Despite negative macroeconomic trends, investor appetite for the rip-roaring play-to-earn (P2E) blockchain gaming industry continues to mount, amounting to billions of dollars worth of investment interest.
DappRadar's Q1 2022 Dapp Industry Report underlines that venture capital funds and angel investors are pouring billions of dollars into a wide range of blockchain-based P2E projects and infrastructure development. Compared to 2021’s $4 billion aggregate investment in P2E gaming, investors have already poured in over $2.5 billion dollars during the first quarter of 2022.
Earlier this month, California-based fund a16z (Andreessen Horowitz) launched GAMES FUND ONE - a $600 million fund dedicated to building the future of the P2E games industry. Funds raised are set for allocation across gaming studios and infrastructure.
Commenting on the investment momentum of this new P2E gaming ecosystem, CEO of First Light Games Neil McFarland notes, “it's the biggest opportunity seen in gaming or tech yet! You've got the community and retention of a game like Minecraft married to the social network of Facebook combined with the financial power of a stock exchange. We expect that in 5-10 years that the biggest game or game company will be a metaverse web3 focussed company with Blockchain at its core.”
Meanwhile, the P2E ecosystem is also evolving faster than expected. The rise of the Metaverse and Web 3.0 have unlocked even more opportunities for players and game developers alike. Here are a few ongoing developments across the play-to-earn ecosystem that are shaping the future of GameFi.
Blockchain-Powered Bridge Game
Powered by blockchain technology, BridgeChamp is the first platform of its kind to allow online bridge play, allowing players to play casually or competitively with each other without any geographical restrictions.
By integrating the real-world bridge experience with blockchain-powered features, Bridge Champ supports an on-chain environment and user-friendly interface where anyone can learn and practice their skills, play for fun, and even join and host tournaments or competitions.
The game, built on Jelurida’s Ardor and Ignis blockchains, employs many social features to connect bridge players globally, making it possible for existing bridge clubs and federations to adapt to the changing gaming landscape.
Since its launch, the Bridge Champ team has been continuously adding new features to the platform. Its 2022 roadmap, too, is equally promising as the platform aims to include more innovative tools and solutions to further enhance the online bridge play experience. This includes the release of a dedicated mobile application, launch of tournaments, NFT registration, social networks integration, and much more.
A Gaming Metaverse of Derivative NFTs
Next up on our list is Silks, a promising play-to-earn metaverse that introduces the concept of derivative NFTs. Through the Silks metaverse, you can experience thoroughbred horse racing in a virtual setting. The game has already raised more than $2 million from VC firms and investors, and it expects to raise another 55 million dollars in the next few months.
Inside this metaverse, every horse born in the real-world has its own tokenized NFT version. Interested players purchase these NFTs. Accordingly, each NFT represents and tracks the real-time performance of the horse in the outside world. Based on the horse’s performance, NFT owners receive token rewards that can be utilized in different ways throughout the Silks metaverse.
To maintain the stability of its ecosystem, Silks also features a pair of non-inflationary tokens. Moreover, the in-game NFTs within the metaverse are all organic, which means that the number of NFTs is limited by the number of thoroughbred horses that exist in the real world, unlike in other P2E games where one can mint an infinite number of NFTs.
Building The P2E eSports Tournament Infrastructure
To address the lingering challenges faced by the eSports industry, leading play-to-earn infrastructure provider Ignite Tournaments is building the world’s first P2E eSports tournament organization and streaming app.
According to the Ignite Tournaments team, the platform is focused at solving the drawbacks of the existing infrastructure, such as lack of mobile compatibility, excessive centralization, lack of transparency, and delayed payouts, among others. To that extent, the platform is building the required infrastructure for organizing tournaments and streaming gameplay across Android and iOS devices.
Through Ignite Tournaments’ infrastructure, anyone can organize eSports tournaments with player payouts in cryptocurrencies and NFTs. As an end-to-end infrastructure provider, the platform also includes a myriad of other tools and features, including streaming, live chat, on-chain voting, gaming guild manag ement, sponsorship prizing, automated match adjudication, and much more.
Cross-Chain and Community-Driven P2E Metaverse
Finally, we arrive at REALM - a cross-chain, community-driven metaverse where users can create unique and customizable virtual ecosystems. The platform aims to take in-game interactivity and immersive qualities to new heights by empowering players to tokenize (and add) NFT pets. This activity is accompanied by travel between different “REALMs” using augmented reality (AR), the ability to mint collectibles, participation in virtual exhibitions, as well as the opportunity to connect with friends and fans through live audio streaming.
Powered by the GODOT open-source game engine and the platform-native $REALM token, the REALM metaverse allows players to create an infinite number of microverses and fully customize them to meet specific needs and preferences.
Unlike most P2E metaverses limited to a single chain and don’t offer much interoperability, REALM NFTs can be accessed across multiple chains. Moreover, players can also mint REALM NFTs on Layer-2 Polygon, Ethereum, and even Reef Chain. The platform currently sports an integration with OpenSea via API connection and will gradually integrate other secondary marketplaces.
