Zzullerr
The year is 2040, after 40 majors Valve finally decided to shut down Counter-Strike. Game Over, you won´t be able to play the game anymore, the skins that you got as a reward for spending hundreds of hours are not yours anymore, the harsh truth is that they never were.
Do you know what the worst part is? There is nothing that you can do about it. The problem is that even though the skins showed up in your inventory they were never yours. You could buy them and sell them but Valve always had the ability to restrict access to your inventory whenever they wanted to.
It doesn´t have to end like this. Over the last couple of years, a new concept of ownership emerged on the internet; a concept of “True Ownership” over your assets. With it, you can use your assets however and whenever you want. They are yours, forever.
The solution to this problem is called NFT (Non-fungible token) and I will show you how they have arrived to change gaming forever— empowering users and companies for the better. Leading gaming to a generational change that will pass into history.
What is an NFT game?
An NFT game is the evolution of a conventional game. It relies on the same principles of providing unforgettable experiences to its users, allowing them to live a thousand lives as their favorite character, engage in epic battles, build monumental constructions with their friends or even make new ones through these experiences.
The only difference is that NFT games utilize NFTs or “Digital collectibles” to represent in-game assets like skins, weapons, access passes, and even virtual land on the Metaverse!
NFT games combine the benefits of blockchain technology with the fun of gaming. They provide a new way for users to play and earn rewards while also giving players true ownership over their in-game assets. Blockchain is a decentralized, immutable database that makes it easier to track assets and record transactions in a network.
The role of NFTs in games
Gamers have been in the back seat for enough time. They should take a major role in the decision-making and design of the game they have spent thousands of hours playing. It is also logical for them to be rewarded for helping the game developers shape their favorite game’s future. NFT games will address these issues with the following solutions:
Play and Earn: The concept is simple, gamers should be rewarded for the time they spent playing their favorite videogame. Did you spend 40 hours farming minions to buy that glorious spear? You can sell it to someone who isn´t willing to spend that amount of time getting it but that is also willing to pay you for taking the time to do so.
In Sunflower Land, you can buy a Sunflower Statue for 1000 Sunflowers (around 1000 clicks and over 1 hour of intense farming) or you can also buy it from another player in the secondary market at around 35$.
NFT games also provide something not very seen in Web 2 games, a market controlled by supply and demand. If too many people get good at obtaining “X” object, then the disponibility of that object will increase, thus, if the demand for the object does not follow this trend, the asset’s price will fall.
This adds more layers and ways of playing a game for everyone! With them users can:
-Become good at obtaining certain assets and selling them for profit, but that would delay their capability of advancing within the game.
-Play for fun and keep advancing within the game. Making a couple of buys and sells from here to there.
-Buy the assets from the secondary market and save yourself a good amount of time needed to master the technique to get those assets.
Decision making: With NFT Gaming players can also be part of deciding where to focus the development of their game. Users can set up in guilds and have a voice in the decision-making of a videogame.
Star Atlas, a grand strategy game of space exploration, territorial conquest, and political domination has set up a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) of gamers which is designed to “become an immersive version of a political senate, with representations of its many layers in the form of planets, stellar systems, and seats of power across our metaverse.”
Although these are extremely amazing new tools for businesses and users, they must be used with caution. Sometimes the community might not really know the relevance of a certain matter and could take voting slightly, risking the game to take a path that won´t benefit them over time.
On a side note, who wouldn´t want to conform a League of Legends Players Guild and finally vote for Teemo to be removed from the game? That is the democracy that I live for.
Benefits of NFT gaming: This is the way
NFT gaming is here to stay, companies keep arriving day by day into what seems to be the future. The future can only be bright if we are building on strong foundations, and I can assure you that we have them. Let´s recap a couple of the advantages that NFTs provide to gaming:
- True ownership:
Thanks to blockchain technology you have a decentralized protocol that assures that you are the owner of a certain asset. NFT´s can be used to represent in-game assets, such as characters, equipment, and virtual property. These assets are not the same and can have different rarities and attributes that can add prestige to the games. - Secondary market:
NFTs can be traded or sold on secondary markets, providing a way for players to monetize their gameplay. True Ownership allows users to use their asset in any way they want; they can use it to fight a Final boss in a dungeon, they can lend it to a friend, or sell it if they don´t want to use it anymore. - Loyal community:
Being able to own your own assets or even a portion of the game allows users to take a much more active role in the decision-making and development of the game. NFTs can help support and grow gaming communities by providing a way for players to connect and trade with one another. Moreover, creators can use these assets to create new game experiences, such as games that require players to own specific NFTs to progres or special rewards for being a loyal holder of the asset.
Some people like the challenge of trying to collect all the different NFTs, while others like the social interaction that can happen when playing with friends. Whatever the reason, NFTs offer a unique gaming experience that is sure to appeal to many people.
