The Free-To-Play business model for video games is quite a revolution. Who knew that you could give away a product for free and make more money on it than actually selling it? The goal behind Free-To-Play is to lure in as many players as possible by making it free. You then charge hardcore players money to acquire extra features or to skip past boring grinding phases. The end result is that a lot of people play the game for free while an elite group of people are paying hundreds if not thousands of dollars on the game. The most successful Free-To-Play games I know of are MOBAs like League of Legends, and Hearthstone, an online CCG.
There are two sides to every coin, Free-To-Play games come under a lot of scrutiny because they prey on addictive personalities and dopamine hits. So many products on the Internet are designed this way (even Steem, and obviously Facebook, etc).
Back in the old days Free-To-Play was called freeware or shareware. With freeware, you had to choice to donate to the developers. With shareware, you could play part of the game but you'd have to pay for it to finish. This business model has come a long way since then. It seems like the more free (not pay-to-win) the game is, the more successful it ends up being. In Hearthstone and League of Legends, you can reach a grand-master level without paying a dime.
In my last few posts I've been calling to take free-to-play one step further with paid-to-play. Developers need to structure their products so that fans can create their own content and get paid to do so. By doing so, an entirely new wave of untapped innovation will be released. Steem is in a prime position to make this happen due to the Proof-Of-Brain theory via stake-weighted upvotes. It's basically already set up as paid-to-play.
Do you know who invented mountain bikes? It wasn't some company in a drawing room; they were created by people who were passionate about biking. This was a stroke of luck because there was no support base to make it happen. With Steem, we can make our own luck. With Steem, we can create platforms for innovation that pay people to contribute to projects that they are actually interested in.
Steemit has already somewhat accomplished this in the realm of blogging/vlogging/streaming etc, but there is no limit to the number of platforms that this blockchain can support. All it takes is a faction with stake-weighted Steem Power to bring a new platform to life. Literally anything with popularity is going to be supported here eventually. Every time this happens, the value of Steem will rise as more and more users HODL their coins for the platforms they support, much like Ethereums ERC-20 tokens (and SMTs).
Would you rather have a super stressful high paying job that you hated or a job that you loved that gave you enough? With Steem, we may be able to provide people with the best of both worlds. There are no bosses here. There is no slave driver towering over you and taking you for all you're worth. The best systems are going to pay out based on merit alone, ushering in a brand new age of work ethic where people are actually paid based on their skills. Putting more effort into your 9 to 5 job could get you nothing. Putting it into The Blockchain will get you exactly what you've earned.
So much potential is being wasted all around the world. Traditional capitalism is failing us in a big way. There are people out there who would make great teachers but move on to less fulfilling jobs because they'll make ten times more elsewhere. There are failures that return to teaching because it's the safe move, essentially teaching the next generation how to do a job that they themselves failed at. We base this success on money, the great equalizer. You either have it or you're not important.
High paying jobs are the worst offenders. The sheeple of the world are lured to the candy cutter professions such as doctor or lawyer simply because they pay more. This in turn creates a flood of incompetence in those fields, on top of creating a bunch of smug garbage people who think they are better than everyone else. In conclusion, the only way to promote qualified employees is to pay them what they're worth. Overpaying or underpaying results in disaster.
This is a huge problem that can be solved with blockchain technology. With advanced reputation based systems we can gauge the approximate contributions that "employees" have to offer and pay them accordingly. Paying by the hour or by the year will become outdated. People will be paid dynamically through reputation and contribution.
I told myself I would stop talking generically and give real world examples. My focus is on games so I'll start there. I'm in the process of creating a Cards Against Humanity clone where anyone can make their own deck. If people are using the deck that you made they'll be encouraged (or even forced) to upvote you. This allows the proof of brain theory to come to life. You use your brain to make a deck and you get paid for doing so. The more people like it the more you'll get tipped.
Not only that, you could also get paid by simply playing the game (paid-to-play). If one of your rounds was exceptionally funny you would be able to post it to the blockchain for other members of the community to possibly upvote.
The nice thing about upvotes is that they are money, but at the same time they are also not money. This means content creators can get paid while the tipper didn't actually lose any Steem. It's much easier to get an upvote than an actual tip.
Another idea I had was to make a simple puzzle game. Take Chip's Challenge for example. If I cloned this game and created a map editor for it anyone could make a puzzle and get tipped by the community if it was well received.
If I can gain some traction with my small ideas then I can start going after the big ones. My ultimate goal is to create an MMO directly on the blockchain where in-game resources can easily be traded to and for currency (paid-to-play). Perhaps I'll use an SMT.
These ideas are just a small sliver of what this blockchain is truly capable of. Be patient, buy some Steem, and watch where this platform goes in the next few years. I have a feeling we're all going to be surprised.