From Game Earnings to Asset Ownership: A New Chapter for Web3 Games

Blockchain technology has brought revolutionary changes to the gaming industry, with its core vision being to redefine the ownership of game assets and truly return control to the players. However, the first generation of "Play-to-Earn" models, which rapidly gained popularity in 2021, struggled to sustain itself due to fundamental design issues, and the boom quickly faded.

This article will review the rise and fall of the P2E model, delve into how "Play-to-Own" has gradually emerged as a more sustainable and player-centered alternative, and analyze why the new generation of blockchain technology can provide a solid technical support and development foundation for such Web3 games.

The Rise and Fall of Play-to-Earn

Play-to-Earn has promised to usher in a new era of blockchain gaming, allowing players to truly profit from their time and skills. Some early projects have indeed helped players in developing countries pay rent and start their own businesses.

However, as the hype rises, the fundamental problems of this model gradually emerge: the game increasingly focuses on "extraction", player earnings continue to shrink, gameplay stagnates, and retention can only rely on a constant influx of new users rather than sustainable design.

Worse still, an increasing number of shoddy copycat projects merely mimic the surface logic of P2E, lacking core gameplay, balance, and user experience, essentially being speculative DeFi projects with a new skin.

These projects did not build a sustainable gaming world, but instead focused on short-term returns, sacrificing long-term player retention. The results are predictable: shallow game mechanics, distorted economic structures, and ultimately system collapse, leading to players quickly dispersing.

Play-to-Own: A Gaming Experience That Truly Belongs to Players

Unlike P2E, which drives player behavior through financial incentives, P2O focuses more on "ownership", "immersion", and "long-term engagement".

When players truly own in-game assets—whether it's upgraded characters, customized items, or a piece of virtual land—they become more immersed in the world they have crafted themselves.

This is not just about "holding an NFT"; it is about establishing a deeper connection with the game. Ownership injects value into decision-making, progress, and creativity. Players will care more because what they create or acquire truly belongs to them, and can be retained, traded, or even used across games.

From a design perspective, P2O has also changed the goals of the game: developers no longer simply distribute rewards to maintain activity, but instead incentivize real participation through mechanisms like customization, growth, and community interaction. At this point, the game itself becomes the reward.

This also changes the way success is measured: instead of looking at token circulation speed or short-term user growth, the focus is on player retention, engagement, and a sustainable game economy. This ultimately gives rise to a stronger community and a more resilient ecosystem.

P2O anchors value to experience rather than speculation, driving Web3 games back to their player-centric essence.

Redefining Classic Games from the P2O Perspective

Imagine if we introduced P2O in familiar games, not to replace the uniqueness of the games, but to give players true asset ownership, creative freedom, and a stake in the future of the game, what would happen?

"Animal Crossing: New Horizons"

Players spend years carefully designing islands, cultivating rare flower species, and creating furniture, but all their hard work is locked in the game company's servers. Once the servers are shut down, all achievements will be lost overnight.

P2O can completely change everything. Players can truly own their islands and creations, using them as verifiable, portable assets that can continue in new versions, derivative worlds, or community-driven copies. This ownership will protect players' creativity from platform restrictions.

"Pokémon"

The reason this series remains timeless is due to the deep emotional connection formed between players and the Pokémon team. However, transferring Pokémon across generations is still complex and requires payment for specific services.

Through P2O, players can truly own the Pokémon they capture and cultivate, retaining their battle records, achievements, and evolutions completely, and freely migrating them to future games. Pokémon are no longer just temporary data "licensed" by the company, but rather digital assets that truly belong to the players, a story that can continue.

"Stardew Valley"

What makes this game most appealing is its warm community culture. However, currently, players are unable to truly participate in the future development of the game even if they make good suggestions.

If it is transformed into a DAO model, players will be able to gain voting rights through their participation in the game, jointly proposing expansion content and funding seasonal events, truly participating in shaping the world they love. P2O allows players to not just "own a piece of farmland," but to own the entire "Stardew Valley universe" future.

