More than a Play to Earn

One of the biggest buzzwords floating around the crypto-gaming community right now is “play to earn.” It’s a popular and exciting term, but what does it actually mean? That’s what we’ll be addressing here: in today’s article about Apeiron — the world’s first god game on the blockchain — we’ll outline our vision for the game’s play to earn systems and beyond.

We’ll start by talking about why this term has spread around the world. Play to earn is nothing less than a new paradigm for gaming. With the rise of blockchains and the birth of the metaverse, players no longer have to worry about wasting their time messing around in a virtual world with no connection to reality. Anything that you create has actual, tangible value: and even better, what you make is yours! Sell your game assets on the market for real crypto-currency, and suddenly, you’re not just playing, you’re earning.

Democratizing ownership of in-game assets and making them exchangeable on real markets is a thrilling prospect. But it’s important not to forget that the “play” part of the equation is just as important as the “earn” part. At the end of the day, there are any number of ways that people could try to earn or produce assets to increase their net worth. But games are more than just their economies: games offer possibilities to explore new realities, to do things that you could never even imagine doing in your life — even to become a god!

Here at Foonie Magus, before we even heard about blockchains, we knew that we wanted to make the next generation of god games. We never forgot the joy of messing around with divine power in games like Populous and Black and White, and we wanted to bring that back.

Our founder had this to say about them: “I was almost always on the good side, but some fights were so difficult, and the temptation was strong, so I tried evil. And I loved it! Throwing fireballs was so fun. I loved those epic moments that made me think about my choices, and where my choices mattered and had a deep impact on the world I was playing in.”

The challenge, of course, is making such a game where you really get the feeling of being a god. Talking about it is easy; doing it is the hard part. We know that we’ve set ourselves some ambitious targets for what we want Apeiron to be. But that’s where the power of the new play to earn approach really helps to underpin the foundations of what we want to build.

In the old predatory free to play models, developers rely on whales — the big spenders — to finance their operations. What this means is unreliable cash flow that comes after releases, making it harder to develop new content — instead, in order to save on costs, developers need to send out limited-time events that do nothing to actually add or change the game. While this keeps players happy in the short-term, in the long-run the game stagnates.

But the play to earn approach involves players right from the get go. With crowdfunding and staking of valuable initial game assets — in Apeiron, that’ll be the Primeval Planets, the first planets to be minted as NFTs — we as developers have the resources we need to produce a game that matches the vision of the players.

We want our players to be able to travel the galaxy, exploring other planets, building up their own societies and avatars, and challenging dungeons and other players in the galactic arena. And with our wonderful community support, we can do that, and more: adding new, hand-crafted locations to play in and actually grow the game after release, keeping up a constant flow of fresh new content.

Ultimately, play to earn puts developers in alignment with the players. Because it’s not as if we’re the only ones adding content to the game: once the game starts, players will be minting their own unique planets and avatars and therefore expanding the Apeiron universe right along with us. You’ll not just be playing the game: you’ll be making it, and earning everything you produce along the way. The Apeiron universe will evolve, and we’ll guide that evolution cooperatively.

That about wraps up this one: we hope you have a clearer idea now of what has got us so pumped about this new game. Play to earn fits Apeiron like a glove, but our game is not only play to earn: it is a unique communal gameplay experience that will bring back — quite simply — good old fashioned fun. Join our growing community today by following us on Twitter so you don’t miss any update. We’re looking forward to co-creating this universe together.