Here’s what all game developers need to know before launching their own NFT marketplace
The non-fungible token space (NFT) has grown exponentially over the last year or two – moving to public awareness, which has led to widespread mainstream adoption. Assets that were at best thought of as fringe symbols have apparently become a cornerstone of the digital economy, and are sold for large numbers and receive support from major celebrities around the world.
The revolution we have seen with NFTs has truly been a marvel. NFTs have been adopted even faster than cryptocurrencies were – and are at the back of cryptocurrency technology to become what they are today. Now that these tokens are a global phenomenon, everyone is looking to create them to share a passion or as an incentive for revenue generation.
Related: 3 ways entrepreneurs can expand their financial portfolio with the help of NFTs
As we have now seen, NFTs have also infiltrated the game area. Following the success of Axie Infinity, Decentraland and other platforms, game developers can see that NFTs provide a great way to monetize and monetize the hype surrounding their games. And as expected, many of them have jumped on the bandwagon and are now using NFTs on their gaming platforms.
The results have been mixed, with some developers having seen impressive success while others have been relative duds. In all lessons, one thing is the same – before you expand NFT features, you need to have a reliable and attractive platform that draws people in. Let’s discuss how NFTs have revolutionized the gaming industry and
whether building a native NFT gaming marketplace is necessarily the right move.
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How NFTS has revolutionized gaming
NFT games are one of the fastest growing subsections of the entire NFT site. Sales of these assets have increased significantly and are expected to be in the billion region by 2025.
The appeal of NFTs in gaming is quite clear: the Play-to-earn model has completely swept the landscape, rewarding players with gaming and financial incentives. The play to earn model has made gaming more attractive to players. Now it’s possible to make money while playing your favorite games.
With NFTs, players can easily own assets in these games and exchange them for fiat money. The model is much better than traditional games, which contained assets just on the platforms, where players could exchange them for digital coins that had no fiat value.
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Take, for example, Axie Infinity. Players battle Axies – or rather, digital pets – as they grow and breed. The rules are simple: When you beat someone else’s Axie, it belongs to you. Each Axie is an NFT and you can sell it for fiat currency on the Axie market.
The latter marks a shift in how most NFT creators traditionally sell their tokens: in regular NFT marketplaces. Of course, this is not to say that regular marketplaces have become less attractive. With support across chains coming to marketplaces such as myNFT, the landscape for NFT marketplaces is also growing.
But despite the growth in earnings opportunities, NFTs also provide additional benefits for gaming enthusiasts. Some of them include:
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Accessories: In gaming, it is also important to use accessories. Several games allow their players to customize armor and weapons, but games are now developing these accessories as NFTs that players can purchase and use directly.
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Possible meta access: With games seeking to create expanded universes, NFTs are expected to play a larger role in this future. The metaverse space is beginning for now, but there is a lot of potential for growth.
Related: How NFTs drive brand engagement and opportunities
Game Developers: Building a Marketplace or Not?
Right now, there is no doubt that NFTs will be a big part of the game of the future. And if you are an upcoming developer, being able to connect to this will help you achieve optimal growth.
However, there is one key question to keep in mind: Are you building an NFT marketplace or not?
Having a custom NFT marketplace allows you to own all of the game’s assets, making it even more compelling for your players to stay in the game. One of the biggest reasons why Axie Infinity became so popular was that it managed to build an economy with its NFTs. By using the Axie marketplace, players sell their Axier and other digital collectibles directly – all without having to leave the game.
As a game developer, you also have the opportunity to build a marketplace directly, which allows players to buy and sell their NFTs in the game. That said, you should also consider the risk. Unless your platform has reached a turning point where it attracts users, this may not be a sensible decision.
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Advantages and disadvantages
Today we have an incredible number of NFT marketplaces available. With the industry still fragmented, many of these marketplaces are built on specific blockchains – which mainly limits their access to NFTs on other chains. However, future-oriented developers can also build on myNFT – an all-encompassing, multi-chain NFT marketplace that supports multiple blockchain tokens and introduces an interesting new auction mechanism to the industry known as GBM.
As a game developer, there are many benefits to building on these existing marketplaces. First, they offer affordable options to own your marketplace directly. You do not have to pay that much to maintain a marketplace, and the only cost you will need to consider will be to keep your tokens listed.
At the same time, you should remember that having your own NFT marketplace only puts more pressure on you to ensure liquidity. People want to get to your marketplace, sell their tokens and get paid as quickly as possible. As an early gaming platform, this may not be possible for you at the moment. However, leveraging the liquidity of these established marketplaces will help you achieve better financial viability, thus increasing the appeal of your game even more.
So you may want to wait until your platform reaches top speed and has built up a significant user base before introducing a native NFT marketplace.
