Play-to-earn games have stolen the show in the last couple of years as one of the hottest emerging use cases for blockchain technology. It’s a dream come true for many video games enthusiasts, as P2E games give them a shot at winning real-life prizes for displaying their skills, beating opponents and completing various challenges. By succeeding, players can win new items, cryptocurrency tokens and NFTs and sell these to generate an income.
One of the hottest P2E games to date is Axie Infinity, a traditional trading/battle card game that allows players to win AXIE tokens that can be sold on cryptocurrency exchanges for real money. During the COVID-19 pandemic, reports emerged that some players in countries like the Philippines were earning hundreds of dollars a week from playing the game, making more than enough to support themselves and their families.
However, P2E games aren’t without risk, and not everyone gets to benefit from the rewards on offer, especially if they lack the skills to compete with the best players. Axie Infinity requires that players splash out a significant lump sum to acquire an NFT that’s needed to access the game, with some tokens reportedly selling for thousands of dollars.
Predict-To-Earn
The good news is that there is an alternative to P2E games that leverages blockchain technology to provide the same reward mechanism, without any gaming skills required and without the same kind of risk. It’s an emerging niche of prediction games where players can “predict-to-earn”, and gain rewards for showing off their knowledge of sports, financial markets and more.
Pioneering this new predict-to-earn movement is Pooky, a soccer prediction game that allows players to guess the results of matches in the biggest sports leagues and earn prizes for guessing the outcome, the correct number of goals scored and the exact score. While anyone can play for free, Pookyball NFT holders will earn rewards paid out in both $MATIC and $POK cryptocurrencies and gain experience points to climb its leaderboard rankings, with the top 50 players benefiting from reward multipliers. Players can use these rewards to boost their NFTs and increase their earnings potential, or else cash them out directly. Bear in mind that rewards are only earned for successful predictions, so if a player guesses wrong, they won’t earn anything for that particular match.
The great thing about Pooky is that it cannot be compared to traditional gambling, as players never have to risk anything financially. All that’s required to start winning rewards is a one-off investment in an NFT that can be resold on the open market at any time, meaning even this money can be recouped if the player no longer wishes to play the game. In fact, if the player is able to power up their NFT significantly, they could make a decent profit from selling it on.
While Pooky is initially focused on football predictions, it has plans to expand to sports including basketball, tennis and Formula One racing.
Pooky isn’t the only predict-to-earn game in town. If the cryptocurrency markets are more your thing, then ROLA.ai may be more your thing. ROLA.ai is a gamified learning platform for people interested in studying crypto and learning about the hundreds of different investments in the space. It offers a complete learning experience that combines community wisdom with educational videos and market insights. It also incorporates a prediction game, where players can guess on the market movements of the most popular cryptocurrencies and earn rewards for making correct predictions.
Combining both of the above ideas, meanwhile, is Newwit, which allows participants to first discuss a range of topics including crypto markets and sports events, before making predictions on the outcome. To predict, players simply vote yes or no on outcomes, such as if they believe the Ethereum 2.0 update will be fully released by the end of 2022 or not. Players are free to read and contribute to the discussion on each topic before placing their vote. If they guess right, they earn $WIT tokens and climb the leaderboard, with the highest ranking players each month earning $WIS tokens, which are a true cryptocurrency that can be sold on the open market.
The central theme of all three predict-to-earn games is that there is no financial risk involved. An NFT is required to play, but NFTs are unique, digital tokens that retain their value and can even be upgraded to increase their value. Most importantly, they can be sold at any time on NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea.
Predict-to-earn is an emerging niche that has a lot of room for growth, providing a safer, entertaining and engaging alternative to traditional betting and P2E games.