Two totally different games are taking place within Pixels at the moment.
Not Game One and Game Two in the sense of optimizer vs dweller. Something more structural than that.
The game landowners play. There goes the game that all the rest play.
I have been wondering whether Pixels has truly considered what that divide entails to the long-term sustainability of its economy.
Here's what I mean.
In Pixels, land isn't just an asset. It's infrastructure. Only the tier 5 industries occupy NFT land. Energy is produced on land. Chains of supply operate on land. Most productive crafting paths, the finest resource availability, the finest Task Board chances all of it comes easier to those players who possess the ground beneath their feet.
Landowners don't just play the game better. They play a radically different form of it.
Chapter 3 attempted to do this now. Unions provided landless players with a means of becoming attached to the functioning ones. You do not have to own land to be a Member of a Union which does. Tier 5 resources can be reached by joining efforts. Even without any plots of your own, you can compete in Bountyfall.
That is really considerate design. It has formed a ramp, which was not there previously.
However, this is what I find myself revisiting. Equal footing is not on-ramp.
Borrowing access is when a landless player enters into a powerful Union. Still the land is in other hands. The infrastructure remains the property of another. The economic leverage remains in the hands of another. Labor is contributed by the landless player. The capital is contributed by the owner of the land. In all economies that have ever existed capital accumulates faster than labor, whether it is in digital form or not.
The early entrants, those who purchased land early, developed a reputation before the system had even become competitive, have an inherent advantage, one that does not dissipate on its own. It compounds.
Those that are new in Pixels today consider that gap and are compelled to make a choice. grinding to shut it. Get a Union to share the good news. Or believe that their limit of this economy is henceforth lower permanently than the individuals who came before them.
Neither of those options is bad per se. The real economies do so. The issue is, will Pixels be content to be such an economy and whether it has crafted enough systems to ensure that the landless majority remains engaged over a sufficient period to be heard.
Since this is the economic truth behind all this.
$PIXEL requires expenditure to operate. It requires players to make in-game choices that necessitate the token. Upgrades, industries, slot deed renewals, staking cost landowners
$PIXEL . They are ingrained in the token economy.
Less spending is by landless players. Earn less. Fewer reasons to remain when returns become meag.
When the landless majority gradually loses engagement not with a bang but with a quiet drip, drip, drip, one actor at a time the economy fails to come to its present end. It simply becomes smaller. More concentrated. A few landowners with an ever-smaller audience and a more efficient operation.
That's not death. Neither is it the flourishing ecosystem the publishing platform vision needs.
I believe Pixels is aware of this. These Union system, the Reputation Score adjustments, the Task Board enhancements all appear as an effort to keep landless players engaged.
The question is, are they sufficient.
Whether or not the difference between owning and taking part in Pixels is being insidiously transformed into the difference between remaining and quitting.
Do you have no place to be in Pixels? What is it keeping you here?
@Pixels #PİXEL #pixel #GameFi #web3gaming $PIXEL