The biggest problem with pay to earn that i never considered is cheating. People cheat FOR FUN so just imagine how many cheaters there will be with money on the line
There is already an excellent example of this in 'Escape From Tarkov'. Cheat developers work hard to sell cheat software to "labourers" who play the game to provide services and collect valuable items and sell them to actual players for real money. And it only keeps getting worse as the illegitimate businesses keep expanding. It has gotten so bad that "infested with cheaters" would be an apt description of the game in its current state. It's not a new phenomenon by any means, but Escape From Tarkov just stands out so well because it's the perfect environment for this kind of business.
People already cheat for money, even without a play to earn model. MMOs are a really big target for this, given that there are enough players who would purchase things such as currency instead of playing the game to get it. Wonder if play to earn games would even embrace stuff like botting, if it's a load of business crypto bros, they might just see it as job automation.
@@Enriath Absolutely. Many online games, especially MMOs already have a massive real life market. From currency to items, everythings on sale. Just look for how much some CSGO skins go. People use cheating to get items to sell. Hell, people use exploits and cheating to create usually impossible, completely overpowered items to sell....
@@Enriath It seems to me like the push for play to earn is because devs are seeing stuff like that and and instead of seeing it as a problem to be fixed, they view it as a potential source revenue.
But really, this isn't actually about valuing the time of gamers. It's corporate mindset people trying to inject the idea of a problem (gamers' time isn't being valued!) Into the discourse in order to justify and hype up the idea of more crypto garbage that they can make money on.
This reminds me of that meme that makes fun of clueless corporateheads. The meme had a picture of trees, and the text said "yo why are they growing without a profit incentive?"
I have willingly spent so much fucking money on games, game systems, and on things like DLCs, that the thought of needing to earn money to play a game sounds beyond foreign. It makes sense for something like play testers who play earlier janky stages of the game, and who do so repeatedly for bug testing and mechanics; but the idea of needing to earn money to enjoy a game sounds idiotic. Especially because, as we all know, the house always wins. These games won't make you a millionaire, you'll probably get ten cents after playing it for a year strait.
@@le_fancy_squid this is exactly how it works with games that have a similar system in place, unless you're rich, you're likely not even going to be able to break even in the first few years (unless you go completely f2p in which case, everything is technically profit, but being f2p in such a game is straight up masochistic). Not to talk about the modern NFT games, where there's a clear bias towards early joiners, those who join early get stupid rich if the game gets popular or have been robbed hundreds, if not thousands of dollars if the game fails and the later you join, the harder it is to "turn a profit". Someone once tried to hire me to develop such a game and after hearing his bullshit I quickly rejected, he literally said that someone who joins like a year after release would start making a profit in 3 years of playing consistently. fuck that shit
UNLESS they dont wanna try to make a good game, and just throw money at us instead.... not huge amounts... juuust enough to keep us playing. but its dead out of the gate to me... its so dumb. I think they try to induce FOMO
Gaming industries has already converted to jobs like half of it instead of hobbies. You see millions of gamers competing in becoming content creator and they forced themselves to make videos or streaming.
You are 100% right Garbaj. That guy is exactly whats wrong with the games industry. They think that they can bribe us with NFTs and gambling mechanics (lootboxes) and that no matter how bad the game is, playwrs will just accept it. No no no. I play games to have fun. I play games to get away from work.
If "Earn-to-Play" will be the system then he has to give money to listen a song. Games, songs, movies, novel - all these are art forms. We listen a song not to earn money but satisfying our minds. Playing games is like that too.
When I heard “play to earn” I originally thought that essentially a term for the opposite of “pay to win”. My idea before actually reading the tweet was that “play to earn” meant allowing players to earn better in-game stuff but putting in the time to actually play a game (think 100% challenges with cool rewards at the end like older games had). Definitely wasn’t thinking it’d be literally paying people in crypto to play their game lmao. My idea sounds way better and much more enjoyable
I'm gonna say Your idea of Play to Earn is kinda scuffed too because if the thing you want is locked behind (exaggerated) 500 challenges then you're kinda fucked, just implementing that thing won't make your game good. It has to be fun in the first place, and your challenges must be actually thought through instead of [kill 50 enemies using (weapon_name)] I'm saying that because most challenges in games are a complete chore and not fun at all
@@sharkenjoyer Yeah, I had that thought after writing my comment. Stuff like Call of Duty’s “get 5 kills in a match 15 times” which is easy for anyone to do but just forces you to play out every match and doesn’t reward skill at all. The challenges need to be something reasonable and fun (I know fun is subjective), not something ridiculously long for the sake of artificially increasing player retention
@@hoagieland3716 But sadly, most games prioritize player retention over actually being fun, so you get these super grindy challenges. And they kill 3 birds with one stone because they get 1. player retention 2. if player doesn't want to grind away, they can just buy their way into getting the thing 3. and still implement challenges so players won't complain en masse about the game being p2w
Play to Earn is an idea pushed generally by NFT/Crypto grifters. We already have a way to play games and earn money, it's called streaming, and ask most any streamer what games they play off-stream and most tell you they don't because once you make your hobby your job it becomes difficult to actually unwind with said hobby
I saw my younger brother have an idle game on his phone on his lap, a tycoon game on his second monitor with him being idle and grinding cash, with a movie playing on his main monitor that he was actually focusing on. I asked him why he wasn't playing the game, and he said he didn't like it and it wasn't fun. The only reason he even loaded it up was because his friends play it, and he wants to have better skins, items, and more hours than his friends. He does this with several games too; he constantly downloads games his friends play like fortnite, apex legends, etc. and uninstalls them because his friends play another game and he doesn't have enough space on his computer then downloads the games his friends play. Rinse and repeat this ad infinitum. He only plays these games, not because he thinks it's fun, but because he wants to play-to-earn better items and skins and whatnot to be better than his friends, which i think is sad, since i only play stuff that i think is fun. I'm just thinking about my brother - plus all those other people - getting exposed to all those battlepasses and level locked items and skins rewarded from challenges, etc. and i realize that more and more people aren't playing to have fun, but playing to earn. "If it's not fun, why bother?" - Reggie Fils-Aimé
"Pay to earn" turns gaming into a *job.* Why the hell would I come home from work and say "oh yeah, I totally want to spend my free time toiling in the digital crypto coal mines!" when I could relax?
