New kid on the block: Crypto and gaming
My first introduction to the world of blockchain and crypto was back in 2013 when a friend of mine tried to convince me to purchase one bitcoin for his birthday. He enthusiastically pitched it to me as a digital currency investment that could possibly be used for online gaming. As a broke university student, the thought of spending $100 on something you could easily use your debit card for didn’t make sense to me. I bought him a hat and a box of beers and thought nothing of it. Now, many years later, the concept of using crypto and NFTs in gaming is a no-brainer.
Over the past few years, investors have thrown hundreds of millions of dollars at gaming companies promising to use blockchain. In the last few months alone Mythical Games was able to raise US$75 million to build its NFT game engine, Patron raised US$90 million for its crypto-based games, and just last week Forte raised a staggering US$725 million to fund its crypto-gaming infrastructure. So what is it about blockchain that has the gaming industry fizzing?
Let’s start with the obvious – in-game purchases. Gamers love customisation and personalisation of characters, avatars, and player utility. NFTs have the potential to allow users to buy and transfer objects between multiple games on different platforms with absolute proof of ownership. Moreover, ‘play to earn’ models offer users the ability to exchange playtime tokens for unique in-game objects. For those of you who are scratching your heads right now, check out this Forbes article which explores the exchange of resources from crypto-based metaverse projects into the physical world.
The use of NFT’s in the gaming space could also allow for diversified user-created content. In other words, users and artists could build and design their own customised avatars, items, skins, and possibly even worlds and sell them directly to other players, knowing that they have full control, ownership, and recognition for their work. Mythical Games, for example, have developed a private blockchain platform that ensures content creators meet international regulations and anti-money laundering laws. Having a space where content creators can sell their work could unlock a new generation of gaming developers, new creative art forms, and bring higher earnings for professional gamers.
At this point, I also need to mention Facebook’s rebranding to ‘Meta’ – specifically how it relates to digital ownership rights. The Meta rebrand is about bringing the physical world into the digital – an immersion of virtual and augmented reality. While Meta has stated privacy and safety is a priority, questions linger about property ownership rights. For a true metaverse to be realised, and to ensure that the experience is fully immersive, users need to trust that their property within this world is their own. Realistically, the only way this can be achieved is through using crypto and platforms like Ethereum.
With the concept of Meta being introduced and the prospect of an entirely new gaming infrastructure, blockchain could well be the ultimate solution for ownership of digital objects. In that, time will tell.