EA Games CEO Says NFTs & Blockchain Are Important Part of The Gaming Industry. It's Time To Shape The Metaverse In Your Favour Before The Corporations Do It For You!

In a public earnings meeting, the CEO of giant gaming company, Electronic Arts (EA), stated that NFTs and thus blockchain technology were "an important part of ... the future of our industry on a go-forward basis". Gaming is clearly going to be one of the main early use cases for NFTs, so what will gaming and blockchain look like 2 years from now?

With Facebook rebranding it's company to specifically focus on 'The Metaverse' and hyping gaming and virtual reality to the max, it is clear that blockchains and NFTs are hear to stay. The ability to tokenise 'things' and even ideas as uniquely ownable on blockchains remains an idea that has yet to be fully exploited, but is clearly paramount in the minds of the world's largest tech corporations.

Facebook, EA and others tend to operate in the realm of hundreds of Billions of Dollars - they are some of the world's largest businesses, period. If these companies are making statements such as the CEO of EA recently did which show their keen interest in NFTs on blockchains then this is clearly a major signal for blockchain developers and investors to get in early in order to fully participate in this coming tech revolution.

Numerous blockchains support NFTs and while some are specifically designed for use in games, it is likely that several different chains will be involved in major gaming titles of the future. There is still everything to play for in terms of gaining market share within the blockchain gaming space and picking the correct chain to support may yield investment return on par with those who invested early in Bitcoin! The huge gains that Bitcoin investors saw as early adopters may even be dwarfed by those made possible through support of blockchains which later gain mass acceptance in the gaming community.

We don't yet see crypto available as a currency at many supermarket checkouts, but integrating crypto into games in ways that add new features, will force adoption of blockchain by very large numbers of people, eager for new gaming experiences.

How Can Games Make Use of NFTs?

It's clear that while the use of NFTs is still in the early stages and the flexibility of the technology means that there will be numerous uses which none of us have yet thought of, there are several uses that are easy to predict. NFTs enable ownership of objects or ideas in a way that is stand-alone and exists outside of a specific game. In future it will be possible to go to a specific digital product designer, perhaps even a totally independent artist, and buy objects from them which can be used in all gaming environments! You could own a special digital jacket for gaming and wear it in your social networking spaces, but then also take it into your favourite games too!

While this sharing of information between games opens up plenty of fun possibilities, it also suggests a much vaster concept too - a literal metaverse - an open standards based digital universe that people can co-experience alongside the physical universe! Imagine going on holiday somewhere, making new friends and then agreeing to join them again later in a digital recreation of your favourite holiday spot to play games, hang out and share experiences! While it would no doubt be more fun or even healthy to meet up physically, this is simply too expensive and even polluting to be practical at this point for most of us. NFTs provide a digital backbone upon which such experiences can be created.

And all this is without even mentioning gambling! While there is no doubt that gambling is not considered to be the healthiest use of our time and resources, the fact remains that very large numbers of people consider it a normal part of their lives. Imagine the temptation of wagering that expensive piece of NFT digital art with someone in a VR version of Mario Kart played on the actual streets of London in VR! While in many ways this is an expression of the unhealed psychology in people that can cause us problems, it is also something that is already happening every day even without NFTs and the metaverse.

One of the key differences between the virtual experiences and the 'real life' versions is that the blockchain events are likely to be totally public and accessible from anywhere in the world. This means that it is highly likely that in future there will be extremely successful sites that focus on arranging NFT based gambling and competitions in game environments. Entire fortunes may be won or lost as people who have never physically met each other play games that go across international borders.

While all of this might sound exciting to some and depressing to others, it is all a predictable playing out of mass psychology that has led to bloody wars and tragedies right throughout history - at least the metaverse may enable some of the conflicts to play out virtually instead of resulting in physical and lasting harm!

Ultimately, technology provides us with tools and the way in which they are used is up to us. The future of our culture will certainly include NFT based realities, so it is wise for us to consider them now, ahead of time. With massive companies looking to profit from the technology it makes sense for us all to think about how we might benefit from it too, rather than leaving the wealthiest to once again take almost all of the 'winnings', leaving the crumbs for everyone else!

Open Source NFT Development

Just as the mega corporate forms of social networks have open source alternatives, such as Hive, there will need to be similar developed for gaming and 'The Metaverse'. Open Source technology straddles a sometimes uncomfortable gap between private business activities and public (good will) activities, with businesses sometimes making huge profits from the unrewarded work of members of the public. The decentralisation of blockchain technology offers a way for this situation to be somewhat balanced, since everyone has the opportunity to invest and co-own part of the blockchains that will enable NFT gaming.

The more organised and co-operative open source development becomes, the more beneficial it tends to be for those involved. The GNU / Linux based operating systems that power most of the world's computer servers and many home computers is a good example. Through combining the power of hobbyists and independent computer experts over the decades, the largest corporations such as Microsoft and Apple have a valid competitor in the Operating System market that is largely free. This was achieved, in part, through a lot of communication and a shared intent/vision.

My suggestion for NFT gaming is that we need efforts that are similar to the early development of GNU/Linux in order to ensure that future manifestations of 'The Metaverse' are truly a social creation rather than a corporate idea that mainly seeks to extract profit from people and limits their power. The NFT Symposium is a community space on the Hive blockchain that is specifically intended to be a haven for this kind of discussion and planning - so please don't hold back in commenting and posting in here if you have thoughts or plans that are relevant.. You never know who might read you and want to get in touch!

Never forget - The best way to predict the future is to create it!

Wishing you well,
Ura Soul

Read My User Guide for Hive Here