I’ve seen a few people ‘playing’ crypto apps over lunch where they just tap on the screen in exchange for rewards.
What does the crypto company get out of it?
In: Technology
It depends. It could be a “traditional” app game, where the people who make the app get money from advertisements and in-app purchases, and that funds a (small) budget for valuable rewards given randomly to players.
Unique to crypto games, users of the app often have to make some upfront investment by buying an NFT to play with. Essentially your player character, cards, pets, etc. are purchased in some external marketplace then linked up with the game. The app makers collect money from these sales, and some of that is redistributed to players through random rewards, often of in-game items/tokens that have value insofar as they too can be resold on some crypto marketplace.
You might notice that the first model is perhaps a bit scummy but sustainable. Money is coming in from advertisers, and players/programmers split that money (usually with a strong preference given to the programmers). The second model is a closed system. If you’re making money from the app, someone else is losing money. If the programmers are also making money from the app, then most of the players are losing money. That’s not inherently a bad thing – nearly all entertainment products leave the user with less cash than they started – but one should not reasonably expect to “play to earn” with these games. You’re going to end up paying for the game, so it better at least be something you enjoy.
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