Let's be honest when the big blockbuster games start to dabble in NFTs they got called out by both sides of the fence. While I'd love to see some true web3 and crypto in gaming I don't think we are going to see it any time soon from larger companies like Epic, Blizzard, Ubisoft etc. Instead it's going to come more from Indie style gamers who honestly I feel make 10x better games then the current big names.
Before these large companies simply threw out trash and hoped it would stick in order to capitalize on the NFT bull run of 2021. However, it was clear that that's what was happening with the focus on the company over the players and that seems to be the case for the last few years where gaming companies continue to listen to everyone else but their valued player base for some reason.
The Last Bull
In 2021 bull run with play to earn games we saw mainly browser based games with very minor value or changes. They were fun though in their own way and I grew up on these simple style of games. With anything though good value takes time and it's now been roughly 2-3 years when gaming studies would have started to build these crypto style web3 games to hit mainstream. Development of these projects can take upwards of 5 years for big titles and throwing in something new to the mix could expand that further.
That's why 2024 into 2026 we should start seeing a lot more high value projects be released in the web3 gaming space. A lot of lessons have also been learned or at least hopefully learned about tokennomics and how to build your game in a way that's self sustainable and the bear market would have been a clear example of solid core foundations vs those who didn't.
Intergration
One recent trend we are starting to see a lot of to bridge the gap at the moment is taking smaller games even mobile games and applying the option to earn NFTs and play it to earn crypto. However it's also not required to play the game. This allows all player types to choose how they want to play. We see this the most happening on the Gala blockchain but I believe soon here on the Hive blockchain we will have something close to it in the form of Arcade Colony.
The Incentive Game
Many games offer up battle passes at the moment along with other small perks etc for both free and then a paid option. Where the paid option often includes better items like rare skins etc but you still have to play the game in order to earn them.
That same point could be applied to web3 games in the form of earning the same things for a limited time and then stopped. At that point they are printed as NFTs meaning you could swap them between accounts if you wish or sell them on the open market.
This incentive style market is nothing new and something many people are stuck on thinking makes web3 gaming incentives bad. When in reality is the better future as the value is returned to players and more freedom and flexibility to the players over older what I would say version 2 of games.
This incentive can also be said that it's simply the incentive to earn which drives people to play. That argument I could highly agree with. Even if a game made me some money if it wasn't something I enjoyed I often found myself not playing it as it just felt like work at that point. A combination of a high quality game with these style of solid NFTs use cases and values behind them via utility is for sure the wave of the future that we will be seeing much more of.