Over the past year, GameFi has become the de-facto trend for blockchain technology and its enthusiasts. Next to concepts like the metaverse, blockchain gaming has become a mainstay for both tech enthusiasts looking to see the blockchain space move forward and players who simply want the opportunity to make money and enjoy gains.
It’s easy to see why and how GameFi has become such a massive phenomenon. Everyone loves to play games, and GameFi provides the opportunity to do that and also earn money. By combining two things that people love, GameFi essentially ensures that its market will always be strong - no matter the market forces.
GameFi And Blockchain - A Perfect Match
In its simplest sense, the primary function of blockchain in the gaming space is liquidity. The application of blockchain in gaming is seamless because gamers already understand the concept of tokenization - even if they don’t necessarily know it yet.
Several of the earliest games to go viral featured concepts of virtual currency. They were able to evolve with the internet, and now, in-game items can easily be purchased with actual money. But, transactions on these games tend to happen outside of the gaming environments themselves - a problem that has continued to irk most game developers to this day.
With blockchain, developers can finally establish the right standards surrounding in-game currency and asset reading. And, the technology provides a baseline for attaching these norms to the real world.
The play-to-earn model, which was popularized by games like League of Legends and Fortnite, has become the norm in gaming. Here, most of the revenue gotten by these games is generated by in-game transactions using virtual currency. And, as you’d expect, the model has become a smashing success.
Blockchain also provides a much-needed structure for many of these games. So far, blockchain games have been relatively simple - they’re either decentralized or hybrid. In the first model, everything concerning the game is run by the blockchain and the community. This means that even game developers don’t have a say-so when it comes to the gaming assets and changes related to it.
But, in the hybrid model, there is still a central server maintained by the game’s developer. The only difference is that this model maintains the decentralized trading of in-game assets.
In both cases, blockchain handles the ownership of in-game assets, ensuring that they are legitimate and truly valuable.
All in all, blockchain provides a lot of benefits for the gaming space. These include:
- Allocating ownership of in-game assets, reducing theft and fraud, and enabling the same of these assets
- Ensuring asset-player matches, which in turn protects players’ investments
- Allowing players to enjoy actual control of the game, regardless of the developers’ actions.
- Enabling user-generated content
- Providing transparency when it comes to sales, thus creating a bond of trust between players and developers
- Driving player incentives by granting them the opportunity to earn money and also control the voting process
- Leveling the playing field to ensure proper competition among gamers - thus reducing the chances of a monopoly.
Gamification Extends Beyond Just Blockchain
Now that we understand the benefit of blockchain technology for games, it is also worth examining the core concept of gamification and its use in other aspects of the industry.
As explained, gamification is a driver that brings people together and causes them to take action at every turn. If you want people to use your platform, simply gamify it and you can rest assured that it will get adoption. This means that the same concept can easily be applied to several other things that cut across the market.
One such thing is trading. Over the years, there has been an explosion of crypto trading platforms, all of which promise to provide a more seamless user experience across the board and help you make money from the market. However, there is truly only so much you can offer people that they haven’t seen before. And, with the crypto market currently experiencing a downturn, traders are more scared than ever to enter the market.
This is where gamification could help. A trader can easily go on
Gamification could also extend to other aspects of the market. You can gamify cryptocurrency staking, providing benefits to people who come around to stake coins and giving them a new feeling of the interface that goes beyond just what they’ve come to know and expect. In a market where tasks are starting to get monotonous, games make everyone instantly more comfortable with your platform.
Is GameFi The Future Of Blockchain?
It would be a bit too premature to declare that GameFi is the new direction of the market. But, it’s not also much of a stretch to say this.
Over the past year, we’ve seen massive success in platforms like Axie Infinity and Decentraland. And as the concept of GameFi continues to grow, investments in it are increasing and we’re seeing the emergence of new platforms looking to take the space by storm.
Games can be a powerful source of attraction if applied right. And at the moment, developers have the creative freedom to apply this concept to whatever it is they do.