Exactly, i believe play to earn games will suffer a lot in gameplay and experience, also the money that you earn will most likely come from other players, so it would only work if players are willing to spend a lot of money on that game. I rather pay for an amazing gaming experience than grind on something i don't like to make 10€ a week
I love how he gave the example of axie infinity as a "good play to earn game" lmao. Ah yes axie infinity, a game well known for needing players to put in insane amounts of money to just get started and be competitive. A game which sees a few rich individuals hold nearly all of the axies and who rent them out to newcomers to basically exploit them like a 3rd world job would. And what happens if you just want to play casually? The axie landlords start cracking the whip and you'll lose everything if you don't follow their line. You don't "play" this game, you work it. Makes sense why the suits would want this to become the future of gaming. To them this is a wet dream.
In psychology there is this term called "reward undermining". By that concept, you would make a game worse by adding something like this. Because the extrinsic reward (money) "overrides" the perceived value of the intrinsic reward (the fun gameplay experience).
i like to think of play to earn as the old model of gaming where the more you play, the more the game rewards you with fun new features and items/cosmetics
The biggest gripe I have with 'play to earn' is the notion that anything earned will automatically have value. Just because you say something is worth X amount, that doesn't mean someone will actually see value in it and pay that money. Unless people find genuine value in something, you can say it's 'worth' whatever you want and fail as a result when no one buys your product. Anyways, nice to see you again, Garbaj! I hope you're having a fun time with Anomaly
At first I thought you were going to talk about the phenomenon of games incentivizing players with rewards that are earned for playing, I.E. Some kind of overall progression system in you games, which I think would be a very interesting talking point. Back in the day, not all games had a core progression system, especially games before Call of Duty 4, but now every game has some kind of internal progression as well as some kind of in-game currency, even single player games have some kind of currency of sorts. See that would be an interesting discussion, because a lot of the games pre-2007, you played them to play them. You didn't unlock anything for playing the game. No cosmetics, no levels, no ranks, you literally just played the game, but now it feels like if a game doesn't have a sense of progression, then it is missing content, even if it isn't. There's that feeling where you have to feel like you are at least in some way shape or form being rewarded to play the game. I don't personally hold that sentiment. I put over 200 hours in Among Us before they added any progression, and I will play Black Ops 1 Zombies for hours despite all of my efforts being negated when I finally die, but I know that many people today do feel that way.
And not only did this progression system totally take over, which I don't necessarily consider a bad thing, but now it seems the progression systems in most AAA games are meaningless and just a number that goes up. In older call of duty games you'd get awesome calling cards to show off to people by completing challenges and leveling up. Now the coolest ones are bought in a store and the "progression" is going through a battle pass that you rebuy every couple of months. I'm not entirely against this business model in free to play games but we should at the least have the progression mean something instead of being bypassed because all the cool stuff comes from micro transactions
@@projectgg6730 oh yeah, that's a whole nother (but related) topic, how games are taking items that you used to unlock from playing the game, and selling them as microtransactions (cough cough Halo cough cough), but like what you're saying, there has to be at least something, some kind of number that goes up, at the very least, otherwise I might as well play a different game that does
@CERJ Media Gaming honestly I still think destiny 2 is the least egregious approach to this with their battle pass just being in game currencies and cosmetics mostly. And stuff like kill trackers and good loot comes from game play. But to bring things back on your original topic. I'd argue that progression back in the day came from achievements and overall mastery of the game. Remember gaming back in the early 2000s and especially earlier than that was a lot more niche and in turn games were just harder and also more clunky. So I'd say we've seen a shift from a player progression system to a character progression system. My theory is that games being more accessible, which isn't necessarily a bad thing I'm not trying to rag on modern gaming, means the over all feeling of mastery might be less rewarding. Also I'd say the gaming community in general has just gotten better at gaming. Which brings up hand holding in games now buttttt that's a tangent I'd rather not go on haha. I like this though because it let's games like dark souls and elden ring to really stand out
In some sense CS:GO has a play to earn feature with their skins and cases being dropped after the game. But that has never been the reason why people play the game, its just a neat bonus.
yeah, i think the fact that its just a chance to get skins, instead of like a guaranteed x payout per match helps to keep it that way, plus the limit they have to how many drops you get per week.
I once heard of an experiment they did with preschoolers. The preschoolers loved to draw because they thought it was fun. Then the scientists gave half of them a star or something like that when they drew something. After a while of giving those stars the scientists stopped and the children didn't want to draw anymore unless they knew they would get a star. I think that also can happen with gaming.
