Money shouldn’t be the main feature: Why gamers dislike NFTs and what to do with it

Delphi Digital, a company specializing in research in the cryptocurrency industry, published a report explaining how to properly implement NFT in games so as not to repel the community of gamers. Let’s see how valid this company’s proposals are and why they contradict the idea of web3.

What the report says

Delphi Digital believes that NFTs in the games should not interfere with the players who play “for fun” while also satisfying the needs of those who want to earn money by playing (the play-to-earn model).

First of all, according to the experts, NFTs should not affect the game experience but be just one of the ordinary aspects of the game. The basic competitive mechanics of the game should remain the same.

The Future of (Crypto) Gaming

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— Delphi Digital (@Delphi_Digital) July 21, 2022

Thus, Delphi Digital postulates that NFTs are not a native element of gameplay and in that way should not be a meaningful element. This strong assertion is explained in this way:

“Money should not be the main motivator for players, much less become the main feature of the game. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to clearly separate the market side, aimed at earning developers, and the main side, which is responsible for the gaming experience and is the essence of the game itself,” the report says.

This approach will generate income for those who play the game to make money without spoiling the experience for those players who play for fun.

1/ In this post, we cover:

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— Delphi Digital (@Delphi_Digital) July 21, 2022

What do we think about this?

Again, the latter category (“playing for fun”) is seen by Delphi Digital as the “normal majority,” for which the entire gameplay should be tuned. Is this assumption correct, especially against the background of the incredible success of, for example, STEPN?

We should bear in mind that previously the giant gaming companies Mojang Studios (Minecraft) and Steam expressed very similar principles, which suggest a kind of secondary use of NFTs within the game mechanics so as not to divide the game players into two different sorts.

It seems as if the old and well-known game brands are right in their own way, wanting to maintain their existing logic and audience while trying to sustain some sort of status quo under the pressure of new technology. The arguments they use are not that important; the only important thing is the strategy of actively shielding themselves from the trends of web3.

On the other hand, if you look at the example of OthersideMeta, there is a strong integration of NFTs (without their deeds, you can not even connect to the game). Here, the implementation of game mechanics completely contradicts the recommendations of Delphi Digital, while the popularity of this game is rapidly growing.

There is a conflict of interest between the new decentralized approaches based on web3 and the old established major players used to working with the audience in old ways. A similar battle can be seen outside of GameDev, such as Facebook or Google banning the topic of crypto just as assiduously.

Who will win in this confrontation between the old and the new? Time will tell, but the logic of evolution most likely is in favor of web3.