NFTs in the current form might be pretty useless as such (just a proof you "first purchased" a jpeg). But I think in the gaming space this will become huge and actually makes sense - use elements (items, characters, stats,...) and their history in different and independent games if the developer wants to integrate them. No lock-in and portable, not tied to game-specific accounts.
It helps to think about this more clearly if you forget the NFT bit and think about just doing this with standard tech. What stops developers today from implementing publicly documented formats for in-game elements? What stops other developers from writing code to import these elements from one game to another? All an NFT adds is a verifiable signature and a pubic database. The signature bit seems completely irrelevant. Why would one game developer care if did or did not pay a different developer? If it's the same developer, they already have some way to track that you bought the items. The public database is more useful here, but all this data is usually sitting on your local disk anyways. Devs could make use of it today if they were so inclined.
NFTs are always brought up for game items but I don't understand the non-fungible part of it. A game item or cosmetic is the example par-excellence for a thing that anyone can have a copy of - I don't get why there has to be artificial scarcity in that at all.
Perhaps you're not playing modern games where skins and cosmetics already go for a lot of money. Games like Call of Duty, Apex Legends etc.. Cosmetics in these games have a rarity rating and single items can go for hundreds of dollars. They are already artificially scarce, however the user needs to trust the developer that this artificial scarcity will remain in the future post purchase. And that the items will be available (there has been recent examples of developers deleting user accounts with significant $ items on the account).
NFTS provide no reason to trust the developer about the artificial scarcity; there's absolutely nothing technical stopping them making, say, in-game clothing originally marketed as an expensive NFT the default player skin, or not allowing accounts with linked NFTs to log in. Sure, the NFT holder still has their unique alphanumeric string, but from a gameplay perspective nobody cares.
And from a developer perspective, if game engines were written in a way which made the holders of a certain token impossible to exclude from the game or possess items whose properties couldn't be adjusted for gameplay balance or aesthetics, that would be a bug, not a feature.
Being technically a verifiable signature, this brings new incentives for users (emotions, possibly valuable) and devs (monetary, user base) which might change the game. But I agree, until we see more advanced intermediary-platforms only the simplest forms like unique avatars or simple rpg-items will be possible to integrate.
NFT technology doesn't add anything for games that isn't already available using guess what, a database! Using a MySQL or whatever database allows single use only items, one-off items that only player can have, multi-use items, any possible combination of items is possible using simple SQL. It's not rocket science, the only difference (which doesn't really add any utility to games) is the idea of this database being public.
Think about it, you could implement items in a game using NFT tech OR a database: would the players notice anything functionally different in the game? If not: why the big deal about NFTs in gaming?
> the only difference (which doesn't really add any utility to games) is the idea of this database being public.
On the contrary, this does add utility. By the database being public I:
A) Have reasonable guarantees of ownership of my items
B) Can use my high value items across multiple experiences
Well no they don't because the NFT only has meaning in the game world which is still owned and operated by the game company. NFTs in their current incarnation merely move the receipt from a centralized private DB to a decentralized public one and make the entire thing much more expensive.
So someone’s selling in-game items for games with no game with the expectation that games will just magically support them despite the cost to the developers to do so?
FWIW I can definitely see an asset store like model if that’s what you mean. Where games that share an engine can share developed assets. But you need to look at how that works out in practice in terms of how much integration cost there is, gamers tolerance for asset reuse and actually how broadly applicable it is between different games. And even then extant asset stores already work perfectly well so it’s not clear what putting it on the blockchain and presumably some decentralised storage actually provides.
You have a credibly neutral place to store the items, publicly accessible to any other developer to leverage without having to maintain you're own endpoints and documentation. Baked in royalties. Sounds... much easier than the convoluted solution you propose with standard tech.
Except NFTs don't store the item, they only store a creator-defined URL hypothetically pointing to the item or a hash of it's contents. Also nothing guarantees the royalties if you can just download the item. Nothing in NFTs prevents right-click-save-as.
Steam already has an inventory service, trusted by millions of players to store billions of items. There is already machinery for users to authorise applications to see their inventory. If a game developer wanted to allow use of another game's inventory in their own game, they could already do this.
What incentive does the developer of the second game have to support a portable account? We've seen how it played out with social networks. And if both game 1 and game 2 are by the same developer, then all that's needed for portability is a common account management service owned by the said developer.
Possibly the big fan-base ready to play a game where there can log in easily and use some of their hard earned collector items.
True, with social networks it played out differently, but social networks is a rare category where the almost only thing you care is having/finding all people you know, all other features are kind of irrelevant. Joining another social networks adds close to nothing (as long as you can chat with those people) and only add friction. A bit like money… the more uses it, the better, it doesn’t need to do many things, the very only thing you care, is all people you know using the same.
Many other things work similarly, but no way in that extent. Mostly you care a lot more about additional features. For example Airbnb works better the more people use it, but you also care about important features, and you would switch to another similar service if it was a lot better and has a reasonable amount of choice/venues, as you don’t need everyone around you using it (which is the case for money and for the main social network you use… at least for the masses who want the fastest solution on most days)
The NFTs might be independent of the game, maybe just exist as data structure on a neutral NFT smart contract with an existing network effect/reputation.
There might be many, this is a new field. A starter would be an existing userbase holding NFTs that enter the game. Different forms of monetarization (entering with NFTs, storing progress on the NFTs, marketplaces,...) might be a thing.
The problem with your first suggestion is that you do an awful lot of work to map another games NFTs to your own items but presumably get none of the money from them. You also have an immediate balancing problem. And the better way is to just make a game that those players want to play, which is how game populations move around now anyway. The only way I can see supporting external NFTs as worthwhile for a game developer is if they’re already table stakes for taking part.
Or say you support BAYC, all that work to address 10k potential users?
Valid points, time will tell. I can image there will be neutral intermediate services (NFT-platforms) that provide assets and smart contracts/APIs for integration for small fees.
Yes all the time but this is specifically about game development as a business by my reading so I’m interested in why this would be appealing in that context.
Your proposal doesn't really make sense from a technical or financial perspective.
Technically, most games aren't interchangeable with assets. There's a wide array of asset formats and bespoke optimizations. It's very hard to take something from one game to another unless they share an engine.
The alternative is the second developer would need to make a corresponding asset for every other one. Though they won't get financially rewarded for it and there's no guarantee that the users will buy the future assets from them instead of elsewhere.
I see this suggestion come up a lot in crypto circles and it's almost certainly always from people who have no experience with game or other real time development, trivializing the cost of asset creation.
this runs into the boundary issue, though. getting your hat asset you bought in HatWars into your Garden Town save file isn’t trivial. the two games’ developers need to use the same assets or one needs to remake the asset. it’s cool for the player but work and money for the developers that i’m not sure provides them much value
Right but then the developer has to decide what the stats are and make a graphical representation for every NFT. In fairness that could just be some free currency for owning an NFT but it’s not exactly compelling. The compelling version makes the item worthwhile but that’s a lot of work the holder of the NFT essentially expects for free.
The metaverse version of this is NFTs that drag around their own code, art and so on. That can run in a sandboxed way and there are protocols for game entity communication and so on. But this level of interoperability is a pipe dream outside of games like Second Life.
