The game economy, where users can play to earn items or “in-game” tokens that others will buy from them, is no different than gamers buying accessories on, say, PUBG Mobile. Game developers make billions from such sales.
Interestingly, some of the gaming items, characters or accessories are individual NFTs and can be traded by the user in the open marketplace.
Another addition to the list is the DeFi game Starchi, which was inspired by Tamagotchi, a handheld digital pet. Leading initial DEX offering (IDO) launchpad, incubator and investor network Starter recently launched this game.
Starter is a launchpad supporting interoperability of IDO launches on blockchains such as Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, Cardano, Solana, Polygon, Fantom and Avalanche.
Starchi will operate on a dual token economy, where the first token, $START, will be used to grant access to the game and trade Starchi, and the second token, otherwise known as Starchi Liquid Luck or $ELIXIR, will provide in-game economic incentives.
“Starter’s first game, Starchi, was inspired by the Tamagotchi-era associated nostalgia combined with the isolation many of us have felt during this worldwide pandemic,” said Lionel Iruk, special counsel at Starter.
The game is about saving Starchi, a species facing an existential crisis. The game provides Starchi collectors with earnings based on completion of tasks everyday, such as growing and nurturing a Starchi, taking part in battles, staking their income or raising Starchis to avoid them going extinct.
The built-in play-to-earn model combined with a fair set of fee redistribution rules allows Starchi collectors to compound their earnings while remaining active in the game.
The user base is rapidly growing and so is the interest in virtual games and decentralised assets. When all of this is put together, we have the perfect catalyst for the adoption of NFT gaming. “With the global impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the number of new users and demographics switching to video games is on the rise,” said Raj Karkara, CMO, ZebPay.
According to reports, the market cap of NFTs is $11.72 billion. Axie infinity, Guild of Guardian and other such games in this space are attracting attention. “It’s safe to say that the next revolution of gaming is here,” added Karkara.
In the current world, big game studios build games to sell to their audience and then build an in-game economy where the players are encouraged to spend money to buy items. Crypto NFT-based games flip this concept on its head. Gamers can not only be in charge of the game, buy the game economy itself and stand to make millions of dollars in the process.
“Gaming NFTs will not only revolutionise crypto but gaming as well,” said Ishan Arora, Partner at Tykhe Block Ventures. “Gaming will be a big adoption factor for crypto just like social media built on the blockchain.” Crypto gaming that involves NFTs and DeFi to build the economy will be the trojan horse for real world adoption. Gamers are quite a big and eccentric community, he added.
