Akie Infinity is toxic to crypto games | Daily News Byte

Blockchain gaming is only four years old – a toddler compared to the rest of the industry. It has a lot of growing up to do, especially when it comes to games for money.

I am a 28 year veteran of the gaming industry. I produced 32 titles in that time period on everything from the Sega Genesis to the Oculus Rift. Some of them were great. Many were forgetful. I didn’t hear much chatter about blockchain games from traditional developers and gamers until Akie Infinity started to take off. Cut to its peak in 2021, and the game had nearly 2 million players logging in daily.

Most people outside of the crypto community at the time were (and still are) extremely skeptical of blockchain’s ability to add anything meaningful to gaming. They see Akie as an example of low production value and rampant speculation that they want to avoid at all costs. Furthermore, they see blockchain as a continuation of publisher overreach. However, in 2021, many believed that Akie would prove blockchain gaming skeptics wrong.

It’s not. Akie and most other crypto “games” to date have been terrible experiences. They’re not even games. They are more like digital shareholders, wealthy owners of NFTs who take advantage of low-income players. It’s a shallow game superimposed on a tokenomic model. This was most recently highlighted in October, when Akie’s SLP token plummeted in value as a result of the upcoming token unlock.

Connected: Crypto games have to be fun to be successful — money doesn’t matter

Most players sell their tokens on the crypto market and not in the game, which means that the number of tokens increases and causes a kind of crypto inflation. The game’s model relies on a steady stream of new players to sustain it — something that this month appeared to be far from guaranteed.

Aksi’s value is primarily driven by this speculation, not entertainment. The game, if you can even call it that, is literally a grind. Despite attempts to break away from its reliance on game economics with iterations like Akie Origins, a toxic model of hyper-dependence on tokenomics prevails. This continues to distract from projects trying to make fun games that use blockchain to improve the player experience.

At the height of its popularity, the team behind Axio arrogantly claimed to “liberate” gamers and enable a world where work and play merge. But the fallout of the game following the massive hack of $620 million in customer funds in March showed just how hollow this language was. Akie’s creator, Ski Mavis, veered away from the play-to-earn narrative to a play-and-earn ethos, clearly aware that the game would not fulfill its mission.

For blockchain games to succeed, developers need to focus on great game design instead of trying to support their tokens. During an increasingly difficult global economic climate, even mainstream gaming is struggling. But those games that are doing well despite the market mood are AAA titles like God of War Ragnarok and the latest Call of Duty, which have exciting lore and great gameplay.

The ability for players to spend time creating things that people will love in terms of stickers, skins and weapons — while being able to monetize them — is key. People need an outlet where they can be creative and put together content that sparks interest and emotion in the gaming community.

If we want to change the perception of blockchain gaming, we need to show how it can benefit players. It goes beyond words and actually shows that it improves gameplay and utility. Blockchain can do amazing things as a back-end infrastructure, such as allowing players to actually own in-game items, prove the attribution and history of their weapons and loot, and be rewarded for their in-game creations.

Connected: Why are bots dominating crypto games? Money-grabbing developers encourage them

Part of Vitalik Buterin’s drive to innovate in blockchain was driven by his plight when he lost his spellcasting abilities in World of Warcraft overnight as a result of the game’s centralized control. Blockchain ultimately returns the true ownership of in-game features to players, meaning they own them, even if the game changes or crashes.

This property ownership can be extended to many areas. Currently, Microsoft and Sony allow you to record a video of your in-game activity and then post it on social media, but you don’t really know how to monetize it. You are locked into YouTube monetization. With blockchain, players could capture in-game moments, mark them as NFTs, and then allow people to buy/sell them as they wish. By updating gaming infrastructure and enabling new innovations, the integration of players into the creative process in real-time can happen, something rarely seen in the industry.

Players want to participate in the creation of games. They don’t want to be manipulated into paying more. Studios must prioritize gameplay, rich graphics, and compelling narratives to attract players. The blockchain games that become successful will be the ones where the players don’t even know that the blockchain is running in the background.

Deception and speculative frenzy have been central features of the broader crypto market this year. So getting players into the game will be much more difficult. Studios will have to go the extra mile to show players that blockchain games can achieve the security, fun, and adrenaline-pumping action that defines the games they love.

This article is for general informational purposes and is not intended and should not be considered legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.