But what’s the real story behind crypto in games?
One of those weapons, a grenade launcher called The Mountaintop, upended Destiny 2’s competitive landscape.
Two years later, Bungie “sunset” a number of older weapons by capping their stat levels.
Something they felt wastheirswas taken away.
The frustration was enough to drive some players to quit Bungie’s MMO shooter entirely.
The idea goes further than just ownership, however.
The primary difference between traditional games and blockchain games is verification of ownershipapart fromthe game platform.
So what’s the reality of NFTs in gaming?
Like crypto, NFTs, and blockchain gaming, the answer is complicated–and often exaggerated.
What the hell’s an NFT?
Essentially, non-fungible tokens are small amounts of code, and that code can do a variety of things.
After all, what does it mean toown a meme?
The size of smart contracts are limited because the blockchain itself is a huge amount of data.
It’s a bit easier to follow with video game assets, however.
When you buy a skin in Fortnite, that skin only exists within the framework of Fortnite.
If Epic bans your account, you lose access to the skin, despite having paid for it.
Epic contains full control of the skin; you’ve just rented its use while playing.
And not paying extra, because you own it.
A Valorant skin was madeforValorant, and works within that game.
Fortnite is, essentially, an entirely different universe.
And that’s the tip of the iceberg of the technical issues at play.
They can’t bring a laser pistol to my caveman game.
So then it’s like, Okay, do I say no laser pistols allowed?
Well, one developer calls their laser pistol a ‘Zapper Pistol.’
Someone else calls their laser pistol ‘Laser Pistol I.’
How would that work?
Each works to make money through its platform, and each makes money from the elements that it owns.
We don’t necessarily know the details of how that deal works, but assume that either a.)
Epic pays Marvel a license fee to use and sell Spider-Man skins, or b.)
Epic and Marvel make an agreement to sell Spider-Man skins in Fortnite and split the revenue those sales generate.
Riot, on the other hand, makes nothing from Fortnite’s Spider-Man skin appearing in its game.
“But that is just upfront capital investment that they’re recouping over time with these digital product sales.
Moving items between games requires homogenization in the industry, which in turn would stifle innovation and technological advances.
Those three games operate on the Ethereum blockchain, meaning they already have some commonalities that made interoperability possible.
But as noted, the three games in question aredifferent, with their own technological and aesthetic underpinnings.
So how do the Genesis Curry Flow NFTs work?
If they pop over to The Sandbox, the token calls up The Sandbox’s version of the sneakers.
The code for all of those versions is stored in each token’s smart contract.
The shared infrastructure of the blockchain, however, made the interoperable assets between games more efficient to create.
It’s that line of thinking that has spawned the “play-to-earn” genre of games.
Most make up the play-to-earn genre, which are games built on in-game assets that are NFTs.
To play Magic, it’s crucial that you buy cards.
Blockchain games operate on a similar situation in video games.
Axies are NFTs you purchase from other players with cryptocurrency.
Gaming as work
Axie Infinity is indicative of a lot of the issues with play-to-earn overall.
for start earning anything, you need an initial investment to buy in.
Barrier of entry is an issue in a lot of play-to-earn games, in fact.
“I hate to say that it depends on the game, but it does,” he said.
When games become jobs, they often struggle, as well.
The same situation played out in traditional gaming with the release of Blizzard’s Diablo 3 in 2012.
Eventually,Blizzard shut down the real-money auction house, which improved the health of Diablo 3 overall.
The developer continues to support the game, withits most recent content season beginning in April.
Other forces were at work as well, but essentially,that’s exactly what happened.
“I personally think that the psychology of ownership is what’s driving this,” he said.
With free-to-play games, Zobrist said, developers give away gameplay–something they’d normally charge for.
That’s maybe an optimistic view of the technology to some degree.
Cryptocurrency has always been volatile, while never being especially useful.
it’s possible for you to’t actually really buy much with, say, Bitcoin or Ethereum.
The same has very much been true of NFTs.
Gamers shouldn’t have to think about the state of the crypto economy when they are gaming.”
Beyond what’s happening in specific games,the crypto market is currently in a deep downturn.
Major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have lost a huge amount of value.
DappRadar reports that sales volume of gaming tokens has risen by 97% in Q2 2022.
“Just like when an economy’s currency takes a hit, all sectors within that economy struggle.
“But I dont think it’s just the downturn in crypto that has hurt blockchain gaming.
“Gamers shouldn’t have to think about the state of the crypto economy when they are gaming.
Blockchains are, in a word,terriblefor the environment.
The Bitcoin blockchain infamously uses so much energy each year thatit’s comparable to the electricity consumption of Argentina.
The reason for all that energy consumption is the way blockchains work.
While there are proof-of-stake alternatives such as Polygon and Solana, the most popular blockchains are proof-of-work.
Longtime video game retailer GameStop has gone in a different direction, creating its own NFT marketplace.
As for players, many have reacted negatively to developers making pushes into the NFT space.
We think they carry too great an environmental and social cost.”
Still,several major gaming corporations have made overtures toward using blockchain technology and NFTs in games.
“I have friends who are huge naysayers, ‘It’s never going to pan out.’
And it didn’t kill other fun things, it just became another choice, another option.
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