Can you imagine a world in which you are being rewarded with Bitcoins to play video games? Sounds exceptionally bizarre and unbelievable right? Well, times have changed and we are slowly and steadily heading toward a new era of the web.
While we all know that the e-sports landscape has evolved at a rapid pace over the past decade, play-to-earn crypto games open up a new dimension for casual gamers who do not get the opportunity to play their favorite games at the highest level.
An array of crypto games have emerged to the fore in recent months due to which, the gaming world is flirting with new innovations and technologies. The entry of crypto into the gaming world is bringing together two significant communities together – gaming and crypto enthusiasts.
Today, the cryptocurrency gaming market is worth billions of dollars due to the gradual maturation of blockchain technology. The technology has paved the way for authentic and real-world trading of non-fungible tokens that are also popularly known as NFTs. In fact, there are a number of digital economies that pay users for playing games.
Before we take a look at some of the lucrative and trending play-to-earn crypto games, let’s understand what play-to-games mean at a greater length.
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What are play-to-earn crypto games?
Play-to-earn crypto games can be defined as games that enable players to have the best experience in terms of gameplay. This may include breeding in-game heroes or characters, completing quests, and hosting online battles among others.
When players perform these activities, they receive rewards in the form of in-game currency. This currency can later be used to purchase NFTs or can be transferred to a cryptocurrency wallet. It can be traded and sold for currencies and tokens which can be used to complete real-world payments.
This is one of the main ways players make money from play-to-earn crypto games. Besides, since there is a clear monetary gain here, it boosts user engagement within these games. This is one of the most notable factors that is driving the popularity of play-to-earn crypto games.
Now that we have a better understanding of what we mean by play-to-earn games, let’s take a look at some of the top games that trade millions of dollars in value each day.
Popular play-to-earn crypto games in 2022
1. Plant vs Undead
Plant vs Undead is one of the most versatile games out there. The farm mode keeps the gamers engaged and presents an opportunity to earn light energy, which then leads to PVU tokens.
Users have control over their in-game assets that are available to them in the form of NFTs. This is how users can make money by playing this game. This is also how Plant vs Undead falls under the category of play-to-earn crypto games.
In this game, users have the ability to manage their farms and slowly generate in-game currency that is known as Light Energy (LE). As of now, Light Energy tokens can be easily converted to crypto tokens that are deemed as Plant vs Undead Token (PVU). These tokens can then be traded across a range of decentralized exchanges.
2. Axie Infinity
Axie Infinity has a very unique record to its name. It is the first Ethereum-based NFT game to cross $1 billion in sales in August last year. What is even more impressive is that the game has over one million active players. This makes it by far the most popular NFT game at the moment.
Axie Infinity is created by the Vietnamese firm Sky Mavis. Besides, it is also one of the highest revenue-generating games across all the blockchains in the world.
Axie Infinity has a lot of uncanny similarities with Pokemon as players have to create a team of creatures called Axies. These Axies can be used to fight players either in the Arena mode or battle enemies in the Adventure mode.
The two main cryptocurrencies that are available in the game include Smooth Love Potion (SLP) and the Axie Infinity Token (AXS). While users can earn AXS by making it to the game’s PVP leaderboard, SLP can be earned by finishing adventure mode levels and by beating your opponents in arena matches.
Every Axie is a non-fungible token (NFT) and comes with a unique set of body parts that can determine its skill and rarity.
3. Gods Unchained
Gods Unchained is a play-to-earn crypto game that comes from the same creators of the Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution that is called Immutable X.
It is quite clear that the game runs on Ethereum and makes use of Immutable X – a platform on which decentralized applications can trade peer-to-peer without any charges.
Gods Unchained is primarily a trading card game in which players fight it out using decks of cards, genesis cards, and core cards.
Core cards can be earned for free simply by playing the game. However, if players want to skip the grinding, they can also purchase card packs. However, these packs were sold prior to the game launch and are no longer available.
This means that you will have to purchase these cards from a different source if you want to get your hands on them. Each card offered in the game can be traded in the Immutable X marketplace. The marketplace uses Ethereum as its currency, which means that you require a MetaMask wallet or any other supported wallet.
Beyond the podium – other play-to-earn crypto games you should know
Play-to-earn crypto games are hot commodities today in the cryptocurrency space today. Besides, as implementations of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are in place, a lot more control is given to the players in terms of in-game assets than before.
While we have listed our top picks, here are some of the other play-to-earn crypto games you can consider playing. These include Age of Rust, The Sandbox, Decentraland, Illuvium, Gala Games: Town Stars, and more.
Where do you think the play-to-earn crypto game industry is heading? What is the future of these games? Tell us what you think by leaving your comments below.
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Featured Image: Ivan Radic used under the license Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
