What is Crypto Gaming in 2023?

What is Crypto Gaming in 2023? A question many gamers young and old may have asked over the past 12-24 months.

Crypto and gaming have become increasingly popular in this time and when put together is still raising eyebrows. 2023 is going to be a make or break year for blockchain gaming. With back to back years of investments growing, mainstream success is on the horizon.

This guide hopes to explain to those still not familiar with Crypto gaming what it actually is, the fundamentals behind it and the titles to watch out for in the next few months.

@ Bountie Gaming

Understanding Crypto Gaming

Crypto gaming is different from original gaming. Through the transparency of the blockchain gamers own the assets they earn and purchase within the crypto games ecosystem. This is not experienced in traditional games.

Traditional gaming, while enjoyable and of course a successful industry, limits owners. Assets owned also do not hold much inherent value outside of the game.

Crypto gaming is not the most appealing and is not available to everyone. Whether its knowledge or price of entry there will be issues somewhere a long the line which stops all gamers from playing. Mass migration to the blockchain in the near future should solve this issue.

Games are accessed through gaming platforms and can be downloaded. Others are accessed more exclusively through NFTs.

Blockchain Wallets

To access a crypto game you may need to connect your crypto wallet. Wallets you may of heard of already are Ronin Wallet, Metamask, Coinbase and WAX Cloud Wallet.

Hooking up your non-custodial wallet allows your in-game assets to be registered to the blockchain under your address. You are able to move your assets from your game and then onto other marketplaces like OpenSea or into different wallets for other use.

In-game NFTs

To get more out of your crypto game such as gameplay and rewards, you can purchase NFTs or receive them in airdrops and/or giveaways. NFTs can be purchased from in-game NFT marketplaces or external ones such as Binance NFT Marketplace or Magic Eden.

If you are lucky and set your attention to the right game, your NFTs can become more valuable and sold on. We’d recommend getting in on a project as early possible.

NFTs for games are usually weapons, armoury, consumabkes, land (real estate), vehicles and clothing.

Whilst they will appear on a marketplace listing as a JPEG image, once in your wallet and you load the game you can let the fun begin.

The ‘Play-To-…’ Concept

More times than not the ‘Play-To-…’ phrase will be included on a crypto game’s website, whitepaper or in-game dialogue.

The most common one is ‘Pay-To-Earn’. This means you play the game, and through completing tasks or through skill, you earn in-game currencies and NFTs that can then be sold for real world money.

Other examples of this include ‘Play-To-Hash’, ‘Play-To-Win’, ‘Play-To-Own’ and they aim to build off of Play-To-Earn.

Whatever the name, the end goal is that the gamer is given real world awards for their participation in a game.

Esports and tournaments

Esports and tournaments within crypto gaming has begun to blossom. We have already seen different games on the blockchain have their own events where gamers have met up and competed for cash prizes.

With how new this side of crypto gaming is, there is still a lot of room for new pros to have some of the spotlight. Streaming your favourite Web3 title and creating online content for it is a great way to get involved in future competitions.

Some of the biggest tournaments so far have been for Axie Infinity and EV.io in countries like Spain and Turkey. Expect more worldwide events as places like the Middle East have really taken on Crypto gaming and Web3 in general.

Top titles

There are a lot of great titles to try out and there are also a lot of fluff or filler projects. Usually we would not recommend trying the latter.

Picking out which titles to go for is fairly simple. Just go with what you know and enjoy already in gaming. Also be on the lookout for who is behind the projects. If it has a reputable team behind it then you are good to go.