Blockchain Brawlers, a new play-to-earn video game, is claiming to have driven hundreds of millions of dollars in trading volume in its first few days.
Why it matters: Play-to-earn (P2E) gaming is touted as the great onboarding for people to crypto. It offers the prospect of gamers actually owning the stuff they gather up in game to drive an in-game economy.
Yes, but: Economies are fickle beasts (see today's U.S. inflation reading). Game developers depend on players to reinvest their assets in the game.
Perhaps more importantly, the worst unintended extremes of capitalism have permeated P2E games. The owners of assets have leverage on the players, many of whom are earning below minimum wage in developing countries.
State of play: Investment in the sector has been hot lately. One new project attained a $150 million valuation (in real dollars) in its first investment round.
Threat level: P2E worked great, particularly with one game, Axie Infinity (whose treasury clocked $1.3 billion in revenue last year), until profits took a dive in early December that it has never recovered from, as Token Terminal shows.
But Axie ran into a problem.
What they're saying: There were those who suspected the model couldn't last.
The bottom line: Blockchain Brawlers is one of a slew of games looking to iterate on Axie's model, hoping they can make it work better, longer.
