Who usually becomes well-known all of a sudden? Most of them are bloggers, TikTokers, and guys who like memes. On the other hand, technologies can’t yet claim to work like lightning and be used right away because we need time to study and test them.
The same thing happened with blockchain. It was first proposed in 2008 as part of a plan for Bitcoin, but it didn’t become popular until years later, when cryptocurrencies became the norm in the financial world and blockchain was finally seen as a mature technology with uses outside of crypto.
Blockchain technology had to wait a while for farming to get better before it could change the gaming world. Read on to learn about the benefits of using blockchain in games and to find out about some real-world examples of games that use blockchain development services.
A sneak peek into Today’s Gaming Business!
The video game business is already very big, and it keeps getting bigger and bigger. The current value of the global gaming market is $178 billion, and it is expected to reach $314.40 billion by 2026, which is a CAGR of 9.64% over the next five years.
Games quickly became one of the most popular things to do when people had to lock themselves in their homes. One report says that by June 2020, when the lockdown started, the amount of time spent playing video games had gone up by 10 percent in all regions. Latin American gamers spend 52% more time playing video games than other gamers.
Mordor Intelligence, on the other hand, thinks that the Asia-Pacific region will have the biggest share of the market in the industry. South Korea, Japan, and China have the most room for growth in their markets over the next few years.
Here are a few more trends in games:
- Cloud gaming is growing.
- eSports are very popular all over the world, but especially in the US and South Korea
- More and more people are playing games on their phones.
- People are becoming more interested in NFTs and blockchain games.
So far, Fortnight, League of Legends, Crossfire, Minecraft, Counter-Strike: GO, and Dota 2 are the games with the most peak concurrent players around the world. These games are the biggest and hardest to beat in the world of gaming. But blockchain has some new ideas that could make a lot of people want to play crypto games.
Let’s take a look at what blockchain can do.
What Blockchain Development Brings to the Gaming Table?
The blockchain technology, which was mostly used to run cryptocurrencies, has become a revolutionary technology that can be used in many different fields. Blockchain gives each sphere at least four unique features:
- Decentralization
Games are usually based on centralised systems. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, as the saying goes. Things work the same way here: all assets, history, data, and game currency never leave the original game. So, the developers keep all rights to the property.
In turn, blockchain makes things less centralised, especially when it comes to trading assets. In decentralised games, you can sell things you win or buy in one game and use them in another. The player, on the other hand, will be the real owner, and reselling an item can even make them money. Smart contracts make it possible to prove ownership. When a certain predefined condition is met, like buying the asset or reaching a goal, the player automatically becomes the owner of the digital asset.
- Immutability
Blockchain also makes transactions that can’t be changed possible. This means that gamers can’t change, replace, or delete information about their purchases and assets.
- Transparency
Transparency is another thing that blockchain has going for it, and it’s also something that modern games don’t have. Players need to buy resources like equipment, cars, swords, and tanks in order to complete missions. Many things are said to be rare and cost a lot of money. But how can you tell if something is rare and if it’s really worth the big bucks? In this way, blockchain is ahead of the other options.
Blockchain turns game assets into tokens and makes it possible to make decentralised markets. Since everyone can see the ledger, information about a certain item and how it was bought and sold can be tracked. So, blockchain’s transparency makes gamers more likely to trust it and helps them make sure they have a real, rare item.
- Increased security
Last but not least, data and payments will be safer. This is made possible by strong and complicated encryption, smart contracts, and the blockchain technology itself. Blockchain can also stop digital assets from being traded illegally in video games.
Blockchain-Driven Trends in Gaming Industry
Blockchain has made a lot of big changes in the gaming industry possible from a technical point of view. These are asset tokenization, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and the play-to-earn model for crypto.
Tokenization
Asset tokenization came about because of blockchain technology. This means that any digital or physical asset can be turned into tokens and then sold on marketplaces. This can also be used in the gaming business.
In video games, tokens can be used to sell things like skins, coins, diamonds, weapons, tools, and even characters. The gamers who buy them will own them, and any sale or change of ownership will be recorded on the blockchain and kept safe. Also, any gamer can track how digital assets are used and make sure they are real.
NFT
A lot of famous people and athletes have become interested in the NFT trend. Blockchain is the technology that made it possible for this idea to come about. What are NFTs in games, though? These blockchain-based tokens can only be used to buy one specific item in a game. They can be bought, sold, and collected, but they can’t be copied or traded.
There’s nothing new about NFT games. In fact, a blockchain game called CryptoKitties in 2017 was the first thing that started the NFT craze. Here, people can buy, breed, collect, and sell digital kittens that all look and act differently. Sounds like a Tamagotchi for the 21st century, which kids in the 90s would love.
