The Problem with P2E Games

Are you playing P2E games?

If so, you might have noticed a problem. It's not per se with the game itself, but rather about the entire "genre" of P2E games. To cut to the chase, P2E games become a management problem. The thing with P2E is that we are actually putting real $ into the game. Sure, we do this with standard games as well, but we do not expect a return from the game. We play it for fun. P2E games have to capture this dynamic because first of all "who wants to play a boring game?", but just as importantly, P2E games need a non monetary gaming incentive. If it were all just for the ROI, games would collapse very quickly as it would be all about investing to get more out of the game than the funds put into it. Obviously, if everyone did this, the game would quickly be unsustainable. P2E games are therefore often Ponzi schemes (see @edicted recent post) or their token value very rapidly collapses to a fraction of the ATHs. This is what we have seen in essentially every game (Splinterlands, Golem Overlord, Axie etc.). So devs have to find a way to balance the whole thing (burn mechanisms, sinks etc.).

But if one plays the game for fun, then a game also becomes sustainable as gamers do not necessarily want to chase a ROI and cash out all of the time. This is one challenge that devs in this genre have. Since they are still very new, we will have to see who comes up with the best way of creating a sustainable economy.

OK, back too the management problem

Creating a sustainable economy is essentially the devs conundrum. But in this post I rather want to focus on the player side of things. Just recently I picked up Golem Overlord and I didn't put more money than the starter pack in and am already in the 5000s rank. Not too bad. But with the recent changes, it's going to be difficult to cash out PARTS very quickly. Which brings me to the problem: I have to now besides SPlinterlands manage anohter P2E game. Both are not super engaging; I can play for a few minutes (well for SPlinterlands more like half an hour) and then be finished for the day. But it requires my attention to not lose out on maximizing my ROI. Not that I have this as a top priority, but obviously it "hurts" leaving the games idle for a few days and not making any returns...

I doubt that there are many who only play for the "fun" of it. Making a return plays at least to some degree a role. So you have to start to manage the whole thing. For Golem Overlord you basically have to log into the game every 8 hours. That's kinda hard if you are sleeping and having a normal routine. I mean sure, it's possible, but my point is that you have to keep it on a high priority among all of the other (actually important) things in life. Because I also play SPL, I have to log in here as well. And because I am also in a guild there, I got to do brawls...

Very quickly all of this is starting to feel like a grind. I have to manage all of those games because I do not want to lose too much value of the in game assets I have. I guess this is why many players resort to bots since they start to manage everything for you. But then the whole point of playing is lost. If bots manage the games for me, there is no point in playing...

Conclusion

P2E games will always have this problem because of their very nature. It also becomes obvious that one cannot play more than a few games a day since it becomes too hard to manage everything (it's also not very fun). Has the industry priced this into their calculations? Then again, there is a lot of untapped potential... (innovation and new players).

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