Are we experiencing a new bigger magnitude Renaissance?
When we look back at history, the Renaissance of the 14-17th Century started with democratizing the printing press. This allows anyone to access information and exchange trade with a double-entry ledger book. Merchants deposit money at any location of the vast empire and withdraw from another location. This allows merchants to trade far and near.
The most exciting part of the Renaissance was the rise of Art and Classical learning that reached the masses. Common people start to communicate and spread knowledge and wisdom through Art and Culture. These arts, wisdom, and knowledge were adopted and embraced by the masses and are still prominent today.
Today’s blockchain innovation follows a similar path.
In the aftermath of the 2008 Economy Recession, Satoshi Nakamoto published Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System to democratize how we transact and transfer money.
The entire Crypto market reached more than 2T market cap last November. This is a massive achievement in just a little one decade.
But we are far from over. Blockchain’s open ledger book (₿) democratizes the financial system. It has reached 83.3M wallet users as of 5th July 2022.
Though this is an incredible achievement, Blockchain needs to get billions of users just like the Internet did. Just as how the Internet has an open a new frontier for distributing content and information online, Blockchain has changed the way we transact commerce and own assets and this has to reach more people.
To onboard 1 billion users into Crypto, NFTs and gaming could be the most significant contributor.
Just as Art & Culture were the core spirit of the Renaissance, NFTs and Gaming could be the cornerstone of Crypto to reach the next billion.
15th-century art communicates messages, and so do today's NFTs.
15th-century culture and philosophy were people and community-oriented so do today’s Gaming and DAO.
According to a report by Unity gaming, over half of all Americans played multiplayer games in 2021. Asia-Pacific(APAC), Europe-the Middle East and Africa(EMEA) also saw an increasing trend.
But gaming is not only about playing games.
Gaming is all about community, a place to meet new friends, connect with people who have similar interests, and of course, a place to talk trash sometime.
In a survey of 4,000 gamers across four of the largest gaming markets — China, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Accenture report says “the social aspect is an increasingly key aspect to gamers’ overall experiences.”
On average, gamers spent 16 hours a week playing, eight hours a week watching or participating in game streams, and six hours a week interacting in-game forums and communities.
And here is where the money is.
According to the report here and here, the total gaming market will be worth more than $300 Billion by 2027. This is more than the market value of movies and music combined.
Since the rise of the Internet, people have been playing different video games, dedicating their time and skills but sadly 99% of the gamers don’t make money.
Players don’t own in-game items and currencies, they are owned by the game platforms. These in-game items and currencies are not transferable and convertible to fiat money. So when players decided to leave the game, they are left with nothing.
But this is changing, blockchain gives real true ownership, allowing players to own in-game items as assets, control the game tokens and have the freedom to transfer or convert them into crypto or fiat money.
This is why blockchain technology is democratizing ownership and earning potential for gamers.
Today, blockchain play-to-earn gaming attracts the highest number of users among all categories of Blockchain.
Games have the most significant shares of the total number of transactions sent to smart contracts in Blockchain.
But, don’t be mistaken.
Firstly, a great game must be fun and enjoyable and have stories to engage with.
Money and earnings come later in the game.
Blockchain technology should use to further enhance gaming by incentivizing players’ time and efforts.
Here is how Distributed Ledger Technology, known as Blockchain, is innovating the gaming industry.
Ownership the true game-changer: As a truly open, distributed, and decentralized technology, Blockchain allows anyone to own a piece of the Internet, be it NFT, a domain, or a virtual land.
With Blockchain, gamers would be able to own in-game items and currencies. These items and currencies would be linked directly to their wallet like Metamask, Coinbase, Phantom, etc.
Players would have complete control of their wallets through their private keys.
Tradable in-game items (NFTs): Video games always have in-game items like skin, cosmetics, weapons, and other add-ons. With Blockchain, these in-game items are stored on-chain. Players can own, transfer and trade them from the external marketplace.
This means when a player wants to quick the games, he can sell his in-game items for crypto or fiat money.
Play for fun while still earning tokens: Now that players can own and trade game items, they can also earn while they do what they love most; play games.
With Blockchain, in-game currencies can be tokenized like the SLP of Axie Infinity. This allows players to earn from their gameplay while encouraging the market participants to trade them for value appreciation.
Develop once, play it forever: This is important for game developers and engineers. Blockchain and software development is becoming more open-source, and games need to be developed only once.
As the blockchain ledger hosts information and data forever, the game can be played forever once developed.
One profile for all games: Again, Blockchain is open and distributed, and while it might be an engineering challenge, a multi-chain wallet can interact across chains.
This means that one wallet can be the wallet for multiple games.
Conclusion:
Gamers are showing more interest in Blockchain gaming which incentivizes their time and dedication to playing games. Not only do blockchain games provides earning opportunities, but it also gives ownership, privacy, and security gamers need.
The community and social aspects of gaming will be an important factor to take the industry forward.
As the crypto market faces its “winter season” and gaming continues to attract more users, the future of blockchain gaming is bright.
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Kuzote Lohe (Akuzo)
Web3 & Blockchain Researcher