The Trend of Gaming Companies Turning Towards NFTS and Blockchain Games Are on the Rise
Making microtransactions are nothing new in gaming. But there has been a trend as of late of various gaming companies that are deciding to utilize the concept of both NFTS and Blockchain games in order to make the most bang for their buck.
For those who are unaware, a blockchain game is a decentralized system where basically, the game is considered a digital asset. This means you can have that game forever and ever…at least until you, as the owner, decide to sell it or trade it for something new. People use what’s known as a Non-fungible token, also known as a NFT, in order to buy these assets. In short, basically, players would have to buy a cryptocurrency in order to say that they “own” that piece of digital property. A good example of this would be Dead by Daylight’s move to make Pinhead an asset. So in short…players could just say they have an intangible piece of digital media that doesn’t necessarily add anything to the experience. It’s little wonder that players have disliked this concept in the past, calling it a bad purchase at best, and a scam at worst.
But the gaming companies disagree. Ubisoft, EA, and Square Enix like the idea and want to use it in the future. EA CEO Andrew Wilson said in a recent company earnings call that both NFTs and Blockchain games are the way of the future (though he professes that it is, too early to figure out how it works for EA in particular). Lidwine Sauer, Director of Insights and Trends for Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovation Lab, seems to believe that it is the future in gaming and is in the process of testing Blockchain technology in the future. Square Enix has already tested the waters with a collaboration with Double Jump Tokyo for their Million Arthur franchise, and said that the NFT cards it sold were a “proof of concept”. Even Zynga, a gaming company known for its Facebook games, is looking into the NFT market.
The whole idea may be based on the concept that players get to actually own a bit of the digital action, and that, well, this is the gaming industry’s way of changing due to its environment. However, there are still concerns on how this technology-based trade can not only impact players but has an impact on the globe with the greenhouse gas emissions that occurs in its wake. In short, NFTs and Blockchain games are a pretty complicated matter, which could have implications in the years to come.
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