While the digital revolution that animates the Web3 world may have attracted creators and users of exciting projects like DeFi, NFTs, and DAOs, Web3 games, in particular, have sparked a revolutionary spirit that is overturning existing centers of power.
According to the BGA Blockchain Game Report 2021, Web3 metaverse games led to a 49% surge in blockchain usage. At least 1.4 million new crypto wallets are connected to Web3 games daily. The trend continued in 2022, accounting for over 52% of all blockchain activity by March 2022. Gigster’s Director of Blockchain, Cory Hymel, recently decided to play one of the popular games, NFT Worlds and shared his experience in a recent Livestream.
Launched in October 2021, NFT Worlds is a decentralized, blockchain-based Web3 gaming platform that allows users to create digital worlds as they perceive the Metaverse. The play-to-earn gaming platform originally built its blockchain layer on Minecraft, a best-selling video game that attracts over a million players per month; Minecraft recently announced it was banning NFT World integration. Like all decentralized platforms, NFT Worlds integrates an aspect of finance that will enable users to govern and run functions on the platform and a chance to earn its native cryptocurrency — the WRLD token.
The idea behind Web3 metaverse games is to allow players to collect NFTs or cryptocurrencies produced in the game. Players can generate income by selling the in-game tokens or NFTs, which they can eventually exchange for fiat currency. The concept behind some P2E games is to incentivize greater participation by allowing users who participate more to increase the value of their collective assets or earn more. Players who develop skills and strategies can earn more tokens and generate more revenue.
For NFT Worlds, users generate income in the form of WRLD, the platform’s native token, by staking. The amount of WRLD a player can earn is based on the rarity of their NFTs, where the rarer the attributes of a user’s piece of virtual land, the more WRLD they’re able to generate.
To separate the chaff from the wheat, Gigster’s Cory Hymel logged into NFT Worlds to try and navigate how easy it would be to purchase land, create a world, change the landscape and organize game locations. Following the available guide, he confessed that buying land and making money wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Some unpleasant issues Hymel found with NFT Worlds include:
Hymel opines that since the success of NFT Worlds relied upon users spending time and money to get entertained, the creators should have made the process of buying, making buildings, and playing easier so players won’t spend valuable moments struggling with unstable APIs or clunky interfaces.
The developers should use proven gameplay mechanics to standardize the game’s core economy and equip in-game builders with more options to circulate the WRLD token within the ecosystem. The team should also provide more player-friendly tools to enable new players to create, sell and trade items more quickly. There may be a need to restructure the token allocation system so the play-to-earn rewards are shared relatively within the ecosystem.
Being a Web3 project, NFT Worlds has the potential to succeed. However, Hymel believes the creators have to go the extra mile to appeal to all players, especially those who aren’t necessarily big fans of NFTs and blockchain. The key to success would be for developers to make the Web3 side of the project as modest as possible. Watch our Livestream for more information on NFT Worlds.