So they're saying within the next five years we're gonna go from borderline predatory business practices and exploiting the addictive nature of gambling (loot boxs) to companies paying players. Lol what a solid prediction
Why the fuck do I need to grindset my relaxing? Am I supposed to become a dogwalker in order to financially maximize my morning jog? What the hell is this corporate hellscape of a world coming to?
this is one of the most quality videos I've watched in a long time. Not only do I agree with you, but also, the video is structured to be brief, informative. If this was any other youtuber's video, they would make it 13 mins, saying the same thing again and again like penguinz and mutahar. I love this. 1 minute is all you needed to prove your point.
Ultrakill does it really well imo. The reward you get for getting good at the game isn't some cosmetic stuff. It's more content and I love that concept.
"Play to earn" can work in certain communities, one that comes to mind for me is Team Fortress 2. The inclusion of item rarity, "currencies", and community means that trading has become an aspect of the games business model, and the best part is you don't have to pay a single to cent to either play the game or earn cool cosmetics/weapons. Sure paying money directly to the game developers gives some nice bonuses like increased inventory, the ability to communicate in game, and if you buy the con-tracker pass you get access to basically free skins and great weapons that introduced game mechanics very well. However you can get very far without spending money in that game, hell you can buy games through trading without even spending money.
You're not really playing the game to earn anything tho, the act of playing and participating in the tf2 economy is almost separate (contrackers and item drops still connect the two but it's unlikely you'll go from 1 key to 300 keys just from those)
Makes you wonder about other areas of this guy's life, like his romantic relationships. "Why would a woman want to date me if she's not being adequately compensated" etc.
I believe (don't have a source here, so add salt to taste) research has shown that once you give someone a form of _extrinsic_ motivation - such as being paid to do something - that replaces and diminishes any future _intrinsic_ motivation - doing something for the sake of it - so if you ever take it away again, doing the thing will stop being fun (even if it had been fun on its own before). So the very act of letting people play-to-earn might immediately make the game in question less fun, _even if_ it was a good game to start with.
The jokes just write themselves. 2 are "but why would anyone play video games without profit incentive" and "business men performing perfect 10's in the mental gymnastics instead of just admitting that gamers want good games"
The fact that all these half-assed game released recently with poor optimization, repetitive content and cut-throat money-grabbing yet still sells like mad really shows not only where the "industry" is moving but also the gamers have changed too.
I think the only positive use of an NFT is if it means I can store my saves on a dedicated server to use the same save across multiple titles, like something akin to Mass Effect and Dragon Age type of generational lineage and persistent story. This kind of save file could be valuable and resold, but the point isn't for that. That can be a byproduct that I won't engage in, like selling gold on WoW for cash or something. But yeah if there was something like an NFT block chain to guarantee the validity of my actions in a game, like a token for this action or that in game, and the save is built up over time I think that could be very useful in gaming. This is just my own idea, though. Everything else I've ever heard of to this day is just con artists trying to make a buck.
So I guess business people saw the current state of gaming and instead of going "maybe we should make games more functional and enjoyable," they said "what if we made it a grift so people HAVE to play our dogshit every day like it's a second job, robbing the games industry of any enjoyable aspects it used to have?" My best guess is they saw microtransactions making money and decided "what if we made them macrotransactions?"
I 100% agree with you for this. But, I still do think games can implement play to earn in their games. Most games already have this and are probably gonna continue to add it, but things like battle passes and level rewards are what I would consider play to earn. It’s kind of expected now. Like, you play the game for a while, you get a free skin or something like that. It’s play to earn, most games have it, and it’s in a lot of really good games.
I have this feeling that, some people forgot that gaming was and is still just a hobby, not a job, not a living (for some yeah...) but, we dont need to get "paid" to play a game or something like that. I play games, beacuse its my hobby, its my passion....
Modern big name games are more interested in keeping you playing longer rather than entertaining the player, similar to how social media and streaming sites now work. It's all about padding the numbers so devs can look good for investors.
Well, I'll gladly take money, but I don't think it'll be Standard, simply because no current games really are made that way(that I know of), and games usually stick around for at least a few years, and the best even for decades
as a gamer i can confirm we play for fun over compensation, no like seriously if we were just looking for compensation it defeats the purpose, at that point we wouldve used that money to invest in a business or something, we play because we enjoy games
Play To Earn concept is quite destructive because it breaks the immersion. For many people games are entertaining simply because of escapism they provide.
With the way things have been going, pay-to-earn might be the model of the future just because that's the only way AAA companies will get us to play their schlock. That, or everywhere will end up like Venezuela and we'll be playing Axie Infinity as a second job just to scrape by.
"Play to Earn" feels like a game journalist take, the one time they play a game without it being for a rushed paid review, and then realizing they don't like games enough to play them without being paid for it.
