NFT gaming, while probably a novelty aspect in blockchain gaming, can no longer be considered a niche but an established part of games built on blockchain.
With the ability to earn being a major pull for gamers, NFT gaming has attracted a large number of new players. At some point in 2021, there were game streamers who were posting earnings in the thousands of dollars every week due to their participation in these NFT games.
Naturally, given that most of these games had been launched during the bull market, their token prices had soared, and so did the earnings of gamers. But these NFT games are now being put to the test as the crypto market has entered another inevitable bear market.
As prices have collapsed, so has the interest from gamers. A large number of games that had been popular due to their growing token prices are now suffering in the bear market. Even large players such as Axie Infinity have seen interest plummet significantly during this time. This has called for more innovation and less focus on token prices when it comes to NFT gaming. That is if these games plan to survive the current bear market.
Token Price Should Not Be The Focus
A problem with existing blockchain games is the fact that the value of the entire gaming ecosystem depends solely on how their token prices are doing. When the price of their tokens is rising, they see a lot of interest, but any decline sees players leave in large numbers. It is evident that such a model is unsustainable, and some industry experts have even referred to the current models as being akin to Ponzi schemes that need a steady flow of new entrants to keep it going.
Using such models only attract gamers who only care about the price of the tokens they earn. The result of this is the mass exodus that has taken place in the gaming sector as crypto has welcomed another bear market.
A new entrant into the space has taken the initiative to tackle the problems that currently plague the NFT gaming space. Cradles: Origin of Species is a blockchain game that focuses on innovation and its community rather than on token price. This game promises to bring never-before-seen capabilities to NFT gaming in a bid to transcend beyond the questionable models employed by existing blockchain games.
How Cradles Differentiates Itself
Cradles: Origin of Species focuses on innovation to keep its community engaged and interested rather than token price. Taking a gamer-first approach, the creators introduce new metaverse gaming experiences. These range from popular aspects of the play-2-earn ecosystem to new metaverse features that make it more than just a virtual reality gaming experience. One of the innovations from the Cradles: Origin of Species team has been the introduction of the EIP-3664 proposal for a new type of NFT.
It follows in the footsteps of the ERC-20 by introducing revolutionary features when it comes to how tokens are created. Unlike ERC-721 or other token standards currently used for NFTs, EIP-3664 contains several new attributes that permit various types of fungible and non-fungible aspects. Players can add and remove components to and from their NFTs, as well as give them new traits, which will enable continuous and dynamic gameplay, unlike traditional NFTs, whose traits are pre-set and unable to change.
Props, characters and operation modes of games using EIP-3664 can be fully represented as smart contracts. This promotes different gameplay and expands the types of NFTs on the Ethereum network to bring about a stronger and more diverse gaming experience.
Play And Earn, Not Play To Earn
Cradles’ gamer-first strategy has seen it move away from the traditional play-to-earn model and bring players towards the new world of play and earn. This helps shift the focus of players from the price of the token being earned in the game to playing the game for pure enjoyment. This way, the tokens earned by gamers become just an added incentive for playing as they progress through the game, not the core motivator for playing.
It is also the first subscription-based game to grace the blockchain gaming space. This allows all players to immediately access the game without having to purchase expensive NFTs upfront. By buying a monthly card, users can play and earn in Cradles for the whole of that month.
The game also has zero transaction fees for small transactions. These are transactions that happen between players and peer-to-peer transactions. For transactions involving more valuable items, there is a small tax.
Staking Into NFTs
As mentioned already, Cradles: Origin of Species players do not have to make a significant initial investment before playing Cradles. Another invention that makes this possible is the Staking Into NFTs (SIN) feature in the game.
This allows users to stake into the NFTs already held by their favorite steamer or professional player. So if a player does not have access to a powerful weapon in the game and a streamer does, they can stake their tokens into the streamer’s NFT to help boost the power of the weapon. This gives the streamer an edge over their opponents to help them claim victory and win the prizes, which are distributed between the streamer and those who staked into their NFT.
All of the in-game items in Cradles: Origin of Species are also created by the players. There are no external NFTs being sold before entering the game, and players can freely move and trade items with each other thanks to a completely decentralized item supply.
Cradles recently raised $5 million in a private funding round to build out its metaverse. The game is backed by some of the largest players in the space, including Animoca Brands, Signum Capital, and Huobi Global, among others.
The innovation behind Cradles: Origin of Species is what puts it ahead of all other blockchain games. By successfully detaching the value of the game from the token price, it makes sure that its community is always involved regardless of whether the price of the token goes up or down. A complete game that kickstarts the evolution of the metaverse.