The gaming community and the crypto community have not been on good terms for a long term now. While the crypto community despises the entry of big game developers entry to the metaverse, game developer communities have also not worked in the space with any considerable impact. Game Developers Conference recently released a report where they surveyed the state of the game industry and how they are looking at the future. More than 2700 studios, companies, and independent developers were surveyed, and the resulting data was used to analyze the future of mainstream gaming. Unsurprisingly, most game developers showed no interest in working with NFTs or crypto payment gateways. Only 1% of those surveyed said that they are actively pursuing an NFT project. More than 70% of respondents said that they or their studio has no interest in working with NFTs.
The gamer community, on the other hand, has a lot of interest in NFTs and gaming on the blockchain. The reasons behind this phenomenon are nuanced, but one factor emerges as undeniable. Under the play-to-earn model that GameFi promotes, there is no space for centralized gaming studios owning the game. Similarly, gaming companies would have very little stake in developing such a game. Blockchain-based games are essentially managed by a group of shareholders who get incentivized for their work through the native token of the game. Big gaming companies, on the other hand, employ the pay-to-win model through which they generate tremendous revenues. While we cannot expect this issue to resolve soon, GameFi will continue to develop in its own right with community support.