Could you imagine AAA publishers (the post author did say majority of gamers, so this is who that author expects to create these games) giving away their AAA games for FREE and being expected to PAY US to play them? This is instead of the current system, where they charge us over a hundred dollars for the game, provide a usually incomplete, suboptimal experience, and collect all our data to sell to the highest bidder? What sounds more profitable to the corporations? I can't even imagine the risk involved in making a game at the AAA tier and just giving it away. I don't think their shareholders and investors would be easily convinced. I know that free to play games, like Fortnite and all that, exist. They come with massive risk and are long-term ventures by companies to hopefully have a cash cow they can milk for many years. Every AAA company already has stacked their games with microtransactions. That's the milk. What benefit would there be to encouraging players to sell what they've bought? If players are profiting off your game, who is losing money - the company? The closest current example I can think of are earning case drops in CSGO and hoping to get something good in the cases when you pay to open them. The thing is, practically nobody makes money opening cases. It's incredibly rare, and the players know it. Valve is raking in millions from cases because players are just injecting their money into Valve's veins, hoping to get something good. It's gambling. That's the closest example to play-to-earn and it works because the players don't actually earn anything, the house always wins, and the gambling drug is strong. If players are going to be generating profits in your play-to-earn, then their data better be worth a shitload, because if the players win, the house loses. And as far as I know, play-to-earn hinges on the success of players actually earning. Otherwise it isn't play-to-earn, it's just free to play, right? It seems ridiculous to assume that the money players earn will come out of nowhere. If you want a trading platform for your game's items, like the Steam Marketplace, then just make one. Players won't be earning, they'll just be spending money and getting something they want in the game. Players don't mind coughing up money to buy some cool skins, obviously - that's why microtransactions are so successful and implemented so liberally. To make a profitable game, your players have to spend money, not earn money. At least, that's how I understand it. (Oh and to your original point, Garbaj - I totally agree. Trading money for entertainment is normal and logical. Nothing else makes sense to me either.)
Hey! love your vids. Iv been on your channel a while ago when you had 440 something subs i believe and i really love your vids since im doing 3d modeling and game design i really like the content that you make. So... play to earn games are basically like the machines on casinos, bad small games that the only reason to play them is to earn something (most likely money) and have zero thought behind them, except for them to get you "hooked" or as many people like to call it addicted lol. As you said you dont play video games to get a physical reward out of them you just play to relax, have fun or to just hang around and do dum stuff that are impossible in reality. If video games somehow end up on a path like that, there will no longer be any good games, instead there will be bad games almost like mobile ones that are filled to the brim with adds because the money that will be getting out will somehow need to get back to the owner/creator of that so called "game" and a LOT and i mean a LOT of people will lose a ton of money and become addicted to cabling giving these companies tons of money. But play to earn maybe a thing but it will most definitely not be the future of gaming in any way. In my opinion the future is VR and if you think that VR is "trash" and is just a dum gimmick like older VR failures like the Virtual Boy by nintendo or the Sega VR headset, then please do your research and come back to me (if your argument contains anything about the motion sickness, first of all you can say the same thing about flat games and how some people cant sit in front of a screen in long periods of time, and second this is an extremely small amount of people and maybe these problems can be somehow fixed in the future).
but like. nobody pays a home machinist to buy a lathe, an artist to paint the eiffel tower, or a musician to practice a guitar solo. why would it be any different for gaming?
The biggest problem with pay to earn that i never considered is cheating. People cheat FOR FUN so just imagine how many cheaters there will be with money on the line
There is already an excellent example of this in 'Escape From Tarkov'. Cheat developers work hard to sell cheat software to "labourers" who play the game to provide services and collect valuable items and sell them to actual players for real money. And it only keeps getting worse as the illegitimate businesses keep expanding. It has gotten so bad that "infested with cheaters" would be an apt description of the game in its current state. It's not a new phenomenon by any means, but Escape From Tarkov just stands out so well because it's the perfect environment for this kind of business.
People already cheat for money, even without a play to earn model. MMOs are a really big target for this, given that there are enough players who would purchase things such as currency instead of playing the game to get it. Wonder if play to earn games would even embrace stuff like botting, if it's a load of business crypto bros, they might just see it as job automation.
@@Enriath Absolutely. Many online games, especially MMOs already have a massive real life market. From currency to items, everythings on sale. Just look for how much some CSGO skins go. People use cheating to get items to sell. Hell, people use exploits and cheating to create usually impossible, completely overpowered items to sell....
@@Enriath It seems to me like the push for play to earn is because devs are seeing stuff like that and and instead of seeing it as a problem to be fixed, they view it as a potential source revenue.
@@last_surprise9507How does one make money off a play to earn model though? The money doesn't appear out of thin air.
When business people try to understand gaming
Best way to say it really
But really, this isn't actually about valuing the time of gamers. It's corporate mindset people trying to inject the idea of a problem (gamers' time isn't being valued!) Into the discourse in order to justify and hype up the idea of more crypto garbage that they can make money on.
@@MFKitten I'm a robophobe. I'm anti services that use algorithmic learning. I appreciate, applaud, and am willing to tip, human element, humans.
This reminds me of that meme that makes fun of clueless corporateheads. The meme had a picture of trees, and the text said "yo why are they growing without a profit incentive?"
Buisness person tries to understand gaming challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)
Imagine thinking you need compensation for having fun
crypto bros can't have fun, that's why
@@mrlucky974 Exactly. These games simply aren't fun, so they need another incentive to play....
These are people who think games aren’t fun
@@Cheesepuff8 then idk maybe like don't play video games if you don't find them fun idk just a thought
@@funknick okay nick funk
You are absolutely correct, if games are properly developed and fun to play, there’s no need to motivate us even further to play the game.
