After artists, now gamers and gaming firms warm up to NFTs

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“As kids, we grew up with vir­tu­al cur­ren­cies, spent so many hours com­plet­ing mis­sions just to acquire some dig­i­tal assets. It is quite excit­ing to know that these assets can now be mon­e­tized,” he said. Once you sell NFTs, you get a roy­al­ty from sec­ondary sales for life. “Also, as a gamer, I can sell things that I col­lect in games as NFTs and make mon­ey through them,” Diwakar explained.

NFTs in gam­ing are no longer lim­it­ed to niche blockchain-based games like Axie Infin­i­ty and Decen­tra­land. Main­stream gamers have been ask­ing for a bite of the NFT mar­ket in their favourite games, and game pub­lish­ers have start­ed to oblige.

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In ear­ly Decem­ber, Ubisoft, known for mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar titles such as Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, released an NFT mar­ket­place called Quartz, where it sells in-game acces­sories such as guns and hel­mets, from the video game Ghost Reck­on Breakpoint.

More­over, while some firms intro­duce NFTs to make more mon­ey, oth­ers use them as a mar­ket­ing tool.

Last July, mobile gam­ing giant Gameloft released an NFT col­lec­tion for its rac­ing game Asphalt 9, down­loaded over 50 mil­lion times on the Google Play Store.

“The NFT in Asphalt 9 was part of a part­ner­ship that we had and wasn’t intend­ed to be mon­e­tized. We are look­ing at tier two titles on our site, which will focus on NFTs to test the waters,” said Nitin Goel, coun­try man­ag­er of Gameloft.

Goel added that “a whole lot” will depend on the evo­lu­tion of this tech­nol­o­gy over the next few months or quarters.

“But I sure­ly think that with strong intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ties (IPs) on our side, and a lot of inter­est in the car licens­ing side, it shall be an area that we will dab­ble,” he added.

Glob­al firms aside, Indi­an com­pa­nies are also tak­ing note.

Nextwave Mul­ti­me­dia, known for crick­et games such as WCC3, has been explor­ing use cas­es of web 3.0 tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing NFTs, in its games.

“Gam­ing tran­si­tion­ing into a web3.0 envi­ron­ment, dri­ven by trust­less ver­i­fi­ca­tion (and a) decen­tral­ized play­er-dri­ven econ­o­my, are some of the con­cepts that are very rel­e­vant to any game, and we are also look­ing at some of these use cas­es that we can imple­ment in our games,” said Rajen­dran P.R., founder and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of Nextwave Multimedia.

Despite the loom­ing threat of a ban on cryp­tos and lack of reg­u­la­to­ry clar­i­ty on future Web3 tech­nolo­gies (decen­tral­ized ones such as blockchain and cryp­tos), inter­est in NFTs in India has soared.

Accord­ing to blockchain research firm Dap­pRadar, more than half a mil­lion Indi­ans have shown inter­est in NFTs in 2021.

This coin­cides with the mas­sive surge in inter­est in gam­ing in India, espe­cial­ly after the pandemic.

A Novem­ber report by the Boston Con­sult­ing Group (BCG) and Sequoia Cap­i­tal showed that the gam­ing indus­try in India is grow­ing at a com­pound­ed annu­al growth rate (CAGR) of 38%, which is faster than the US (10%) and Chi­na (8%).

Faisal Kawoosa, founder and chief ana­lyst at techARC, a home­grown mar­ket researcher, explained that gam­ing is one of the prime use cas­es of NFTs, as they already have a sys­tem for reward­ing wins with in-game cur­ren­cies. He also felt that this would increase the mon­e­ti­za­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties for gam­ing companies.

Kawoosa, how­ev­er, point­ed out that this year, “we will see more main­stream games embrace them”.

How­ev­er, it might take a year or so for wide­spread adop­tion. He added that it takes a bit of time from an inte­gra­tion point of view. “Also, busi­ness mod­els will change. Gamers will take a frac­tion of the trans­ac­tions as pay­ment,” Kawoosa said.

Nexwave’s Rajen­dran agreed that imple­men­ta­tion in main­stream gam­ing would require sev­er­al adjust­ments on the part of gam­ing com­pa­nies. “NFTs are all about allow­ing play­ers to own their in-game assets. The cur­rent game econ­o­my may not work with NFTs. Game economies will have to be re-designed for a play­er-dri­ven mod­el,” he added.

Many game com­pa­nies will also hold back, giv­en the nascent stage the tech­nol­o­gy is in. Giants like Ubisoft, too, are only test­ing the waters right now. Goel said NFTs are at a nascent stage and have mul­ti­ple angles that need more in-depth understanding.

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