Why Is the Gaming Industry Entering the Metaverse?

The global video gaming industry is one of the largest on the market with its revenue in 2022 estimated to have reached around $347 billion.

Another growing industry is the metaverse sector which is valued to reach $54.95 billion in 2023 with the number of users surpassing 1.4 million people by 2030. A plethora of major companies including Mark Zuckerberg’s, Meta, are already making plans of entering this fascinating virtual space, so why should the gaming industry be stuck behind?

Video gaming has been initially a prime candidate for entering the virtual reality (VR) world and as companies are starting to create more interconnected world-building platforms, the gaming industry has found a new home in the metaverse industry.

The value of the metaverse gaming market is projected to reach $13.84 billion in 2023 and the number of users could grow past 433 million by 2030.

Why Is the Gaming Industry Entering Web3?

Because the gaming industry is one of the biggest on the market, it becomes a very appealing asset in the mass adoption and exploitation of new technologies.

The founder and CEO of MetaGravity, Rashid Mansoor told Business2Community:

“Gaming helps an arcane technology interesting only to enthusiasts enter the mainstream and see broad-based adoption that every industry needs in order to grow and succeed. It is not surprising that we are seeing the uptake and widespread adoption of blockchain technology is being fought on the battleground of gaming.”

Some of the biggest metaverse games have taken the world by storm, attracting players with their ability to combine both VR with augmented reality (AR) as well as other fascinating technologies (like the blockchain space).

Mansoor is positive that the Web3 space is the future of player-driven game economies as they allow gamers to become the creators.

One of the most prominent ways in which metaverse games are attracting long-term traditional gamers is by letting them ‘own’ a piece of their games through the introduction of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain technologies.

“Every gamer in a well-designed web3 game has the opportunity to be a contributor to the game’s content and therefore its economy. No longer will the developer monopolize an exclusive role in how value is created, transacted and traded. Every player now has that agency in the world of decentralized games,” Mansoor added.

The Potentials of Metaverse Games Are Unmatched

Prior to entering the Web3 space, the gaming industry was very centralized, under the control of the game developer or agency that owned the said game. Players had very little power beyond the ability to play the game.

Mansoor noted that the whole potential of merging the gaming industry with the Web3 space is that they can become fully-fledged economies.

“They become like mini-nation states. The players then become citizens of this bold new world. The old term netizen (someone who is actively engaged in improving the internet) makes more sense in this new future where games are themselves like islands in the ocean of the global economy. Players can truly create, share and find meaningful commercial enterprise in these future games, or even rise as business leaders or rulers.”

Some of the most popular metaverse games preaching these potentials include Axie Infinity, a Pokemon-inspired metaverse game where players can breed, trade and battle digital creatures called Axies.

What was net new about Axie Infinity was not necessarily their game or even SLP rewards but the fact that they were the first onchain project to generate a significant sense of ownership between a holder, their axie and others in the community. The game as just an artifact of… https://t.co/txR24pLoKC

— Peter / ‘pet3rpan’ (@pet3rpan_) July 25, 2023

Entering the Metaverse Game Industry Early Could Be a Big Win

Mansoor told Business2Community that entering the metaverse game industry as early as possible could serve as the biggest gain in the industry for a number of players as well as future game developers.

“This new trend towards the decentralization of game economies is one that is here to stay. I would urge gamers to ignore the mainstream cynicism and instead educate themselves on the current trends.”

He noted that by identifying promising projects, gamers can truly luck out because “when a new world is discovered, it pays to be among its early settlers.”

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