Play-to-earn falling out of favor after ‘massive shift in priority’ — BGA survey

cointelegraph.com:

A new survey has found that the blockchain gaming industry is experiencing a “massive shift," with the once-popular play-to-earn (P2E) model falling out of favor and focus shifting to improving gameplay experience. 

The survey results were included in a newly released annual report from the Blockchain Game Alliance (BGA) on Jan. 12, conducted with 347 professionals representing 252 projects or companies in the blockchain sector.

According to BGA, most respondents were young adult males working for blockchain gaming companies in middle and top management positions. 

One of the trends from the report was an apparent shift in how blockchain gaming executives viewed P2E as a driver for blockchain gaming adoption.

In 2021, the report found 67.9% of respondents agreeing that P2Es would be the most significant growth driver of blockchain gaming. The latest survey found this number shrinking to just 22.5%.

Instead, gameplay improvements were seen as the biggest driver for adoption in 2023 with 35.7% of respondents saying gameplay improvements will be the industry's top priority.

Pedro Heddera, head of research and analytics at DApp insights company DappRadar, cited P2E’s fading out as a result of “falling crypto prices and upcoming free-to-earn games,” paving the way for the new generation of Web3 games, adding:

Rowan Zwiers, the co-founder of Web3 consulting company Blockminds, stated in the report that despite the previous hype achieved by P2E games during the first generation of blockchain gaming, the industry is currently in the midst of a “drawback to normalcy.”

Zwiers said that P2E games have “proven themselves unsustainable” but showed the need for the development of the next generation of more advanced blockchain gaming