Web3 Games to Shift from Play-to-Earn to Free-to-Play Model, Says Yield Guild Games CEO

According to Cointelegraph, Yield Guild Games CEO and co-founder Gabby Dizon predicts that the most successful Web3 games in the coming year will shift from a play-to-earn (P2E) model to a completely free-to-play model. This change aims to remove financial and technical barriers to entry, allowing millions of people to access the games. Dizon explained that the evolution of the business model will involve games being free to play initially, with players able to mint NFTs or earn tokens later on without requiring NFT ownership at the start. This shift towards a free-to-play model is part of a broader effort by Web3 game developers to prioritize gameplay over tokenomics. Dizon believes this approach will help address speculative Web3 gaming bubbles and create games that players want to continue playing, thereby reinvesting their capital in the game and preventing the in-game economy from becoming a cash-generating machine. Blockchain games experienced a downturn in late 2021, with players and revenues leaving the ecosystem due to the over-financialization of gameplay, lack of fun, and confusion around crypto wallet technology. Dizon anticipates a change in the industry as experienced teams that received funding in late 2021 work on developing their own games, with high-quality games typically taking 2 to 3 years to create. He expects to see many high-quality games with strong teams behind them, as well as new experiments in tokenomics and earning models. Dizon also highlighted the potential of the ERC-6551 token standard or 'token bound' accounts in gaming, which some developers are using to incorporate artificial intelligence into games. This automation could reduce the amount of 'grinding' needed in games, allowing players to focus on the fun aspects while leaving the mundane tasks to AI.