Why is web3 the future of video games?
On many occasions, from interviews to AMAs or even in our articles, you may have heard us say that we sincerely think that Web3 is the future of video games, not only of eSports, where we have it very clear, but also of conventional video games.
We are going to try to explain some of the main reasons that lead us to think this way, keep in mind that there are many others, but these are especially relevant.
Why does the entire video game industry survey web3?
There are indeed movements in the entire video game industry towards blockchain and web3. This is undeniable, and, in fact, in one way or another, practically all the big companies (and to a large extent the smaller ones) are in one way or another experimenting, testing or very attentive to the innovative movements of companies like Warlands.
If we had to draw a parallel, we could compare today’s video game industry with the record industry at the beginning of the 21st century, when it was clear that the sector was changing, that streaming was going to set a new paradigm.
At that time, the official discourse of the recording industry was totally opposed to negotiating anything with the incipient streaming companies.
Unofficially, practically all the companies negotiated in the shadows or directly reached agreements, which in the end culminated in a radical change in the industry.
The same could be said of multimedia content: the experience of Netflix and the other platforms that changed the on-demand content market, or Youtube or Twich with their groundbreaking models of shared and free content.
The video game industry has not experienced its evolution. As much as the industry, in that official frontal position against blockchain, tells us that the evolution has already happened with the incorporation of digital download and multiplayer game models, the truth is that no one is unaware that it is still a sector based on buy to play.
In fact, within the three major sectors of audiovisual and multimedia entertainment, the last one is practically based on this model.
Moreover, attempts at streaming models or access to catalogs based on quotas have not worked, or at least not in the way that could be expected.
The great advantage that the industry has is that it continues to generate money. However, they cannot avoid that more and more people turn their eyes towards a much fairer model, and that allows the user a realistic management of their money invested in entertainment.
And what does Web3 bring to the player?
It would really take much more than a single article to explain what this new paradigm shift brings to the gamer. But perhaps the simplest answer is also the most powerful: freedom of decision.
Let’s think that, nowadays, when we buy a video game, we become the owners of an asset that will not have a functionality beyond our own use. Its revaluation in the digital market is practically zero. And in the case of collector’s editions, physical, they follow another very different market.
Now, let’s imagine an environment where the player can own their in-game assets. He doesn’t buy the game, he buys in-game assets with which he performs the leisure activity. Notice, we are not even talking about the remunerative component, just buying an asset to be able to play within a game. Once the game is finished, this asset can be kept, but it can also go to the secondary market, that is to say, it can end up in the hands of another player who buys it to enjoy the game. The first player gains access to an amount of money that can be reinvested in another game.
It is a simplistic explanation, we know, but it is also a very graphic way of being able to see how blockchain and non-fungible tokens are really much more useful and with a much deeper use than mere speculation, as the industry sometimes pretends to tell us.
