How NFT Interoperability Impacts the Gaming Industry
Blockchain technology has already heralded the dawn of a new era in gaming. It has successfully offered an array of benefits that traditional gaming has not, such as the play-to-earn model, asset ownership, and more. While these advantages are still greatly desired and anticipated by developers and players, this is likely to change as NFT interoperability becomes more visible and exerts an increasing effect on the gaming industry.
Our previous article has provided a thorough explanation of the relevant concepts such as NFT, interoperability, and NFT interoperability. When applied to the gaming industry, the definitions narrow, with NFTs (or NFT assets) referring to avatars, land, accessories, collectibles, skills to anything that could be considered an “asset”, and in-game NFT interoperability describing different blockchain games being able to communicate and collaborate, allowing users to transfer NFT assets across games easily.
Weighing the Pros and Cons
When it comes to how NFT interoperability will affect the gaming industry, the main debate is whether the advantages will outweigh the disadvantages or the other way around. A near-universal understanding (or misunderstanding) of the subject, as highlighted by the Coin Republic, is that NFT interoperability would more likely undermine the current value of the gaming industry because players would only have to pay once and never again. In other words, the rewards are believed to be significantly lower than the costs.
The team member of Naavik, Matt Dion, also expressed reservations about NFT interoperability being applied in games. He suggested that, while embracing interoperability will eventually become table stakes in a world where a fully-fledged Metaverse has taken hold, in today’s gaming industry the incentives are not so straightforward. For large developers and publishers with established IPs and entrenched fanbases, the impetus to interoperate is not as strong.
Both of the two opinions show poor confidence in NFT interoperability’s ability to overcome underlying issues or generate large revenue. However, in MixMarvel’s opinion, though in short term, NFT interoperability may appear difficult, costly, and even unfavorable to the gaming industry, its long-term benefits will far outweigh every disadvantage. And such benefits and value will come directly from IP operations and the Web3 value network, both of which are closely related to NFT interoperability.
The Web3 Value Network and IP Business Value
NFT interoperability is one of three main features required for a well-functioning Web3 value network, a next-generation network paradigm proposed by MixMarvel. It is also regarded as the most important technical feature, as the other two, openness and co-creation, are more concerned with market scale and sustainability.
From recent examples such as DeHero, it could be seen that a new way of asset insurance and a primary stage of asset interoperability are being proposed and delivered. These NFT interoperability features notably enhance rather than detract from the game’s values because they truly reassure the functionality of Web3 games’ play-to-earn mechanism and guarantee the players’ ownership over the assets they hold. Hence, from an individual game’s point of view, while developing and introducing NFT interoperability may reduce the purchase per player makes, the player community will rapidly expand to include more, benefiting the entire gaming industry and, subsequently, every game involved.
On the other hand, MixMarvel believes that NFT interoperability will also help raise the Web3 game’s business value by revolutionizing the IP industry — a point overlooked by many critics as they are often too preoccupied with reflecting the moment rather than looking into the foreseeable future.
IP is the abbreviation for intellectual property. In the field of games and pop-culture industry, the term has extended in meaning and come to stand for the cultural brand that can be developed in multiple dimensions. The current IP market size is surprisingly big and promising as ever. For instance, Pokemon, the one that takes up the largest market share, earns nearly 100 billion USD a year through IP operations.
In light of this, MixMarvel predicts that by promoting a new understanding of IP & NFT interoperability combination, the market size will grow even larger. Although a further push on IP development seems to be less appealing for large developers and publishers with established IPs at the moment, the combination of IP and NFT interoperability is not the same thing and points to a new potential market distinct from what they have secured.
As MixMarvel’s CSO Mary Ma explained earlier during her speech on NFT interoperability at the Digital Economy Forum, the combination of IP and NFT will lead to a more inclusive and community-based IP future, just like how over 200 BAYC owners have already signed up to make money off the NFTs by licensing them to brands as well as how entrepreneur Andy Nguyen has opened the first BATC-themed restaurant in Los Angeles. When such a combination is widely used in the gaming industry, the Web3 blockchain game is expected to expand scales for several times, to create unimaginable value, and to go far beyond what we can envisage today.
To sum up, though many in the industry remain skeptical of the NFT-interoperable game future, MixMarvel believes that the pros outweigh the cons because NFT interoperability not only opens up and makes up an essential part of the next-generation value network, but also has the ability to increase the business value of Web3 games tremendously. With this limitless business potential, NFT interoperability could propel the gaming industry to new heights and, ideally, pave the way for the ultimate Metaverse that the Web3 world has long awaited.
About MixMarvel
MixMarvel is the world’s leading blockchain content-incubation platform and creators community. By in-depth exploring the open world and integrating world-renowned IP with high-quality content, MixMarvel connects investors and mass users through asset distribution, content publication, DeFi tools, infrastructure, community co-creation, and other diversified scenarios in a new ecosystem of dapps. Its ecosystem comprises a broad portfolio of FT/NFT assets, including the MIX, RPG, and HEROES tokens; blockchain content, including the GameFi application DeHero; and infrastructures, including Rangers Protocol and MixMarvel SDK. For more information, visit https://linktr.ee/MIXMARVEL.
