The integration of blockchain technology into online gaming will revolutionize the industry. Blockchain technology will add digital property rights to games and allow players to be rewarded for their time. This will shift gaming from a locked-wall ecosystem to an open-wall ecosystem and turn gaming from a parasitic relationship to a symbiotic one.
What does this mean and why is this important? In gaming currently, as soon as players leave a game, everything they’ve earned is lost. Thus, making it a locked-wall ecosystem.
Gamers collectively spend trillions of hours and billions of dollars gathering items inside of games and collecting social status in the form of skins, weapons, achievements, etc. For example, an item you earn inside of a game, such as a rare golden sword, could be sought after because maybe the only way you can get it is by playing 1,000 hours. The social status attached to that item can now follow you across an open ecosystem of interoperable games, thanks to blockchain. That’s true ownership. Now, because there is true ownership, peer-to-peer economics come into play, creating a decentralized model that allows users to buy, sell, and produce goods and services together, without an intermediary. Now, not only can game studios provide value, anyone can.
This moves gaming from Rental Economy to an Ownership Economy and will put the creative rights into the hands of the users. This will expose digital assets in games to an abundance of value because the potential is no longer limited to what a single game studio can accomplish. To rephrase it, the potential economic value of the gaming ecosystem is now limitless. This model is the same way third parties add value to things in the real world. For example, third parties add value to a Tesla by making charging stations, developing apps, and building accessories for a Tesla. Third parties get customers and Tesla owners receive value. Win-win.
How will this happen in gaming? Let’s say there is a gaming event consisting of top gamers and to enter this event you must own a “golden sword”. This gives the platform the high-value users that it wants and it increases the value of your asset, the golden sword. Even if you couldn’t play in the event because you have a family obligation at that time, you could rent or sell your sword to another gamer so they can utilize it.
The assets will no longer support games, games will support the assets and the power will go to the user, enabling gaming to be an open-walled ecosystem.
The second problem is the parasitic relationship in gaming currently, resulting in 100% of the value being generated from all of the time and money spent within a game being given to the game studio. In other words, gamers are currently “free laborers” for these companies, just because the work is fun. The billions, if not trillions, of collective hours gamers spend playing these games add value to the network. The play-to-earn model simply unlocks the inherent value and delivers it across the network, in the form of tokens, allowing gamers to own a piece of the game, ending the parasitic relationship in gaming currently.
The play-to-earn model enables users to be rewarded for activities inside blockchain games with tokens. For example, you kill a creature in a game and you get 10 tokens. These tokens will be used to purchase things inside of the game and will power the in-game economy. Many will be willing to pay a lot of money for some of the best things in these games, like the golden sword from earlier. Why? Because there is social status attached to these in-game assets.
Items inside of these games may be purchased using the tokens, giving them their value. The rarest items in games that experience mass adoption will become priceless, driving up the value of these tokens. The monetary value these tokens have will enable gaming to turn into a side hustle or potentially a full-time job for some of the best gamers out there. Now when your mom tells you to turn off that stupid game you can say to her, “Shut up, mom. I’m working!”
This will be LIFE CHANGING for those from impoverished areas where a few dollars can be the difference between putting a meal on their family’s table that day or not eating at all.
I understand how the current over-hyped and greedy nature of NTFs may turn many off from having them exist inside games of the future. Rest assured, if blockchain is implemented correctly, it will distribute the value of the network to the gamers and give power to the users.
Imagine a fun game you can play FOR FREE while simultaneously making money and having ownership over the items you spent hours collecting, giving you the option to sell them and bring them with you across the gaming ecosystem.
That is blockchain gaming. We will soon start to see games like these and once that happens, there will be no looking back for gamers.
