Well-known PC games such as 'Diablo II' (2000) and 'Runescape' (2001) created the digital economy long before popular sports, the competitive video game industry, became known as a profession, allowing the best players to secure their lives by playing games. In fact, Moritz Baier-Lentz, one of its authors, was able to fund his undergraduate and graduate studies by completing in-game challenges and turning prizes into real money; at one point, it was more successful than any of the other 13 million active players.

However, the early 2000s were the “wild west” of digital assets, virtual property, and online identity, and video game markets and transactions were never fully legitimate and secure. So stories like this are a case study of rigorous individual entrepreneurship, rather than a viable solution. Professional harassment.

Huge growth in the gaming industry

Today, nearly 3 billion people around the world play video games, and there is a whole infrastructure around professional gaming that has created important opportunities and riches for the best players. The best of these are considered sports: employees as paid team members, sharing prize money in tournaments, and controlling their earnings. Others make money from live broadcasts by playing games on audience platforms like Twitch or YouTube Gaming.

Video games currently represent a $ 336 billion industry, according to BITKRAFT Ventures, which represents a wealth of software, hardware, and intellectual property. As games have become the largest category of media in the world ahead of linear television, on-demand entertainment, movies and music, some features have been developed. It is important that almost all economic activity based on games is centralized, giving developers and publishers the rights to everything that happens in their games. The business case for this is to capture billions of dollars in in-game content, digital items and subscription sales, but it also means that most players have little way to go without sharing the value.

This historic pattern of ownership and profit sharing has persisted as the industry has grown, but may be on the verge of transformation, with the emergence of “play to win” games. This type of video game allows players to “actually” win and own digital assets that they can sell outside of the game, at their own discretion.

Blockchain technology

If people want to devote significant time, attention and personal investment to digital environments, it is essential to establish their presence and confidence in the sustainability of their digital assets, as well as their financial strength. Early implementations show that this can be achieved with blockchain technology, which, through the use of cryptography, can ensure digital trust and decentralized value storage.

Blockchain is already being implemented in a variety of sectors, from funding to video games, and video games are no exception. Play-to-win games are based on blockchain technology, as well as non-fungible tokens (or NFT) as a basis for value creation. An NFT is a digitally secured property claim for a single, unchangeable digital asset. In practice, NFTs can take many forms in virtual worlds: characters, items, land, decor customization features, such as digital clothing, and so on. People “earn” the most valuable items by acting brilliantly and can sell them for real world money on their own terms.

The real innovation lies in the decentralized integrity and security of these digital elements, which, for the first time, can go beyond traditional ownership, custodial ownership, and the discretion of a business or government. As an example, instead of relying on the permissions or rules of publishers or other third parties, the resources of winning games may be freely sold in the markets, both in-game and out-of-game.