When business people try to understand gaming

Imagine thinking you need compensation for having fun

The biggest problem with pay to earn that i never considered is cheating. People cheat FOR FUN so just imagine how many cheaters there will be with money on the line

You are absolutely correct, if games are properly developed and fun to play, there’s no need to motivate us even further to play the game.

turning a relaxing gaming time into a side hustle, sounds like a nightmare

This feels like those "turn your hobbies into your side job" types. Like, it's not my hobby if I'm doing it for work

I see this as completely reasonable, the popularity of minecraft has already proven that children yearn for the mines. /s

You are 100% right Garbaj. That guy is exactly whats wrong with the games industry. They think that they can bribe us with NFTs and gambling mechanics (lootboxes) and that no matter how bad the game is, playwrs will just accept it. No no no. I play games to have fun. I play games to get away from work.

If "Earn-to-Play" will be the system then he has to give money to listen a song. Games, songs, movies, novel - all these are art forms. We listen a song not to earn money but satisfying our minds. Playing games is like that too.

"Pay to earn" turns gaming into a *job.* Why the hell would I come home from work and say "oh yeah, I totally want to spend my free time toiling in the digital crypto coal mines!" when I could relax?

When I heard “play to earn” I originally thought that essentially a term for the opposite of “pay to win”. My idea before actually reading the tweet was that “play to earn” meant allowing players to earn better in-game stuff but putting in the time to actually play a game (think 100% challenges with cool rewards at the end like older games had). Definitely wasn’t thinking it’d be literally paying people in crypto to play their game lmao. My idea sounds way better and much more enjoyable

“You couldn’t pay me to play that game” is going to become a very literal phrase lol

Play to Earn is an idea pushed generally by NFT/Crypto grifters. We already have a way to play games and earn money, it's called streaming, and ask most any streamer what games they play off-stream and most tell you they don't because once you make your hobby your job it becomes difficult to actually unwind with said hobby

I saw my younger brother have an idle game on his phone on his lap, a tycoon game on his second monitor with him being idle and grinding cash, with a movie playing on his main monitor that he was actually focusing on. I asked him why he wasn't playing the game, and he said he didn't like it and it wasn't fun. The only reason he even loaded it up was because his friends play it, and he wants to have better skins, items, and more hours than his friends. He does this with several games too; he constantly downloads games his friends play like fortnite, apex legends, etc. and uninstalls them because his friends play another game and he doesn't have enough space on his computer then downloads the games his friends play. Rinse and repeat this ad infinitum. He only plays these games, not because he thinks it's fun, but because he wants to play-to-earn better items and skins and whatnot to be better than his friends, which i think is sad, since i only play stuff that i think is fun. I'm just thinking about my brother - plus all those other people - getting exposed to all those battlepasses and level locked items and skins rewarded from challenges, etc. and i realize that more and more people aren't playing to have fun, but playing to earn. "If it's not fun, why bother?" - Reggie Fils-Aimé

Exactly, i believe play to earn games will suffer a lot in gameplay and experience, also the money that you earn will most likely come from other players, so it would only work if players are willing to spend a lot of money on that game. I rather pay for an amazing gaming experience than grind on something i don't like to make 10€ a week

We live in a society.

I love how he gave the example of axie infinity as a "good play to earn game" lmao. Ah yes axie infinity, a game well known for needing players to put in insane amounts of money to just get started and be competitive. A game which sees a few rich individuals hold nearly all of the axies and who rent them out to newcomers to basically exploit them like a 3rd world job would. And what happens if you just want to play casually? The axie landlords start cracking the whip and you'll lose everything if you don't follow their line. You don't "play" this game, you work it. Makes sense why the suits would want this to become the future of gaming. To them this is a wet dream.

"You don't need to dangle carrots on a stick to get me to play a good game because the good game is the carrot."

Funnily enough, the only people who I can see taking “play to earn” seriously are Reddit mods

In psychology there is this term called "reward undermining". By that concept, you would make a game worse by adding something like this. Because the extrinsic reward (money) "overrides" the perceived value of the intrinsic reward (the fun gameplay experience).

That tweet gives me "whats up fellow kids" vibes

In some sense CS:GO has a play to earn feature with their skins and cases being dropped after the game. But that has never been the reason why people play the game, its just a neat bonus.

i like to think of play to earn as the old model of gaming where the more you play, the more the game rewards you with fun new features and items/cosmetics

When "entertainment" is in the description of "game" then the question answers itself. If it's fun, there's a reward

Play to pay

The biggest gripe I have with 'play to earn' is the notion that anything earned will automatically have value. Just because you say something is worth X amount, that doesn't mean someone will actually see value in it and pay that money. Unless people find genuine value in something, you can say it's 'worth' whatever you want and fail as a result when no one buys your product. Anyways, nice to see you again, Garbaj! I hope you're having a fun time with Anomaly

So they're saying within the next five years we're gonna go from borderline predatory business practices and exploiting the addictive nature of gambling (loot boxs) to companies paying players. Lol what a solid prediction

I once heard of an experiment they did with preschoolers. The preschoolers loved to draw because they thought it was fun. Then the scientists gave half of them a star or something like that when they drew something. After a while of giving those stars the scientists stopped and the children didn't want to draw anymore unless they knew they would get a star. I think that also can happen with gaming.

