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Key Takeaways

• Within a couple of 12 months, NFT games at the moment are on the brink of overtaking PC games in popularity

• Compared to traditional PC games, solely 10 games are extra widespread than prime NFT editions

• $2.5 billion raised by blockchain games in Q1 of 2022, on course for $10 billion this 12 months in comparison with $4 billion for 2021

• While costs of gaming tokens have been in freefall alongside wider market, consumer progress and funding has been stout

With NFTs crumbling because the market continues in full risk-off mode, I made a decision to dive into the statistics behind a sector I imagine is one of essentially the most intriguing use instances for this novel expertise. 

Sure, heaps of NFTs are overpriced and will be attributed to bear market hysteria, however I’ve at all times felt that the wedding between gaming and NFTs is a pure one. Players pour a lot time into taking part in sure games, in addition to cash into in-game additions, that defining possession and sustaining a historic document on-chain appears to make sense. 

So what do the numbers say about NFT gaming adoption in comparison with typical gaming, and do they paint a extra bullish image than the freefalling token costs? 

One 12 months progress

In phrases of energetic customers, the expansion in the final 12 months has been meteoric for NFT games. A report from DappRadar calculated the expansion in blockchain gaming as 2000% since Q1 of final 12 months. 

Also in Q1 of this 12 months, $2.5 billion was raised for blockchain games and different metaverse tasks. While this got here earlier than the ugly downturn of current months, it’s nonetheless promising given $4 billion was raised in all of 2021, a interval when the bull market was in full swing. That places gaming and metaverse tasks on course to boost $10 billion via 2022. So, even a massively conservative 60% reduce to funding would place it above 2021 ranges. 

NFT gaming customers

The funding is stout, however so too are the customers. A take a look at the beneath graph displaying the highest 10 NFT games confirms that the sector is beginning to achieve mainstream attraction and seize increasingly more distinctive customers monthly.

To put the above numbers in context, a neat present benchmark for NFT games is that of PC games. The beneath graph exhibits the highest 10 most performed PC games on the Steam platform. While the info for whole customers in a month is more difficult to acquire, the beneath graph presents the common quantity of concurrent gamers during the last 30 days (reasonably than whole distinctive customers monthly as per the above graph). 

Assuming that 5% of energetic gamers are on-line at any given time, the beneath graph then compares how NFT games stack as much as the most well-liked PC games, with NFT games in blue and traditional PC games in orange. 

This exhibits that whereas NFT games are but to overhaul PC games, this can be very near occurring. Only the highest 10 PC games are capturing extra customers than the highest NFT recreation, Alien Worlds, and the margin could be very slim, with Alien Worlds solely about 1,000 customers off. 

Yet regardless of the bullish progress in numbers, these games are being brandished as fads because of the general pullback in crypto markets. Additionally,  the beneath graph for 2 of the largest tokens – Alien Worlds and Axie Infinity – present that the freefall has been stark after explosive run-ups final 12 months. 

But in trying previous the costs of such tokens (a big half of which might have been on account of hypothesis) and as a substitute digging into consumer progress and the funding being put into these platforms, the long run nonetheless seems shiny. 

It’s a reminder that regardless of the bearish sentiment in the markets, there’s very actual expertise right here that’s making a distinction and disrupting industries. To be on the brink of the highest 10 PC games already is kind of the achievement, given the nascent nature of the house. 

As for whether or not these tokens are good investments at present costs? Well, that’s a difficulty for one more day. 

Sources

https://dappradar.com/blog/dappradar-x-bga-games-report-q1-2022

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1266486/blockchain-games-user-number/