Video game industry Key Points
The global gaming market is worth $180 billion while the global film industry is worth $100 billion and all North American sports combined are $73 billion in terms of annual revenues.
Experts predict that the number of game streamers will rise to one billion by 2025.
Three of the top four most viewed US sporting events in 2018 were Esports event.
What is happening?
We see “third physical space” concept playing out today among the younger generations and it’s called the metaverse (sorry Facebook, not just your “Metaverse”). This is where people are increasingly hanging out and engage with their friends. But in 2021 this concept turns out to be not in the physical world but start with the digital space. And video game is most popular among them all.
With this digital space game industry business model has changed significantly over the years in this digital space. Gamers used to pay $60 for a game and it was a one-time cost. This model is outdated now. The freemium model is on the rise. Gamers play for free and are induced to make in-game purchases to nearly everything they can interact with. This is a much more profitable model for developers and game publishers.
But from gamer’s perspective, this model brings negative and unfair experiences. They call it “Pay to Win” and almost all voiced opposition to this model. That’s when NFT Games appeared with the concept of “play to earn” was born.
Why gaming will move to blockchains?
Gamers actually own in-game items
Gaming today means that users cannot own their in-game items (skins, characters, heroes…). Developers and Game Publishers own them. Many NFT Games out there is disrupting this model because gamers own their items as nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Players are able to sell them for real profit.
Blockchains allow for gaming economies to form organically
Players can be paid to play. For example, Axie players pay to acquire the Axie NFTs and the AXS native token to begin playing. From there, they can earn the SLP token by competing with other players, as the tokens earned can then be exchanged for other crypto assets.
This give us a question: If you can play to earn real money from a NFT game vs. paying to play on a non-blockchain game, which would you choose?
The blockchain gate is wide open
To participate in an NFT game you only need a smartphone and an internet connection, simple as that. Some of them not even require you to invest money to begin to play. And not only can you participate on a blockchain, but you can also earn income. As smartphone adoption continues to rise with the growth of 4G and 5G, we should expect more and more users to be accessing crypto and NFT games in the near future.
Anyone can make NFT Games
Ethereum is an open protocol. Anyone can build games on Ethereum. By doing so, operating and capital costs of a NFT Games is outsourcing to the Ethereum base layer blockchain. This mean it is much easier to start a game for a new developer. Low barriers to entry increase competition and this benefits greatly to the end-users.
Decentralization
Anyone can build NFT Games on public blockchain. This means in the future there will be blockchain games built on top of various layer-one blockchains, for example, Ethereum, Cosmos, etc. Players will be able to switch games with ease, and bring their own items to another digital space. Players will be able to trade their NFT assets for profit if they choose and joining a truly metaverse that we alway dream of.