Playing games for side income

The new model of gaming is Play-to-Earn.

This is made possible by Web3 technologies: blockchain, crypto, and NFTs.

In late 2020, I bought a few plots of NFT land in the game VulcanVerse. This land sale funded the initial development for the game, with almost 10,000 plots sold for $80-100 each. I didn’t check the progress until last summer, and was surprised that the land had gone up 25x in value! The game was only in beta (and still is).

I started playing the game and earning XP so that I can level up my land. This past week they finally released the feature for everyone to upgrade their plots to level 2. Another condition for leveling up is to stake the game’s cryptocurrency into the land. In exchange, we get daily rewards from a dedicated pool of funds. Although, to get the rewards each day, the game has to be played enough to reach a daily threshold of XP to qualify, which can take 20-30 minutes per day.

The next month is a testing phase, so the rewards aren’t that much. But when the full staking and rewards goes live, the estimates are at least $10/day (at current crypto prices). That’s $300/month! If the crypto price were to reach its all-time-high again, this would be more around $1000/month.

On top of this, I can rent out my land for other people to play. (You need to either own or rent land to enter the game.) They can either pay a flat price, or play for free and I get a percentage of what they earn. The higher level my land, the more people I can rent it out to.

When land is upgraded high enough, they will become nodes for the new blockchain the game company is developing. That means they will earn from blockchain transaction fees. This blockchain will be used for other games that become part of the metaverse (or anyone who wants to join). And a neat thing about this blockchain is that a portion of transaction fees also goes towards planting trees, to offset carbon emissions.

The gameplay itself is pretty fun. It’s an MMORPG set in a Greco-Roman mythological setting. In one aspect, it’s similar to Minecraft, where you forage for materials and then build on your land. I’ve created mazes and obstacle courses for the community, and offered rewards for winners. (I’m also good at winning in other people’s mazes.) We also have creatures called Vulcanites that we can battle Pokemon-style.

There are other games that are part of this metaverse, which earn cross-compatible XP and the same cryptocurrency. They also use the same Vulcanite characters. They span multiple genres:

I loved video games since I was a little kid. During the later half of college and when I was in Japan, I fell into a productivity-obsessed phase and felt video games were a waste of time. Now I’m coming back to them, and don’t feel this way. Because this time I’m getting paid for playing.

P.S. If any of these games sound interesting to you, here is my referral for you to create an account and get a small bonus after you’ve earned enough XP https://auth.vulcanforged.com/Account/Login?referrallink=UPROS52WPF1CJI8V