Original source: Medium

Original author: Vader Research

Compiled by: Meta Era

Web 3.0 games allow in-game items to be traded for real money on permissionless, decentralized marketplaces. This creates opportunities for speculation and profit-making for those financially motivated participants, while also enabling game developers to incentivize player behavior with financial rewards. The complex and open game economy has also led to the creation of many new categories of participants, each with different motivations and behaviors - this article aims to discuss these participant roles together with the existing F2P (free-to-play game) participant roles Classification.

F2P players (Free to play)

F2P players are traditional video gamers—the most intuitive reason they play is because they enjoy the game, rather than expecting financial reward. Some F2P players are more valuable to game developers than others because they tend to spend more on in-game microtransactions, making their attention more valuable to advertisers.

F2P whale

F2P whale are the crème de la crème - they often spend huge amounts of money in the game. Whale like to pay for experiences such as power and social interaction. Most of the revenue of F2P games may be contributed by these people. Due to their extravagant consumption behavior, advertisers are willing to spend a lot of money to capture their eyeballs and sell various products and services to them. They can spend anywhere from $500 to $100,000 per month.

F2P medium consumer players

F2P mid-spending players are the type of gamers that the long-term health of the gaming economy needs. Although they don't spend as much money as whale players, they tend to play games for more time than whale and still spend a considerable amount of money. That money will likely be spent on battle passes, in-game microtransactions, and cosmetic cosmetics. They can spend anywhere from $5 to $100 per month.

F2P non-paying players from developed countries

This type of F2P non-paying players refers to players who do not spend money in the game, but are not limited by their disposable income. Their attention is valuable to advertisers, and they may be converted into paying players. The game's total advertising revenue from non-paying players from developed countries may be $5-20 per month.

F2P non-paying players from developing countries

This type of F2P non-paying players are those who never spend money in the game. Additionally, their attention is not very valuable to advertisers, as the average non-paying player from developing countries is seen as having little disposable income, and the likelihood of converting into a paying player is relatively low. The total advertising revenue a game generates from the average non-paying player in a developing country may be $1 per month or less.

In short, the impact most F2P players have on the game economy is net deflationary. Because they are willing to spend more in the game than the game pays them. (If the game pays them anything).

capital provider

Let's get one fact straight first. Any for-profit organization exists to make money—an organization has no emotions (and ethics). Founders, executives, and some shareholders may have emotions, but they also have a fiduciary duty to their share/token holders to maximize franchise value. Therefore, they must always prioritize decisions that maximize profit/value over supporting ethical causes.

A brand may appear to be supporting a moral cause (environment, peace, racial/gender equality, etc.), but in reality, it may just be an elaborate PR campaign. Because executives conclude that the financial and social costs of supporting a particular ethical cause will yield a positive return on investment in the form of greater customer/employee retention and profitability, leading to greater High franchise value.

Web 3.0 Game Guild

Web 3.0 gaming guilds are financially motivated and aim to maximize revenue and franchise value through the allocation of money, time, and labor. Guilds purchase in-game NFTs and lend them to gold farmers to earn income, and in order to gain capital appreciation, invest in early game tokens/NFTs.

Although guilds spend as much as F2P whale, unlike F2P whale, they have no physical motivations and may not spend money on cosmetic items, broadband providers, or battle passes unless they can demonstrate their investment. Positive financial returns can be obtained.

The reason is simple: an association with VC support and whose tokens have been listed and traded has a fiduciary responsibility to institutional and retail token holders. It needs to maximize revenue and complete the task of completely diluting market value in the long term. Therefore, it cannot waste trust funds purchasing in-game cosmetics for the executive's personal biological motivations.

A guild that makes millions of dollars from a P2E game might buy items from the game - but that's a PR ploy to show support for the game and prove that it's not just "pulling hair." Thereby gaining more investment opportunities in early game tokens or NFTs.

As an exception, some guilds are not value extractive and have a deflationary effect on the game economy, and this is the zero-sum betting model. For example, Guild A and Guild B each bet $10; the winning guild wins $18, the game developer gets $2, and the losing guild gets nothing. Leveraging various token models, this model is growing in popularity, leading to guilds investing heavily in their esports teams.

Another exception is that guilds can serve as an acquisition channel for deflationary users (that is, players whose in-game consumption is greater than their income). Such guilds have both deflationary characteristics and value extraction properties - similar to Internet celebrities. In this way, the revenue a guild extracts from the game can reasonably be viewed as revenue they import through their own brand and distribution channels. There is an exception, as discussed by Carlos Perreira, where a guild can become a UGC creator/development agency/training camp.

Typically, guilds generate less advertising value for the game. Because, while guild owners have high disposable incomes, those who play games and watch ads are members of guild scholars, who tend to have lower disposable incomes and come from developing countries.

