NFTs ushered in a new era of digital ownership, mainly in areas like digital art, fashion, and, most successfully, gaming, where virtual ownership is highly regarded. While a majority of the hype has been surrounding digital art projects like Crypto Punks, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and NBA Topshot; however, games like Axie Infinity, MetaBlaze, Sandbox, and more have also been shaking up the industry.

The core nature of NFTs being non-fungible, unique, and irreplaceable, among other foundational features that come with it being based on blockchain technology, attributes to the success of NFTs. The fundamental basis of NFTs, as well as the technology behind them, is why they’re such an exciting asset for gamers and creators alike.

NFTs have empowered creators to express themselves through various mediums and allow them to rightfully monetize and value their digital content, whether it is music, videos, memes, art, or in-game items, without having to go through the challenges that a modern-day creator or developer has to go through.

Especially when the global gaming industry is structured in such a way that game developers and studios can only benefit through unlockables that players spend money on. League of Legends, Dota, Apex Legends, and Fortnite are some of the most played games in the world. Interestingly, all of them are free to play.

However, the developers and studios have to make money off in-game unlockables such as skins, guns, and subscriptions. Unfortunately, in-game unlockables are limited to the game they’re offered in, therefore, offering siloed experiences.

This is where NFTs come in.

The Current State of Games vs. Blockchain Gaming

Blockchain technology has been disrupting every sector, and it is no surprise to see it evolving and transforming the gaming ecosystem. Blockchain gaming has been making a splash by transforming the gaming sector into an interoperable sector through NFTs.

The advent of blockchain technology and decentralized finance in the gaming industry works on that concept by enabling players to capture the utility and value of their gaming experience and asset acquisitions more effectively with NFTs.

NFTs have transformed how we perceive ownership and media. These unique, rare, non-fungible tokens are changing player ownership with their provable scarcity, interoperability, and immutability, driving adoption towards a far more optimized value model.

The revenue created by the global gaming industry is based on three markets: mobile, PC, and console games, which together are worth billions of dollars. However, while the market continues to grow and expand, the players generate little lasting value for themselves.

By spending thousands of dollars on getting the latest hardware for their PCs, getting expensive consoles, or buying the next generation of gaming phones, players entering gaming environments are being offered a tiered-access user experience. This means the more money they spend on their phones, PC hardware, and consoles, the better their experience.

That’s one problem. The next problem is the money flow. In traditional games, money flows in one direction; players have to spend money to unlock in-game content, and exclusive features such as skins, DLCs, and battle passes. Contrarily, blockchain games emphasize generating value for players.

While blockchain games are still developing, they aren’t as visually refined as traditional games; however, they’re setting a standard. That standard introduces a shift that enables players to better capture the utility and value of in-game assets acquired through in-game purchases, gameplay, or other promotional events.

For example, when a player unlocks a certain knife upgrade in a traditional game, their only benefit is enhanced gameplay within the realm of their game. However, in blockchain games, where in-game assets are utilized as cross-platform NFTs, the same knife can be tokenized in a way that evolves in-game purchases into transferable assets that may have the same benefits in other games, or they could be exchanged for money and digital assets.

NFTs are driving the blockchain gaming industry because they’re unique and can be designed to retain value beyond the borders of their original games.

NFTs and Blockchain Gaming

Today, almost every game in the blockchain gaming industry is driven by NFTs. Unlike traditional in-game purchases, where these purchases are confined to a single gaming world, NFTs provide interoperable ownership that can be represented in other games. With blockchain technology, gamers can now save in-game purchases, sell them to other gamers, or use them in other games.

Another benefit of NFTs in blockchain gaming is through provable scarcity. Imagine you put in hours into a game and unlocked an exclusive achievement. With NFTs, you can actually prove the rarity and authenticity of your achievement, whereas, in traditional games, your achievements don’t mean a thing outside of the game.

This brings us to one of the most important features of NFTs, Interoperability. While traditional games are known to offer siloed experiences, blockchain games are completely interoperable, thanks to NFTs. Since blockchain games are decentralized and exist on independent blockchains, game assets represented by NFTs can be designed to hold their value across different games and environments.