I have willingly spent so much fucking money on games, game systems, and on things like DLCs, that the thought of needing to earn money to play a game sounds beyond foreign. It makes sense for something like play testers who play earlier janky stages of the game, and who do so repeatedly for bug testing and mechanics; but the idea of needing to earn money to enjoy a game sounds idiotic. Especially because, as we all know, the house always wins. These games won't make you a millionaire, you'll probably get ten cents after playing it for a year strait.
@@le_fancy_squid this is exactly how it works with games that have a similar system in place, unless you're rich, you're likely not even going to be able to break even in the first few years (unless you go completely f2p in which case, everything is technically profit, but being f2p in such a game is straight up masochistic). Not to talk about the modern NFT games, where there's a clear bias towards early joiners, those who join early get stupid rich if the game gets popular or have been robbed hundreds, if not thousands of dollars if the game fails and the later you join, the harder it is to "turn a profit". Someone once tried to hire me to develop such a game and after hearing his bullshit I quickly rejected, he literally said that someone who joins like a year after release would start making a profit in 3 years of playing consistently. fuck that shit
UNLESS they dont wanna try to make a good game, and just throw money at us instead.... not huge amounts... juuust enough to keep us playing.
but its dead out of the gate to me... its so dumb.
I think they try to induce FOMO
turning a relaxing gaming time into a side hustle, sounds like a nightmare
Wait until you meet destiny players
Yes I would like to return home from my stressful job to work at another job
@@beenguy5887 ☠
Lamest distopian ever.
This feels like those "turn your hobbies into your side job" types. Like, it's not my hobby if I'm doing it for work
Gaming industries has already converted to jobs like half of it instead of hobbies. You see millions of gamers competing in becoming content creator and they forced themselves to make videos or streaming.
@@youravghuman5231 True
You are 100% right Garbaj. That guy is exactly whats wrong with the games industry. They think that they can bribe us with NFTs and gambling mechanics (lootboxes) and that no matter how bad the game is, playwrs will just accept it. No no no. I play games to have fun. I play games to get away from work.
I see this as completely reasonable, the popularity of minecraft has already proven that children yearn for the mines.
/s
If "Earn-to-Play" will be the system then he has to give money to listen a song.
Games, songs, movies, novel - all these are art forms. We listen a song not to earn money but satisfying our minds. Playing games is like that too.
“You couldn’t pay me to play that game” is going to become a very literal phrase lol
Jk this stuff isn’t happening lol
When I heard “play to earn” I originally thought that essentially a term for the opposite of “pay to win”. My idea before actually reading the tweet was that “play to earn” meant allowing players to earn better in-game stuff but putting in the time to actually play a game (think 100% challenges with cool rewards at the end like older games had). Definitely wasn’t thinking it’d be literally paying people in crypto to play their game lmao. My idea sounds way better and much more enjoyable
your idea is how any well developed game should progress
I'm gonna say
Your idea of Play to Earn is kinda scuffed too because if the thing you want is locked behind (exaggerated) 500 challenges then you're kinda fucked, just implementing that thing won't make your game good. It has to be fun in the first place, and your challenges must be actually thought through instead of [kill 50 enemies using (weapon_name)]
I'm saying that because most challenges in games are a complete chore and not fun at all
@@sharkenjoyer Yeah, I had that thought after writing my comment. Stuff like Call of Duty’s “get 5 kills in a match 15 times” which is easy for anyone to do but just forces you to play out every match and doesn’t reward skill at all. The challenges need to be something reasonable and fun (I know fun is subjective), not something ridiculously long for the sake of artificially increasing player retention
@@hoagieland3716 But sadly, most games prioritize player retention over actually being fun, so you get these super grindy challenges. And they kill 3 birds with one stone because they get
1. player retention
2. if player doesn't want to grind away, they can just buy their way into getting the thing
3. and still implement challenges so players won't complain en masse about the game being p2w
Play to Earn is an idea pushed generally by NFT/Crypto grifters. We already have a way to play games and earn money, it's called streaming, and ask most any streamer what games they play off-stream and most tell you they don't because once you make your hobby your job it becomes difficult to actually unwind with said hobby
Streaming, trading, boosting, selling accounts etc
making money with streaming is less about playihng the game and being an e-clown
@@melc311 or being so good that people wanna watch you
But of course being an e clown is much easier
I saw my younger brother have an idle game on his phone on his lap, a tycoon game on his second monitor with him being idle and grinding cash, with a movie playing on his main monitor that he was actually focusing on. I asked him why he wasn't playing the game, and he said he didn't like it and it wasn't fun. The only reason he even loaded it up was because his friends play it, and he wants to have better skins, items, and more hours than his friends. He does this with several games too; he constantly downloads games his friends play like fortnite, apex legends, etc. and uninstalls them because his friends play another game and he doesn't have enough space on his computer then downloads the games his friends play. Rinse and repeat this ad infinitum.
He only plays these games, not because he thinks it's fun, but because he wants to play-to-earn better items and skins and whatnot to be better than his friends, which i think is sad, since i only play stuff that i think is fun. I'm just thinking about my brother - plus all those other people - getting exposed to all those battlepasses and level locked items and skins rewarded from challenges, etc. and i realize that more and more people aren't playing to have fun, but playing to earn.
"If it's not fun, why bother?" - Reggie Fils-Aimé
"Pay to earn" turns gaming into a *job.* Why the hell would I come home from work and say "oh yeah, I totally want to spend my free time toiling in the digital crypto coal mines!" when I could relax?