The dark past of NFT gaming
NFT games are still in their early stages, but they are already showing promise as a new type of gaming experience. The road hasn´t been easy as the phrase “Play to Earn” has been often used to mask some of the biggest Ponzi schemes in crypto history.
Play to earn is a phrase that has been used a lot in the early stages of NFT Gaming (and that it is still used), however, it is no surprise that whenever there is a new and mysterious technology emerging, there will always be bad actors ready to take advantage of the people.
A Ponzi scheme is a form of fraud that lures people into investing money offering a huge return within weeks and paying profits to earlier investors using funds from more recent investors.
Ponzis emerged in crypto camouflaged as “games” in which you had to click every day to get an amount of X token, you could “invest” that X token again to improve your daily generation per click. As more users arrived at the “game” the demand for the X token would increase, increasing the price of the token exponentially and offering huge profits to the ones who invested early.
Crypto Blades was a Ponzi project that worked in this way. The price of the token (SKILL) reached an All-Time High (ATH) of 154 $USD, early investors were generating close to 4000 $USD per day. As you can see at the chart from CoinGecko, this insane price lasted only 2 weeks before falling and leaving tons of late investors trapped in this scheme.
The market will continue growing
Gaming is a market that hasn´t stopped growing since its conception, and the 2019 pandemic only managed to increase its growth rate. More than 3 billion people around the world spend their time playing video games, the industry reached a 116$ billion value in 2021 and is expected to be worth 321 billion by 2026.
Blockchain has arrived to boost this ever-growing industry providing another layer of value to it: true ownership.
Blockchain-based projects like Axie Infinity, Decentraland, DeFi kingdoms, and STEPN have already engaged 2 million users in just a few months.
Axie Inifinity, the pokemon inspired game backed by SkyMavis studios on the Ethereum blockchain has reported a total sales volume on their secondary market of four billion USD. This data will only continue to increase as Axie Infinity expands its product offering and means to reach more users.
Economic models for Play and Earn games:
Gaming can be divided into a wide variety of genres. Not all NFT Games are the same or even work in the same way. The following is a list of the types of NFT games that you might encounter on your road to success:
Pay-to-play
The closest model to conventional gaming. Users need to pay before getting access to the game. They can earn rewards and special discounts by playing the game. Call of duty, God of War, FIFA, and several others utilize this business model.
Free-to-play
The game is free to download and play, although there might be special charges for users to leverage their advantage within the game or just improve their in-game experience (skins). Businesses can also earn money by selling advertisement slots for their in-game audience. Fortnite, League of Legends, and Valorant use this business model.
Play to Earn
Rewards players for playing and participating in in-game activities that can earn them real-world money. Games like Axie Infinity, Decentraland, and Sandbox, are the leaders in the web 3 space.
Play and Earn
Like play-to-earn, play-and-earn games are new business models whose priority is developing fun and engaging games whose main purpose is not to be rewarded financially for playing the game; however, effort and time will allow them to generate rewards that can be monetizable.
Can NFT games make you rich?
As with everything in life, it is a matter of how you play your cards that will determine your success within NFT Games. You have to find your strengths and work along with them. Are you good at shooters? Then get involved in a shooter game and start gaining those NFTs! Do you believe certain NFTs will be more desirable with time? Then what are you waiting to start hoarding it?
Can I win NFTs playing these kinds of games?
Of course you can! Each NFT will have a different purpose and utility depending on the game, some of these utilities might be:
- Skins for your character.
- Special land that can be used in-game.
- Badges that recognize your participation in certain events.
- Unlockable gameplay content.
- Character boosts.
How do I start with NFT games?
When starting with NFT games, you need to have a clear objective and budget. Remember to always perform careful research on the project, put in a list their pros and cons, and make a decision! Even though they can be seen as an investment the final goal is to have fun with them and be rewarded for being good at it.
Are you short on budget? Free to Play games are a perfect way to start your NFT Gaming journey!
How do I start playing NFT games?
In most situations, you will only need your wallet from the blockchain your game runs on (MetaMask, Phantom, Mavis, WAX Cloud Wallet), some games might create the wallet for you or just require an email to start playing!
Are there rules? Not really, this space is just starting and both players and developers are trying out new stuff, we will have to wait sometime to see what the future repairs!
Are there Free to Play NFT games?
There is a wide variety of Free to Play games, you name the genre and you will have at least one free-to-play game. Let’s talk about the most common ones:
Gods Unchained:
It is a trading card game for many players. To compete against other players, you must design your own deck of cards. Wins raise players’ ratings, giving them access to more difficult battles with exclusive cards as a reward. It is strikingly similar to Hearthstone and its knockoffs.
