Published
2 years ago on
April 18, 2022
Market experts believe that the play-to-earn (P2E) gaming model will soon dominate the video gaming industry. As per the data available for 2020, video gaming was the most profitable sub-segment within the entertainment industry space. The NPD group measured it to have grown by $57 billion in revenue, exceeding the movie and music industries' growth.
In consumer spending, games occupied a market space of $116 billion worldwide. One of the fastest-growing sub-categories in this space was blockchain-powered gaming. Estimates suggest that it will rise to nearly $40 billion by the time we reach 2025. P2E gaming, or decentralized gaming powered by blockchain, is helping expand the market faster and spreading its benefits to the end-users, the real stakeholders of the process - the gaming community.
Algorand, one of the leading blockchain platforms in the DeFi space, is now bursting onto the emerging play-to-earn (P2E) gaming scene. It announced its intention to establish a niche in the blockchain gaming space by joining an association of gaming and blockchain companies known as Blockchain Game Alliance.
Gaming on Algorand
As of 2022, developers still rely on a plethora of different blockchains to build P2E games. Popular names include the world’s biggest smart contract platform Ethereum, as well as next-generation blockchains like Solana and Algorand. And if you believe Piergiacomo Palmisani of Algorand Foundation, game developers serious about making legacy games should look at Algorand as the go-to blockchain.
As the Ecosystem Development Manager explains, “Algorand is a high-performing, secure, carbon-neutral blockchain that never forks and never goes down - a natural fit for the next generation of AAA games.”
Now, it seems that P2E enthusiasts have caught on to the idea that Algorand’s unique blockchain architecture might be superior to other available solutions. As Dean from Algo Gaming Guild says, "the current Algorand gaming ecosystem is incredibly exciting to be a part of. As we are still in the early stages, there are new and amazing projects being revealed all the time. There are still so many opportunities for new games and even tools to support an eventually thriving ecosystem such as launchpads, guilds, and marketplaces."
He further adds that "this journey is really starting to ramp up and the future's looking bright. The Algorand community combined with the technical advantages of the blockchain will evolve into an ecosystem that everyone will want to be a part of and one that we will be even prouder to be involved in."
The year of the breakthrough?
With P2E games being on the verge of mainstream adoption, Palmisani is convinced that 2022 will prove to be a turning point for the Algorand gaming ecosystem. “We saw impressive growth, with the launch of several DeFi protocols and a vibrant NFT community [in 2022]. Gaming is catching up with a few games already launched and many more to come in the next months,” he explains. An increasing number of developers are now seeing Algorand as the best protocol to build the crypto components of their games.
With dozens of talented developers flocking to the protocol, it is no surprise that a new wave of exciting games could soon become available to the masses. As Palmisani puts it, the initial wave of games sparked the light for innovation. However, he admits that it also attracted plenty of skepticism from the gaming industry and its community. “Oftentimes, rightfully so,” he says.
As the new generation of P2E games revealing its plan, skeptics now appear to be rethinking their attitudes. In the past few months, several exciting games with high potential have joined the Algorand gaming ecosystem. This includes the monster-inspired trading card game Alchemon, Algorand Casino, and a game that allows players to do skill-based wagers on outcomes, dubbed ZCircuit, among others.
