After being in this circle for a long time, you will find that the scripts of all blockchain games are actually quite similar.
The story always begins with a grand metaverse dream, where a group of founders in suits or hoodies stand in front of the camera saying they want to 'change the power structure of the game' and truly allow players to own assets. And then? Then comes the long period of empty promises, token issuance, and FOMO, ultimately leading to silence amidst a flurry of pressure. I have witnessed too many such narratives, so much so that when I saw Pixels, a project once hailed as a 'low-risk masterpiece' by countless users, release a thick V3 white paper, my first reaction was not to check what new levels had been added, but rather to see how the project team planned to cut off the internet connections of those who were looking for free benefits.
After all, everyone knows that coming here to farm, chop wood, and feed chickens is not really because those few pixels are so charming.
We came here to farm gold, to share a piece of the pie in the myth called Play to Earn. But myths always have an end, and when Pixels in 2024 boasts millions of active users but faces the predicament of $20 million in revenue unable to cover token inflation, the romantic filter shatters.
Now Pixels doesn't want to talk about dreams with you anymore.
If you open this white paper, you will find a cold sense of an internet giant's KPI assessment manual permeating every word. It is no longer just a simple game, but a highly sophisticated on-chain advertising intermediary disguised as a game.
In the past, when we talked about blockchain games, we talked about 'gameplay' and 'ownership'.
Now Pixels gives you a new term: gold-farming ROI, which is RORS. This thing is essentially the calculator in the hands of the casino owner, comparing the rewards given to players with the fees collected. If RORS is less than 1, it indicates that the project party is losing money supporting vampires; if it is greater than 1, then the business is considered viable.
What do you call this? This is called 'the casino has started checking the surveillance'.
The project party has finally realized that the era of blindly giving away money is over. To raise RORS, they created something called joy beans (vPIXEL) that can only be spent in the game. This move is really cunning and also very smart. If you want to withdraw the profits you earned from gold farming into real money, sorry, please pay an extremely outrageous 'farmer's tax'; but if you are willing to continue spending these profits in the game, or invest them in other cooperative games, then there is 0 fee.
This logic is actually forcing players to make a choice: either you really want to play and cycle the profits within this system; or you pay a protection fee and leave.
The illusion of 'coming in and picking up money' has been shattered by this extreme sense of 'stinginess'.
But this reflects a more interesting transformation.
In this hypocritical circle that constantly shouts about the metaverse and Web3 revolution, Pixels' transformation shows a rare honesty. It lays it out directly: I am just an on-chain advertising intermediary. It treats games as validators and players as data assets with various tags.
What does Pixels want to do?
It wants to directly give the user acquisition costs that were previously given to Facebook and TikTok to the players. But the premise is that you must be a valuable, real player who can generate LTV (lifetime value), not a bot that has opened hundreds of accounts. So it implemented something called 'precise rewards based on user evaluation', using big data and machine learning to analyze every action you take. If you just log in mechanically to click a few times and then withdraw, the system will quickly label you as a 'low-income parasite' and use various mechanisms to make it unprofitable for you.
This strategy of treating players as data labels for operation, while it sounds not at all 'romantic', is indeed trying to save the collapsing token economy.
Looking at it from a different logic.
In the Web2 world, developers might have to pay advertising platforms $5, $10, or even more to acquire a real user. This money ultimately goes into Zuckerberg's pocket. Pixels now wants to take this money out and directly distribute it to users willing to invest their time and energy through the 'token return rate' calculation. This is essentially a highly utilitarian redistribution of interests.
You will find that a large part of the white paper discusses how to reward those who actually spend money, rather than giving rewards to those who just log in and click a few times.
It even starts to let the games compete against each other.
Games that want to join the Pixels ecosystem can't just rely on a beautiful PPT or a few good-looking character models. They have to compete in the 'staking pool' and make players willing to spend real money (PIXEL) to invest in them. This is simply a talent show on the chain, and only those games that can retain users, make them spend, and run RORS correctly can obtain ecosystem resources.
This extreme competition and elimination mechanism has completely sealed off the early benefits of the past, where ‘one person achieves success and all benefit’.
So, is Pixels still fun now?
For those with a 'zero investment, free ride, overnight wealth' mentality, this place may increasingly resemble a cage. You will find that the threshold is getting higher, the VIP system is getting stricter, and the cost of exiting is becoming outrageous. But for those veterans looking for a sustainable business model in Web3, Pixels' attempt at 'de-bubbling' is more compelling than those idealistic projects.
It is becoming an extremely sophisticated 'data abacus'.
Code does not lie.
When the project party learns to use the most boring Web2 business logic—watching retention, calculating returns, and targeting precise ad placements—to counter the greed in human nature, the project can be considered truly grown up. It can no longer return to the FOMO era of everyone crazily farming gold. In that era, each of us believed we were pioneers of the metaverse, but in reality, we were just nutrients in the liquidity pool.
The current Pixels is teaching everyone how to be a qualified, valuable 'labor force'.
Lastly, let me say something from the heart.
Stop reminiscing about that Pixels where you could casually farm and exchange for a rib dinner. That Pixels is dead, killed by greedy selling pressure and uncontrolled inflation. The current Pixels is a calm, rational, and extremely self-interested advertising platform. It doesn't care whether you found happiness in this world; it only cares whether the money you spend in this system is more than the tokens it gives you.
Ponzi schemes will always collapse, but advertising intermediaries always make money.
In this world full of gold-farming vampires, project parties have finally learned to put away their compassion, pick up calculators, and start calculating the return on investment for every player. This is harsh, but perhaps this is the only truth that allows Web3 games to survive.