Game developers are offered two primary building blocks in creating new games. Firstly, smart contracts are used by developers to create publicly verifiable rules. This allows users to universally connect and interact without any hindrance from borders or monetary transactions, which are inbuilt within the protocol.
Secondly, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are types of cryptographic tokens that can represent ownership of digitally scarce goods. These programmable building blocks allow developers to augment existing game formats as well creating new game formats.
Many of todays crypto games are incorporating NFTs and this trend is only continuing to grow.
The usage of NFTs in gaming can differ in reliance, from high reliance such as a game that ends with the collection and management of NFTs, to low reliance, which uses NFTs but not as part of the primary game mechanics.
NFTs can take a number of forms in games.
- Branded NFTs are digital collectibles that used by well known brands, such as large sports franchises. Examples of this could be baseball cards on blockchain. Demand is driven by consumer interest.
- Memorabilia provides ownership significance to the collectible. The digital transparency of NFTs show proof of their history and verifying ownership.
- Game relevant NFTs are reliant to the underlying game. These can include skins in the game, with value again being determined by demand, not the player directly impacting the game.
- Gameplay / Story NFTs are similar to the above, where characters or skins can come under this category. The primary difference is the player can change the value of the NFT. For example, a character come reach a certain level and be value at more than characters on a previous level
The gaming market in valued at over $100 billion and continues to grow. NFTs have the potential to grow in tandem with new gaming sectors, as well as penetrating old ones. The potential transactional values of NFT games has the potential to be colossal due to their natural properties. Crypto games alone are only just accounting for a fraction of this with NFTs transactions, so we are still very much at the early stages of adopting this new concept. Each NFT is unique and is distinctly identifiable much different to standard currency. Rare coins have a distinct value as opposed to standard currency, where for example, all pennies have the same intrinsic value. A rare coin could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and is very much identifiable!
NFTs are going to become something that has yet to be seen in the widespread gaming sector. Incredible value backed up with identifiable information. The concept is going to explode!