Bankless: Talking about the opportunities and challenges in NFT game design
Compilation of the original text: Deep Tide TechFlow
Compilation of the original text: Deep Tide TechFlow
NFT games can come in a variety of forms. They can be simple on-chain strategy games, or they can be advanced, sprawling massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) that use NFT assets to track player ownership outside of centralized servers.
So far, we’ve seen a lot of experimentation with simple on-chain strategies. I played one recently, the game is called Battle Royale Onchain, it's very simple and fun at the same time!
But the bigger NFT MMO game, we haven't seen it yet.
To be honest, there are indeed many such projects being developed now, and I am curious about some of them.
But on the other hand, it also shows that a complete NFT game field is still building its own foundation, which is not surprising: because game design is very difficult.
The main challenge of NFT games
From combat animations to level design, to the economic loop in the game, ordinary games need to consider a large number of moving parts in the design, and the designer also needs to connect these parts together, even though these parts are already complex. Therefore, when NFTs are added to this complex equation, they only complicate game projects and increase the challenges they face.
If not handled properly, NFT may also become a game killer. A July 2022 article by 0xKepler entitled"The Road to Web3 Gaming"The article states that,"Tokenize most of the in-game assets"How the game responds to two ultimate challenges: economic exodus and excessive speculation.
Regarding economic outflows, if everything is tokenized, then making money becomes the main goal of the players, which may lead to everyone cashing out at the same time, with no taker, which will cause the game economy to collapse. 0xKepler wrote:
“With no demand side for currencies and assets, no one sees their value outside of money, prices fall, which translates into less income for players. The game becomes uninteresting – existing players leave and new players don’t.” Too likely to join. P2E games tend to be too reliant on player growth and token churn accelerates, which leads to a rapid downward spiral.”
And on the point of excessive speculation, 0xKepler used the auction system in Diablo 3 to show how making everything easy to trade would drive away real players and kill the in-game economy:
"Easily tradable assets take away the sense of accomplishment some players seek. As a result, games with in-game marketplaces reach fewer of these types of players and attract mostly players looking for monetary rewards. Over time, speculators drive up prices, making the asset needed to play the game unaffordable for non-speculators. In the end, only speculators are left"。
How to make better NFT games?
When it comes to"What is a good NFT game", we must go back to the fundamentals of the game.
To do this, we have to understand why people play games, which I think is perfectly described in Sal.xyz's tweet: testing our skills, having unique experiences, connecting with others.
Based on these, there are ways to build NFT games more intelligently to optimize these fundamentals and mitigate economic outflows and excessive speculation.
0xKepler proposes the following solution:
1. Less Tokenization- Limit the amount of tradable assets (instead of making everything tradable) and tax transactions to limit speculation and allow players to build a sustainable economy.
2. Isolation system- Some items can be traded, while others cannot.
3.NFT >Fungible Token (FT)——Focusing on NFT rewards instead of FT rewards, games can emphasize fun and in-game empowerment rather than financialization.
4. Land value tax——Optimize builders who promote a sustainable economy, and prevent NFT land from becoming too valuable and becoming an object of excessive speculation.
Why are NFT games attractive?
If implemented properly, NFTs can lead to novel gaming experiences.For example, the customizability and community power that openness brings. Let's say your team builds the core of an on-chain game into a superstructure that is forever free to use and build on. It unleashes the power of the mod community like never before.
In addition to the literal openness, there is also an open window of opportunity for Web3-native game projects compared to the large game publishers that are leading the way on Web3. We should use this period of hesitation from the big game publishers to set the tone for what a successful NFT game should be.
Finally, one of the coolest aspects of game NFTs is that they can be used as an attribute, no matter which game the player is playing, his game achievements can be seen from the player's panel.Now, in mainstream games, your game data is isolated in each game, and the interoperability brought by NFT opens up more possibilities for games.
Following...
As far as I know, an upcoming NFT game that does a lot of work on the problem I described above isCivitas。
Civitas will be launched next year. It is a strategic MMO game built on the basis of Ethereum + L2. I believe that any player who has played the Civilization series will not be unfamiliar with its gameplay. The biggest difference between Civitas is that each of its Each city is a subDAO owned and organized cooperatively by players.
From mechanics like the free-to-play nomadic mode to the CITI token transaction tax on resource transactions,I think Civitas has various elements that stabilize against excessive speculation while creating a vibrant in-game economy.
But now only time will tell.
What to expect from NFT games
What's next for the NFT game?
One can see a future where work around game development will flourish on Layer 2 (L2) scaling solutions. With fast and ultra-low transaction fees, these L2s represent the next on-chain for better Web3 games"cutting edge"。
Finally, there is a lot of fragmentation in the current NFT game ecosystem, that is, there are a large number of different projects built in isolation on dozens of blockchains, not related to each other."communicate"。
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