NFTs in Gaming — why a picture’s worth a thousand… dollars.

I grew up with the most basic of cartridges and floppy discs during the rise of electronic video games. Man, the ’90s were fun. Many games didn’t even let you save your progress; some, like Nintendo’s truest mind fuck — Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, made trying to save a nightmare…on purpose.

The gaming industry has spent the past 30+ years evolving to constant updates, data-backed decisions, and eternally refreshing online play. Until 2014, one thing remained missing from the thriving ecosystem of developers, gamers, and content made for, and by, both: Ownership.

A brief history of NFTs

And I do mean brief. Gaming should be the focus here, and I can’t wait to bring up my personal favourite example — Project Nebula.

The first, widely-accepted NFT was minted on May 3, 2014 (basically ages ago). Fast-forward seven years and Sotheby’s, an auction house that’s been taking bids since the mid-1770s, is welcoming its second NFT auction of the same 2014 piece known as Quantum. Throw in a rare crypto-punk and a 2021 art piece from Anna Ridler, and you have a major milestone in NFT history.

Quantum alone, a simple GIF, sold for over $1,470,000. Sotheby’s first auctioned NFT collection netted just under $17M.

What happened between that first GIF and 2021 auction extravaganza?

A lot. NFTs stayed largely out of the common public eye for many years, floating around in inner-circles of crypto-enthusiasts and occasionally grabbing the eye of outside investors with sweaty palms and loose neckties.

But after years of development, memery, digital card collecting, musical albums, pro-sports ticket sales, and much more, NFTs finally got the chance to speak for themselves.

Even outspoken, and fairly eccentric, Mark Cuban jumped full-throttle onto the digital collective bandwagon — funding major platforms like Mintable, introducing NFTs to his NBA team (Mavericks), and rumouring his own digital art gallery.

This single .gif file turned into a multi-billion dollar industry in just a couple years.

One problem remains.

I just don’t get it, son. I would never invest in crypto. Why would anyone justify paying $5K for a jpeg? Sorry, not for me.

Dad, I’ll probably never quite nail an NFT explanation enough for you to understand. And the truth is, you don’t need to! This space is growing so rapidly that, understand it fully or not, the human psyche has started locking itself onto something that enables us to have what we all love…

Control.

Giving power (and value) to the player

You owned Sonic and Knuckles, but you never owned Sonic. Sega did, no matter if the console, controller, cartridge and power cable were in your possession.

Now we’re talking about a day without social media (whoof, sounded nice for a moment), online advertising, and MMOs (sounds awful now!). Today we have a lot to brag about! And not in a bad way. Owning something unique, rare, personal to you… that’s awesome! Show it off! Care for it, use it, improve it, make it yours, baby!

NFTs let you own Sonic —or at least for Sega, they will soon!

The non-fungible token took that character, its shoes, its colour, its weapons, its emotions, anything that could make it unique or different, and gave you the option to control it. To own it. To sell it! Trade it. You get it.

Someone spent $5.2M on a physical trading card.

Why not a digital one? And in the eyes of grandfathered collectors around the world, that would seem reasonable for such a rare piece! A 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card in such condition! Wowzers!

NFTs are no different in that base layer of collectible value, but where they are different, they are better. Imagine:

1. Never having to worry about physical deterioration.
2. Never having to worry about physical storage/safekeeping.

Even better, imagine:

1. lifting Mickey Mantle off that card and playing with a character only you have in MLB 2022.
2. Customising Mickey’s uniform, updating it to a 2021 Yankee’s uniform, putting a furry, pink pimp hat on him.
3. Selling him when you’re ready for 100% of the profit at an instant transaction speed, with no need for some stuffy, over-priced auctioneer.

A long way left to go.

Definitely stop at Circle K and get a coffee for this car ride. It’s gonna be a long and windy road, but what you’ll see along the way will make you laugh, sometimes cry (ever transferred something to a non-existent wallet?), but always appreciate the journey.

We’re so damn lucky to be here right now. It’s like being around when someone found gold and also recognised it had future value.

NFTs aren’t a mainstream adoption yet. They aren’t in AAA games like many would hope to see these days either. Questions surrounding value are still batted around in circles and much progress is left before NFTs don their final form and go full on…

And that’s perfectly fine.

Now’s the time to get your feet wet, or at least get one of them in the door.

Personally, I’d love to make a suggestion as to how.

Come play an awesome NFT strategy game called Project Nebula online with me! A game that is beginning to feel like everything from HOMM3 to AOE. Talk about being on the forefront of something awesome? This one is taking the strategy gaming cake.

See you out there, pioneers!