Could video games popularize NFTs?

After works of art, music and cinema, video games are the new realm of non-expendable digital goods, known as NFTs, which break auction records, but whose mainstreaming is still slow.

NFTs designate a certificate of authenticity for a digital item and its ownership is registered by blockchains, which is the same technology as cryptocurrencies.

From art to fashion, creative industries quickly joined this experiment, showing a capacity for innovation that generated enthusiasm, but also skepticism in the technology sector.

Now well-known auction houses like Sotheby’s sell NFT like other works of art and film director Quentin Tarantino is embroiled in a lawsuit for wanting to sell unused fragments of his cult film “Pulp Fiction” as NFT.

Now the French giant of video games Ubisoft They have just launched 2,000 units of this asset to get equipment such as weapons, helmets and vehicles for their game “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint”, which can be a first stage to massify this type of trade.

“Today NFTs are still a niche market. We, on the contrary, are a very popular industry. The idea is to achieve an encounter between the two universes in the best possible way, ”Nicolas Pouard, vice president of Ubisoft’s strategic innovation laboratory, told AFP.

And Ubisoft is not alone in this endeavor. Its US competitor Electronic Arts (creator of “Les Sims” and “Fifa”) announced that it will launch in this race and the maker of mobile games Voodoo plans to invest 200 million dollars in studies aimed at blockchains that allow the NFT authentication.

“Play to win”

The “Play to Win” model, how the fictions “Axie Infinity” and “Sorare” work, allows participants to get hold of cryptocurrencies and NFT and is experiencing an unprecedented boom.

Imagine how many years we played for nothing. Today you can use two hours a day to play an extraordinary game and you can earn an additional source of income, ”explained Franklin Ovalles, an American in his early 40s who is an NFT collector.

However, the entire industry is not on the same page.

“I think there is a lot of speculation and experimentation at this time and that some of the creations that I see seek more profit than leisure“Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft’s Xbox games division, told the US portal Axios in mid-November.

Ubisoft’s first foray into this field allowed it to place 2,000 digital assets in half an hour, while the development of crypto-goods, the category of virtual objects to which NFTs and bitcoins belong, seems to have no limits.

For Pascal Gauthier, director of Ledger, a platform of secure wallets that allows to save these assets, in the coming years, this could attract a billion or more people.

But, currently the market has a minority of investors and is not without risks.

“Only 28.5% of the NFTs bought during their creation and sold later on a platform generate profits”said the specialized consultancy Chainalysis.

A leap to literature?

“As long as interest rates remain low and money is almost free, people are going to continue taking risks in the NFT universe. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the more speculative NTFs lost most of their value within a few weeks, ”warned Jonathan Teplitsky, head of an agency specializing in NFT.

This, however, does not discourage some sectors of the culture market.

The French startup Edith & Nous, which manages the relationship between authors and publishers, and ensures the submission of manuscripts thanks to digital blockchains, aspires to launch NFT in the literary and publishing domain.

“This constitutes immense potential,” explained Valentin Vauchelles, CEO of this company, also citing a source of “pre-financing for aspiring authors.” (I)