Exactly, i believe play to earn games will suffer a lot in gameplay and experience, also the money that you earn will most likely come from other players, so it would only work if players are willing to spend a lot of money on that game. I rather pay for an amazing gaming experience than grind on something i don't like to make 10€ a week
Implementing a Play to Earn system is much easier than making a good game...
I love how he gave the example of axie infinity as a "good play to earn game" lmao. Ah yes axie infinity, a game well known for needing players to put in insane amounts of money to just get started and be competitive. A game which sees a few rich individuals hold nearly all of the axies and who rent them out to newcomers to basically exploit them like a 3rd world job would. And what happens if you just want to play casually? The axie landlords start cracking the whip and you'll lose everything if you don't follow their line. You don't "play" this game, you work it.
Makes sense why the suits would want this to become the future of gaming. To them this is a wet dream.
So a Pay2Win game?
We live in a society.
In psychology there is this term called "reward undermining".
By that concept, you would make a game worse by adding something like this.
Because the extrinsic reward (money) "overrides" the perceived value of the intrinsic reward (the fun gameplay experience).
Funnily enough, the only people who I can see taking “play to earn” seriously are Reddit mods
i like to think of play to earn as the old model of gaming where the more you play, the more the game rewards you with fun new features and items/cosmetics
"You don't need to dangle carrots on a stick to get me to play a good game because the good game is the carrot."
The biggest gripe I have with 'play to earn' is the notion that anything earned will automatically have value.
Just because you say something is worth X amount, that doesn't mean someone will actually see value in it and pay that money. Unless people find genuine value in something, you can say it's 'worth' whatever you want and fail as a result when no one buys your product.
Anyways, nice to see you again, Garbaj! I hope you're having a fun time with Anomaly
At first I thought you were going to talk about the phenomenon of games incentivizing players with rewards that are earned for playing, I.E. Some kind of overall progression system in you games, which I think would be a very interesting talking point. Back in the day, not all games had a core progression system, especially games before Call of Duty 4, but now every game has some kind of internal progression as well as some kind of in-game currency, even single player games have some kind of currency of sorts.
See that would be an interesting discussion, because a lot of the games pre-2007, you played them to play them. You didn't unlock anything for playing the game. No cosmetics, no levels, no ranks, you literally just played the game, but now it feels like if a game doesn't have a sense of progression, then it is missing content, even if it isn't. There's that feeling where you have to feel like you are at least in some way shape or form being rewarded to play the game. I don't personally hold that sentiment. I put over 200 hours in Among Us before they added any progression, and I will play Black Ops 1 Zombies for hours despite all of my efforts being negated when I finally die, but I know that many people today do feel that way.
And not only did this progression system totally take over, which I don't necessarily consider a bad thing, but now it seems the progression systems in most AAA games are meaningless and just a number that goes up. In older call of duty games you'd get awesome calling cards to show off to people by completing challenges and leveling up. Now the coolest ones are bought in a store and the "progression" is going through a battle pass that you rebuy every couple of months. I'm not entirely against this business model in free to play games but we should at the least have the progression mean something instead of being bypassed because all the cool stuff comes from micro transactions
@@projectgg6730 oh yeah, that's a whole nother (but related) topic, how games are taking items that you used to unlock from playing the game, and selling them as microtransactions (cough cough Halo cough cough), but like what you're saying, there has to be at least something, some kind of number that goes up, at the very least, otherwise I might as well play a different game that does
@CERJ Media Gaming honestly I still think destiny 2 is the least egregious approach to this with their battle pass just being in game currencies and cosmetics mostly. And stuff like kill trackers and good loot comes from game play. But to bring things back on your original topic. I'd argue that progression back in the day came from achievements and overall mastery of the game. Remember gaming back in the early 2000s and especially earlier than that was a lot more niche and in turn games were just harder and also more clunky. So I'd say we've seen a shift from a player progression system to a character progression system. My theory is that games being more accessible, which isn't necessarily a bad thing I'm not trying to rag on modern gaming, means the over all feeling of mastery might be less rewarding. Also I'd say the gaming community in general has just gotten better at gaming. Which brings up hand holding in games now buttttt that's a tangent I'd rather not go on haha. I like this though because it let's games like dark souls and elden ring to really stand out
In some sense CS:GO has a play to earn feature with their skins and cases being dropped after the game. But that has never been the reason why people play the game, its just a neat bonus.
yeah, i think the fact that its just a chance to get skins, instead of like a guaranteed x payout per match helps to keep it that way, plus the limit they have to how many drops you get per week.
That tweet gives me "whats up fellow kids" vibes
Play to pay
This is why executives ruin games, movies, shows etc.
their boomer ass doesn't actually know how the world works, these are the people most disconnected from the audience
Music?
I once heard of an experiment they did with preschoolers. The preschoolers loved to draw because they thought it was fun. Then the scientists gave half of them a star or something like that when they drew something. After a while of giving those stars the scientists stopped and the children didn't want to draw anymore unless they knew they would get a star. I think that also can happen with gaming.
When "entertainment" is in the description of "game" then the question answers itself.
If it's fun, there's a reward
I think we all know where this is going when he starts talking about NFT's
Capitalist tries to understand the concept of fun (Colourized, 2023)
So they're saying within the next five years we're gonna go from borderline predatory business practices and exploiting the addictive nature of gambling (loot boxs) to companies paying players. Lol what a solid prediction
It's probably gonna be more like "pay 10$ to play some mission that may or may not earn you 20$"
Let's just turn gaming into a second job
I completely agree. I think the play to earn model will just be either a way for bad games to entice you to play them
Why the fuck do I need to grindset my relaxing? Am I supposed to become a dogwalker in order to financially maximize my morning jog? What the hell is this corporate hellscape of a world coming to?
