NFT makes it possible for gamers to own digital property rights

Every day, we hear more participation from large industry players (for example, Epic game with Rob Rox) As we get closer to Metaverse, this is a shared persistent virtual environment of interconnected digital experiences. The problem is that none of this matters until netizens can truly own digital assets. And it all starts with the game.

Video games make us feel that we can do anything. These virtual worlds with unlimited potential allow us to transcend the reality of everyday life when we become heroes. They make us feel that we can control our own destiny.

Games and gamers

The game is a good simulation of life: players earn rewards to accumulate value, level up, and gain status.These goals are something gamers value very much, and every week, gamers spend On average, about 30 hours of playing games, interacting on game forums, and participating in game streaming. They also spend a lot of money on in-app purchases (such as weapons and armor) for various purposes that upgrade the gameplay or just look cool. They can even pay to speed up progress and reach higher levels faster.

One might argue that achieving “success” in these games is misleading. As a species, we spend a lot of time in simulated environments while giving up our economic substance and potential. Traditional video games are some of the most enclosed, constrained, and controlled worlds imaginable: beautiful walled gardens built for players-and only played in them. Any sense of freedom or ownership felt by the player is an illusion, because the game publisher and platform actually control your game and virtual world experience.

Pay attention to The price of the global game industry exceeds 170 billion U.S. dollars and is still growing, and its price is higher than the combined price of movies and music. Game publishers believe that they need to strictly control the game to protect their profits, which is of great importance.

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Games and the real world: a conflict

An example is being staged in Chinese courts.Tencent is the world’s largest video game publisher Prosecute DD373.com is asking DD373.com to compensate US$6.2 million because it enables players of Dungeon Fighter Online to trade virtual coins and other in-game items on the DD737.com website.

In court, Tencent emphasized its terms and conditions, clearly stipulating that any virtual items obtained by players have no real value and will always belong to Tencent’s property. According to Tencent, even game virtual currency purchased by players from the platform represents a “service fee.” In short, players are not allowed to trade their game assets outside the platform because they did not really own these assets from the beginning.

This is not an isolated issue. Almost every game publisher follows the same approach.

Currently, most traditional games only allow game players to carry out limited, predefined economic activities. Players are obliged to use the in-game transaction system, and can only use designated in-game currencies for transactions, such as coins, credits, gold, and gems. Therefore, in-game assets only have value in their native games.

Because games and assets are provided to users on a permission basis, which means they do not belong to By the player-they are rented. And this rent is trivial at best: players can put years of hard work into a game and spend tens of thousands of dollars to accumulate assets, but everything can be erased in an instant without recourse.

This often happens in the game world. Delisted Games is a website that tracks dead games. An example of a game currently facing premature death is the China-exclusive version of Call of Duty, which is scheduled to close in August and accept payment for in-game purchases by the end of June.

Unexpected consequences may annoy players, such as Ubisoft shutting down the server Blocked Might & Magic X: Veteran players who have purchased content since the beginning of June.

Catastrophic failures may occur, such as a fire or flood in a critical data center, which can destroy progress, accounts, and even the entire world. In March, players of the survival game Rust lost a few days of progress on the game server Literally Seize fire. Although the incident may be worse, in a real-time game, whether you can log in or not, it is still quite serious.

Finally, changing regulations and licensing arrangements can also deprive players of the fun of the game. For example, due to licensing restrictions, European players on Star Trek Online will no longer be able to access the game if they move to Hong Kong. It seems absurd to block access to and participation in online games based on geographic location, especially considering the borderlessness and inclusiveness of games and virtual worlds.

Basically, the gaming industry has adopted a very protective and restrictive approach.

Digital property rights in games

These different situations highlight the lack of fair digital property rights in the game. So far, players have not thought deeply about digital copyright, but due to the increasing number of blockchain games, there will soon be a revolution, and game players will begin to demand their property rights.

We already have the means of game digital property rights: Irreplaceable tokens (NFT) as an in-game asset. With the support of the blockchain, NFT is a unique and indivisible token that grants property rights to the owner and makes digital assets have real value, independent of the platform. The platform can be a game, a publisher, a mobile application store, or other exclusive host, but the game may be the best starting point, because the 2.7 billion gamers there already understand the concept of virtual goods.

Digital ownership on the blockchain is provided by an open license-free agreement and guaranteed by collective calculations agreed by the community. This allows NFT game assets to be traded between holders in ways unimaginable in most traditional games.

This is a good thing for gamers, but many traditional game publishers worry that this new dynamic will have a negative impact on their profits.

NFT is a game changer

An example of a tokenized game is F1 Delta Time, a blockchain game Animoca Brands licensed by Formula One. Every bit of content in the game can be owned by the player.Cars, parts, tires, and even the track where the driver and you race are all NFTs, which can be used in the game or in Third-party market, according to the owner’s privileges. As a result, some F1 Delta Time players report that they can earn thousands of dollars every month.

NFT also allows interoperability and cross-platform functionality, which means that the digital asset itself becomes the center of the player’s experience—in essence, the content will Become The platform. Just as you can have a set of chess pieces that can be played on many different boards, you will eventually be able to have NFT add-ons that can be used in different games or can access different virtual worlds. Yuanjie is nearby.

The more game content is tokenized to empower gamers and provide digital property rights, the more I am optimistic about the future of the game industry.

In short, the world is moving towards a more decentralized and fair global Internet. This is supported by blockchain technology as a transparent and unchanging accountability infrastructure, and is driven by the incentive model of the community that rewards, establishes and maintains its value. The new digital economy will rebalance the flow of capital and power, reduce the impact of intermediaries on the virtual world, and finally free us from decades of restrictions.

related: Is the new decentralized Internet or Web 3.0 possible?

History is full of examples of society transitioning from an autocratic system to a (more) democratic system, but this may be the first time this has happened on such a large scale.

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