Hi there. It’s Brady.
I’m a lifelong Star Wars fan. Two and a half decades ago, I learned how to operate my parents’ LaserDisc player so I could watch the original trilogy over and over again. Later on, when I was a student in Tunis, I’d visit some of the filming locations in Tunisia to get the feeling of walking on the desert planet Tatooine.
Being a fan for so long means accepting some of the blemishes of the franchise, like when Electronic Arts released Star Wars Battlefront II, an online multiplayer shooter. It was panned by angry players as “pay-to-win” because progressing through the game involved many payments for loot boxes.
One of the lessons here is that the recipe for mixing gaming and financial transactions is delicate. People are willing to pay for fun, but there’s a limit. That makes blockchain-based gaming finance projects all the more interesting. These games typically utilize cryptocurrencies and NFTs in their gameplay, which means costs can fluctuate and newcomers could be priced out by speculators.
Nonetheless, it’s a corner of the crypto space that is receiving much attention from powerhouse investors, particularly the investment arms of established exchanges. These games aren’t framed as “pay-to-win,” but are instead described as “play-to-earn.” For some players, that’s probably a truthful characterization. For others, less so.
Stephanie had the full story on recent funding developments in GameFi. You can read about it here.
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