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Major game manufacturers’ efforts to add NFTs into their products are typically met with mistrust in the gaming community. NFTs are seen as a scheme devised by crypto criminals to make fast money, not as a tool for game makers to hide microtransactions.
Some may say that there seems to be a lot to be anxious about, and much of this fear is genuine. However, there is a chance that a different approach will be more beneficial. What if we instead looked at the basics of the technology and compared it to the present gaming environment, rather than how people respond when others pay $100,000 for a JPEG picture of a monkey? There is a better way to use this technology in games, one that will shake up the traditional gaming industry and help players in the long run.
Pushing the system
To begin, let’s take a look at the overall economic structure of video games. Let’s take a look at a little-known game called Call of Duty (CoD) as an example (CoD). The Call of Duty series has sold millions of copies across consoles and PCs, making it the most successful and highest-earning shooter franchise of all time.
Because Call of Duty is a recurring series, we may expect at least one new game each year. Players who have stuck with the series through several iterations have likely spent hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on in-game skins, weapons, maps, and other kinds of aesthetic and gameplay-enhancing add-ons. In order to prepare for next year’s entry, players will have to start accumulating goods all over again.
No matter how much money you’ve spent on things for your game, you won’t be able to utilise them in the future iteration. What if they did, though? What if you paid for downloadable content (DLC) and then got to keep it forever? The best-case scenario is that you may retain the item and resell it to other gamers to recuperate part of your original investment. What would you do with it?
Non-fungible token (NFT) content in a blockchain company’s play-to-earn (P2E) environment has the exact same effect. No longer confined to jpegs and dumb memes, the NFT category embraces anything of monetary value in a video game. In other words, once you buy an NFT, you have full ownership and discretion over how to use it. They are not goods that are genuinely held by the creator and bound forever within their particular environs.
This fundamentally affects the concept of DLC. Loot boxes and downloadable content (DLC) have long been attacked by players as a sort of pay-to-win gaming. There is a gambling-like addiction to discovering a loot box full of expensive things for those who are ready to pay, which gives game creators an unfair edge.
DLC, on the other hand, will not be totally phased out as the industry continues its regular income model. So why not add some flexibility to this strategy by allowing gamers to own the DLC as an asset that they are free to do whatever they want with once they obtain it?
A problem with NFTs
Players have no control over what they do with NFTs in the secondary market, which is the fundamental problem with current gaming corporations’ attempts to use NFTs in their games. This smells of corporate boards wanting to capitalise on a trend without fully grasping what makes it remarkable. As a consequence, NFTs are nothing more than repackaged DLC items with a new name.
To simplify things, these game producers receive their own storefronts and everything operates on their own servers. That’s all there is to it. It’s feasible that the present state of things will be drastically transformed by blockchain technology.
The blockchain is an idea that extends way beyond the realm of bitcoin. Even though many people think cryptocurrencies are Ponzi schemes, blockchain and cryptocurrencies are not incompatible.
Open and peer-to-peer are the governing notions of blockchain ledgers. In a torrent, no one user is hosting any files; instead, all users participating in the torrent do so in a peer-to-peer fashion. This is the core of decentralization.
Even if the issue of cryptocurrency is brought up, it is not necessary to have a discourse about it. NFTs are simple keys that represent in-game assets that may be owned and transferred by the user instead of the developer. In the case of true NFTs, buyers would be free to take them outside of the confines of the developer’s lab. Popular game developers, on the other hand, have weakened the most basic function by securing it within their own markets.
NFT Possibilities in the Gaming World
NFTs are a tool for proving ownership, frequently satisfying a fundamental desire (and thrill) for collecting and status, and, like other tools, they can be used for both good and bad purposes. The market has to create games that provide players with realistic experiences while also providing compelling possibilities for them to earn NFTs that reinforce and enrich the gaming experience for all players. New technologies like AR and VR provide windows of opportunity for players to wear their NFT products in the actual or digital environment. As NFTs and metaverse avatars become more interoperable, players will be able to take their gaming experiences with them wherever they go.
