How to Solve Gamer’s Biggest Concern about Gaming & NFTs

Let’s be honest; gaming can be a costly hobby or job. Most of us have played games like Call of Duty, FIFA, GTA, Minecraft, and Fortnite. Often, we have bought expensive gaming devices and games or had the opportunity to purchase additional coins, outfits, or weapons when free.

Game Developers are Losing

Lately, there have been a lot of announcements of gaming companies wanting to make a move with NFTs, either by giving their users exclusive access to additional content or by collecting certain rare traits or characters. BUT gamers have been giving a lot of pushback to the game developers that wanted to work with NFTs. Their main concern is that game developers seek new monetization methods to get more money from the users, and they don’t like to be in the second place. It makes total sense.

Many game developers have withdrawn their plans to integrate NFTs in their games after the backlash, but honestly, this is just because they are scared of losing their fanbase. Game developers should have waited with such announcements and instead talked with their fanbase first. Game developers could have seen that the primary concern of gamers is the increase in costs. It is much easier to develop a solution once you know the core problem…

Gamers Should Win

Last week I visited the Non-Fungible Conference in Lisbon. I overheard an anecdote about most of us who used to pay 60–70 dollars for a game, which is worth nothing after using it for a while, so the gamers end up making a loss or keeping the game in their collection. However, the concept of play-to-earn solves this and can result in a profit or income for the gamer. The greatest example of this is Axie Infinity. Over 700.000 users play Axie Infinity daily, and many users make a decent monthly income with it. So why haven’t more traditional game developers come up with ways for their players to win instead of losing?

First of all, traditional game developers don’t like having a fan base that doesn’t believe in their vision. Secondly, the turnover and profit are harder to predict (this is important for mature/public companies) when players can earn, and NFTs, in general, are not widely adopted. Thirdly, many bigger traditional game developers like Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts are dependent on the income of a new game every year (e.g., Call of Duty and FIFA).

So, How Can We Solve It?

1. Game Developers should go talk with their most active users to understand their problems and expectations. You can always find new users, but losing your existing users is tough and expensive when making significant changes.
2. Game Developers need to experiment with new concepts and technologies to track adoption and usage. You can always void experiments but never return from visions.
3. Game Developers need to give back to their users and make them feel part of the company’s mission. Build relationships!

It doesn’t matter if you build on top of a play-to-earn mechanism or the NFT technology; as long as you have a vision for your existing and new users, every game will find its way to adoption.