And since NFTs are immutable, you don’t have to worry about your game shutting down and losing access to all of your achievements and in-game assets. Since NFTs exist independently on a blockchain, they can be bought and sold regardless of what happens to the game.

NFTs are undoubtedly transforming the gaming industry at a rapid pace; however, we can’t ignore the fact that they’re fairly nascent and still have a lot of obstacles to overcome. NFTs have yet to become more appealing to people that aren’t tech-savvy before they can break into the global mainstream. However, despite these obstacles, NFTs are definitely going to usher in a new generation of games.

Here are some projects that I believe are leading the race in bringing mainstream gamer adoption to Blockchain Games

Let it be noted that I am not invested in either project, and this article is opinion-based about projects I really like. Please do your own research and read more about the project before investing. I hope you enjoyed reading this article.

Wilder World

Blockchain gaming, for a while, has lacked the ‘AAA-touch.’ Most AAA games like Cyberpunk, GTAV, and Saints-Row offer a hyper-realistic, immersive element. The common element amongst these games is hyper-realism. You can do whatever you want as a player in a very large, realistic open world. Whether it’s buying clothes, attending concerts, flying planes, driving fancy cars, hacking systems, or whatever your heart desires.

These games take 10s of years to develop, play-test, and build. Cyberpunk was delayed multiple times before it came out and disappointed people with bugs and choppy gameplay.

Blockchain games have been out for about three years, so you can’t expect much from them. But there are projects like Wilder World that are changing that narrative.

When you bring all the best artists of the world to work on one project, you have Wilder World. Wilder World is an enticing and immersive metaverse created by Artists for Artists. Wilder world is the perfect fusion of the 3D art world and the gamer economy. It’s a virtual reality and augmented reality-enabled decentralized gaming platform that offers an array of diverse opportunities and applications specifically engineered for creators and collectors alike.

It’s rare to see Unreal Engine 5 being utilized within the blockchain gaming realm, and Wilder World greatly executes that with their NFT collection and open-world metaverse.

MetaBlaze

Most blockchain games are too focused on funding and investors instead of gamers. As a gamer, I want a rewarding, immersive, visually appealing game that keeps me hooked for hours. Spider-man was one game that really had me hooked. I was swinging through New York, beating up bad guys, and throwing some sick combos for three days straight.

But the fun ended after I beat the game. I was at the top of the world for three days.

If you want to keep having fun, you need to play story-based metaverse games. Spiderman’s New York is no less than a metaverse, but it has borders, it’s single-player, and your achievements mean nothing outside of the game, defeating the purpose of a metaverse game.

If you’re looking for a story-based metaverse game, then MetaBlaze is it. The metaverse was essentially introduced to break barriers, encourage decentralization, and empower both developers and gamers. And MetaBlaze is one game that does that phenomenally.

By taking a story-first approach to its metaverse, keeping its interstellar theme consistent, and constantly expanding its ecosystem, MetaBlaze is a wonderful example of what blockchain games should be following as a standard.

By combining elements of science fiction, action, role-playing, strategy, lore, and more to its metaverse, players can go on exciting adventures to outer space into Galaxia Blue, fight wars, make alliances, and build empires while collecting resources and building progress.

What I love about MetaBlaze is its consistent attention to detail in its lore, its immersive ecosystem, and its hyper-realistic role-playing game powered by its NFTs. Unfortunately, while games like Wilder World provide a better hyper-realistic collection of NFTs, there isn’t a story or theme connected to it.

MetaBlaze takes it one step further by giving its collection a playable story.

Closing Remarks

Blockchain games could be on par with AAA games in the near future. While it still misses many elements that AAA games have, we need to note that AAA games have huge studios, billions of dollars in funding, and experienced veterans constantly working for years and years to give us a great experience. Kudos to game developers for giving us a great time, and I hope to see blockchain gaming get the same attention as AAA games do.

Until the majority picks up blockchain games, we’ll have to make do with what we have. And what we have, isn’t less than any AAA game on the shelf.