In the past, I was also the kind of person who would set an alarm at midnight.
It's not insomnia, it's harvesting crops. On my phone screen, a tiny pixel person squats on the field ridge, I squint and poke a few times, harvest a wave quickly and go to sleep, then come back for another round three hours later. At that time, there was no concept in my mind about whether 'this game is fun or not', only a math problem: how many coins were produced today, what is the exchange rate, and how many days until breaking even.
Later, when the coin price plummeted and the mining machines turned into scrap metal, I was forced to graduate in a state of chaos. That feeling is not about regretting money—money was already lost long ago—but a kind of indescribable emptiness. You spent so much time and energy, only to find out that you spent hundreds of hours tightening screws on an assembly line, and after finishing, even the screwdriver was taken away.
So later, when projects shout 'blockchain game revolution', my reflex is to sneer. Don’t talk to me about that; just tell me how many months you can last.
The current GameFi circle indeed resembles a morgue. The Bitcoin price occasionally hits a new high, and Ethereum Layer 2 is everywhere, but the blockchain gaming sector just can’t get hot. The on-chain data looks quite prosperous, but peel it back and it’s all scripts interacting with each other, with hardly any live players. The customer acquisition cost is absurdly high, and the game lifecycle is pitifully short; everyone is just patching up the Ponzi model, changing the skin and continuing to operate.
I was quite disdainful when Pixels was trending. The farming game on the Ronin chain has a strong (Stardew Valley) imitation flavor; early popularity relied on the gold farming effect, right? Daily active data looks good, but what does it matter if this circle is just fabricating data?
But I have a flaw; I may talk tough, but my hands itch to look up information. After flipping through their white paper, I was silent for a while — their appetite is much greater than I imagined.
They didn’t position themselves as a farming game but instead want to be a user acquisition and publishing platform for Web3. The real knife they want to wield is at the core disease of P2E: misplaced economic incentives.
There are three logics in the white paper worth breaking down and discussing; no jargon, just speaking in plain terms.
The first is called Smart Reward Targeting. Previously, the way blockchain games issued rewards was absurdly stupid — you log in and sign in to receive tokens, cut down a tree to receive tokens; what’s the difference from putting money on the table and asking a studio to move it? Pixels’ approach introduces a data analysis system similar to internet advertising. Every action you take in the game, every interaction record in your wallet, runs machine learning algorithms in the background to tag you. The goal is simple: to distinguish between real players and scripts. Want to get something for nothing? No way. Rewards are directed at those with social engagement, retention behaviors, and even a certain willingness to spend. This logic isn’t new in the internet industry, but applying it in blockchain games is indeed a kick at the studio’s lifeline.
The second is called Publishing Flywheel. This is the part I think reflects the ambition the most. Pixels is not satisfied with having one game for a lifetime; they are building a traffic pool. How does the flywheel turn? First step, use self-developed games to bring in the first batch of real players and accumulate behavioral data; second step, use data to train the algorithm model to lower customer acquisition costs; third step, take this low-cost customer acquisition card to connect with other game teams — whether Web3 or traditional manufacturers — to get them to publish games on the Pixels platform. New games bring new players and new data, continuing to feed the algorithm, speeding up the flywheel. Do you understand? This isn’t about making blockchain games; this is copying the traffic distribution homework of the internet giants back then.
The third point is that they are serious about the token model. Anyone who has experienced uncontrolled inflation knows that unlimited money printing is a dead end. Pixels proposes 'Fun First', meaning that in the future, spending tokens is not about buying a high-level hoe to dig out more coins to sell, but because you want to buy a skin to dress up, want to unlock a privilege to experience, or want to do something with guild brothers. The impulse to spend should be based on 'I had a good time playing today and am willing to spend a bit', not on the calculation of 'I have to buy it because I want to break even in three months'. Connecting token consumption with genuine emotional needs is an attempt to shake off the shadow of Ponzi schemes from the root.
No matter how beautifully the words are spoken, the reality is full of pits.
The first pit: you say 'entertainment first', but how many teams in Web3 truly understand how to make a fun game? Degen players have been spoiled by high returns, and once the gold farming becomes less profitable, how many people have the leisure to stay and discuss game quality with you? If you can’t get past this barrier, everything is just empty talk.
The second pit: that set of reward algorithms based on machine learning is essentially a black box. The cryptocurrency world values transparency and decentralization the most, yet you run algorithms in the background to decide who gets money and who doesn’t; can players swallow that? How to prove there’s no behind-the-scenes manipulation? If mishandled, community backlash can happen in an instant.
The third pit: whether the issuance flywheel can start turning depends crucially on the cold start. If the conversion rate of early precision pushes is very poor, those traditional manufacturers who don’t see the rabbit don’t release the eagle will run faster than anyone else. Once the platform strategy gets stuck at the first step, it becomes a self-absorbed joke.
Sometimes when I can’t sleep at night, I think back to the days when we set alarms to harvest crops. Back then, everyone was very naive, thinking the flower in the game of passing the parcel wouldn’t rot in their hands.
Now looking at this thing from Pixels, I indeed see a bit of different glimmer. This is not a disruptive narrative but rather an industry trying to save itself in the mud. They are finally not satisfied with just having a beautifully packaged plate, but want to build a self-sustaining system using data analysis, traffic funnels, and a return to common sense in business logic.
This matter is likely to be nine deaths and one life, and it may even end up failing in the end. In this speculative circle, trying to counter human greed is no less difficult than climbing to the heavens. But it’s worth keeping an eye on. If Pixels can really find a way through the chaos and run this mechanism even halfway, we might be one step closer to saying goodbye to Ponzi schemes.
At that time, when I open a blockchain game, I can finally say: I play it for no other reason than that it is indeed fun.$BTC