Crypto Venture Capital Institutions & Hedge Funds

Crypto venture capital and hedge funds are institutional investors; they have a financial incentive to aim for a higher exit price than entry price. Time horizons and asset preferences may vary; VCs may prefer early-stage private tokens/equities with maturities of 2-3 years, while hedge funds may prefer tradable tokens/NFTs with maturities of 1-180 days . Often, the institutions themselves are not very active in the game. Simply put, these are institutions that provide capital to the market and look for investment opportunities and market imperfections.

retail speculator

The economic motivations of retail speculators are similar to those of the institutions mentioned earlier. As part of chat groups, communities/forums, and DAOs, retail speculators can either act collectively or become lone wolves.

NFT and IDO whitelist hunters are always looking for major investment opportunities in the GameFi field. They conduct extensive research on various projects and spend hours in the Discord channel just to get the whitelist of the first NFT for popular games. .

Ponzi supporters figure out where they can get huge investment returns and happily participate in it; the projects they have invested in may be Axie Infinity, Thetan Arena, OHM, Luna, and STEPN. They seem to know where the profits will come from. While enjoying the excitement and high returns, they firmly believe that the sun in this market will rise as usual.

Ambitious traders bet on various tokens and NFTs, vowing to make a fortune from the price difference between entering and exiting the market.

Although mostly financially motivated, individuals may not be the most rational investors. Because of their willingness to invest large sums of money in risky crypto projects, they may also have a high propensity for gambling. A game with a well-designed economic model can turn economically motivated retail speculators into players who bring deflation to the game economy.

income player

gold farmer

The financial motivations of gold farmers are pure - they play the game to make money. Their decision-making process for whether to play a game hinges on a formula: how much money they can make per hour, how much effort it requires, and what the probability is of making money. If driving a taxi is guaranteed to make $5 an hour, but playing Axie is not guaranteed to make $3 an hour—they might choose to drive a taxi.

F2P players will beat the core levels of the game and are willing to reinvest the physiological/financial rewards back into the game to play the entire level. Gold farmers, on the other hand, are interested in extracting value from the economic model by obtaining financial rewards as quickly as possible in order to cash out.

Institutional gold farmer groups are a bigger problem for the game's economic system because they are more organized and efficient than individual gold farmers. They might pay fixed wages to child laborers in low-income countries, or deploy sophisticated bots. They will continue to extract value from the game economy until it is no longer profitable.

competitive player

Competitive players are highly skilled and consistently top the game leaderboards. They don't necessarily have a financial motive, and even if they do, they're often not just playing to make money. Most of them started out as F2P players, but as they improved their skills in the game and climbed up the rankings, they started making money by winning tournaments or being game streamers.

As they begin to build a reputation, these individuals may be poached by esports teams and begin working for them in exchange for a steady paycheck and additional benefits. However, as with any professional sport, the average revenue of such a player will be limited by the size of the audience and consumer behavior willing to attend the event.

NBA and football players make millions of dollars every year because there is a large audience willing to spend hundreds of dollars a month on satellite television to watch them. However, the scale of spending by spectators at a badminton or squash match is different - so professional badminton players earn much less than professional football players.

The same applies to eSports - even though top eSports tournaments may have more viewers than the FIFA World Cup, the average consumption per eSports viewer is much lower than that of a football viewer.

That said, competitive players don’t necessarily have an inflationary impact on the game’s economy, as their presence attracts new players and additional engagement from existing players (either through streaming or playing together). One model that allows competitive players to truly bring deflation to the gaming economy is the zero-sum betting model, in which competitive players are willing to stick to the game and bet based on their gaming skills.

Micro-influencers and content creators

Micro-influencers and content creators represent powerful game distribution channels. Internet celebrities attract and retain players through numerous activities. They build communities whose members are confident and engaged in their leaders. As a result, influencers promote new games/products to their audience, achieving very high conversion rates.

Unlike esports players who earn income primarily from tournaments funded by game developers, influencers typically earn income by advertising new games/products/services. The performance of influencers promoting games is relatively easy to measure, so the market will continue to reward influencers who have a positive (deflationary) impact on the game economy.

Premium paying players

High-quality paying players have strong social skills, and their presence increases retention and consumption of players who interact with them. That's why even though they might be paid, their overall impact is deflationary.

in conclusion

In addition to having a strong core level, great art, and balanced rules, the biggest challenge in making a fun Web 3,0 game will be maintaining an open economy, optimizing the distribution of economic incentives, while keeping the players/community happy Maximize LTV (user lifetime value).

An open, permissionless economy will inevitably attract financially motivated players who aim to make more by investing less in the game. Web 3.0 game developers should carefully evaluate and consider the type of players their games will play for. Therefore, the game's economy and rules should be designed to reward or punish certain types of players and behaviors.