5 New and Exciting Trends in GameFi (2022)
GameFi is a combination of blockchain technology, video games and finance.
Gamers are rewarded with tradable tokens as they invest time and effort in play-to-earn games.
Examples of such games include Axie Infinity, Roblox, splinter lands, Illuvium, Mobox and others.
GameFi as a potential industry in web3 has continued to grow speedily, attracting heavy investments from both sports and entertainment companies.
“So, here are 5 interesting trends you need to know about GameFi in 2022:”
1. Big Acquisitions in GameFi Industry
Drake Star Partners, an investment firm indicated in its recent report that investors have poured more than $3.6 billion into the GameFi industry.
Since January, there has been significant surge in studio acquisitions across the traditional, gaming space, with Microsoft’s $69 billion takeover of Activation Blizzard.
This singular deal has continued to make headlines until recently. The deal is apparently the biggest acquisition in gaming industry.
This is not surprising as it came off the heels of Take-Two’s $13 billion purchase of US-based social game developer, Zynga.
The blockchain segment isn’t left out; crypto exchangers such as FTX raised $400Million in its Series C founding round targeted at sports and gaming.
In view of its reliance on gaming, FTX recently allocated $2billion to invest in GameFi startups specifically.
The acquisition spree has spiked speculations in the industry about a metaverse race among top gaming companies including Meta.
Near influx of big brands into the industry underscores potentialities in GameFi that are yet to be explored.
Increased acquisitions and funding also emphasizes widespread anticipation of explosive growth in GameFi industry in the future.
2. Emergence of Hardware Monetization
Monetization of idle gaming hardware is a novel trend in GameFi.
“Beyond play-to-earn, gamers now have more opportunity to earn even when not playing.”
With the partnership between AMD and Cudos-GoATi, leasing idle gaming hardwares for computational tasks create novel opportunity for gamers to monetize their devices and earn.
For instance, gaming hardwares with AMD RDNA2 architecture, the Playstation5, Xbox Series S and X Consoles with outstanding compute power speed and efficient energy could be leased by gamers when not in use.
This is because when this cutting-edge hardwares are idle, they can be deployed to solve complex mathematical computations while the outcome of such is redeemed by gamers as reward.
Also by linking their various hardware to the cloud, gamers using Cudos software for instance can redistribute their compute power and earn rewards.
Statistics has shown the general hours spent weekly playing games is in single digits, meaning idle hardware monetization could potentially rival play-to-earn in terms of revenue for gamers in the future.
3. NFTs as the Lifeblood of GameFi
NFTs are emerging as the lifeblood of GameFi resolving the major problem of interoperability in the industry.
The inability of gamers to transfer their in-game personalized player characters with items, weapons and skins bought with real-world currency to other games is a significant limitation in gaming industry.
The problem of interoperability reducing gamers flexibility needs to be resolved.
And this is where NFTs come in to resolve this without a centralized point of control.
They offer a way to make digital assets from player characters, weapons, skins and cosmetics to art and property, transferable across distinct virtual games while still maintaining their uniqueness, as well as allowing them to be freely traded in marketplaces.
This is why major game developers and fashion brands have begun to show great interest in NFTs and their application to virtual worlds, and gaming industry specifically.
4. Cloud Gaming Hitting New Highs
The new buzzword is cloud gaming with potential to revolutionize the gaming industry.
Cloud gaming is simply a method to play video games through remote servers in data centers without the need to download and install games on your system or Console.
Cloud based gaming is the next frontier in the gaming ecosystem.
Several major cloud providers offering their services with their own distinct benefits.
Companies like Amazon (Amazon’s Luna), Google (Stadia), and Sony (Playstation Now) are the most common.
One of the primary advantages of cloud gaming is that it’s not dependent on powerful hardware to function.
The rapid expansion of cloud gaming has attracted NVIDIA and Microsoft as the former announced its GeForce Now for cloud gaming while the latter has proposed its platform, Xcloud, which is still under testing phase.
Fortune Business Insights has projected the global cloud gaming market size to reach $40.81 billion in 2029, emphasizing the industry’s potentials.
5. In-game NFTs and Oppositions
DappRadar report says the way to mass GameFi adoption of NFTs will not be smooth.
It cited an instance of when the Ubisoft game company launched its first-ever NFT platform Quartz and received a negative reaction from users.
Ubisoft had announced the launch of the beta version of Quartz, the platform for trading in-game items minted as NFTs. But users reacted negatively saying such a decision would result to “artificial scarcity” of NFTs and susceptibility to pump-and-dump schemes.
However, NFTs seem viable to serve as the foundation for interoperability in the gaming industry.
Many emerging games that use this infrastructure to facilitate interoperability may create a new community of games around them that expect the transferability of in-game purchases.
Subsequently, this may generate sufficient tractions to bring this tech to the mainstream.
