We believe many of the issues popping up in play-to-earn economies are already solved problems in the traditional gaming world.

Our goal is to combine good game design, lessons from the leading web2 games, and what’s working from the top web3 games into delivering what we believe to be a long-term and sustainable economy for our game.

Our economic models rely on one fundamental assumption - our game needs to provide real value to our users - through gameplay. People need to enjoy our game - enough so that they would potentially even pay for things upgrades, skins, or other premium features - just like they would in normal games.

Source of Value

We believe there is a wrong assumption about blockchain gaming circulating through the space that blockchain games can monetize at orders of magnitudes higher than traditional gaming. We believe this assumption will likely not hold in the long term.

Games do provide real value to their users! This is a fact - but the truth is that a blockchain game of a similar caliber to a traditional game will probably create close to the same amount of total value for the ecosystem. But the sadder reality is that the previous generation of blockchain games did not even provide the same level of experience as traditional games. The prior generation of blockchain games was not valued for the entertainment they were providing but rather for the speculative elements of potential future earnings.

We are designing our tokens and in-game items instead to focus completely on gameplay and providing entertainment to our users.

Core Loops

There are three classes of assets in the Pixels Universe - all of these stored on-chain.

• Land

• Resources

• Tokens

These three asset types all integrate into our core loops in different ways.

Plots are pieces of floating landmass signature to the Pixels universe. Players can choose to make their homes on three varieties of plots, each with its preconceived perks and limitations.

Free and rented plots will primarily be single-player instances, and visitors won't be able to see your farm. You don’t need to own a plot of land to access the game's features.

Free Plots

Also known as Specks, which are the most basic type, allowing the player to engage in basic farming activities. Altogether, Free Plots do not offer much functionality and provide far less yield than other types.

Rented Plots

Rented Plots allow the players more freedom, better yield, and space for decorative purposes, but their downside is in the player having to rent them out, thus forfeiting a large portion of their winnings by using this plot type.

Owned Plots

Owned plots give the player additional space, functionality, and the highest income/yield out of all plot types. There are two variations of Owned Plots, each with its corresponding level of benefits:

• Small Owned NFT

• Large Owned NFT

Land Owners have unique benefits associated with an ownership relationship to the land that is not found in other land interactions.

All Industries are available to Owned Land, and some are unique to Owned Land. A Land Owner adds value to the NFT by working, industrializing, automating, and decorating it. Active Industries are limited by available land size but limitless overall. They can be mothballed at any time, and a new Industry initiated, as long as your land size can accommodate it.

Land Owners have the richest tapestry of interactions in Pixels. They can manage the resources of their land themselves, benefit from the production of their land by Sharecroppers, and be Sharecroppers themselves on other Owned Lands.

Resources

Each NFT farm will have resources available and the highest tier of resources that can’t be found in public lands (of which the free Sharecropper Speck and the rented Sharecropper lands are included). The only method of obtaining these resources is through a Sharecropping relationship with a Land Owner.

Resource generation is the main faucet in our game. Part of our in-game progression is that there is an increasing amount of difficulty to gather more rare and hard-to-come-by resources - and those resources will give more utility in-game. Players will need to spend time working their way up to be able to consistently gather higher and higher quality resources.

The number of resources generated during a given time period can be adjusted by our team via several variables:

• Replenishment times

• Inputs required to grow a resource

• How many resources are generated per action

• How much effort and attention does the process to harvest this resource require

The sharecropping system is how F2P players will play the game. Players can harvest, plant, and sell to their heart's content.

Rented land will all be leased and not owned by the player. The land will stay assigned to their account as long as they can pay the leasing fee. Players will be able to lease larger and larger plots of land as they accumulate in-game resources.

Sharecroppers can establish new skill progression by working the industries of an NFT Farm.

How are the Industries and Land Owner/Sharecropper relationships structured?

Since potentially there are many more non-land owning Players than Land Owners, multiple Sharecroppers can build the same relationship with a single Land Owner’s Industry. This has no cumulative benefit, however. In terms of production and leveling, it only matters that it is actively managed and there is continuity of production.

Land Owners may also be Sharecroppers. Simultaneously, Land Owners can personally manage their own Industries as a Player, managing the Sharecroppers using their Land, and being journeymen as Sharecroppers on other Land Owner's Land.

We are implementing a 2 token system.

$BERRY and $PIXEL.

Both tokens are intended to be uncapped in the amount of total supply - however the utility unlocked by each currency is quite different and so are the way they’re acquired.

$BERRY is the primary in-game currency in Pixels. They are the main way for a player to progress and navigate through our game loop.

This currency is a ‘soft currency’ - it is vital to core gameplay loops and it needs to be accessible and easily earned in-game.

The primary of this currency in the game in its early stages will be through the in-game store. Players will be able to sell resources they generated to our in-game store to exchange their resources for $BERRY.

The primary burn mechanism will be through purchasing in-game items that progress players further along our game loop. In-game items that unlock new industries, activities, areas, quests, and content. Players who do not own land will also need to $BERRY to maintain their land.

We have several levers to adjust the incoming supply of $BERRY.

• Controlling the generation of resources

  • Adjusting replenishment times of resources

  • The number of inputs required to generate a resource

  • The output of a given resource

  • The effort to harvest a particulate resource

  • The amount of energy it takes to complete certain actions

• In-game store prices

  • The prices of in-game items will be adjusted on both the buy and the sell side

In the future, we also have the option of limiting or even removing our in-game store - which would stop the minting of new $BERRY altogether!

$PIXEL is a premium in-game currency in Pixels. $PIXEL is used to buy items, upgrades, and cosmetic enhancements that are outside of the core gameplay loop of Pixels and it’s much harder to come by. It’s analogous to GEMS from the game Clash of Clans. Players will not need this token to progress in the game - but if they want to show off a bit more, then they will.

Demand

On the micro-level, user-by-user we want to think about why they might use these tokens

✅ Does this token save me time

✅ Does this token buy me social status in-game

✅ Does this token provide me real enjoyment

❌ Does this token increase future earnings

We want to ensure we’ve created an environment where first…

• Our game is providing real enjoyment and entertainment to our users

• Our currency can help amplify that experience without affecting the experience of other users

$PIXEL can be used to

• Mint new Land

• Speed up build times

• Temporarily boost energy

• Special items to place on land

• Unlock new skins

• Unlock XP and Skill enhancers

• Unlock new Crafting Recipes

• Unlock Player Pets

• Purchase IRL Merchandise

Supply

Unlike its counterpart, $BERRY - the supply of $PIXEL will be heavily controlled and predictable.

100,000 new $PIXEL will be minted each day. The new $PIXEL will then be distributed to active players that are engaging in desired behavior patterns that benefit the Pixels ecosystem.

Daily Distribution

A large form of this distribution will be through a daily reward system for completing various tasks, quests, or finding a specific item. However, we also aim to reward other behaviors such as creating unique user-generated content that encourages more use, engaging with our community, and more.

The allocation of these daily rewards is decided off-chain but approved on-chain.

At first, this system will be decided by Pixels - but this is a perfect example of decision-making that will move to be more decentralized

Burn

Premium items will be able to be purchased in our in-game store. The store will not purchase items back.

Proceeds will be sent to a treasury managed by Pixels. Pixels will likely burn a large portion of the incoming proceeds each day.