Your Guide to NFT Gaming
Breed pet monsters, fight fierce card battles, build replicas of global landmarks, and own your dream football team — these are a few things you can do in the world of non-fungible token (NFT) gaming. This is just the beginning, too. Soon, you should be able to join advanced mystical quests and advanced role-playing gaming features in the crypto gaming space.
This begs the question: What differentiates an NFT game from a traditional computer role-playing video game?
To understand NFT gaming, you must first grasp the concept of NFTs.
What is NFT?
Non-fungible tokens or NFTs are unique assets securely encoded or stored in digital form on a blockchain. They can be real-world assets. You can convert real estate into its digital (unique code and metadata) equivalent and mint or tokenize it (register it on a blockchain) so the digital data can no longer be altered.
More often than not, NFTs are digital artwork minted or registered on a blockchain for trading purposes.
In a landmark deal in 2021, digital artist Beeple sold “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” — a collection of 5,000 artworks created every day, without fail, since May 2007 — at Christie’s for more than $69 million. As impressive as that sale is, it is no longer even the most expensive NFT artwork sale. The mysterious artist Pak’s “The Merge” artwork has sold for $91.8 million.
It’s not just digital artwork that can be converted to NFTs. You can tokenize any digital content. The NFT of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet sold for $2.9 million in 2021, although its current owner tried but failed to sell it for $48 million in April 2022.
What are NFT games?
NFT games are blockchain-based games with NFT features. In these games, weapons, items, land, buildings, and even characters are NFTs.
What differentiates NFT games from traditional role-playing games where players can buy and sell digital items? The weapons, items, characters, and all other NFTs in NFT games are unique (non-fungible and registered on a blockchain), have value, and can be traded (in-game and on decentralized NFT gaming marketplaces).
One key differentiator of NFT games is their play-to-earn model. Some NFT games reward their players with NFT items. Players can win NFT land, weapons, rare items, skins, and crypto tokens as they progress through challenges, meet minimum hours of gameplay, or build and create things on the gaming platform.
NFT gamers can swap their NFT builds, skins, weapons, items, and characters with other players, or they can sell them outright.
Profit can be in the form of in-game currency (e.g., the small love potion or SLP by Axie Infinity) or in some other crypto token. For instance, if players drop their skins, weapons, land, and other NFT items on the Gamerse cross-platform NFT games social hub and aggregator market, they will earn Looking for Group or LFG tokens; one LFG is currently worth $0.000567.
How do you play an NFT game?
You play NFT games like you would conventional computer role-playing games. You will register for them on a gaming platform and then proceed to battle other players, villains, or some other creatures. You can build things, too, or raise pet monsters.
Some games are free-to-play, while others are pay-to-play. For instance, the popular NFT game Axie Infinity requires you to have at least three Axies (these are the game’s NFT pet monsters) to begin playing. You can buy your starter Axies, or somebody else can sponsor them for you; in the latter’s case, you will be a scholar, and your manager (your Axies sponsor) will reap a fraction of your earnings.
However, the developers of Axie Infinity, Sky Mavis, released a free-to-play version called Axie Infinity: Origin. In this game, players get non-NFT starter Axies to practice and play with. Once it launches fully, Sky Mavis says Origin will have monetizable rewards in the form of small love potion or NFT runes and charms.
As you progress through an NFT game, you will earn more in-game currency, find and win rare items, or earn other upgrades. Some games will even let you mint or tokenize real-world objects, after which you can sell and trade them in-game or in NFT marketplaces.
How do you earn in NFT games?
You can earn as a creator. You can create skins and fashion in-game items that other players may want to buy from you.
You also earn as you play the game. Some games will reward you with in-game currency for the hours you spend on them, while others will allow you to acquire NFT items in adventures, quests, battles, tournaments, and other challenges.
In Sandbox, you can buy land and then build on it any way you want. You can turn it into a New York skyscraper or a villa in Antigua. It’s all up to you. Then when you’re done with your build, you can sell it to others who want property in the Sandbox.
NFT game players can also earn through currency appreciation. In other words, if they bought their crypto tokens at $0.0006 each and their value rose to $0.0009 per token, their tokens would have appreciated by 50%.
NFT gamers also earn through their social interactions. Some platforms reward NFT gamers for streaming and sharing content. For instance, the Gamerse NFT gaming social hub rewards creators and players for the engagement on their posts and content.
NFT Games: A New Frontier
NFT games are at the intersection of role-playing games and non-fungible tokens.
They let you have fun playing, battling, building, and going on quests and adventures while you earn and win crypto tokens and in-game NFT assets that may be bought, sold, and traded for real-world profit.