Axie Infinity
Another blockchain game, Axie Infinity, is very close to stepping on cats’ paws. The number of people who use Axie Infinity every day went from 30,000 in April 2021 to over 1 million in August. The Blockchain Game Report July 2021 says that with over $1 billion in trading volume, Axie has become the most valuable NFT collection ever. In this game, people buy pets called “axies,” raise them, breed them, trade them, and fight with them.
A new company called Polygon Studios has been set up by an American gaming site called Polygon. This is also interesting news. The studio will make NFTs for the gaming market and has a $100 million fund to help developers.
Hunting for Crypto
Another popular trend is the play-to-earn (P2E) model. Can you earn cryptocurrency by playing games? Sure! In crypto games, players have to look for, buy, or win items, just like in any other video game. However, these items are tokenized and shown as NFTs. When players get these items, they can put them on digital marketplaces where they can trade them for other non-fungible tokens or just sell them for cryptocurrency.
There is no such thing as a free lunch, though. Most crypto games require a small investment at the start. Gamers must set up a cryptocurrency wallet, buy some currency, and pay transaction fees.
What games are already out there that use blockchain?
More and more game companies are choosing to combine games with cryptocurrency. Let’s see what happens when we put these things together.
Splinterlands
The Hive blockchain is the basis for the collectible card game Splinterlands. In this game, players can earn DEC tokens and send them to other blockchains like WAX, Binance Smart Chain, or Ethereum.
At the moment, the game has more than 283 cards that are common, rare, epic, or legendary. The cards can be traded on sites like Open Sea, Monster Market, PeakMonsters, and others.
Over 310,880 people play the game, making it the most popular blockchain game.
Decentraland
Decentraland came out in 2017, but it was a small game for a long time. What made the game popular in the end? The craze for NFT. It is the blockchain-based virtual world with the most growth right now.
The number of people who use it is also going up. At the start of 2021, about 1,500 people used Decentraland every day on average. By March, however, 10,000 people were playing the game.
Age of Rust
Dark science fiction adventure game Age of Rust is powered by the Enjin blockchain. The game has stealth mechanics, non-player characters (NPCs), AAA graphics, and the chance to hunt for 20 Bitcoins, which is the best prize in the game. But it won’t be easy to win this crypto money. There are plans for 3 seasons of this game. The first season will have about 40 hours of gameplay. The main reward can take a very long time (maybe even years) to come.
But this is not the only chance to make a lot of money here. The second-largest prize is 4 BTC, and players can try to win more than 35,000 smaller prizes.
Nine Chronicles
Nine Chronicles is a role-playing game that is completely open-source and has its own main net that is run by the player community. Gamers are really in charge of this game because they decide how to play. The game is based on myths from Scandinavia, but you play as a cat. Like the rest of the world, the blockchain community loves kittens a lot.
Since October 2020, when early access started, more than 500,000 NFTs have been made and 80,000 NFTs have been sold. Planetarium, the company that made Nine Chronicles, said in August 2021 that its game had raised $2.6 million in a round led by Animoca Brands.
REVV Racing
REVV Racing is a play-to-earn game that runs on the Polygon blockchain, which is a protocol for making and connecting blockchain networks that are compatible with Ethereum. This arcade racing simulation game was made by Animoca Brands. It joined F1 Delta Time, Formula E: High Voltage, and MotoGP Ignition as part of the REVV Motorsport ecosystem.
Future of Blockchain Development in Gaming!
If we look at each game mentioned, we can see that NFTs are making both the number of players and the value of in-game items grow quickly. Reuters says that the NFT market was worth $13.7 million in the first half of 2020. It reached $2.5 billion in the second quarter of 2021, which is crazy growth.
Now, players can get items in games that have real-world value and even sell them for a profit. Who doesn’t want to play games and make money at the same time?
At the same time, blockchain games shouldn’t just be about collecting items, so developers still need to figure out how to make crypto games more fun. Most of the time, people love games that make them feel cool. They like winning hard battles, getting to the top of rankings, or just making it through a mission that seems impossible. They like scenes that give them a rush of adrenaline and plots that make sense. These things are not in blockchain games, so there is room for improvement and growth.
Developers of blockchains also need to keep working to improve protocols and solve problems like low scalability, high transaction costs, and high energy use. If not, crypto games might not be as popular as they are now.
Bottom Line
Blockchain has given the gaming industry many new ideas, such as decentralization, a play-to-earn (crypto) model, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and real ownership of in-game items. Even though blockchain games are still in their early stages and some problems will take time to solve, the technology has the potential to grow and could find a place in the gaming industry.
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