Basically it is the gamification of Bitcoin. Bitcoin mining uses a lot of electricity, which makes is bad for the planet, but consumes very little manpower. It is completely possible to use similar technology in which the token/NFT/cryptocurrency is created by people playing games. Many of us will have experience in having "grinded" some virtual currency or resource in some online game. And back in the days of MMORPGs, the trading between players of virtual resources versus real money was a big issue. What if the developers, instead of fighting real money trade (RMT), cash in on it? And get investors into the deal as well?

Play2Earn games like Axie Infinity already exist, but as the payouts aren't great the players are mostly in less rich countries, where $200 per month is significant. And the whole operation smells a bit like a Ponzi scheme, because the money is coming from people first having to buy in-game property before they can play in Axie Infinity. If *everybody* in the game is just there to make money, the economics of the whole thing just don't work. What made RMT viable in MMORPGs was the interaction between players who had more money than time with other players who had more time than money. If rich people can have a maid, nanny, or gardener, why shouldn't they have somebody farming gold in their favorite online game for them? Ah, capitalism at it's finest! /sarcasm

What is new, compared to MMORPGs, is the idea that blockchain technology could allow virtual items in games to become "non fungible", and enable safe trading of these items outside the game. However, there is still the issue of quantity. A big part of the original value proposition of Bitcoin was that there was only a finite supply of it, a maximum of 21 million. Since then it has occurred to some people that even if the supply of any single type of cryptocurrency is finite, the overall supply of cryptocurrency is infinite, because new cryptocurrencies are constantly created. Hey, can I interest you in some ToboldCoin? It turns out that the value of a NFT of Pepe the Frog's butt heavily depends on how many of the 100 NFTs of the same image are on the market. Right now for example gold in World of Warcraft is infinite, but even if you reprogrammed it to be finite, there can be an infinite supply of in-game resources by having an infinite number of different games.

Another problem is that games aren't permanent. No, World of Warcraft isn't dead. But it certainly doesn't have the same player numbers anymore than it had at its peak in 2008. If the source of revenue is players spending real money on virtual items, the change of "hotness" of a game over time certainly affects that "investment". And yes, some online games have shut down over the years, which makes the value of virtual goods in that game zero.

So, overall, I would remain very careful when handling any cryptocurrency, NFT, or other token "investment". They all belong to the Greater Fool Theory of investment. That makes them extremely volatile, and likely to become worthless in a sudden downturn. Linking them to games doesn't fundamentally change that.