Since the growth of internet culture, the entertainment and video gaming industry has grown tremendously.
From arcade games to video games to internet gaming - also known as the e-gaming industry - there has been significant growth in just two decades. The e-gaming industry has also been seeing millions and billions of investments following the growth of blockchain in gaming.
Newzoo, a games market research company, stated that in the year 2022, the e-gaming industry generated $184.4 billion with more than 3.2 billion active users.
The COVID-19 pandemic aided the industry in growing vigorously in a span of a couple of years. This has resulted in the industry adopting several advanced technologies like blockchain in gaming, crypto blockchain gaming, metaverse outlets, etc.
Source- Newszoo
In the past decade, Blockchain technology has been innovating and expanding its horizons across all nations.
Initially, Bitcoins were rising in the market, then came Altcoins, with Ethereum gaining a top market position. Other technologies like DAO, DeFi, NFTs, and metaverses became popular one by one. And now, we can see that the blockchain in the gaming industry is slowly on the rise.
Companies such as Epic Games and Nintendo have started to incorporate blockchain into their ecosystem even though they are non-Blockchain gaming enterprises. Though they have not directly integrated blockchain game ideas, the technology will be welcomed through metaverse and NFTs in the future.
The web3-based gaming industry is also on the rise, as the demand for gaming empires like Axie infinity, Decentraland, and The Sandbox is skyrocketing, particularly in the East. According to statistics, there are around 1.48 billion gamers in East Asia, with China leading, followed by Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, respectively.
Owing to the huge rise in demand, the use of blockchain in video games is also yet to be decentralized. Additionally, people are keener on accepting blockchain in the gaming industry as it might give gamers the opportunity to earn via Play-to-Earn options and trade their in-game NFTs in marketplaces and make a real-world value out of it.
Although theoretically, these sound easy, many gaming companies are constantly working towards making a seamless user experience on the platform with more interoperability.
While developments are constantly happening on one side, on the other hand, investments from venture capitalists are bringing huge interest in the metaverse gaming ecosystem.
According to DapperRadar’s BGA reports of Q1 2022, over 2.5 billion has been invested in various Blockchain gaming companies, which was over 150% higher than the previous year’s investments.
Q3 also saw an increase in investments which accounted for up to 1.3 billion. By this estimation of investments, they are also expecting that the decentralized gaming infrastructure will grow to an $8 trillion market.
Major investors like Animoco brands, Merit Circle investor, Polygon and Polygon Studios, Delphi Digital, Genblock Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Binance Labs, Solana Labs, and many more investors and crypto ventures are actively investing in the blockchain gaming industry.
The blockchain gaming sector is ready to take off, according to Franklin Bi, the director of Pantera Capital's Portfolio division.
Though the gaming industry has been on the scene for decades, now the integration of blockchain will transform the industry to be even more relevant in the future. Bringing in elements like metaverses, NFTs, and real-value rewards will forever change the current lifestyle of gamers.
Play-to-Earn games are becoming more and more common as users are earning money. Though they are still lacking in many ways, GameFi2.0 is set to eliminate that criticism as developers are striving to achieve a balance between interoperability, earnings, and enticing story elements to redefine the current gaming infrastructure.
Henry Chang, CEO of the South Korean video game company Wemade, states, "First of all, games must be enjoyable. With blockchain technology, they can provide economic benefits too. The convergence is very important – it’s a key factor of game sustainability."
The new vision is resulting in more redefined developments in certain gaming sectors. Within the next 3 years, all gamers in the blockchain economy will be able to earn a monetary value in real life via their gaming assets.
Despite the Blockchain gaming industry being in its early stages, several projects are making the ecosystem more and more trustable.
The Ethereum-Based Blockchain was launched in 2017 with its token MANA. It is a virtual real estate game that has risen in popularity since its launch.
Decentraland’s ICO raised over $26 million, and the ecosystem also enables the lands to be bought as NFTs. When the NFTs started to boom, the value of the land patches was sold from $6,000 to $100,000.
Axie Infinity was launched in early 2018 and is now considered one of the industrial pioneers of the Blockchain gaming space.
The ecosystem was built on the Ronin network with AXS as its token. The NFT-based online games used Ethereum in trading their in-game assets. Though it encountered a fall after the failure of Sky Mavis Hub, several leaders have predicted that the value may rise soon in the coming years.
This game was trending in early 2022 as the projects maxed out their presale- requirements by raising over $4.3 million.
This was one of the highly anticipated games in the web3 space as it addresses major critical challenges faced in the industry. Their token MEMAG can be bought for 0.023 USDT or through equivalent Ethereum.
In the emerging technological era, it is crucial to understand the moving market for industries to make their enterprises relevant for future generations.
Considering this, we can conclude that blockchain is the future, and particularly the gaming industry, with the entry of blockchain in video games, will evolve to new heights.
