If you’re interested in NFTs, you probably know that collectors use them to authenticate ownership of artwork and other collectibles on the blockchain. But that’s not all they can do.
NFTs are a big part of the still-emerging play-to-earn model of gaming, also called P2E or Game. In fact, gaming showcases the functional potential of NFTs in digital economies better than just about any other application.
If your knowledge of video games plateaued at “Call of Duty” or “Mario Kart” but you’re ready to move on to P2E, you should expect a bit of a learning curve. Here’s what you need to know to start playing and earning with NFT gaming.
In the P2E Gaming Economy, Money Flows in Reverse
Whether you were putting a quarter in an arcade game in the 1980s, buying a console cartridge in the 1990s or subscribing to a multiplatform pass more recently, gaming has always been a pay-to-play endeavor.
As the name implies, play-to-earn gaming rewards game play instead of charging for it. So how, exactly, do you profit by playing?
According to Coin Market, NFT games look like traditional video games in the way they’re designed, but they give users much greater control over in-game assets like weapons, vehicles, land, characters and skins.
That gives players the unique opportunity to add value to the game as they play. In exchange, they can take value out of the game by claiming ownership of game assets that they create, buy or unlock along the way.
Just as NFTs can authenticate the originality of artwork, memes and other collectibles, they also can validate the ownership of game assets. Creators launch P2E games on blockchains and anchor them to economies powered by digital assets, which makes NFTs the perfect mechanism for preserving and identifying ownership of those assets.
How Do I Get Started?
There’s no shortage of ETF games to choose from. Axie Infinity is No. 3 in terms of market cap, according to play. The Sandbox — metaverse games based on the Ethereum blockchain like — take the top two spots.
There are, however, many, many other choices beyond those. So, which one is right for you? The simplest winnowing strategy is to pick a genre and filter the choices from there. Genres include:
Metaverse games
Monster battlers
Fighting games
Trading card games
Creation games
Sci-fi games
Real estate mogul simulators
Racing games
Role-playing games
Battle royales
To get started, you have to have a crypto wallet loaded with enough of the gaming platform’s preferred cryptocurrency to cover the entry costs. If you can’t afford a character, land or whatever the initial asset requirements happen to be, many games have so-called “scholarship programs,” which front the assets in exchange for a portion of future earnings.
Is This a Fad, an Investment, a Side Hustle or What?
According to telegraph Magazine, most current NFT games simply aren’t good. They tend to be clunky, poorly designed, frustrating or visually unappealing. Until that changes, the P2E segment won’t command anything more than a sliver of the $180.3 billion worldwide gaming market.
A real challenge to mainstream gaming is probably still a few years out. Today’s headline is that gaming is the biggest driver of NFT growth — and therefore the growth of cryptocurrency. Last year, 22% of all NFT trading dealt with gaming. According to Creative,50% of Axie Infinity users had never used cryptocurrency before playing an NFT game.
If you meet someone who dabbles in crypto and NFTs, it’s very likely that gaming was their first introduction to one or both.
On top of that, P2E is already bringing crowdfunding to the metaverse. For example, the blockchain gaming platform Game start lets independent game developers fund their projects by offering i
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