Hello gamers, holders, friends, and family đź‘ľ
We have written a piece about NFTs before, and we were glad to see a lot of you seemed to profit from it. So we thought to ourselves: what do gamers like even more than NFTs? Perchance games?
Oh yes, games.
So why not tell you about all the delectable ways they intersect?
Here’s everything you need to know about NFTs in gaming and the world we love:
NFTs will be myriad different things
If you ever Google “NFTs in gaming” as one might have to if one had to write an article about this… say… hypothetically… then you would find that people make all sorts of comparisons. NFTs are going to be like baseball trading cards. They’re going to be like merchandising or memorabilia. They’re going to be like in-game assets.
The truth is, those comparisons are both good and bad to understand the issue. NFTs are going to do what all of those things do for traditional (even analog) games, so they can be useful to get the message across to people who just don’t understand the tech.
They will do many other things, however, because NFTs can point to any digital object you want, which makes them insanely versatile. So to think of them as any one thing (even two or three) can limit your perception of their potential.
Let’s start off by telling you a story.
Axie Infinity changed the lives of people in the Philippines
This is a story that has been going around a lot, and here’s an article where you can read all about it.
Here’s the CliffsNotes: When COVID19 hit the Philippines, a lot of people were left out of a job in an economy where having one in the first place didn’t exactly mean financial security. A number of these people, with a lot of free time on their hands, and more than a little tech curiosity and audacity, started looking at a little game called Axie Infinity.
Axie Infinity is NFT and blockchain-based, and it’s based on a Play2Earn model. We’ve written about Play2Earn in the past because that’s what we at Exeedme do as well. It’s right there on our website, front and center. The basic idea is that gamers shouldn’t be bled dry by in-game purchases and a constant barrage of demands on their wallet. As long as we have the technology to do it (which we do), then they should be able to monetize their time and talent.
And that’s what Axie Infinity did for these people.
Before they knew what was happening, they were making more money at this little game than they were at their pre-pandemic jobs.
The crypto you earn at Axie Infinity is real, and so are the NFTs that the game is based on. Both the creatures and the land you own on Axie Infinity are actually owned by you.
And you can sell them.
And that’s the beauty of NFTs
Let’s look at the main characteristics of NFTs, as we laid them out in our article:
- Non-fungible;
- Non-interoperable;
- Indivisible;
- Indestructible;
- Verifiable.
You can find the definitions for these terms in the article, but what this means, in essence, is that you can make anything in your game all of these things. We couldn’t even begin to tell you all of the possible uses for this… well… because we’re just beginning to scratch the surface. Companies are coming up for new gaming uses for NFTs every day (including us! We have surprises coming! You’ll love them! We can’t tell you more right now, though! Exclamation points!!!)
Here are some of our favorite things companies are doing with NFTs to enhance gaming experiences.
Trophies
This is something we ourselves are already doing, and they are going to revolutionize the way we look at GamerCards or achievements. What we are doing right now puts all the power in the hands of companies. If you play tennis or cricket, you get a physical trophy to put in your mantlepiece. If you are the world’s best FIFA player, all your achievements are either owned by EA or a screenshot JPEG. If your account ever gets deleted for whatever reason, it’s all gone. It’s gone like it never existed.
Do you know how many results we get if we Google “gamer loses achievements”? 24.200.000. That’s right, twenty-four million two hundred thousand results. People are waking up to find that, because of some software glitch or algorithm-determined ban, they’re losing everything they’ve managed to build over dozens of hours of playing.
With NFT trophies, that’s done. They’re real and you actually own them. We’ve already given out a few, both for participation and victory in tournaments:
Whoever has these, actually has them. We can’t take them away, and no one else can either.
In-game assets
Depending on the kind of game you’re playing, you will have objects, skills, armor, magic, potions, what have you, that you can find/build/take from others and use in-game.
As for now, the same thing that’s happening with trophies is happening with these assets. World of Warcraft doesn’t care whether you spent 300 hours grinding to get your hands on that sweet sweet sword. If you lose access to your account, then it’s all gone. Poof. Like it never existed.
If they are NFTs, though, they are yours. You own them outright. In fact, if the game is compatible, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use your assets from a game in any other game.
NFTs are naturally non-interoperable, meaning that whatever function they play is embedded into the object and can’t be changed. However, there’s nothing stopping us from building our platforms to learn how to use the same NFT in different ways.
This would make it possible for you to use your NFT card-game cards to activate weapons on a different game.
Imagine the potential (*laughing sneakily*).
Land, creatures, and characters
This brings us right back to Axie Infinity. Their Pokémon-like little critters can be owned by you as NFTs. Real estate in the game is also up for grabs, as we saw before. This significantly alters what you can do in games.
Let’s look at what Upland is doing, for instance.
They are creating a metaverse that is based on the real world. You can buy virtual properties based on real addresses and own them outright. You can then sell them, trade them, and even rent them out. The goal is to create a parallel, digital, world. There are cafés, art galleries, homes… There are no limits to what they can potentially do, and the best thing is that if you’re participating you actually own whatever is yours in the game to do what you will with.
The same goes for your creatures on Axie Infinity, and the same will go for anything you can own in-game, as long as it’s an NFT.
We hope you enjoyed this little exposé, so here’s a little challenge for you guys: this article is going to go on Twitter (follow @exeedme if you haven’t yet). Can you think of some awesome feature for NFTs that no one’s implemented yet?
Let’s get the conversation rolling!
Until next time, farewell đź‘‹
The Exeedme Team
