Gamers Adopt Play-to-Earn in Web3, but Questions About Enjoyment Persist

• Incentives and rewards are the “top benefit” offered by Web3 games.
• Mainstream adoption from Sony, Konami, Square Enix, Atari, and others continues to drive Web3 gaming innovation.
• Industry experts remain concerned that boring games with poor gameplay remain a top issue for the Web3 gaming sector.

Blockchain gaming has come a long way and continues to draw in players worldwide, but players aren’t really enjoying the games.

Web3’s promising play-to-earn (P2E) model may still be a long way from ever being sustainable, yet it may be the primary reason anyone’s playing in the first place.

P2E Model, Overplayed?

In its 2024 State of the Industry Report , the Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) has found an interesting divide between gamers who play for fun and those who play for incentives.

According to 42.4% of respondents, earning rewards from P2E titles is the main draw. Contrastingly, 46.2% identified the games as not fun, which is a main misconception around Web3.

This is somewhat understandable, as wildly popular and overtly simplistic mobile titles such as Hamster Kombat (HMSTR) and Catizen (CATI) lack the prestigious gameplay seen with other blockchain titles such as Off the Grid, which is available on PlayStation 5 and desktop.

For some time, the question of whether the P2E model could be sustained has been a point of contention. But Telegram’s ongoing efforts suggest that rewarding players will continue to be a mainstay of the most popular Web3 gaming offerings.

It’s certainly come a long way since the early days of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which facilitated early blockchain-based P2E experiences in titles such as Axie Infinity.

Now, there are many free-to-play titles with few barriers to entry, which sometimes makes earning/NFTs an optional part of the experience.

It’s worth noting that these views come from industry professionals who work at major blockchain and gaming firms such as Square Enix, Ubisoft, The Sandbox, Immutable, Accenture, and others.

Overcoming Challenges

Beyond the complicated interplay of P2E mechanics and making fun games, 53.9% of respondents cited onboarding and poor user experience (UX) as the main challenges facing Web3 gaming.

It’s an improvement from 2023’s 79.5% result, which reflects Web3 gaming’s shift toward developing free-to-play titles and gasless transactions.

For quite some time, layer-2 scaling solutions such as Ronin were absolutely necessary to keep Web3 games accessible and affordable, as network fees would act as a sizeable barrier to mainstream adoption.

The need to hold crypto and NFTs has been largely eliminated in favor of creating a “seamless entry point” for gamers of all shapes and sizes.

The survey notes that “poor gameplay” has dropped from second to third place as a key challenge for Web3 gaming. According to the report, 33.2% of respondents still believe that Web3 games  lack  rich gameplay options.