For a long time, core gameplay is an important factor for a specific game, whether the game can be sustained or not. Besides other factors such as graphics, storytelling, development team. In recent years, the integration of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) has come into the entertainment industry and has changed a new face for this billion-dollar industry. While games provide the core experience for most people, integrating NFTs into the core game will just acted as an DLC (*Downloadable content).
So can gamers accept the integration of NFTs?
The integration of NFTs in a game can also be compared to the game publisher creating an extra DLC for the base game, and this is also a possible path that gamers can adopt NFTs as a part of their experience. The only difference here is that game publishers can apply NFT's technology as an additional aspect to the game without affecting the core gameplay or the fair competitive experience that gamers aim for.
However we should also pay attention to balance and well combine the monetization of NFTs with other elements in order not to affect the core experience of loyal gamers. If the integration of NFTs makes the game monetized with the majority of gamers being a trader who just simply want to speculate and make money from the game, they’re not really want to experience the game. Without controlling the issue, money will be the main driving force rather than the core gameplay of the game. To conclude, separating the money market from the core game loop is the first thing that should be done.
The downside
If there is any inability of game publishers to combine and balance the profit from NFT with the core gameplay experience, it can lead to several negative effects and bad reviews of the traditional gaming community for the crypto games. Contributing to the negative impacts, it can be mentioned about the precedent profiting already in traditional games, such as the game publisher's restriction or addition of functions or utilities that are detrimental to the game. Then forces gamers to spend more money to get the full game experience. Therefore, gamers tend to avoid games where game publishers require players to spend money first on NFT in order to access to play the game. Consequently, they will think that this may just be another way of "bloodsucking" by the game publisher.
From another perspective, it should be emphasized that some monetization methods in games are not necessarily bad ideas, whether it is a traditional game or a crypto game with NFT applications or not, monetization needs to be implemented in a way that the issue won't negatively impact the core experience of the game.
Reasonable ways to apply NFT to games
To be able to apply NFT to games so that gamers can gradually accept the integration of blockchain technology into this industry. The current possible way to do this is to offer a free-to-play (F2P) game that anyone can join in. On the other hand, utilizing NFT as complementary experiences for people to enjoy. Which is:
- Esport tournaments ticket
- Competition rewards
- Downloadable contents
- In-game items
- Game characters
And there are many other utilities that NFTs can be applied to games. The purpose of this is to help real players to fully enjoy the game without being forced to own a particular NFT in order to play games because an NFT is just one of the options available for them to choose. In addition, the core gameplay of games is still the main factor to attract players, the more people interested in the game, the more likely they are to spend money on that game. Of course, they will consider purchasing NFT items of the game.
Conclusion
In author opinion, NFTs application in games is the future improvement of this entertainment industry. Where intellectual property rights are respected, as well as anti-counterfeiting. Along with that is the experience increase for gamers. Therefore, the NFT integration into the game industry is a sooner or later process in this billion-dollar entertainment industry.
