Making money by playing games seems to be really not a joke this time! The new shooting game “BR1: Infinite” has recently launched a quite alternative gameplay. Players not only compete for ranking, victory or equipment, but also for killing other players in the game, and even have the opportunity to obtain real-world monetary rewards. It sounds like “making money while playing games”, but here’s the problem: if you can make money, of course others can make money from you.
You can make money by killing people, but you can also become a cash machine
The core concept of “BR1: Infinite” is to allow players to earn real money through game performance. In other words, kills are no longer just a number on the leaderboard, but may directly become benefits in the players’ pockets.
This also makes the game’s competitive approach very special. If you lose in a general shooting game, you will have to queue up again to play another game at worst; but in “BR1: Infinite”, every battle may involve actual monetary interests, so players may be more cautious when facing other people than in ordinary FPS.
Resurrection is not free
The most interesting thing about this system is also the place where it is most likely to make players’ mentality explode. The game adds designs related to death, resurrection and payment mechanisms. In other words, if you want to continue returning to the battlefield, you may have to pay a cost. This creates a very direct cycle: you kill → make money → get killed → lose resources/pay the resurrection cost. People who play well can gain more and more advantages as they play, but if they are not skilled enough, they may become someone else’s “cash machine.”
This is no longer an ordinary FPS
The design of “BR1: Infinite” is, to some extent, directly linking the “stimulus of winning and losing” of traditional competitive games to money. For experts, this may be quite attractive, because their skills can finally be converted into actual profits; but for ordinary players, the question becomes, are they playing games, or are they using their own money to fight with others? This “Play-to-Earn” concept has actually caused a lot of controversy in the gaming circle in the past, and “BR1: Infinite” puts this idea directly into the shooting game, making every kill and death more exciting.
Will it eventually become “only the rich can afford it”?
The biggest controversy about this mechanism is probably not “whether it can make money”, but whether the game will become another paid arena.
If players need to continuously invest money to maintain the game experience, then novice and ordinary players may be at a further disadvantage. And once the monetary benefits in the game are high enough, players may begin to treat every game as a real competition for interests, rather than simply enjoying the game. So whether “BR1: Infinite” is creating a new FPS business model, or whether it makes “win or lose the game” too realistic, I’m afraid it still depends on whether players will pay for it in the end.