Play to Earn Game, Why? How? When?
Since this is my and Titanian Games’ first post on the medium, let me tell you a little about myself. I’m Alper from the Titanian Games “Rage of Titans” team, and I’ve been around in the industry for more than 20 years. I develop software, give conferences, write blogs. I’ve two recipe books published in software development (in Java language) and two more books waiting to be published. The website of the bilisim.io software community, which I founded in 2017, has 5.7 million page views a month. I mean, I have always been and will always be a loyal member of the whole kind of hi-tech community.
As far as I’ve seen lately, some VCs, Angel Investors and especially Game Investors are pretty upset and could be even angry. Perhaps for the first time, game startups and game studios have a second but fairer option like ICO/IGO. In other words, now they have some other investment opportunities offered by blockchain technologies, which seems to have angered some investors.
I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been around for 20 years. As you know, if you have been in the industry for more than 20 years and are active in the community, you can get reviews or thoughts of many people first-hand. When I look deep in the community, I see many game investors see the “play-to-earn” games as a gamble. Especially for the “play-to-earn” games that have become widespread with blockchain, they say, “it’s not a game, it’s a gambling”.
Let’s get straight to the point; some games and game studios fit this description. However, claiming that every play-to-earn game is a gamble and every player is a gambler seems to be a cheap shot. First, let’s get to know the world of ICO/IGO briefly. I will not jump into details, but a short introduction will be good for those who hear it for the first time. Later on, let’s compare the traditional games and play-to-earn games.
ICO/IGO
The Initial Coin Offering (ICO) means attempting to raise funds for a created service or game. In the game ecosystem, ICO is called IGO “Initial Game Offering”. Assume that we want to develop a game, but we do not have enough funds or create a bigger game with more funds. In this case, we prepare a roadmap and present it to the relevant investors.
The blockchain or cryptocurrency communities are the relevant investors. When the investors like the project and the roadmap, they fund the project. The investors here may not be one or a few people, but thousands of people. Thus, thousands of people take small risks and form a community and fund the projects.
The blockchain networks and contracts secure the investment and investors. Because the entire funding operations have to run over the blockchain networks within valid contracts, that is not a profit assurance but an assurance that the investment will be used in the right place.
The entrepreneur must explain where and when to use the funds collected, write it clearly on the unchangeable token (blockchain) contract, and share it with the community. The differentiation or reality here is that you are funded by a community, not a traditional VC or Angel Investor. Please remember, in the IGO tour, the blockchain or cryptocurrency community is funding you.
Play to Earn Game
“Play-To-Earn” game developers are commonly using Blockchain-based ICO/IGO type fund-raising. At the IGO stage, most of them promise to share the economy and income created in the game with both the players and the investors. The game income is shared between the players since the game is classified as a play-to-earn game. Now, we can say that when you are playing a play-to-earn game, and you can make money with the in-game rewards or in-game trades. Please be aware that until here, we didn’t mention any type of bet or gambling. We only talked about a shared game economy and game income.
Let’s examine the concept of “Play-to-Earn” according to its good and bad usage scenarios. Let’s exemplify this review with the traditional game ecosystem.
The Bad
Yes, many games deserve the accusation of gambling. Especially some token-based play-to-earn games which have overly simple game mechanics or per a day one-button click mechanics deserve the gambling classification without any second thought.
As you know, there are games, and that lets you gamble too in the traditional world. While both can be played in the digital environment, not all games are classified as a gamble. In the gamble class games, someone would lose, and the other one would win the money. So, there is a bet mechanism, but many play-to-earn games do not allow betting/gambling. There is only a promise to share incomes or gain rewards. Please, do not decide anything without reviewing the good part!
The Good
As we all know, a very serious economy is formed in traditional games that appeal to large audiences. Gamers buy and sell weapons, armour and cosmetics. All those trades can be directly between the gamers or gamers and studios/publishers. As you would guess, the studios or publishers always gain profits from those trades, meaning “the house always wins”.
I can assure you that we need a second or fresh thought at this exact point. Because we “the gamers” provide tons of profits to the studios and publishers, but they don’t to us. Yes, this is a one-way street. We’re talking about multi-10-billion, perhaps multi-100-billion dollars here. It is such a big market and money that we witness that many publishers and platforms that do not want to share this money with the other are constantly suing each other.
The game publisher, the game studio, or the entrepreneur promises to share those profits in Play-to-Earn games even with excellent visualization and advanced mechanics. They create a living and sharing ecosystem, and they promise that the community will be able to both have a pleasant time playing games and making money.
At this exact point, someone should ask, where does this shared income or money come from? Whether paper or digital. The real value of money is as much as the transaction made with it.
Then, the value of the process should be the same in games that promise the same quality of visuals and mechanics, right? Plus, as discussed above, multi 10 billion dollars, maybe more, are spent on the traditional game system, and a considerable part of it goes to the game studio and the publisher’s pockets. Remember, “the house always wins”.
However, in blockchain-based “play-to-earn” games, game studios promise to share the money created in the economy built in the game ecosystem with the community as a return for their first investment. So, we can call it the perfect shape of a “win-win” economy or ecosystem because there is a reliable and shared ecosystem.
Conclusion
The gamers who are only buyers or the customers in the current ecosystem can now be gainers of a shared ecosystem. Now you decide, do you want to be just a customer or sometimes a winner and sometimes a spender? Only I can say that we need a second thought or a new perspective on the traditional game ecosystem.
Rage Of Titans
Now, I can give the Rage Of Titan as the best example of the ideal play-to-earn ecosystem. We started designing and developing Rage Of Titan at the beginning of 2021 before IGOs became a hype. Rage Of Titans is being developed to allow millions of people to play together. Imagine the ecosystem (money) that millions of gamers will create with the transaction they will make.
Rage Of Titans is the world’s first AA+ Class, Free to Play, Play to Earn, Blockchain/NFT based game with superior visualization and extraordinary technologies to be used for the first time in it.
Now, in order, we will talk about;
1. Titanian Games
2. Rage Of Titans universe
3. Advanced technologies used/will be used in Rage Of Titans
4. Rage Of Titans play to earn mechanism
5. Then, we will try to share detailed game reviews.
All the bests,
Alper
