Best NFT Games And The Complete Guide﹣ Top 5 in 2022

Reports have it that NFT gaming platforms often have over 150 million active monthly users - and this number only seems to improve with time. This indicates a trend that NFT games are to be the new sought-after gaming experience, and the sooner that you understand what this movement is all about, the more you can reap early adopter benefits.

In this article, we’ll help you understand NFT games meaning – from what it is, to how it is different than your traditional games, and to top it off, we’ll give you a list of the currently popular gaming NFT  for you to try out.

NFT games meaning? 

To put it simply, NFT games are games where the players get rewarded with non-fungible tokens when they play them. Each object/item in these games can be obtained in-game, traded on exchanges, and converted to fiat. The value of each object depends on how important it is in the game, and also how scarce it is. 

NFT games are often built with white-label game NFT marketplaces in mind where all the in-game NFTs are traded. 

🔎 For instance, Idle Mystic is a Polygon NFT game, while Black Eye Galaxy is a BSC NFT game. 

How do NFT games work?

Fundamentally, an NFT game is built with NFTs at its core, which means that all in-game transactions, in-game items, and player interactions are made to work seamlessly with NFTs. 

🔎 By playing a popular play-to-earn game such as Axie Infinity, for example, you can earn collectibles similar to pokemon, and depending on the rarity, you can earn a great sum of money if you happen to get a rare collectible.

Risks associated with play to earn games 

1. It takes away the fun

Beyond anything else, the core reason behind gaming is to have fun. People play games to relax and bond with friends. However, the concept of play-to-earn is not on-par with this fundamental tenet. 

The idea of play-to-earn sounds more like a job where people only participate for the sake of one end goal: money. In other words, such people would have distorted psychology toward gaming. 

🔎 For example, millions of people in Argentina, Venezuela, and the Philippines are taking play-to-earn NFT games as their full-time careers. When some of them were interviewed, they confirmed that their primary reason for engaging in NFT games is because of money. 

Against this backdrop, NFT games might not be recommended for a first-time gamer who want to explore and enjoy the games.

2. The relevance lasts as long as the hype

 The NFT gaming industry strives on the usual law of demand and supply; the more players, the higher the prices of NFTs. 

CryptoKitties was one of the pioneering play to earn games which has been as far back as 2017. It operates in such a way that the players can breed and trade virtual cats. 

As of 2017, these virtual cats were traded as NFT cards for thousands of dollars. By the end of that year, TechCrunch reported that people had spent more than $1 million on virtual cats. 

In early 2018, the hype was still in the air and each Cryptokitties had a floor price of $140k. 2019 was the year most NFT gamers were having issues with Cryptokitties and they left the game en masse. This made the trading price of these NFTs drop to as low as $65.

Who could have imagined that an NFT game that caused traffic on the Ethereum blockchain could decline so fast within 3 years of launch? If this can happen to the almighty Cryptokitties NFT game, what makes other upcoming NFT games safer? 

Bearing in mind that history tends to repeat itself, everyone who wants to engage in play-to-earn NFT games must be aware that the value of these NFTs is tied to how well the game is reigning. 

Once the game is declining in users, there will be less liquidity and the value of the NFTs will decline - or even crash as it happened to some. 

3. Rug-pulls

The NFT space as a whole has received a lot of censorship from regulators. This was due to many NFTs projects or communities that have swindled their members. 

Although these rug-pulls are not yet rampant in the NFT gaming ecosystem, they are possible bearing in mind the surge in the number of NFT gamers globally. 

Squid Game Token, for instance, was a project that was premised on the popular movie called Squid Game. Due to the hype that the movie has garnered, some launched a token for it. 

SQUID token made a bullish move that was up to 230,000%. Surprisingly, the developers took away the liquidity, and the project was dumped to zero. While this happens in DeFi, some gamers fear the same thing is possible to happen in play-to-earn NFT games as well. 
In a similar occurrence, the Co-founder of Pudgy Penguin—an Ethereum-based NFT collection—was announced to have looted the treasury and the project stands a chance of being illiquid. 

4. Environmental issues affected by NFT games

Some environmentalists are not in agreement with the concept of play-to-earn NFT games. They underscored that the process of minting each NFT is consuming power and contributing to the carbon emissions by the blockchain. Thus, they argued that NFT games are not worth the climatic hazards they'd cause. 