At first I thought you were going to talk about the phenomenon of games incentivizing players with rewards that are earned for playing, I.E. Some kind of overall progression system in you games, which I think would be a very interesting talking point. Back in the day, not all games had a core progression system, especially games before Call of Duty 4, but now every game has some kind of internal progression as well as some kind of in-game currency, even single player games have some kind of currency of sorts. See that would be an interesting discussion, because a lot of the games pre-2007, you played them to play them. You didn't unlock anything for playing the game. No cosmetics, no levels, no ranks, you literally just played the game, but now it feels like if a game doesn't have a sense of progression, then it is missing content, even if it isn't. There's that feeling where you have to feel like you are at least in some way shape or form being rewarded to play the game. I don't personally hold that sentiment. I put over 200 hours in Among Us before they added any progression, and I will play Black Ops 1 Zombies for hours despite all of my efforts being negated when I finally die, but I know that many people today do feel that way.

I like that you took some Stalker Anomaly gameplay footage as the "background video" for what you've got to say. A great game indeed!

Capitalist tries to understand the concept of fun (Colourized, 2023)

Why the fuck do I need to grindset my relaxing? Am I supposed to become a dogwalker in order to financially maximize my morning jog? What the hell is this corporate hellscape of a world coming to?

I love the stalker gameplay. tyvm

I think it goes beyond being a good game or not. "Play to earn" and "good game" are almost mutually exclusive.

on point as always

The commodification of everything is getting to the point where talking points like this are hard to distinguish from satire.

this is one of the most quality videos I've watched in a long time. Not only do I agree with you, but also, the video is structured to be brief, informative. If this was any other youtuber's video, they would make it 13 mins, saying the same thing again and again like penguinz and mutahar. I love this. 1 minute is all you needed to prove your point.

I completely agree. I think the play to earn model will just be either a way for bad games to entice you to play them

Ultrakill does it really well imo. The reward you get for getting good at the game isn't some cosmetic stuff. It's more content and I love that concept.

This is why executives ruin games, movies, shows etc.

me: sees flat surface at 90 degrees my titanfall brain: hehe scoot scoot

The answer was so simple and your take was perfect lol had me cracking up. I bet the guy thought he had a profound idea or something 😂

As an engineer, the whole web3 is like a solution to a problem that doesn't exist

Completely agree, a good game is the carrot. A good game is also something you come back to and play again and again.

Indeed brother right on spot brohter

I think we all know where this is going when he starts talking about NFT's

Tell me you're motivated solely by money without telling me you're motivated solely by money.

Let's just turn gaming into a second job

"Play to earn" can work in certain communities, one that comes to mind for me is Team Fortress 2. The inclusion of item rarity, "currencies", and community means that trading has become an aspect of the games business model, and the best part is you don't have to pay a single to cent to either play the game or earn cool cosmetics/weapons. Sure paying money directly to the game developers gives some nice bonuses like increased inventory, the ability to communicate in game, and if you buy the con-tracker pass you get access to basically free skins and great weapons that introduced game mechanics very well. However you can get very far without spending money in that game, hell you can buy games through trading without even spending money.

Not only this nis not the future, its a weird past

It's just a cryptobro's detached view of reality.

Let's not forget playing games is a hobby and you are doing it for fun.

I believe (don't have a source here, so add salt to taste) research has shown that once you give someone a form of _extrinsic_ motivation - such as being paid to do something - that replaces and diminishes any future _intrinsic_ motivation - doing something for the sake of it - so if you ever take it away again, doing the thing will stop being fun (even if it had been fun on its own before). So the very act of letting people play-to-earn might immediately make the game in question less fun, _even if_ it was a good game to start with.

There's another name for that: financial pyramid.

Give this man a medal! he gets it

Long long time no see. Garbaj

I couldn't have said it better. I feel sorry for those guys

Ohanian's idea has very scary potential consequences.

Literally casinos

Makes you wonder about other areas of this guy's life, like his romantic relationships. "Why would a woman want to date me if she's not being adequately compensated" etc.

Pay to pay

we're already at pay to play to earn right now with battlepasses

When money people try to comprehend the concept of having fun.

