Hello there, gamers, holders, family, and friends! 🎮
Welcome to what promises to be a little series that will occupy our hearts and minds for a few hours. As you may be aware, Exeedme is heavily invested in NFTs, and we are pushing the envelope regarding some of their possibilities.
Of course, this isn’t a new interest of ours. We have been looking into this tech for a long time now. We actually wrote an article that you may or may not know that explains exactly what NFTs are, what differentiates them from regular tokens, and why you absolutely should care about them. If you aren’t quite sure NFTs are, or how they work, we recommend taking a look before you dive into this one.
Gaming had a problem
Have you ever seen one of these videos?
Sure, it’s a joke, and it’s a performance by two well-known British YouTubers, but the reason why it resonated with millions of people is that we all know that fear: what if our accounts get deleted? What if we get banned by mistake?
Some of us grew up with games like the original Super Mario Bros., that didn’t even allow you to save at all. We had to keep our Nintendo Entertainment Systems turned on and guarded religiously even when we went to sleep, because if someone pulled the plug… we would’ve lost hours and hours of progress and gameplay.
This fear runs deep.
The fact is that until very recently, there was no real solution for this. Regardless of whether your gaming achievements are held in the servers of one company or another, regardless of whether you’re a PC gamer or a console gamer, you don’t truly own them. They can get deleted and lost. They aren’t transferable anywhere else. If these companies shut down their servers, or go out of business, it’s all gone. Whatever you’ve achieved on Fortnite, Minecraft, Call of Duty, or FIFA only really exists within the realm of those games.
It’s not yours.
And then came NFTs.
In this article, we are going to be looking at how NFTs are being used to preserve, improve and revolutionize gaming achievements.
Own what you find
Have you ever played a really incredible RPG or any story-driven game at all, and just… refused to let it go? Because your character is just too amazing, or your armor is perfect, your weapons are incredible, your companions are brilliant? So you just keep the game installed, and sometimes log on just to check out your beautiful work and then quit without playing at all?
No?
Just us?
Well, what if we told you that you can now actually outright own the weapons, creatures, equipment, etc. that you collect in RPGs and story-driven games? What if we told you that you will be able to use them again in sequels or even in entirely different games? Wouldn’t that be amazing?
This is definitely in the works by several gaming companies as we speak. An NFT will be able to record all the relevant information for any in-game object that you attain, such as how you got it, when you got it, and how much work you had to put in to get it. It’s a situation where everyone wins. Gamers get to keep the things they invested so much to get, and developers get games that actually provide real motivation for people to dedicate a lot of time and resources to.
Own what you buy
What about ongoing games, such as Fortnite, Dota 2 or Pokémon Go? Gamers are putting their hard-earned money into in-game objects such as skins, clothes, etc. that are then locked in-game and can’t actually be displayed or used elsewhere.
Yep, you guessed it, those two.
NFTs will actually provide extra layers of appeal to these in-game purchases because NFTs can actually provide proof of rarity. Companies can always make more skins available, but exclusive NFTs can’t be replicated. Even if more are minted, the dates and editions of the original versions will mark them out as unique.
Trophies that you can actually keep and display
Do you have any idea how big eSports actually are?
Every year a record is set, and 2019 came in at 433 million spectators. By 2023, over 600 million people are expected to be watching.
For comparison, that’s more than the UEFA Champion’s League final and the Super Bowl.
And yet, eSports trophies are physical trophies like the ones used for analog sports. Competitions go out of their way to create unique shapes and sizes that differentiate them and reflect the uniqueness of these competitions. The situation is even more inadequate when competitions are played remotely (which is the case for the vast majority of eSports tournaments). Then there is no trophy. Only an animation that will be gone as soon the event is over.
No more.
Trophy NFTs are the perfect solution. They can record all the relevant information for these wins in a public and indestructible ledger, and they can actually be used. Let’s say the winner of the previous year has access to perks and advantages. Let’s say part of their prize is entering other competitions. Whatever you can imagine, you can program into the NFT. It would be like the champ carrying the trophy around for VIP status.
Own your achievements
These are just examples from diverse areas of gaming, but really this could work in as many ways as developers and companies want them to. Anything that can be achieved in a game and owned in-game can be turned into an NFT that will be outright owned by the gamer.
This is possible now.
Not in the future.
We at Exeedme are already doing it, and we will be doing a lot more of it in the future.
Next time, we will be talking about how NFTs will change gaming memorabilia forever.
Until then, cheers! đź––
