Blockchain gaming grew like crazy since 2021, but it roots reach as far as 2013, with Huntercoin by Xaya.io being officially first blockchain game.
GameFi tried its best again in 2017, with games such as CryptoBots and Spells of Genesis coming out.
With 2021-2022 NFT explosion, P2E games caught the train and went into mainstream again.
Axie Infinity
2022 was a turbulent year for Blockchain games industry. At the beginning of the year, Ronin bridge hack occurred, with supposedly Lazarus group stealing approximately 650 million USD in Ethereum and USDC(173.000 ETH, 25.5M USDC), becoming most expensive crypto heist yet. The aftermath was AXS, Axie Infinity token price declined from 160$ to a mere 50$ in just 2 months.
Many small, or just badly managed GameFi projects had to close due to harsh market circumstances, leaving players high and dry.
That's what I would call a Sin #1 - inadequate safeguards for investors funds.
Crypto Zoo Saga
Later, at December 17th, Coffeezilla published his investigating video about new, viral P2E project called Crypto Zoo.
Crypto Zoo and its token ZOO, turned out to be in fact gears in a grand rug pull scheme, orchestrated by Logan Paul associates causing again millions to be lost by investors and future players.
That's what I would call a Sin #2 - many bad actors abusing the idea of blockchain gaming.
Mir4, AI gaming, before it was cool.
Mir4, mmorpg game released on 25th August of 2021, published by WeMade. Mir4 incorporated a P2E system of mining resource called Darksteel which you could turn into Draco and then sell to other players for money. You could gather Darksteel by different means, but most lucrative and easy way was mining. What WeMade didn't predict and what ultimately caused Mir4 to slowly fade into oblivion was Bots, designed and used to mine Darksteel and then dump it onto all buyers, causing its price to fall and making P2E way of playing more and more unreliable.
It is very common across different Blockchain Games, and not only! To have a unsophisticated mechanisms, causing deterioration of market prices of resources which leads to painful slow death of ingame economy and then the game itself.
Thats what i would call Sin #3 - long term unreliable, unrealistic yield mechanism often working almost the same as Ponzi schemes. Luring new players with a promise of high gains, while rapidly decaying and becoming unsustainable.
What's next?
Year 2023 only begun, and the industry keeps growing. There are many anticipated P2E games like Tamadoge or Meta Masters Guild. Lets hope the teams responsible for all the games coming out soon wont commit any more sins and we can enjoy new amazing games in 2023!
Let me know what you think in the comments!
None of information in this article should be considered a financial advice, it's my own analysis and facts I wanted to share with this wonderful community.
