Since the 1970s, games have been a part of our culture and have developed in an incredibly fast pace. Thanks to the expanded concept of Blockchain, the play-to-earn games or GameFi initially emerged on the periphery of the gaming market, creating space for gamers can both enjoy playing and increase their financial conditions. It sounds interesting and has successfully become a trend that cannot be ignored in the investor community. However, investment cash flow has shown signs of withdrawing from this nascent field very quickly after the boom period, when most users decided to quit the game, making GameFi likely gasp out. There will be future for GameFi, however, this fruitful field needs to do more than just overseeing the market and accept to be passively affected by pumps and dumps.<h2>GameFi evolution and gaps start to appear</h2>On the strength of a few significant Bitcoin achievements in terms of market value and price movement, one of the first blockchain games, Huntercoin, was released in February 2014, which is still in operation these days. Despite cryptocurrency market had been fluctuating significantly during the time causing less attention paid to blockchain-based games, fast forward to 2017, the cryptocurrency sector had continued to grow and some of the earliest P2E games that utilised non-fungible tokens (NFTs) introduced. Cryptobots enabled in-game trading and purchasing of digital goods between players in the game. It wasn't until the Covid-19 conquered the world that GameFi really got escalating and paved the way though the game universe with the most noticeable game called Axie Infinity. After the introduction of Axie Infinity, the GameFi market experienced a tsunami of new play-to-earn games whose mechanics were either different or similar to the pioneer.<img src="https://cdn.builder.news/news/11ecf2c1c077870ca8e6023f659fee92.jpg" alt="axie infinity" title="axie infinity" width="600" height="445" class="lykafe0"> Gamers, of course, will not neglect this phenomenon where they can play games and earn at the same time. Another target audience of GameFi is crypto investors joining the field with less interests in game but huger ambitions for profits. The trend starts to appear when there’s news everywhere reporting about hot play-to-earn games coming up with attractive advertisements such as earn without paying any fee, valuable in-game NFTs are minted while playing…Things seem to be a dream, however, there are people who act skeptical when mentioning GameFi. They do not believe in sustainable value and long-term development of play-to-earn games. CEO of TapTap, a popular Chinese game distribution platform, once shared that he is not a fan of GameFi and all play-to-earn games are nothing different from Ponzi scheme. In a larger scale, South Korea imposed a ban on blockchain-based video games with cashable NFTs in spite of the international boom of GameFi. In the context of recent crypto winter, play-to-earn games seem to be affected more severely. Participants keep withdrawing their money from a fragile earning model which is reported to experience continuous hacks and report permanent problem of high inflation. <h2>Inflation everywhere, especially in GameFi</h2>What if you’re tired of macroeconomics and the current inflation rate in your country, you find a more peaceful place to rest and gain money, yet the place you chose was a mess with the same economy’s sickness? That’s a problem need to be addressed in the GameFi.<img src="https://cdn.builder.news/news/11ecf2c1c0778faaa8e6023f659fee92.jpg" alt="Ponzi scheme" title="Ponzi scheme" width="600" height="400" class="lykafe1">Currently, there is no play-to-earn game that can bring attractive profits to players without experiencing severe inflation because of a familiar phrase mentioned multiple times during and after the collapse of Luna/USDT- Ponzi scheme.Applying the Ponzi scheme has indeed helped many crypto games attract early players easily, but also hurt the in-game economy itself in the long run. While many investors accept to buy in-game NFT at a high price and hope to resell it at a higher price, others buy in-game tokens and want to earn more passive income through staking pools. In essence, both of these models promote speculation, making it easier for large capital investors to make more profits without playing games. In other words, it does not give real meaning to the sustainable development of the game. Even worse, deploying staking pools and rewards after staking can cause severe governance token inflation, increasing the risk of a price crash.This is not to say that every play-to-earn game are Ponzi scheme, however, the majority of current games are showing the real scheme they followed after long-lasting dump lines appear on price charts.<h2>“Games” must be game first</h2>On Playtoearn.net, new play-to-earn games are introduced on the market almost everyday. It brings you a sense of ease whenever thinking of building a game. Oppositely, games need to be developed more seriously than most of the crypto games released in recent times. Those have extremely sketchy gameplay even the UI sucks. The mindset of those developers is as long as creating space for money to be invested and withdraw, gameplay is not the priority. When the price decreases, there’s no reason for players to stay and remain loyal to the game. Consequently, no user is willing to continue playing without making a profit, and they leave quickly as soon as they see signs of a decline in profits.<img src="https://cdn.builder.news/news/11ecf2c1c07794b8a8e6023f659fee92.jpg" alt="gamefi" title="gamefi" width="600" height="400" class="lykafe2">Not only the GameFi sector but also the overall crypto space suffered drastically in recent months. Many games died when players withdrew and decidedl to leave. However, it cannot be denied that play-to-earn games were doing good, yet it’s time to evolutionize. GameFi will continue to grow if developers, project managers know exactly what to fix and get ready for the next explosion.Content by&nbsp;pe*****tty_0x0@gmail.com(Builder.news Writing Contest)<div class="pr-block-special">Disclaimer: This article is intended for and only to be used for reference purposes only. No such information provided constitutes advice or a recommendation that any investment or trading strategy is suitable for any specific name.</div>

Crypto winter is a break for GameFi to rest and pave its way through difficulties.

Is it time for GameFi to take a serious lesson?