Will Blockchain Gaming Make Gaming A Job?

It looks like the days are coming when you can turn your hobby into a job or at least a part time one. Between daily rewards, ranked rewards, item ownership, item creation and blockchain tournaments, blockchain gaming can give players who are skilled enough multiple ways to earn. And if you combine this with streaming and sites like Hyperspace you might be able to do really well financially.

But for this discussion lets take streaming out of the picture. What would it take for a game to offer enough rewards that a pay-to-earn structure would work. It depends on how the coins are distrbuted and why gamers would pay for them with fiat.

For daily rewards and ranked rewards this is a nice bonus for doing well or staying active. But unless there is incentives to hold and buy the coin it will be hard to have any value of them. You can give bonuses for holding coins (like access to levels, avatars, titles or gear) and this could encourage worth. It is the same with ranked matches. You can reward the top players but there still needs to be a “value” to the coins.

When it comes to tournaments this can be feasible if there is an entry fee. Having to spend coins to enter gives the coins value and thus the coins themselves are worth something. This can work well but you need to be careful if it becomes gambling.

The last and probably best way for blockchain gaming to be a career is in digital ownership and item creation. With blockchain gaming in-game items can be rare. For example you can have 1000 copies of a piece of armour. That means only 1,000 players can get this armour and if you are one of the lucky ones who grinded for it, you can sell it on the market place. With an MMO or card game this can lead to a digital economy where top players get paid well. World of Warcraft already proved this economy can thrive and with blockchain it can really be expanded on. And if you allow people to make items and sell them this can also lead to a creation market.

There are lots of ways blockchain gaming can pay but we will need a game big enough for it to have value. Will this be the year we see one of this games released?