Each distinct card is an NFT token. Starter cards are the exceptions. A player can “mint” a duplicate of a rare card using Flux (the in-game currency) to create a non-fungible token that can be exchanged for it at a market.
Blankos Block Party:
It is an open-world, free-roaming multiplayer game featured in the Epic Games Store. A virtual avatar is provided to the gamer, and he is given straightforward tasks to complete (find a location, kill a monster, etc.). He obtains Blankos, which are inexpensive NFTs, for finishing these chores. The more expensive NFT is given to the player at the conclusion of the chain of tasks (usually a new avatar).
Players compete in tournaments, and the winners also receive Blankos. There are numerous game mechanisms that let you get either NFTs or BB (in-game currency you can use to buy or sell NFTs).
Coin Hunt World:
Coin Hunt World may be the NFT game for you if action games aren’t your thing. It incorporates certain real and virtual sensations to make it more enjoyable. It is, however, restricted to a small number of nations.
Players search for keys and open vaults in the exploration game with a Pokemon Go theme. Once a vault is opened, the game poses a trivia question to the player, and if the question is correctly answered, the player receives in-game currency or valuables.
The game offers players the chance to win Bitcoin or Ethereum. Players walked more than 35 million kilometers and made $1.5 million from the game in 2021.
The present of NFT games
NFT Games are present and future. Even though there are a lot of games in their early development phases, some of them have shown that they have what it takes to entertain their users and provide engaging and lucrative experiences.
The Sandbox:
The Sandbox is a virtual world where players can build, own, and monetize their gaming experiences in the Ethereum blockchain.
The game offers three interconnected solutions that together offer a complete user-generated content (UGC) production experience, creating the Sandbox blockchain gaming platform. The game creates value for its users by enabling them to guarantee copyright ownership for their user-generated material using blockchain and smart contracts.
Axie Infinity Metaverse
Axie Infinity is an online game universe revolving around Pokémon-esque creatures known as Axies. Players can collect Axies as virtual pets with aspirations to battle, breed, collect, raise, and build kingdoms for their Axies.
The Metaverse is expanding as the community decided to take the lead and develop some of their own games after getting approval to use Axie Infinity IP. Mech Infinity is one of these games, and you can reach their MVP from the tweet below.
Million on Mars
A Play-and-Own City-Building MMO Experience Unlike Anything Else.Delivering the most realistic Mars city-building experience, Million on Mars offers a rich, player-driven and owned economy where you unite to problem-solve with other players and team up towards the common goal of a thriving settlement of one million people.
RPlanet Conquest
R-Planet Conquest open Alpha has been a success. This new MMORTS (Massively multiplayer online real-time strategy game) had a smooth and highly praised launch. Conquest offers its players a unique and fun experience, allowing everyone to set up trades, alliances, and be part of epic battles!
Future of NFT games
If the present is bright just wait to see what the future awaits. These are a couple of the best NFT Games coming out sooner than expected.
Illuvium
In Illuvium gameplay, players can explore a fantasy open world to unearth regions where Illuvials dwell and capture them to form a team fight.
Get to be the owner of a piece of Illuvium by owning land, capture amazing creatures and explore unimaginable ecosystems. Are you ready for the challenge?
Star Atlas
The human race, alien species, and robotic species are the three main groupings that makeup Star Atlas’ Realm. In order to compete for resources and establish authority over a region, players must choose their factions and participate in faction wars.
Star Atlas will bring back well-known ideas like combat, farming, and crafting systems in addition to the exciting guild war mode.
The main objective of the game is to explore space in search of fresh, interesting planets with hidden treasures. Players now have additional motivation to visit these areas in search of valuable in-game resources.
Will Web2 games expand to the Metaverse?
It is difficult to know which companies are looking to get their piece of the cake first. Stances vary and we might seem a lot of games in conflict towards taking the next step of what seems to be the future of gaming.
Minecraft
Minecraft made its stance on NFTs crystal clear. There shall be no NFTs in the cubic realms of Minecraft for the time being. Mojang Studios announced on July 20 an update on their community guidelines regarding NFTs:
To ensure that Minecraft players have a safe and inclusive experience, blockchain technologies are not permitted to be integrated inside our client and server applications, nor may Minecraft in-game content such as worlds, skins, persona items, or other mods, be utilized by blockchain technology to create a scarce digital asset.
Roblox
Roblox is an app that allows users to play a wide variety of games, create games, and chat with others online.
Roblox has decided to pursue new opportunities in the wake of Q3 financial results that were disappointing. One of which will witness a sudden but welcome divergence into the market for non-fungible tokens.
Sources claim that Roblox plans to release a number of special edition products that “resemble” NFTs. In order to avoid offending the social media outrage crowd, care must be taken while using vocabulary, and through exclusive, high-profile collaborations, a series of branded material is also hinted at. The end product is a significant advancement that demonstrates a sharp mental.
