Metaverse Gaming Is Way Bigger Than You Think

How the Gaming Industry is Booming over Hollywood…

In 2021, the Global Gaming Market had a whopping $180 billion in revenue and the gaming industry’s worth has increased from $8 billion in 2006 to $160 billion in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has damaged entertainment industries such as Hollywood, while the gaming industry has massively benefited with an almost 30% growth. 

In terms of reach, the gaming industry has already surpassed some of the top-earning entertainment industries. Many gamers stay with the tried and true route of console gaming, but as the gaming industry moves forward with metaverse/crypto gaming, online gaming has stepped into the future with crypto gaming platforms like Axie Infinity, Sandbox, and the upcoming Viking Cyborg MetaVerse of Velhalla. 

HOW BIG IS THE GAMING INDUSTRY?

In 2020, there were 2.69 billion gamers worldwide. Games have become a billion-dollar business and have been for many years. In 2020, the revenue for the worldwide PC gaming market was estimated at almost $37 billion U.S. dollars, while the mobile gaming market generated an estimated income of over $77 billion U.S. dollars. 

The global gaming market is said to potentially reach $256.97 billion by 2025. Due to nationwide lockdowns implemented because of the COVID-19 pandemic, some people turned to game platforms to pass the time. Recently, video gaming trends experienced a massive surge in players and revenue. According to stats on the video game industry revenue by year, the market is forecast to grow at a rate of 2.29% annually from 2020 to 2024. 

In 2016, Clash of Clans had an estimated 55 million active players. After 9 years on the market, Clash of Clans still makes a minimum of $1 million in daily player spending.

The franchise generated $722 million in revenue in 2019, a 27 percent increase year-on-year and its first increase since 2014. In 2021, they generated over $1.1 billion in revenue, showing the massive potential that the online gaming industry holds. Although Clash of Clans may not yet be part of the crypto space, a similar game play model will be used in  Velhalla’s game play, lending validity to the potential success that the Velhalla metaverse could be a part of.

WHAT IS THE POTENTIAL OF MELDING CRYPTO AND THE GAMING INDUSTRY? 

With many people all around the world becoming more involved with crypto and NFTs, it was just a matter of time before the gaming industry would filter in. Now, gamers and developers can leverage blockchain technology to construct resource-rich games and apps, as well as upgrade game versions and earn awards through blockchain gaming mining procedures…a strategy that Velhalla has already begun to utilize by offering upgrades to the NFT lands that players have purchased for use in the upcoming game. 

With many potential Velhalla players all around the world, the use of cryptocurrency can also allow gamers to play internationally without any security and exchange rate issues and will give players complete control over the digital assets they earn through their participation in the game.

Blockchain technology could potentially solve several related problems: eliminating fraudulent items, creating scarcity, and incentivizing more purchases by making items transferable across games…a trait that Velhalla holds in the tradability of their NFTs across multiple DeFi platforms.

HOW BIG IS GAMEFI (CRYPTO GAMING)?

Crypto games are now transforming the gaming market by letting players earn while playing. As more gamers accept crypto, gaming companies have a vast market opportunity to reach crypto gamers worldwide. New research finds that more than 70% of gaming developers would consider weaving blockchain tech, cryptos, and non-fungible token (NFT) rewards into future games.

The play-to earn baseline for Velhalla fits into this market perfectly by allowing players to collect valuable NFTs and play to earn in-game tokens that could potentially transform into profit. Many crypto based games that are similar to Velhalla have seen a massive amount of success in the GameFi industry with the integration of in-game earning:

Axie Infinity

This trade-and-battle, play-to-earn game is based on “Axies”  which are Ethereum-minted NFTs that players can collect, breed, generated $364 million in revenue in August 2021 alone. That’s up 85 percent from its’ July numbers during which the company generated $196 million

Sandbox

This blockchain-based game lets users build, craft and survive in its blocky metaverse and has raised around $95 million in funding.

Decentraland

A virtual reality platform that allows players to construct their own 3D world, buying land and developing it into whatever they want within the platform. Their market cap is worth between 800 million and 1.4 billion U.S. dollars.

The Unbanked Horde is Coming to Gaming

Currently, many people in the world are unbanked which can present a problem for those who wish to join the online gaming community. According to the World Bank’s latest report as of 2021,  nearly 1.7 billion people are unbanked globally. Morocco, Vietnam, Egypt, Philippines and Mexico top the list of the most unbanked countries in the world with more than 60% of their population not holding their funds within a banking institution. With the rise of crypto gaming, the access to online gaming becomes much easier and can draw in a much larger audience by only requiring a mobile phone and a crypto wallet address. 

In the online gaming world, NFT based crypto games have become the next major step in the evolution of online gaming which puts ScarQuest in a perfect place to become the main stage for crypto and the gaming industry to combine. The growth of the GameFi space within the past decade has shown that the future of the gaming industry lies within MetaVerse/crypto gaming. So far, we have seen just a glimpse of the limitless possibilities of what play-to-earn gaming could become.