Blockchain technology has brought a paradigm change across various sectors including the gaming industry where non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have injected a new lease of life into the gaming industry.
NFTs were first introduced in 2012 but didn’t hit the mainstream until the late 2020s when they have become a sensation across the gaming and cryptocurrency industries. The NFT revolution has majorly been fuelled by NFT marketplaces like OpenSea and Rarible, and popular NFT projects like CryptoPunks, CryptoKitties and BordApes.
Besides changing the definition of digital ownership and how digital creators interact with their content and fans, NFTs have also changed how gamers interact with games.
Shift towards play-to-earn games
Traditionally, gamers only interacted with games on a play-to-play basis. Gamers played games only for entertainment.
But with the introduction of NFTs in the gaming industry, the gaming world has opened up and players can buy, own, trade, and sell-in in-game assets thus giving them an opportunity of earning a passive income from their favorite games.
For some people, NFTs have become a fad, and believe the latest internet obsession will eventually give way to blockchain technology where NFTs will take the lead.
Besides providing a chance to earn, NFT gaming has also changed our general outlook on games. They have made gaming a viable day job for millions of people, especially in developing countries.
For example, people in a rural Filipino community from the province of Nueva Ecija, north of Manila, near Cabanatuan City earn multiple times higher than the minimum wage in the Philippines by participating in Axie Infinity.
In addition, traditional centralized games only siphoned money from players either through paying to be allowed to play or purchase in-game assets and paying subscriptions to get online and play. By the time a player exits gaming, there was no way to recuperate the investment of their hard-earned cash, which simply vanished into the pockets of the shareholders of the companies behind these centralized games.
But with the introduction of NFT games which have created micro-economies around their ecosystem, players not only fork out money but also get a chance of earning an income depending on their participation.
Lastly, NFT games are decentralized with a majority of the games creating decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) whose members are the game participants. Mostly, participants are required to stake the native tokens of the blockchains behind the NFT games or buy specific NFTs to become members of the DAOs and get a chance to vote on issues surrounding product development, reward distribution, and general game development. These not only give players a sense of ownership but also ensure the games are geared more towards fulfilling the taste of gamers.
NFT market surge
In 2021, NFT sales reached $40 billion according to Chainalysis and this year the total NFT sales have already exceeded $42 billion which is already $2 billion more than what was transacted in the whole of last year, It is important to note that the record sales so far this year have been recorded despite the crypto market meltdown that has been witnessed for the better part of the first and second quarter of 2022.
NFT games like Axie Infinity, Decentraland, The Sandland, Battle of Guardians, and Idle Cyber are some of the main drivers of the blockchain gaming industry. The native tokens of these blockchain-based have also been performing exceedingly well in the secondary crypto markets.
Besides the native tokens of the crypto games, there are also in-game assets whose value varies depending on their aesthetics, rarity, and utility within and without their respective gaming ecosystems. An example includes pieces of virtual land in Decentraland, which can be sold for as much as 345 ETH a piece depending on their location.
Conclusion
NFT gaming creates a future where gamers will no longer be spending on their favorite games but simply investing. Gamers will be able to earn an income from participating in the games which are mostly blockchain-based games with crypto incentives/rewards.
In general, NFT gaming is quickly evolving the gaming industry just like the overall blockchain technology has done in other sectors.
NFTs have done to games what cryptocurrencies did to the finance sector. They have flipped the traditional model where centralized institutions benefit most from participants to a model where individual participants are empowered and rewarded depending on their contribution.
That said, the future of gaming is believed to be in NFTs. NFT games are rapidly creating a series of micro-economies where gamers can play and earn from their favorite games. There is also a rise in gaming guilds with the rise of crypto-based MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games).
With Traditional gaming companies partnering with blockchain firms to create metaverses or integrating blockchain technology and specifically NFTs into their games, NFTs are expected to become an integral part of the future of gaming.