Wemix Play to Earn Games: Ups and Downs of Blockchain Gaming

Play to Earn and NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are the trending words in gaming nowadays, shaping up a future for videogames where consensus is a farfetched word. The promise of financial rewards is an alluring one that is capturing the minds of many players, who flock to these games without any palpable concerns over quality and consistent gameplay mechanics. Earning real money is the driving factor here, and that’s why we’re likely to see more and more games releasing on Wemix – allegedly, hundreds in just a few years. In this article we’ll discuss the positives and negatives of Wemix Play to Earn games, and if you should dedicate yourself to this very specific future of gaming.

What is Wemix?

Wemix is a blockchain and NFT platform created by Wemade, a South Korean company, solely focused on games so far. Wemix became popular on a global level thanks to the success of Mir4, released in August 2021. Although this wasn’t the first game to land on the platform – that honor goes to CrypTornado, followed by other games focused on a more casual crowd –, it was without a shadow of a doubt the game responsible for the massification of the platform in the west.

How Can I Earn Money on Wemix?

By playing games supported by Wemix you can earn tokens or mint game NFTs that are tradable for real money. Axie Infinity is one of the most popular games doing this right now, but it isn’t available on Wemix.

Let’s take Mir4 as an example for the way that you can make money on Wemix. By playing this MMORPG you reach a point where you can mine Darksteel, which is the currency that you can trade for the Draco token. This is a decentralized economy that is in the hands of players, but the games are still plagued by bots and sometimes a very toxic community where gaming doesn’t matter, only winning.

After trading Darksteel for Draco and sending it to your Wemix wallet (a downloadable app), you can keep it in the hopes of seeing better values, or trade it for other cryptocurrencies such as Klay and send it to your favorite online exchange.

What is the Downside of Wemix Play to Earn Games?

There are a few things that you should know before diving headfirst into Play to Earn games, Wemix or otherwise. As they usually say, there’s no such thing as a free meal, and you won’t get rich by playing games, at least not in the current state of things. Here’s why.

Before you can farm the in-game resource that you can convert into the actual game token and then send to your Wemix wallet, you must persevere and unlock the requirements to do so. It is usually a specific character or building level, but there may be other requirements to fulfill. This may take you a few days, but most likely more than that, unless you decide to speed up progress by buying some boosters. You may call it an investment, but this doesn’t always turn out for the best.

After reaching the required level, now it’s time to collect enough resources to be able to convert it. You must collect a minimum of resources to be able to create the token, for example 100,000 Titanium to finally make the Milico token in Gunship Battle: Crypto Conflict. This means that you have quite some farming ahead to get to the point of transferring tokens to your Wemix wallet.

It’s extremely difficult and time-consuming to earn some decent money from each game – remember that time is a precious commodity and while these games present themselves as free-to-play, you’re investing your valuable time, and possibly some cash shop purchases in there as well. You either go all in or it’s not even worth bothering.

Another major issue currently is the huge depreciation in value that each token suffers a few days after game release. This is far from a coincidence and more of an inescapable rule – the token value plummets after a week and the price drop doesn’t seem to stop during the following months. It may have been worth it for the few spenders that managed to transfer a few tokens while the value was appealing, but the rest of us will be playing several hours each day to buy a coffee after a week – maybe.

Last but not least, there’s the gaming aspect itself. Apart from the toxicity that you may be subjected to from other reckless players, most games aren’t designed for fun – they are finetuned to keep you coming back each day, grinding daily quests over and over, while dangling the real cash carrot in front of you. Quality isn’t important here, and apart from a game or two that would remain undeniably good if stripped of any P2E aspects, such as Mir4, most of them are average or just plain mediocre.

The proof that this is a business first and foremost and that quality is an afterthought can be seen when you take a glimpse at the existing and future offer on Wemix. Gunship Battle: Crypto Conflict is an above average strategy wargame, but it’s nothing more than a revamped version of Gunship Battle: Total Warfare; Yulgang Global is a rehash of Yulgang Mobile, which released in China in 2017, and looks terribly dated; the upcoming Crypto Ball Z is an updated version of Hero Ball Z with crypto thrown into it.

As you can see, quality is secondary as long as there’s the promise of a token to trade for real cash – and we’re quickly losing track of all of them, from Draco to Milico, not forgetting Silthereum, TIG, DEBCO, LUX, and Flero, to mention just a few.

Hopefully, the future will bring high-quality games that just happen to include Play to Earn functionalities as an added incentive. We’re looking forward to Wemade’s own MMORPG Legend of Ymir, a spiritual successor to Mir4, which looks amazing thanks to the use of Unreal Engine 5. But since this is going to take a while, we’ll have to settle for some more reheated meals – we’ll leave that for another article, the Best Wemix Play to Earn Games.