The essence of P2O is not to turn games into "tools that can only be played with tokens," but to unlock a new world—players have their own stories, control the results of their creations, and participate in building a game universe that transcends a single company or server.

Why the New Generation of Blockchain Technology is the Ideal Infrastructure for P2O

The concept of P2O is good, but to truly realize it, a suitable tech stack is needed. This is precisely where the new generation of blockchain technology comes into play—it is not a fantasy, but a real infrastructure that truly allows game assets to be owned and scalable.

In contrast, the high transaction fees of traditional blockchains, the limitations of smart contracts, the instability of certain networks, and the congestion issues of various scaling solutions have all become bottlenecks for complex game mechanics and high-concurrency user experiences. Although there are some scaling solutions available in the market, they often come at the expense of performance and stability.

The new generation of blockchain technology has completely changed this logic:

• Dedicated SDK: Developers can build custom application chains through the SDK, customizing the blockchain to align with their own game mechanics, incentive structures, and economic systems. They can even define asset standards and governance mechanisms at the chain level, providing players with the optimal experience.

• Cross-chain communication: Supports the cross-chain transfer of assets, identities, and data between games, truly achieving interoperability between different game worlds, allowing players to carry their progress and creativity across multiple ecosystems.

• Flexible resource management: Allows developers to flexibly purchase computing resources based on actual needs, eliminating the need for long-term leases to support dynamic scaling of game size and lowering the initial development threshold.

• Shared security mechanism: Provides security assurance for all connected blockchains through the main chain, eliminating the burden of independently building a validator network. Developers can focus on creating rich, player-centric gaming experiences without having to manage complex network security infrastructure.

This is not just talk. A team is already building Web3 games based on next-generation blockchain technology that balances ownership, creativity, and economic incentives, breaking free from the pitfalls of early blockchain game speculation.

Make blockchain invisible for a purer experience

A well-known game developer is migrating its blockchain to a next-generation technology platform, which is not just a technical shift but also a strategic choice: to build a scalable, player-owned game ecosystem without sacrificing performance and user experience.

They need an infrastructure that can handle tens of millions of transactions, support real digital asset economic activities, and provide a smooth experience for players. However, issues such as high transaction fees, limited throughput, and non-unified standards of traditional public chains severely hinder development and player experience.

The modular architecture provided by the new generation of blockchain technology perfectly meets these needs. Developers can freely optimize game operation performance on top of this while enjoying the shared security of the entire network, without having to deploy complex security mechanisms or manage an unstable transaction fee market.

Immediate effect: Within just 48 hours after the migration, the company's blockchain processed over 3 million transactions and supported the issuance and transfer of over 16 million NFTs, with extremely low transaction delays and minimal impact on players.

Its representative works have successfully entered the mainstream player market, allowing them to truly own collectible game items. These assets exist on the blockchain, and even if the game shuts down, players still own them.

The upcoming new game continues this concept: the quality refinement of Web2 + the asset ownership of Web3.

For developers, this demonstrates a paradigm - player-first, enhancing the experience through modular blockchain infrastructure rather than adding burdens. The blockchain is "invisible", making the experience purer, and ownership becomes a bonus rather than a barrier.

From Play-to-own to Play-to-stay

The future of blockchain games does not lie in chasing tokens or short-term profits, but in creating a world where players are willing to "live in, build in, and belong to." P2O shifts the focus from speculation to narrative, from extraction to immersion.

The best P2O games will fully stimulate elements that players love: character customization, digital identity, growth experience, and community relationships, while blockchain provides key added value - true asset ownership, without changing the way players originally play.

This is not about letting "crypto users" play games, but rather about encouraging "players" to actively embrace blockchain, as it truly enhances the gaming experience.

A truly lasting game ecosystem will be built around "meaning" rather than "mechanics." Players stay not because of token rewards, but because this world is worth their long-term investment.

The new generation of blockchain technology is the ideal platform for building such a future. Through modular architecture, seamless cross-chain interactions, and player-oriented tools, developers can focus on creating rich, continuously evolving game worlds, rather than being constrained by infrastructure.