By Abhay Aggarwal
Given the accelerated times of digitisation and technology, it wouldn’t be wrong to assume that blockchain technology is creating path-breaking avenues for many industries. As the blockchain industry is becoming more competitive day-by-day, we are witnessing major breakthroughs in blockchain technology. NFTs are gaining attention across sectors and the gaming market is no exception. Since the first game launch in the 1950s, the gaming industry has constantly been evolving, and NFT gaming is definitely the next leap forward.
Currently, gaming as we know it is changing due to the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Players can now turn their in-game awards into real money for the first time. We are witnessing the paradigm shift in the gaming industry as the focus is now more on generating value for the users, surpassing the traditional benefits of entertainment.
Let’s understand this better with an example. For instance, in a traditional game, the only advantage a player receives from purchasing an armour upgrade is better gameplay inside the constraints of that specific game. However, in a gaming ecosystem that uses cross-platform non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the same armour can be tokenized in a way that converts in-game purchases into transferable assets that may bestow benefits across connected games or be traded for fiat currency.
What does the future of Gaming NFTs look like?
Many people think NFT games are the future of gaming for several reasons. Some of the major benefits offered by NFT gaming are:
● In traditional games, in-game purchases are non-transferable between different games. In NFT gaming, the ownership is with the players enabling them to save their purchases/assets, re-sell to other players or move to other supported games.
● In pursuit of creating rare value and authenticity, the irreversible records built into the blockchain network underpins the NFT in-game purchases. This decentralised public ledger verifies the quantity and individuality of each NFT, making it valuable as collectibles.
● The users do not necessarily have to worry about the in-game purchases even at the advent of the game shutdown. NFTs are based on the blockchain itself and exist independently of any particular gaming platform and thus can be used in other games.
The most significant feature of NFT gaming is the opportunity to Play & Earn. NFT games allow players to make money while doing what they enjoy most i.e. gaming. Multiple reports show that many Philippines-based gamers make between $200 and $1,000 every month. Another extension of earning while gaming is Rent & Earn. The emergence of gaming guilds has allowed gamers to invest in NFTs by giving newbies the option to rent through a scholarship scheme. The guild and the player then split the profits – another strategy that lowers barriers so players can participate and profit.
As gaming gradually shapes into an earning model, a new term, “GameFi” has emerged that signifies the merger of gaming and finance. Widely identified as one of the fastest growing segments of Web3.0 gaming, it is leading to decentralised ownership. Game assets, or NFTs, can be moved inside and outside of games because of GameFi’s decentralised architecture. Their transferability increases the gaming assets’ worth outside of the gaming industry. Additionally, NFTs can be purchased and traded on third-party exchanges as collectibles because the ownership status of each one is recorded on the blockchain.
Soon these games will also have governance tokens. The holder of a governance token can vote on treasury management issues and changes to the smart contract code. Token holders have a solid motivation to acquire governance tokens as they will have a say over the game’s tokenonmics. Additionally, these tokens frequently come with cash flow rights, much like stocks’ dividends.
Pay-to-play and free-to-play were the two main types of gaming monetisation up until recently. Fast forward to today, NFT games are drastically changing the gaming business and giving players more control. They now provide benefits that were thought to be impossible through games in the past. Long gone are the days when video games were considered a mere means of entertainment or a waste of time rather than becoming an industry with its own economic and financial benefits.
The author is founder and CEO, Colexion
Also Read: Block-the-Talk; Edul Patel of Mudrex on why investors need to do research before making cryptocurrency investments
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