It's been a while since I played any good play to earn game for more than 6 months. I had spent most of my time earlier playing the Splinterlands, Gods Unchained, Axie and few other games. This has given me a perspective on how the play to earn games work. And how they can be profitable and non profitable if you choose them for monetary reasons.

Here's my perspective on play to earn games.

Initial Investment

Here most of the games, say 90 percent of the games have some sort of the barrier. Some expect you to buy something to get into the game. Like say splinterlands require you to buy spellbook before you can make money off it. And some other games expect you to buy characters to play before the game can start. This investment is rarely zero dollar unless the game and the overall play to earn is somehow generating the project some dollars. Which is not the case, they need constant cashflow to pass along the small rewards.

A lot of people make good income out of such games so this arrangement works out for those people and ecosystem at the same time.

In-Game Investment

Almost every game that is being released has the NFT component. You get to buy characters, side items, land, house, clothing etc. You can buy them and hold them as your asset. Which can be sold depending on how many of them you own. And then that sort of the in game investment can get you some good earning if you sell it at the right time in the market. It's not going to be cheap in such marketplace and the games. You have to learn to find out the right timing for such game investment to earn you.

NFTs and Marketplace

Some of the NFTs in the marketplace are going to be the only way for some sales to be made by the company. So people tend to be supportive towards the developers. but if the developers are greedy then remember they come out with lot of collection and also don't have some sort of the scarcity. You can then understand how the NFTs can make difference with the marketplace saturation and it'd be hard to sell.

Exit from Game with Profit or Loss

Unless you have some sort of the magical skills to know when to make the exit, you can't really time this sort of the exit. You buy early and sell in the peak of the games hype and the reward cycle. Most of the games including axie are reducing the earnings as the game and the ecosystem is getting matured as well.

I wish I knew how some of those games would work on financial side. I suppose people who have time and money and can burn it on these type of games for years would love "play to earn" model. But it's not going to be an easy money economy. I hate to say this and people will hate me for saying this but if there is too much to be done to make money same as the day job then "Play to Earn" has now become a job! A bit expensive at that.