Blockchain gaming had a sensational breakout year in 2021. With the advent of NFT technology, developers suddenly realised they had a way to make in-game virtual items a lot more, well, real. Gamers have for decades assiduously built up collections in single player and online games for the sheer satisfaction of it. Indeed, skins and collectibles are now the main source of revenue for 99% of new gaming. Free to play models let gamers experience new games easily, before selling them digital collectibles. The issue with this model is it tends towards exploitation fast. Companies who need to make a profit must push the microtransaction envelope and in doing so alienate their player base. Free to play has had a good decade, but the cracks are starting to show in the model.
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Blockchain gaming had a sensational breakout year in 2021. With the advent of NFT technology, developers suddenly realised they had a way to make in-game virtual items a lot more, well, real.
Gamers have for decades assiduously built up collections in single player and online games for the sheer satisfaction of it. Indeed, skins and collectibles are now the main source of revenue for 99% of new gaming. Free to play models let gamers experience new games easily, before selling them digital collectibles.
The issue with this model is it tends towards exploitation fast. Companies who need to make a profit must push the microtransaction envelope and in doing so alienate their player base. Free to play has had a good decade, but the cracks are starting to show in the model. Free to play online games need player participation for them to have value, but the players are not rewarded for populating these online worlds.
How Web3 Rewards and Incentivises Players
Thus, web3, the blockchain, and digital ownership suddenly found a powerful use case in the gaming industry. Developers want players playing their games, players want to be rewarded, not taxed, for playing them. Many players willingly spend hundreds upon thousands of hours playing their favorite games.
They make up your allies, the friendly team, the social community – everything that makes a game what it is and what gives it value. Now, with the blockchain, developers have an easy way to both incentivise and reward the players who put in the hours and show their talents in game.
This is the play to earn model in gaming, one that is seeing exponential growth, but recently has shifted in favour of a new moniker – Play to Own. Earn sounds like a job, and – with blockchain gaming – playing games can be. Play to Own puts the core concept of digital ownership at the forefront of gaming.
How Online Economies Promote Player Engagement
All those items collected in game – magical treasures, fantastic outfits, powerful weapons – can now be owned by the players. They can be bought and sold by them too, creating fantastic in-game economies that can revolutionise online experiences.
We’ve already seen how web2 mainstays like World of Warcraft and Eve Online became popular in large part due to their sophisticated in-game economies, which created a textured, organic feel to those game worlds it provides. However, centralised providers control all the keys, quite literally. They can rescind accounts, edit game data, or simply stop providing or hosting servers for the game.
Big Names Getting Into Web3 Gaming
Web3 is different, web3 lets the in-game items players acquired be actually owned by them, with rights to sell them on to others, give them away, trade them for other items, delete them, or whatever else they choose to do. The palpable sense of agency this gives to players makes NFT ownership in games an extremely hot trend in the general gaming industry.
This trend in gaming then, has exploded, with new blockchain games being built and attracting funding and players every day. Already, large industry players have moved to incorporate NFTs within their games, with Square Enix and Sega already looking at the best implementation for their games.
How Fungies Helps Developers Enter the Metaverse
With so many game studios looking into bridging their game worlds into web3, obstacles still remain. Blockchain knowledge among developers is still in its infancy. Even experienced game studios face months and hassle and development time to create features like wallet login, NFT marketplaces, and other key tools for their web3 game. Even then, they may end up with technical debt they can’t overcome.
Fungies is a complete suite of tools for game developers to adopt the latest metaverse and web3 trends within their games. Fungies provides a complete set of APIs alongside customised NFT marketplaces, as well as all the required tools to mint NFT assets for your in-game collectibles. Blockchain gaming has a long way to go, but with tools like Fungies, it’ll get there a lot quicker.