NFT games on the verge of taking over PC games in popularity

Important takeaways

• In the space of a year, NFT games are now on the verge of taking over PC games in popularity

• Compared to conventional PC games, only 10 games are more popular than the best NFT editions

• $ 2.5 billion raised from blockchain games in the first quarter of 2022, at a rate of $ 10 billion this year compared to $ 4 billion for 2021

• While the prices of gaming tokens have been in free fall along with a broader market, user growth and investment have been high

With NFTs crumbling as the market continues in full risk-of-mode, I decided to dive into the statistics behind a sector I believe is one of the most exciting uses for this new technology.

Sure, many NFTs is overpriced and can be attributed to bear market hysteria, but I have always felt that the marriage between games and NFTs is natural. Players spend so much time playing certain games, as well as money in addition to the game, that it seems sensible to define ownership and maintain a historical record on the chain.

So what do the numbers say about NFT game adoption compared to conventional games, and do they paint a more bullish picture than the free-falling token prices?

One year of growth

In terms of active users, the growth over the past year has been tremendous for NFT games. ONE report from DappRadar calculated the growth in blockchain games as 2000% since Q1 last year.

Also in the first quarter of this year, $ 2.5 billion was raised for blockchain games and other metaverse projects. Although this came before the ugly downturn in recent months, it is still promising that $ 4 billion was raised throughout 2021, a period when the beef market was in full swing. It sets games and metaverse projects on track to raise $ 10 billion through 2022. So even a very conservative 60% cut in funding will place it above 2021 levels.

NFT game users

The funding is solid, but so are the users. A look at the graph below that shows the top 10 NFT games confirms that the industry is starting to gain mainstream appeal and capture more and more unique users every month.

To put the numbers above in context, a pretty current benchmark for NFT games is PC gaming. The graph below shows the 10 most played PC games on the Steam platform. While the data for the total number of users during a month is more challenging to obtain, the graph below shows the average number of concurrent players over the last 30 days (instead of the total number of unique users per month according to the graph above) .

Assuming that 5% of active players are online at all times, the graph below compares how NFT games stack up against the most popular PC games, with NFT games in blue and conventional PC games in orange.

This shows that while NFT games have not yet surpassed PC games, it is extremely close to happening. Only the top 10 PC games capture more users than the best NFT game, Alien Worlds, and the margin is very narrow, with Alien Worlds only around 1000 users.

Despite the sharp growth in numbers, these games are being portrayed as fashions due to the general decline in the crypto markets. In addition, the graph below for two of the biggest symbols – Alien Worlds and Axie Infinity – shows that the freefall has been strong after explosive riots last year.

But by looking past the prices of such tokens (a large part of which would have been due to speculation) and instead digging into user growth and the investments made in these platforms, the future still looks bright.

It is a reminder that despite the bearish sentiment in the markets, it is very real technology here that makes a difference and disrupts industries. Being on the brink of the top 10 PC games is already pretty good, given the nascent nature of the space.

As for whether these tokens are good investments at current prices? Well, that’s a problem for another day.

Sources