I like that you took some Stalker Anomaly gameplay footage as the "background video" for what you've got to say. A great game indeed!
I think it goes beyond being a good game or not. "Play to earn" and "good game" are almost mutually exclusive.
The commodification of everything is getting to the point where talking points like this are hard to distinguish from satire.
I love seeing Garbaj play Stalker
this is one of the most quality videos I've watched in a long time. Not only do I agree with you, but also, the video is structured to be brief, informative. If this was any other youtuber's video, they would make it 13 mins, saying the same thing again and again like penguinz and mutahar. I love this. 1 minute is all you needed to prove your point.
on point as always
As an engineer, the whole web3 is like a solution to a problem that doesn't exist
Ultrakill does it really well imo. The reward you get for getting good at the game isn't some cosmetic stuff. It's more content and I love that concept.
me: sees flat surface at 90 degrees
my titanfall brain: hehe scoot scoot
Completely agree, a good game is the carrot. A good game is also something you come back to and play again and again.
But how am I supposed to have fun without a profit incentive?
Tell me you're motivated solely by money without telling me you're motivated solely by money.
I love the stalker gameplay. tyvm
"Play to earn" can work in certain communities, one that comes to mind for me is Team Fortress 2. The inclusion of item rarity, "currencies", and community means that trading has become an aspect of the games business model, and the best part is you don't have to pay a single to cent to either play the game or earn cool cosmetics/weapons. Sure paying money directly to the game developers gives some nice bonuses like increased inventory, the ability to communicate in game, and if you buy the con-tracker pass you get access to basically free skins and great weapons that introduced game mechanics very well. However you can get very far without spending money in that game, hell you can buy games through trading without even spending money.
You're not really playing the game to earn anything tho, the act of playing and participating in the tf2 economy is almost separate (contrackers and item drops still connect the two but it's unlikely you'll go from 1 key to 300 keys just from those)
I couldn't have said it better. I feel sorry for those guys
Let's not forget playing games is a hobby and you are doing it for fun.
Not only this nis not the future, its a weird past
Makes you wonder about other areas of this guy's life, like his romantic relationships. "Why would a woman want to date me if she's not being adequately compensated" etc.
I believe (don't have a source here, so add salt to taste) research has shown that once you give someone a form of _extrinsic_ motivation - such as being paid to do something - that replaces and diminishes any future _intrinsic_ motivation - doing something for the sake of it - so if you ever take it away again, doing the thing will stop being fun (even if it had been fun on its own before). So the very act of letting people play-to-earn might immediately make the game in question less fun, _even if_ it was a good game to start with.
This is absolutely true and research does support this
Ohanian's idea has very scary potential consequences.
There's another name for that: financial pyramid.
The answer was so simple and your take was perfect lol had me cracking up. I bet the guy thought he had a profound idea or something 😂
When money people try to comprehend the concept of having fun.
Games should start paying us to play them
It‘s either a troll or a guy who’s „gaming“ on his phone and has reached Candy Crush LvL 99999XXXYZAA
we're already at pay to play to earn right now with battlepasses
Ah yes, my enjoyment is not the goal, it's cash money
Long long time no see. Garbaj
Of course it's Mr reddit that says that.
Indeed brother right on spot brohter
The jokes just write themselves. 2 are "but why would anyone play video games without profit incentive" and "business men performing perfect 10's in the mental gymnastics instead of just admitting that gamers want good games"
The fact that all these half-assed game released recently with poor optimization, repetitive content and cut-throat money-grabbing yet still sells like mad really shows not only where the "industry" is moving but also the gamers have changed too.
Garvaaaaj
We have play to earn, it's called E-sports and Streaming and UA-cam.
Literally casinos
Absolutely unhinged from reality.
either he interested in that idea or warning us of that idea.
The point is to commodify your free time, so you have to work even more, otherwise you're behind.
All I'm wondering is whether this man actually believed what he said or if he just wanted to create a viral tweet
I think the only positive use of an NFT is if it means I can store my saves on a dedicated server to use the same save across multiple titles, like something akin to Mass Effect and Dragon Age type of generational lineage and persistent story. This kind of save file could be valuable and resold, but the point isn't for that. That can be a byproduct that I won't engage in, like selling gold on WoW for cash or something. But yeah if there was something like an NFT block chain to guarantee the validity of my actions in a game, like a token for this action or that in game, and the save is built up over time I think that could be very useful in gaming.
This is just my own idea, though. Everything else I've ever heard of to this day is just con artists trying to make a buck.
Pay to pay
It's kinda like sports. Outside of competition you won't see it. And sports have been there for a looonnng time
So I guess business people saw the current state of gaming and instead of going "maybe we should make games more functional and enjoyable," they said "what if we made it a grift so people HAVE to play our dogshit every day like it's a second job, robbing the games industry of any enjoyable aspects it used to have?"
My best guess is they saw microtransactions making money and decided "what if we made them macrotransactions?"
>Creator of reddit
>valuable opinion
Uh.. okay.
