Gaming might be the world’s favorite past time, but what if it became more profitable than working?
You know the saying, “Time is money”, especially when playing online. It is worth the effort to get to the top level in any MMORPG, such as World of Warcraft, because people would prefer to spend less time grinding, gold and gear. An entire industry was created by the increasing popularity of online gaming items. Workers are paid to spend their time playing games with the goal of making as much money as they can, and then selling it for local currency. In fact, regions within multiple third-world countries have become entirely dependent on the billion-dollar business of what has become known as “gold farming”.
The challenge however is that these games all explicitly prohibit any “real life” monetary transactions in regards to your account, your characters, and your items. Discussion or soliciting sales of your virtual property will result in your account being permanently banned. If this happens, your items, characters, as well as your account would become irreversibly unavailable.
Because of these restrictions, selling your character or rare item generally requires you to have a private buyer lined up – otherwise your best option would typically be to find a 3rd party marketplace that connects buyers and sellers. Scammers are common on both ends of the transaction. This poses a significant risk however. Most commonly, account sellers would contact the game’s support team to prove their identity as the original owner, thus resetting the account’s login credentials and returning the entirety of what was sold straight back to them.
How would it be if you were able to trade and immortalize your character as well as all their items on blockchain? This is exactly what NFT powered games are now offering with immense success – under this structure, monetizing your character is not only allowed, it is showcased as the primary attraction.
In June of this year alone, NFT-based game Axie Infinity saw players make over $42 million in sales, going on to be the #1 most valuable NFT collection.
This trend is real as we are at the forefront of it. There aren’t many NFT-based gaming platforms, and not even any AAA developers expressing interest in announcing projects. However, this will change soon. With the decentralized nature of cryptocurrency, NFT is an ideal space for independent developers.
Screenshot of DashLeague.io – Home Page
Among the most exciting of these independent gaming ventures is DashLeague.io, a Runescape-meets-Minecraft style MMORPG utilizing NFT tokenomics in completely new ways: players who conquer a town will then earn passive income on the town’s shops from all in-game item sales made by other players. High-stakes PVP situations allow you to take items from others and transfer their NFT directly into your account.
Teaming up in “leagues” with other players allows you to split token rewards from defeating dungeons as well as pool conquered maps. DashLeague is intentionally structured for players to literally earn money while they sleep, which is hard to argue with considering the sole purpose of these games: to have fun while making money. What may prove to be their most brilliant move of all is their decision to theme the game around the same retro, pixelated style that resonates so strongly with the crypto community as shown through the wild success of NFT projects like cryptopunks and meebits.
As the NFT realm continues to grow in both awareness and application, one thing is for sure – the gaming industry has always been incredibly lucrative (out-earning both the movie and music industries combined), and with the adoption of these hyper-monetized NFT structures, will absolutely be stimulating real-life economies and jobs in a dramatic fashion.