Games should start paying us to play them

Ah yes, my enjoyment is not the goal, it's cash money

Hey! love your vids. Iv been on your channel a while ago when you had 440 something subs i believe and i really love your vids since im doing 3d modeling and game design i really like the content that you make. So... play to earn games are basically like the machines on casinos, bad small games that the only reason to play them is to earn something (most likely money) and have zero thought behind them, except for them to get you "hooked" or as many people like to call it addicted lol. As you said you dont play video games to get a physical reward out of them you just play to relax, have fun or to just hang around and do dum stuff that are impossible in reality. If video games somehow end up on a path like that, there will no longer be any good games, instead there will be bad games almost like mobile ones that are filled to the brim with adds because the money that will be getting out will somehow need to get back to the owner/creator of that so called "game" and a LOT and i mean a LOT of people will lose a ton of money and become addicted to cabling giving these companies tons of money. But play to earn maybe a thing but it will most definitely not be the future of gaming in any way. In my opinion the future is VR and if you think that VR is "trash" and is just a dum gimmick like older VR failures like the Virtual Boy by nintendo or the Sega VR headset, then please do your research and come back to me (if your argument contains anything about the motion sickness, first of all you can say the same thing about flat games and how some people cant sit in front of a screen in long periods of time, and second this is an extremely small amount of people and maybe these problems can be somehow fixed in the future).

Absolutely unhinged from reality.

either he interested in that idea or warning us of that idea.

I 100% agree with you for this. But, I still do think games can implement play to earn in their games. Most games already have this and are probably gonna continue to add it, but things like battle passes and level rewards are what I would consider play to earn. It’s kind of expected now. Like, you play the game for a while, you get a free skin or something like that. It’s play to earn, most games have it, and it’s in a lot of really good games.

It‘s either a troll or a guy who’s „gaming“ on his phone and has reached Candy Crush LvL 99999XXXYZAA

I think the only positive use of an NFT is if it means I can store my saves on a dedicated server to use the same save across multiple titles, like something akin to Mass Effect and Dragon Age type of generational lineage and persistent story. This kind of save file could be valuable and resold, but the point isn't for that. That can be a byproduct that I won't engage in, like selling gold on WoW for cash or something. But yeah if there was something like an NFT block chain to guarantee the validity of my actions in a game, like a token for this action or that in game, and the save is built up over time I think that could be very useful in gaming. This is just my own idea, though. Everything else I've ever heard of to this day is just con artists trying to make a buck.

Or what indeed

We have play to earn, it's called E-sports and Streaming and UKposts.

All I'm wondering is whether this man actually believed what he said or if he just wanted to create a viral tweet

The point is to commodify your free time, so you have to work even more, otherwise you're behind.

Garvaaaaj

The jokes just write themselves. 2 are "but why would anyone play video games without profit incentive" and "business men performing perfect 10's in the mental gymnastics instead of just admitting that gamers want good games"

Of course it's Mr reddit that says that.

It's kinda like sports. Outside of competition you won't see it. And sports have been there for a looonnng time

The fact that all these half-assed game released recently with poor optimization, repetitive content and cut-throat money-grabbing yet still sells like mad really shows not only where the "industry" is moving but also the gamers have changed too.

I have this feeling that, some people forgot that gaming was and is still just a hobby, not a job, not a living (for some yeah...) but, we dont need to get "paid" to play a game or something like that. I play games, beacuse its my hobby, its my passion....

(good game)

Feels like it's an idea pitched by someone who has to pay people to hang out with him.

When I saw Play to earn I thought it meant like a battle pass but never spending money

that’s deep ^^^^

Well, I'll gladly take money, but I don't think it'll be Standard, simply because no current games really are made that way(that I know of), and games usually stick around for at least a few years, and the best even for decades

i need compensation for breathing oxygen

true

i mean i kind of get it, like there has to be a goal, objectives and challenges, but yeah those are something you really go for when the game is already enjoyable

That tweet is just: POV: You own a business and have never played a game in your life

With the way things have been going, pay-to-earn might be the model of the future just because that's the only way AAA companies will get us to play their schlock. That, or everywhere will end up like Venezuela and we'll be playing Axie Infinity as a second job just to scrape by.

I love seeing Garbaj play Stalker

Modern big name games are more interested in keeping you playing longer rather than entertaining the player, similar to how social media and streaming sites now work. It's all about padding the numbers so devs can look good for investors.

I agree 🗿

as a gamer i can confirm we play for fun over compensation, no like seriously if we were just looking for compensation it defeats the purpose, at that point we wouldve used that money to invest in a business or something, we play because we enjoy games

It's hard to come by actually good games these days, especially AAA.

i mean if i got paied to play the games i already play i wouldn't compline but i agree that enjoying a game is the reward for playing.

So I guess business people saw the current state of gaming and instead of going "maybe we should make games more functional and enjoyable," they said "what if we made it a grift so people HAVE to play our dogshit every day like it's a second job, robbing the games industry of any enjoyable aspects it used to have?" My best guess is they saw microtransactions making money and decided "what if we made them macrotransactions?"

Geez I thought AI already replaced web3/crypto.

There's another work for being paid to carry out an activity: work....