Tech Isn’t The Barrier to NFT Game Interoperability (Op-ed)

(Contributed by: Linda Hartley)

The gaming industry is getting advanced and innovative by integrating NFTs in upcoming games. Well, you might get confused with the word “NFT”

So, what is NFT? Why is it trending in the gaming industry? And how does it work? To get the answer to all these questions, let’s begin with the simple definition of NFT.

NFT stand for Non-Fungible Tokens that are powered by blockchain technology. NFT represent real-world objects like music, video, game collectibles, people identities, property rights, etc. They are unique and cannot be exchanged or traded. These are also known as cryptographic assets that exist as permanent and unchangeable records.

What is NFT in gaming?

Image: Illuvium Play-to-Earn NFT game.

NFT in gaming is the source of earning money by purchasing and trading in-game items within the cryptocurrency market. The players can purchase weapons, costumes, characters, land, etc., through NFT rather than real currency. The owners of the game can use these items in the games or can also invest in them.

Moreover, the decentralized gaming environment offered by NFT, enable players to have full control of the game. The won or the purchased items in the game marketplace in one game are transferable in another, which simply means that they are interoperable.

For example, if the player is switching to another NFT game and has a huge amount of in-game assets, then he can easily transfer that asset to another game. Furthermore, players can sell their assets for profit or can collect them until they gain crypto rewards from the game.

Advantages of NFT in gaming

In-game asset ownership and control

The reason behind the popularity of NFT games is the in-game asset ownership and control given to players. A player who purchases an asset in the NFT game has full control of them in a decentralized system, and they are the real owner of that asset.

A unique identification code is given to each game item that will be associated with players’ accounts as long as they own them.

Unlike non-NFT games, where players have no control over the game asset, NFT games allow players to save in-game purchases, sell assets to other players, or move them into other supported games. Plus, owners can monetize and trade assets on the marketplaces in exchange for crypto or fiat.

Transfer of ownership

When a player decides to quit the game and wants to give ownership of the asset to another player, then it’s not a big deal. The player of the NFT game can take advantage of the transfer of ownership option that lets them sell their game collectibles at any time and get value for them.

So the player who buys the game collectibles now becomes the current owner. Thus, the new owner of the game asset gets updated on the blockchain, which means that now all the game assets are under his ownership.

Security and uniqueness

NFTs are well-known for their security and uniqueness as they cannot be duplicated. The assets in NFT games are safely secure in wallets like Trust wallet and MetaMask.

The best part is that players will not lose the game assets even if the game owner or provider shuts down the game because it’s stored within their wallets.

Transparency and provable scarcity

As NFT operates on blockchain technology, therefore the presence and history of ownership are completely unalterable and accessible to the public through blockchain. Furthermore, blockchain explorers give each game collectible complete transparency and verifiable scarcity.

Investment opportunity

There is a lot of investment opportunity in NFT gaming that in return, provides great Return on Investment (ROI). Players can get a huge investment opportunity on the game assets, especially the rare items that are most demanded by other players of the game.

Branding and creativity

NFT is one of the finest ways to promote brand recognition because it is presented on numerous NFT marketplaces. By introducing new creative features into game designs, they can also be used to promote new interest and excitement among gamers.

Immutability

The in-game purchases are bought and sold regardless of what happens to the game because NFTs exist live on the blockchain. The game items are kept safe and secure without the fear of losing the real game assets.

What is Interoperability in NFT?

NFT are interoperable, which means that they can be connected, exchanged, or traded over different platforms that operate on the blockchain network. As NFTs are the decentralized game system that exists on independent blockchains, therefore they can act as the backend framework for other interconnected games.

For example, two games that are created and designed on the Ethereum network can easily support the same in-game collectibles like vehicles, weapons, armor, or even entire characters.

Is tech creating a barrier to NFT game interoperability?

The first question that comes to our mind is how one game can be connected to the other that has different objects? We take an example of a spaceship game that is totally different from a happy farm-style game.

How would the property of spaceship games work in the farm-style game, where space battles and wars were never planned to be part of the gameplay? The game developer of farm style-game never coded the properties and functions of a spaceship game in the farm game, thus, making it non-interoperable.

However, game developers can sort out this problem with creative thinking and collaborative design. While the original graphics elements may not be transferrable, developers could use a generic graphical component to represent an NFT from another game.

The value of the NFT game will be retained to a certain level, even if it is imported into a game that does not support any of the NFT’s original attributes and functions.

This might be accomplished by using a random generator to assign new features and functions that are inherent to the game it is being imported into while taking into account the original token’s rarity.

Final thoughts

With technological advancements, NFTs are becoming the backbone for unleashing genuine interoperability in the gaming sector. NFTs are the best way to provide ownership of digital or other assets on a public and auditable database.

While today’s potential is being held back by non-blockchain commercial considerations, in the future, we may see a complete metaverse of NFT games where players can freely move their assets from one gaming world to the next without any hassle.