Forget Play-to-earn, ‘Play-and-earn’ Is Fixing GameFi

UniX Gaming is a gaming guild, community and launchpad with over 27 million stream viewers and 5,000 members

article-image

Blockworks Exclusive Art by axel rangel

share

key takeaways

  • Play-and-earn gives players the entertainment they want while also providing earnings and ownership
  • “Play-to-earn is basically a job. It’s not fun. You do something, and you get rewards. Then people cash out their earnings, over and over.”

The initial iteration of blockchain gaming in the form of a play-to-earn model has garnered a lot of attention. However, a new paradigm is emerging in the space; The play-and-earn approach refactors priorities and seeks an expanded audience with a more lasting effect.

Axie Infinity was the first blockchain-based game to put down a marker, with the Ethereum-oriented NFT game reaching $1 billion in sales last August, according to data from Cryptoslam! — rising to $4 billion by February.

From play-to-earn to play-AND-earn

Following the initial success of Axie, there has been a scramble to get similar games onto the market. However, while the play-to-earn gaming model is innovative, it loses sight of the core motivators behind gaming — playability and fun. Pivoting to a play-and-earn model seeks to address that, and it is this approach that is necessary to bring blockchain-based gaming to the mass market.

The play-to-earn and Axie hype was evident all through 2021 and continues into 2022. However, the hype and interest will hold only as long as the profits do. If the playability of a play-to-earn game is not of a high enough standard to attract and engage gamers organically without such financial incentive, it’s not likely to come anywhere close to matching the popularity of games produced by AAA games publishers.

In contrast, play-and-earn gives players what they want while also providing earnings and ownership. It’s an evolution of gaming rather than a complexification of investing. As Mirko Basil, founder and CEO of UniX Gaming, put it, “It’s never been play-to-earn, it’s always been play-and-earn. We’re adding crypto as an earning vehicle to gaming.”

The importance of community

UniX Gaming is very much seizing the initiative in terms of pursuing a play-and-earn approach. Basil said:

“Play-to-earn is basically a job. It’s not fun. You do something, and you get rewards. Then people cash out their earnings, over and over. They don’t contribute to the community, they’re just doing their tasks and getting paid. Play-and-earn is fun and rewarding. People spend hours, days and months playing and getting better, competing and collaborating and building a really incredible community.”

The emphasis doesn’t stop at a consideration of game playability: “Gaming is not only playing; It’s owning, building, sharing, chatting and more”, he explains. “In gaming and in crypto, the most important focus is community. The greatest feats of both industries are creating attractive and impactful communities.”

With a nod to the importance of community, UniX has established itself from the outset as a gaming guild — a gathering of gamers that play together, which has evolved to include business and social projects. This aspect of the evolution from play-to-earn to play-and-earn also has implications for other community participants such as streamers, game developers and investors.

With play-and-earn, guilds become organizations capable of great innovation and social change. Leading by example, UniX has organized itself as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), becoming itself just one group within a large symbiotic ecosystem it creates in gaming communities.

Gamers are empowered to use their voices and resources together with regard to what they want the landscape of play-and-earn to be. In recent weeks, UniX has been adding AAA titles to its ecosystem via its Initial Gaming Offering (IGO) Launchpad, and players have been forming investment guilds, development guilds, competitive guilds and more.

With early adopters in the blockchain gaming space such as UniX leading the way, it’s clear that this evolution in gaming is ongoing with the likelihood of mass gaming adoption in the not too distant future.

DAOs were said to be the evolution of the governance and organizational structure, and gaming guilds are the evolution of DAOs. 


This content is sponsored by UniX Gaming. To learn more about UniX, explore the website.

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates (19).png

Research

Suilend has grown into the top money market and liquid staking provider on Sui. STEAMM, Suilend’s Superfluid AMM, presents a compelling avenue for growing market share within Sui’s DEX landscape and revenue generation for the protocol. Suilend’s multi-product suite position it well for owning market share across key verticals. While current metrics across the Sui ecosystem are likely inflated due to Sui Foundation incentive programs, SEND trades at amongst the lowest multiples in the lend/borrow sector, suggesting that a bull case for continued growth in the ecosystem may be mispriced.

article-image

Strive board member Ben Werkman expects thousands of firms to hold BTC, if only “to protect themselves”

article-image

To date, 12.6 million humans have scanned at a World Orb

article-image

One small step for man, one giant leap for Bitcoin

article-image

Jay Woods, Chief Global Strategist at Freedom Capital Markets, said it would be “very rare” for an acquisition to happen since the IPO may occur as soon as next week

article-image

Sponsored

Money is one of the most consequential pieces of infrastructure, and M0 believes its architecture should serve builders, not extract from them

article-image

The financial backwaters they laughed at might be the only thing keeping the dollar afloat