At further scrutiny, however, some have rebutted that the Ethereum blockchain is a network that is not eco-friendly. They noted that networks like Solana, Algorand, and Polygon don't release excessively harmful carbon. 

With this development, even a good number of environmentally-inclined people have deemed it fit to play Polygon NFT games and BSC NFT games. 

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Best NFT Games in 2022 ﹣Top 5

Chances are you would want to try out some gaming NFTs to get a better idea of what’s in it for you. 

In the list below, we’ll show you currently popular NFT games that allow you to earn money when playing:

1. Splinterlands

Inspired by Heartstone and Magic the Gathering, Splinterlands is arguably one of the hottest NFT games right now. The game was released back in 2018 and has built for itself a massive userbase with a busy game marketplace where users can buy, sell, and trade cards for cryptocurrencies. If you’re just starting out, you don’t even have to worry about not having enough money to buy cards as you can get cards just by playing the game.
 

2. Axie Infinity

If you have played Pokemon, you would love Axie Infinity because of just how addicting it is to collect ‘Axies’ and train them to fight other players. In this game, your pets are the NFTs and you can sell them to other players for profits, and if you perform well, your collection will keep on benefiting from your growing pets. The game even introduces ‘breeding’ between Axies, so there are even more ways for you to get better Axies and sell them for profits.

3. Gods Unchained

Similar to Splinterlands, Gods Unchained is also a play-to-earn NFT trading card game with a focus on building the best deck possible to win against your opponents. However, compared to Splinterlands, the game feels a bit repetitive due to the lackluster number of game modes.

4. Neon District

Neon District is a free, play to earn game with a cyberpunk theme and role-playing gameplay. It’s similar to other card games in the sense that cards are also essential in this game in order to provide more advantages and tactics for your characters. To play the game, you’ll need to earn NEON which can be obtained while playing the Neon Pizza mode – which is a mode that lets you deliver pizza for money.

5. Alien Worlds

With over 1.1 million users, Alien World is the most popular gaming NFT on our list and it’s for a good reason. In Alien Worlds, you play as a miner exploring the vast space and collecting Trillium in the process. When first getting started, you’ll be provided with three mining tools and a skill tree to grow your mining skills.
 

Will NFT games exist in the future?

At this juncture, it is worth mentioning that NFT games are currently in their nascent stages. Therefore, their developments cannot be perfect overnight. It will be a gradual process.

Fortunately, some NFT games have been growing beyond the risks listed above by building a more robust platform that is appealing to both gamers and investors. 

A perfect example is Star Atlas. Star Atlas is an NFT game where the players can build cities and manage economies. The platform is building structures to make NFT gaming more fun, scalable, compliant, and eco-friendly because it's built on Solana.

The advent of Star Atlas makes it clear that game publishers are developing more games that are scalable and tend to be more acceptable. Premising on these developments, NFT games would actually be the future of gaming. 
 

Creating your own NFT game marketplace  

As NFT gaming is gaining more popular adoption, NFT gaming projects would need a marketplace to sell their NFTs to the players. However, coding an NFT marketplace from scratch can be too time-consuming or cost-draining. This is the reason every NFT game publishers need NFTify - a platform where they can build stores for their NFT games.

With NFTify, you can easily design and customize your NFT game store in a way that suits your brand identity.

📌 Open your own NFT Game Marketplace with NFTify: http://nftify.network/

NFT gaming FAQs

1. How do NFT games work? 

The central concept behind NFT games is the monetization of in-game assets. In NFT games, in-game assets are NFTs that can be bought and traded on secondary NFT marketplaces.

2. Why are NFT games so popular?

Much of it comes down to the possibility of earning money while playing. While this can also be the case for non-NFT games, NFT games yield way better rewards and profits for their players. 

3. How do you get started in the NFT gaming space as a player? 
To get started in the NFT gaming space, you’ll need to follow the following three steps: getting a crypto wallet, buying cryptocurrencies, and picking a game to start investing in.

4. Do I need a crypto wallet to play NFT games?
In most NFT games, a crypto wallet is essential as it’s also where you store all your NFTs and in-game tokens.