Digital goods have proven to be viable goods that people will pay for, trade, and hold. Counter Strike Cosmetics, Fortnite Skins, and iTunes downloads are just a few examples of something that used to be a labeled as a gimmick, but are now big money makers. It's very easy to extends these to NFTs, a seemingly more generic digital good that is not tied to a specific company.
But In Game Cosmetics have something that NFTs still seem to lack, a way to use them. Sure you can use an NFT in a Twitter Profile, but so can I with a simple copy/paste. Is anyone really going to surf a metamask wallet gallery to look at others' NFTs? Probably not. But that cool Counter Strike Knife skin can be used in an actual game that people actually play. Until NFTs can be used in a way that is not easily stolen, they will be relegated to speculation and money laundering vehicles like every other shitcoin out there. In theory games could plug into federated markets where an NFT could be used in multiple games, but where is the incentive to open a walled garden that prints money?
The economic and energy arguments are just bikeshedding the real issue of finding an actual purpose for NFTs. 90% of people probably have never been to a museum to look existing art outside of school field trips, why will that change just because it's digital? Just because digital goods are viable, doesn't make NFTs viable by association.
This all sounds cool in theory but I'd like to point out that NFTs have existed for quite a while now and so far none of these things have ever been implemented in any of the released games. Which makes me doubtful that people are interested in these kinds of solutions in the first place.
NFTs I think haven't found product market fit yet. Imagine skins in a video game. People pay good money for those even though it's "just pixels", and I think there would be sustained interest to trade and own skins in a limited run, for example, autographed by an e-sports player. Or, in a digital trading card game, decks could be represented as a bundle of NFTs, and players could rent them to participate in a tournament without having to go buy all the carts themselves.
I don't think the current model where everyone and their mom doodles something and mints an NFT is sustainable without external anchors of value.
I'd also like to add that games are only one use-case for NFTs. Recently I saw someone offering NFTs for donating to charity. Incentivizing charity donations is a really cool and creative use-case IMO.
NFT's applied to real world things or stuff like video clips does seem kinda silly. You are right, NFT seems geared towards things with no redeeming value whatsoever ... in the real world. Video games have had the concept of tokens for decades and those even have printed on them that they aren't redeemable. That is why NFT and video games are a perfect combination, possibly industry changing.
Think of it in terms of an operating arcade. A video game NFT is like a special physical token only you can own (or maybe limited numbers of them) and when you drop it into a game, it gives you a unique item, exchanges for currency in-game, etc. If this is what GameStop is doing, they could be the backbone for all of this - the token machine at the arcade. Or the token machine for every arcade.
I think NFT might become a marketable term for things that aren't an actual crypto currency but use blockchain simply because there is a lot to unpack and understand to explain to someone like a grandma. Some possible uses based on my limited understanding of NFT's/blockchain:
- Revenue sharing of second hand digital games with developers. If a game purchase is an NFT and gets resold, my understanding is there is the possibility for royalties to go back to the original owner. This would make second-hand games a very profitable business for GameStop and game developers.
- Novelty/Collectibles - say a sports star purchases a digital game as an NFT, sells it at auction for charity and now someone gets to own the single copy of that game that sports star owned, with a one of a kind in-game item.
- In-game currencies, cross platform, cross-game. You have a stack of tokens usable across anything. Kinda like old school arcades. Yeah that's not NFT more of a wallet concept, again think of NFT as a marketing concept.
The point of using NFTs in your game is that you don’t have to implement a marketplace yourself and you can just plug in the existing ones. As a bonus people can now trade their stuff from anywhere even outside your game and potentially even across games.
NFTs aren’t any more stupid than the existing game cosmetics/collectibles.
I'm not sure they're even useful in gaming. The NFT games of 2020 have all collapsed, and there was huge backlash among gamers against normal games incorporating NFTs.
I see huge potential for NFT integration as well. Imagine buying a Mickey Mouse skin in Fortnight and being able to use it in one of Epic Games' other games too. Lots of possibilities.
So you are saying there are solutions to these problems? Because, if there are, this is the first I'm hearing anything about it. I've had a lot of "NFT game items are never going to be a thing" kind of arguments and not once have heard a compelling argument for them. Are you just keeping the answers a secret, or something?
NFTs make absolutely no sense for video games collectables. As it is, video game collectables work just fine, NFTs add nothing except cost and complexity.
NFTs are also a pre metaverse type setup to get people used to digital goods, that you will need to see through an spectacles. Spectacles that require spectacles.
Much like an online game when you buy cosmetic digital goods to improve the look or performance of your game/player, to show off really.
In the meta/game world there will be unique digital goods that could be built to use an ownership/db system that isn't proprietary to the game/app/world. This is almost a psychological operation or training mission for that type of setup from games to the "real" meta world.
Besides that, NFTs at the root were created as a product to buy with crypto that still essentially stores value. Like art today, they are a way to pass value, in some cases that will be to evade oversight, in other cases that will be to share, on other cases to own, in others to speculate. People buying actual goods with crypto would make it go down, so NFTs are a hedge to offset that essentially to keep speculation high.
Essentially cryptocurrency creators/developers wanted a way to increase circulation, but not decrease the value, so they chose art/interactives as that product. It was a product created for crypto and potentially the future. Whether NFTs are that solution or not, digital goods do need some way outside systems to share across other worlds/views/apps/games.
We have this already pretty much there with just the internet, but some want a large market within these systems with unique products being a way to create scarcity and potentially demand by limiting supply, but an external digital rights system.
In the end though the root cause of NFTs being created was increasing cryptocurrency circulation with a way to essentially "lock up" some value like a vault or staking would do.
No need to limit your analogies. NFT's are digital and their use will be of a digital nature. Anyone who has participated in a virtual item marketplace can see clearly what NFT's are good for, even if that's not quite what most are yet. The primary issue with today's NFT's are that most lack a platform - a place to show them off like in game, or in (trigger warning for buzzword-phobics) a meta-verse style environment.
Is this just protifing on a topical craze or does this have staying power? What experience does in-game NFTs offer to players that they otherwise cannot find in traditional database backed assets?
All NFT based items have the same problem where these items rely on the goodwill of the people who make the games and they're the ones that end up deciding whether the item has any practical value or if it's even in the game in the first place. If I were a game dev I'd have no incentive to implement some foreign NFTs in the game when I can make my own NFTs or just go with the classic model where the items are just entries in one of my databases.
There's also a conflict of interest in where someone who is both a dev and has a lot of certain NFTs could attempt to make the in-game item busted or required for competitive meta in order to sell out their stock of NFTs at a high price.
The "card game with NFTs" has already been tried, it's called "Gods Unchained" and didn't really catch on because if you type "Gods Unchained" in YouTube search bar the top results are not about the game itself but about the fact that you can earn money in-game. People actually interested in playing the game end up playing with bots because the game has a profit incentive.
I don't think the point is that this is settled and will definitely work, but there are interesting applications for NFTs and games.
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