I 100% agree with you for this. But, I still do think games can implement play to earn in their games. Most games already have this and are probably gonna continue to add it, but things like battle passes and level rewards are what I would consider play to earn. It’s kind of expected now. Like, you play the game for a while, you get a free skin or something like that. It’s play to earn, most games have it, and it’s in a lot of really good games.
Feels like it's an idea pitched by someone who has to pay people to hang out with him.
that’s deep ^^^^
I have this feeling that, some people forgot that gaming was and is still just a hobby, not a job, not a living (for some yeah...) but, we dont need to get "paid" to play a game or something like that. I play games, beacuse its my hobby, its my passion....
Or what indeed
Give this man a medal! he gets it
When I saw Play to earn I thought it meant like a battle pass but never spending money
AAA companies haven't released a good game in YEARS. I dare you to name 1 game that's come out in the last 10 years by a AAA company that's been GOOD.
Modern big name games are more interested in keeping you playing longer rather than entertaining the player, similar to how social media and streaming sites now work. It's all about padding the numbers so devs can look good for investors.
There's another work for being paid to carry out an activity: work....
Well, I'll gladly take money, but I don't think it'll be Standard, simply because no current games really are made that way(that I know of), and games usually stick around for at least a few years, and the best even for decades
as a gamer i can confirm we play for fun over compensation, no like seriously if we were just looking for compensation it defeats the purpose, at that point we wouldve used that money to invest in a business or something, we play because we enjoy games
That tweet is just:
POV: You own a business and have never played a game in your life
Play To Earn concept is quite destructive because it breaks the immersion. For many people games are entertaining simply because of escapism they provide.
With the way things have been going, pay-to-earn might be the model of the future just because that's the only way AAA companies will get us to play their schlock. That, or everywhere will end up like Venezuela and we'll be playing Axie Infinity as a second job just to scrape by.
"Play to Earn" feels like a game journalist take, the one time they play a game without it being for a rushed paid review, and then realizing they don't like games enough to play them without being paid for it.
Could you imagine AAA publishers (the post author did say majority of gamers, so this is who that author expects to create these games) giving away their AAA games for FREE and being expected to PAY US to play them?
This is instead of the current system, where they charge us over a hundred dollars for the game, provide a usually incomplete, suboptimal experience, and collect all our data to sell to the highest bidder?
What sounds more profitable to the corporations? I can't even imagine the risk involved in making a game at the AAA tier and just giving it away. I don't think their shareholders and investors would be easily convinced.
I know that free to play games, like Fortnite and all that, exist. They come with massive risk and are long-term ventures by companies to hopefully have a cash cow they can milk for many years. Every AAA company already has stacked their games with microtransactions. That's the milk. What benefit would there be to encouraging players to sell what they've bought? If players are profiting off your game, who is losing money - the company?
The closest current example I can think of are earning case drops in CSGO and hoping to get something good in the cases when you pay to open them. The thing is, practically nobody makes money opening cases. It's incredibly rare, and the players know it. Valve is raking in millions from cases because players are just injecting their money into Valve's veins, hoping to get something good. It's gambling. That's the closest example to play-to-earn and it works because the players don't actually earn anything, the house always wins, and the gambling drug is strong.
If players are going to be generating profits in your play-to-earn, then their data better be worth a shitload, because if the players win, the house loses. And as far as I know, play-to-earn hinges on the success of players actually earning. Otherwise it isn't play-to-earn, it's just free to play, right?
It seems ridiculous to assume that the money players earn will come out of nowhere. If you want a trading platform for your game's items, like the Steam Marketplace, then just make one. Players won't be earning, they'll just be spending money and getting something they want in the game. Players don't mind coughing up money to buy some cool skins, obviously - that's why microtransactions are so successful and implemented so liberally.
To make a profitable game, your players have to spend money, not earn money. At least, that's how I understand it.
(Oh and to your original point, Garbaj - I totally agree. Trading money for entertainment is normal and logical. Nothing else makes sense to me either.)
i need compensation for breathing oxygen
"Play to earn is the future" -every greedy gaming industry exec every
Hey! love your vids. Iv been on your channel a while ago when you had 440 something subs i believe and i really love your vids since im doing 3d modeling and game design i really like the content that you make. So... play to earn games are basically like the machines on casinos, bad small games that the only reason to play them is to earn something (most likely money) and have zero thought behind them, except for them to get you "hooked" or as many people like to call it addicted lol. As you said you dont play video games to get a physical reward out of them you just play to relax, have fun or to just hang around and do dum stuff that are impossible in reality. If video games somehow end up on a path like that, there will no longer be any good games, instead there will be bad games almost like mobile ones that are filled to the brim with adds because the money that will be getting out will somehow need to get back to the owner/creator of that so called "game" and a LOT and i mean a LOT of people will lose a ton of money and become addicted to cabling giving these companies tons of money. But play to earn maybe a thing but it will most definitely not be the future of gaming in any way. In my opinion the future is VR and if you think that VR is "trash" and is just a dum gimmick like older VR failures like the Virtual Boy by nintendo or the Sega VR headset, then please do your research and come back to me (if your argument contains anything about the motion sickness, first of all you can say the same thing about flat games and how some people cant sit in front of a screen in long periods of time, and second this is an extremely small amount of people and maybe these problems can be somehow fixed in the future).
but like. nobody pays a home machinist to buy a lathe, an artist to paint the eiffel tower, or a musician to practice a guitar solo. why would it be any different for gaming?