Intro
Although, at first glance, Blockchain (that was initially used for financial services) seems to have almost nothing in common with VR and AR (originally adopted for entertainment), the recent years have proven that there could be many effective ways to integrate and make use of those two technologies.
Nowadays blockchain technology has been leveraged in many economic and social sectors, such as: education, healthcare, logistics and distribution, charity, M2M economy, finance and, of course, gaming industry.
Blockchain is changing the gaming industry and making it more player-friendly by opening new possibilities of the offbeat life-like gaming experience as well as the chance to monetize gamers’ assets and accomplishments.
Why are the blockchain-games different?
The great deal of online games are centralized. They store most of the related data such as account information, history, in-game assets (collectibles, items, and virtual money) on the server that is fully controlled by a single company. Therefore, players don’t have real ownership of their accounts and digital assets as everything is governed by the game producers. More than that, centralized servers that host the game lack transparency and safety — they can be easily hacked.
Blockchain games on the other hand come short of such vulnerabilities because the blockchain is cryptographically stored on multiple servers across the world. So there is no single company who controls the network and no single database that can be easily attacked or hacked. If you add here the low cost of the instant transactions that help users exchange money and game-related assets in seconds and you can easily see the reason why blockchain games are breaking new ground in VR.
New possibilities of creating and monetizing your game-experience
VR of the blockchain games is a complex of astounding in-game experiences that were not possible before. More than that it is the way to get some real income from your game by taking part in the diverse game-economy system that is bound to the real economy and marketplaces.
Due to the interoperability of NFTs users are able to use items and characters of one game in a different game. It is indeed awesome when you are able to move from one virtual world to another with your virtual stuff or to sell and exchange things (including land, avatars, usernames and virtual outfits).
The blockchain games are based on the Metaverse as a complex of plots of the land. That opens up the immense opportunity to speculate on the digital land itself. You can buy those parcels, resell them in time, rent them to others etc. Buying the NFT land parcels has become extremely popular over the past year. The market of NFT projects has really boomed in 2021 with the prices reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars per land parcel.
Another way to make a profit via blockchain was brought to gaming by DeFi. It is farming of the passive income by staking collectibles or other assets that players have accumulated in the game to DeFi liquidity pools.
Creating your own virtual space in the Metaverse
All of the above is just the top of the iceberg. The real boom will happen when users are able to make real use of their NFTs, to experience them just as they were intended. If it’s a plot of virtual land, you ought to do something on it, build, develop infrastructure, invite visitors — use it for some real immersive purposes.
For people who have great imagination or capable of actually building something valuable there is a huge field of actions. You can put up any kind of digital building on your parcel: a casino, a store, you can generate revenue, you can charge rent, you can sell space for advertising, you can build a museum, make an exhibition of crypto-art and charge admission, etc. The list of the things you can do and the ideas you can implement in the blockchain game is really boundless.
In these Metaverses people can wander around with friends, visit virtual buildings and attend virtual events, which can be very useful under the conditions of pandemic. Imagine going to a concert or to a museum together with your friend not leaving the house, not even leaving your room.
Moreover when you settle down in the Metaverse and build your micro-economy there, you become a stakeholder of the game and get the powers to participate in governing this Metaverse. Thanks to the transparency of the blockchain the gaming mechanics can only be modified if the majority of the NFT-holders community votes in favour of it.
Closing thoughts
The blockchain and VR are definitely changing the virtual world. Blockchain games and Metaverse are one step from becoming the real economy digitally stored in VR. With advances of the blockchain the Metaverse and VR will most likely be integrated with our real-world experience sooner and deeper than we can imagine right now.