Let’s Face It, NFT’s Are Ruining Gaming

Honestly, I used to love the idea of NFT gaming. Instead of simply buying some skin that has no value or utility, now I can own all of my skins and property. The whole idea was super fascinating to me, and I assumed it would take the gaming world by storm. Obviously, this is all still in its infancy, so there’s plenty of time for all of this to come to fruition and work itself out, but I am not convinced that will be the case.

There’s one issue: It’s all so prohibitively expensive basically no one can actually enjoy it. It’s pretty much exclusively for early adoption crypto bro’s that have more money in Crypto than they know what to do with. For example, the Sandbox Alpha, the absolute cheapest thing you could purchase was equivalent to $60. That was the absolute cheapest thing possible to buy, and it was a hat. If you want to do pretty much anything in the game, it will literally cost you hundreds of dollars just to get started between gas fees, minting, the cost of the NFT, and so on. Some “metaverse” games like Crypto Kitties quite literally require several hundreds of dollars to get started by purchasing a few NFT’s to start. Some require their tokens every single time you want to play a game.

Imagine having to pay real dollars every time you wanted to play a round of call of duty. NFT gaming has created an even more dystopian, hyper monetized gaming environment than the CEO of Blizzard could have imagined in his wildest dreams.

The Kicker

Despite all of this, the real kicker is none of these games are even fun. In fact, it’s almost exclusively paying money for stuff, or walking around being told to pay money to do stuff. The games are awful. The barrier to entry is so prohibitively high it’s pretty much impossible to get started if you aren’t rich, and even then, why would you? The game’s entire selling point isn’t how fun the games are, it’s solely NFT’s.

Sure, it’s great if you got in early and picked up things for pennies on the dollar, only to offload your bags for millions, but it kills the game in the same light. I also understand the creator's wishes that everyone needs to make money so it would kill the economy to just endlessly allow things to be minted for a few dollars, but in reality, there needs to be significantly lower barriers to entry if these are ever going to really take off.

Right now, like most things, it’s basically just a rich person's trading playground.

It’s not getting better

Why am I not optimistic? Well, sure, Crypto has had its fair share of 90% declines, but over the long term, crypto will most likely continue to climb. Since all of this is priced based on ETH, or ETH-based tokens, the odds are that this will only get worse. As ETH continues to increase, gas fees get worse, everything becomes more expensive, and all of this just continues to get worse. For reference, people generally consider a $60 game to be alot, and that should be a complete game. A couple of dollars for a few skins is considered a lot. People already frown on things like loot boxes and gambling of skins in gaming.

With this, you can blow through thousands of dollars on pretty much nothing, and it’s honestly not that much more liquid than a Fortnite skin. You pay $500 for skin but have to pay ETH fees to buy and sell it, and the only way you make money is by offloading your bag to someone else. What are the odds you are able to make yours stand out in a sea of thousands of other NFT’s? Generally, it will take a few months, and maybe a bit of campaigning.

Quickly Fading Games

Since most people get into this for the NFT’s and money, basically no one actually plays the already boring games. There’s the game there, and might even be a thriving marketplace for the game… but no one actually plays the game. It’s a weird mix because usually, games in-game items have value because it’s super fun, with a thriving community. Here, the game has value because the in-game items have value. No one actually plays the game, and in fact, it’s most rich dudes scouring the marketplace for things to buy, instead of anyone playing the game.

You can occasionally get free tokens, generally worth pennies, by completing certain missions, interacting with the community, and playing games, but… no one plays the games. You can sit there in lobbies for hours waiting for 2 or 3 people to join your game… obviously further killing the possibility that anyone will actually play these games. Sure, I could grind a semi-boring game just to get started with some cheap/free stuff and earn my way up, but even then, dead lobbies everywhere make it further unlikely.