Welcome, welcome, welcome.
This is part 3 of a series, so you may be interested in checking out parts 1 and 2 in case you haven’t already. This third part is about one of the more interesting use cases for NFTs that’s starting to be used by gaming companies.
Now, NFT usage in gaming is recent, so we are only just scratching the surface of what can and surely will be done in the future, but this is one of the cases where we already have some truly stunning examples of what can be in hold for us.
The creation of new worlds
As you know (and if you don’t, check out this article), NFTs allow people who purchase them to effectively own in-game objects. If done properly (i.e. on-chain), users will be able to entirely control what happens to their property, trade it, sell it, give it away, or just keep it and use it for as long as they like.
We’ve spoken previously in this series about very interesting examples of this that range from actual objects, like weapons or loot, to game creatures.
But what if the actual real estate of the game’s metaverse, or the properties in it, could also be turned into NFTs?
Then gamers would be able to own their homes in a virtual world outright. Or their businesses. Or a building.
Or anything else.
The possibilities for this are endless, because if done right, this would take the power to control the world-building away from companies in charge of games and put it right into the hands of the users. The universes created would actually belong to their creators and develop their own economies.
First of all, what is a metaverse?
Meta means referential. So a metaverse is a digital universe that refers to our own. A parallel universe. A mirror image, if you will. For the purposes of this article, and Web3 in general, a metaverse is a universe that runs on the blockchain and where environments are created that mimic real ones. This can be done in a number of ways, such as augmented reality or virtual reality.
This mimicry, of course, can be done in more or less detail. It also can be done with more or less realism. While companies like Meta are trying to create highly detailed and sophisticated versions of the world to allow people to digitally do most things they do in the real world, others are more specific, like games.
You can go for very real
Games like Upland are seeking to create cities that function… well… like real cities. The properties you can buy are mapped to real-world addresses, so you can buy your own home in the Upland metaverse. Or, if you are a little richer in the metaverse than you are in real life, you can buy that prime slot in Manhattan you’ve always dreamed of but could never afford.
But it goes a little further.
Seeing as you actually own the property you just purchased, Upland allows you to do with it what you will. You can start your own metaverse business, you can rent it out, you can build whatever kind of building you like on it, and even flip them for profit once you’ve done something nice to them.
The market in Upland is free and fair (yay blockchain!), so the goal is to truly smash the boundaries between what’s real and what’s digital.
But you can also go very creative
But the metaverse doesn’t really need to map out the real world. It can be entirely new. The Sandbox metaverse is one of the better-known examples.
They allow anyone, from regular users to superstars like Snoop Dogg or Avenged Sevenfold to customize both their land and other NFTs to build their own little worlds in their metaverse. After you’ve created your avatar (they have a dedicated NFT creator for this) and your own little property, you can build it from scratch into whatever you want it to look and feel like.
You can then create your own life there. You can host events with your friends, do activities, and you can, in fact, create games within the game. Anyone can build games for free in The Sandbox. NFT-based metaverses can be whatever their community wants them to be.
The future is massive
These are some examples of gaming metaverses, but what can and will be done in the future is absolutely unfathomable.
We don’t know what is going to come from this place, except one thing: it’s going to be awesome.
We can’t wait for the future.
And Exeedme will be here to make sure every gamer can enjoy it.
