The Ultimate Community Building Guide For Your Play-to-Earn Blockchain Game

Have you ever wondered what makes some play-to-earn games, such as Axie Infinity or Splinterlands, more popular than other blockchain-based games? Sure, a well-thought-out marketing strategy to onboard users can help you get more players for your play-to-earn game. Still, to retain players in the long run, you need to build a thriving community to convert that initial curiosity and anticipation into a dedicated fandom.

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The importance of community for a play-to-earn game:

- Unlike the web 2 games, web 3 based play-to-earn games give gamers ownership of their in-game assets.

- Because of the economic incentives involved with play-to-earn, if gamers like your concept, they will become your ambassadors by spreading the word about you in their network and creating a viral loop for your play-to-earn game.

- Your community can boost player retention by providing a forum for players to discuss your game with fellow gamers.

- For gamers, an established community is much more difficult to abandon and shift into a new game where they don't feel a sense of belonging.

Involving the community should be the topmost concern for a game developer, as taking a different approach is unlikely to succeed in the long run. However, it takes more work than you might expect to build a strong community. In this article, you'll learn how to grow your play-to-earn game exponentially by creating a strong community.

How to grow your play-to-earn community

Create a shared cultural and economic vision for your community

Creating a Play-to-earn ecosystem is less about developing games and more about creating a world, culture, and economic incentives. Rather than flashy animations and massive investment, we believe that the most successful play-to-earn games can begin by establishing a wonderful culture, community, and a thriving economy. Consider your play-to-earn community to be a virtual democracy that offers the best opportunities to its residents and shares common cultural and economic beliefs. Building a strong narrative and principles that inspire your audience strengthens cultural values. People will come to your community because they identify with its culture, and they will stay if they become owners of it.

The play-to-earn model has enormous potential because it allows players to generate income by playing a game. Because of the live economics at work, the P2E mechanism surrounding your game takes it on a whole new level of significance. These virtual nations are more than just places for community members to have fun; they are also worlds where they can earn money, own income-generating businesses and value digital assets with defined jobs and responsibilities.

Start early and establish your play-to-earn game on every social media platform

Creating a community around your play-to-earn game can give long-term benefits, and you shouldn't put it off for too long. Join every social network or content platform, such as Discord, Twitter, Instagram, Telegram, Twitch, Reddit, YouTube, Medium, etc. This may appear overwhelming at first, but you do not have to use all of these platforms; you simply need to claim ownership of your social profiles.

You may be inclined to avoid revealing too much about your play-to-earn game in the initial stages, but it is critical to building in public and allow your audience to see what you're working on. What you share could be as simple as concept art, character designs, snapshots, an official website, or a rough and ready pre-alpha gameplay video—as long as you have proof that your play-to-earn game is in development stages, you can (and should) work on building your audience around it. Since emotions are contagious, if you're enthusiastic about your growth, your audience will be as well.

Continue reading: Blockchain Marketing on Twitter, Discord and Reddit

Have a well-thought-out screening and whitelisting procedure

Instead of inviting everyone in the early stages of your P2E game development, you should closely select who will be the gamers and content creators for your play-to-earn gaming community. If the community isn't invested in the game's long-term success, things can quickly devolve Play-to-earn gaming rewards are native tokens and NFTs that can be freely sold and traded in the market. Users who are uninterested in the long game are more likely to sell rewards quickly, putting market pressure on your game's economy.

As a result, it is critical to curate who are the initial members of your community. This can be accomplished through manual whitelisting and other strategies such as gated participation through a commitment of loyalty or contribution.

Set that meme machine to work

There's more to memes than just a collection of witty images on the internet. They are a streamlined and efficient method of exchanging ideas. Over the years, memes have become one of the most impactful methods of communication in the information age, and the opportunities for marketers are enormous. They are now a standard component of internet behaviour, so don't be afraid to communicate through memes; instead, leverage them to reap the rewards.

Learn the slang and lingo your community members use and officially adopt them. Creating customs and common language makes people feel more connected while making communication more effective. This creates a cultural experience that makes a group feel distinctive and builds brand loyalty for your game.

Learn more about how to market your blockchain game.

Promote community-created content

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Empowering community members to create content for and about your game ensures a constantly engaged community. If used correctly, community-created content can be a great asset for your play-to-earn game's marketing. Make it easier for community members to create content around your play-to-earn game and community by providing assets for them to edit into memes, gifs, fan art, mods, in-game assets, and so on to post in your community or share on their social accounts. You can highlight your fans on your social channels by reposting their content, highlighting their creations, or incorporating them into the game. Show your appreciation for your community and their hard work by boosting the content they create.

Incentivize valuable members of your community

While a community's culture may initially lure gamers and contributors, they only stick around if they are decently compensated for their efforts and create an ownership mindset. When this creator feedback loop is reiterated, it fosters trust, loyalty, and fanaticism. Look for ways to reward the most-valued community members and content creators for their time and effort.

It's important to think of token rewards as limited resources that should be given out only to the community's most valuable members rather than being used to acquire new members.

Here are a few ideas for rewarding valued members of your community:

- Create non-transferable NFTs that can serve as a badge of honour for your most devoted members.

- Create exclusive in-game assets that can only be obtained after a thorough understanding of the game or after reaching a certain level inside your community.

- Give special community roles to your OG community members.

Keep thou engagement high

A happy community is one in which every community member feels heard. Keep an eye on your community channels to gauge your community members' moods, ideas, and feedback. Fans prefer to be acknowledged in real-time, so quick responses make a much better impression than detailed but slower responses. Direct engagement with your community members can be invaluable and make them feel like they are a part of the team. They will feel personally involved and invested in the game and want to devote more of their time and love.

In addition to prompt responses, you can increase engagement levels by gamifying your community channels. You can configure Discord bots to assist with matchmaking during test runs, run trivia competitions, gamify specific channels, and reward active community members.

Read more: Discord Guide: How to Build an Engaging Community

Remember, Community support = Long term growth

When a new play-to-earn game is announced, players are initially intrigued and excited because they are always searching for the next big hit in the industry. At the moment, many play-to-earn games are focused on offering rewards above all else. As a result, gamers looking to earn income from playing a game that offers the most rewards, albeit with a limited perspective. 

Building a strong community in P2E gaming is a two-way street. Ultimately, a project's success or failure is determined by its community development and satisfaction, which most projects do not prioritize. Members of the community will back the project if the devs remain committed and have a long-term perspective. The game with the most active community will have a significant competitive advantage in the industry.

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