NFTs in Gaming: What to Expect

January 9, 2022 at 11:08pm
By Jason Stettner

As the industry continues to evolve and change, as does the monetization that keeps the wheels moving. One of the upcoming trends to watch out for is NFTs in gaming. This is a fresh type of monetization that will very likely be integrated in various ways over the years to come.

Some forms of it are already prevalent, and other attempts at integration have begun at varying levels of success. While this is explained in perhaps more depth during the video that’s embed here, I’ll be going over some of the elements of this new change to the industry in a written format as well.

How there might be an evolution over the existing aspects of monetizing gaming including microtransactions, battle passes and loot crates which are currently present. This will be NFT gaming explained so that you can get the just of where things are headed and not feel too left out of the conversation as I’m sure you’ve likely already heard a ton about it.

To start, you really need to know what a NFT is which is essentially a “Non Fungible Token”. That really doesn’t tell you anything, so I’ll dive deeper there. You basically spend some crypto in order to create this special item. Typically right now it’s an art image. This has distinct value as being the original version of this particular work, and then the community at large bids on your piece with their crypto, thus increasing the value of the item.

It could go in a negative way, or not make any money and that in general is the way any type of market works. For those being like, I can right click and save, that’s not really the point. In a gaming sense, this would be for say, a unique item. I play a game like Borderlands and I get a super rare special colorful high stats gun. If this gun were treated as a NFT, I could take it and sell it to another player on a marketplace and the developer/publisher would essentially take a piece of the action.

This item could be one of a kind, or perhaps part of a limited run. The latter example being Ubisoft’s Quartz which was supposed to kick off with Ghost Recon Breakpoint giving out numbered helmets which is honestly ultra lame. There was backlash, that video is gone and we’re not sure where they’re headed with it going forward.

Another backlash example is with Stalker 2 where players could own a redeemable token to become a character in the game. That aspect and the whole system of gaming NFTs within Stalker 2 were completely removed due to complaints by the community. Square Enix recently praised the metaverse and blockchain gaming, planning to invest in it going forward so enjoy that with Final Fantasy.

Keep in mind blockchain is similar to all these other concepts, just being a sort of earn to win system. Somewhat what I described prior by getting an item and selling it or find value for it. Epic Games will welcome these types of games onto their storefront whereas Valve has noted they won’t allow it on Steam. EA’s CEO Andrew Wilson says NFTs in gaming will be ”an important part of the future of our industry”. This is almost countered by Microsoft’s head of Xbox Phil Spencer noting that these efforts to bring the concept to gaming feel ”exploitive”.

There are other aspects to this integration, such as the impact on the environment. Another being investors that don’t care about gaming pushing this to make money as opposed to trying to make games better. There are perhaps some benefits, such as digital ownership expanding or the potential for long term MMORPGs offering more value for your time in terms of actual monetary value.

This seems to be a bit of an evolution of monetization in gaming, or perhaps a potential branch that we might see grow going forward. It’s definitely fascinating, with multiple perspectives coming in from leaders of the industry. It should be quite fascinating to watch, and to see where it goes. You can read some other cool articles from the links below, and in general I hope you found this somewhat interesting with the video being an expansion upon these concepts.

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