The world has witnessed tremendous growth and popularity around the gaming industry in recent years. The whole mobile gaming world has attracted millions of players worldwide. With the adoption of smartphones and tablets by the maximum population these days, gaming has been growing continuously and the games have been more accessible and engaging than ever. The gaming industry is experiencing significant transformations with the use of blockchain technology. The games with blockchain give the decentralized ledger system, that has countless applications that go beyond the economic prospect.
Blockchain has truly revolutionized the way games are played, owned, and monetized. There are so many advantages like true asset ownership, provable scarcity, decentralized governance, and play-to-earn models, that have reshaped the gaming world. In traditional gaming, there were numerous challenges like the developers or publishers having complete control over in-game assets. Players had no sense of ownership and could not monetize the virtual possessions in any way. But with blockchain, players can have verifiable ownership of their digital assets. Any best NFT game development company uses tokens to provide players with security and transparency.
In this article, you can look at how the use of blockchain has revolutionized the whole gaming industry. You can even explore the aspect where the blockchain still has to leave an impact.
How is blockchain revolutionizing the gaming industry?
- Ownership and Digital Assets: Blockchain technology brings a feeling of true ownership of in-game assets among the players. Where the in-game items and characters were owned by developers or publishers traditionally, the use of blockchain helps players truly own these digital assets. In addition, they can also buy, sell, and trade these assets without the need for intermediaries.
- Transparency and Trust: The decentralized nature of blockchain makes the game transparent and trustable. The smart contracts within the game ensure fairness while eliminating any fraud or cheating. Players can verify the authenticity of assets and transactions which ultimately increases the trust between multiple participants.
- Play-to-Earn and Tokenization: Blockchain enables the concept of “play-to-earn”. This provision has been used by many companies that are also dedicated to NFT gaming platform development. These tokens have real-world values and can be exchanged and sold securely. With blockchain, you can tokenize any virtual items and have unique ownership and scarcity.
- Interoperability and Cross-game integration: A NFT gaming platform development company uses blockchain to make it compatible on multiple platforms. A game with cross-platform compatibility enhances the player’s experience across all devices and operating systems.
- Crowdfunding and Decentralized Development: Blockchain also helps with crowdfunding platforms like Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs). This enables the developers to raise funds directly from the community. Likewise, the decentralized funding model bypasses traditional publishing and investment channels, giving more power to developers and fostering innovation.
- Community Governance: A unity3d development company that leverages blockchain allows for decentralized governance models, where decisions about the process of game development and future updates can be made collectively by the community. Players get a voice in the shaping process which ultimately increases their engagement and loyalty to the game.
- Secondary Markets and Monetization: A unity3d development company can create marketplaces where players can trade their assets directly with other players without the need for centralized platforms. You can earn new revenues from games with these secondary markets.
Are there any demerits of using blockchain in gaming?
While there are good things that have come with blockchain integration in games, there are some challenges as well.
- Scalability: Blockchain brings the challenge of scalability to this world. There are limitations in terms of transaction speed and capacity here and since gaming requires real-time interactions and high throughput of transactions, the networks can be strained and might even lead to slower gameplay experiences. However, to solve this issue, blockchain also brings layer-two protocols or alternative blockchains whose development and implementation are still ongoing.
- User Experience: User experience has also been one of the challenges in blockchain. Since the transactions often require confirmation times, players might experience delays and it ultimately affects the real-time nature of gameplay. Moreover, some players might be unfamiliar with blockchain wallets and keys.
- Cost and Energy Consumption: Any company involved in NFT gaming platform development understands that the transactions involving blockchain require networks with high congestion. There are high fees that affect the microtransactions and in-game purchases which leads to a bad experience in players. Energy Consumption is also associated with certain blockchain networks, usually those that use proof-of-work consensus mechanisms. They have certainly raised concerns regarding environmental sustainability.
- Adoption and Infrastructure: Further, the challenge of adoption remains as blockchain integration is still in its early stages. It can be complex and time-consuming to integrate blockchain technology into existing game systems which might also disturb the infrastructure.
- Regulations and Legal Considerations: There are so many legal considerations while integrating blockchain in a game that it has established itself as a challenge. There are virtual asset ownership, taxation, and the legality of certain in-game activities that varies across jurisdictions. This has made it hard for industry stakeholders in different demographics.
Future of Blockchain in Gaming
As blockchain continues to evolve, it holds significant potential for further innovation and growth.
- Enhanced Scalability: The technology can be developed with some solutions for scalability like layer-two protocols, sidechains, and sharing. They can help improve transaction speeds, reduce costs, and enable seamless real-time gaming experiences on a larger scale.
- Improved User Experience: User experience can be improved for blockchain gaming where the gaming experiences will be smoother and more accessible. The user interfaces can be more intuitive and user-friendly than it is right now.
- Metaverse and Virtual Worlds: Blockchain can be actively used to bring metaverse and virtual worlds together. The concept of true asset ownership, interoperability, and decentralized governance aligns perfectly with the metaverse and this can be a revolutionary change in the gaming world.
- Integration with Traditional Gaming: The potential blockchain has when integrated with traditional gaming is immense. Blockchain technology can fill the gap between blockchain gaming and mainstream gaming and create a wider adoption and familiarity among players.
Regulations and Standardization: As the technology evolves, the frameworks and industry standards should be updated regularly and the provisions for legal considerations customer protection, and tax implications should be maintained regularly.