The human quest for entertainment brought about different forms of sports and games. Considering the long history of hunting and organizing games showcasing physical skills, video games can be considered a recent addition to this bouquet of thrilling entertainment humans have added.

History Of Cosmetic Skins In Gaming

For a long time in the short history of video games, the player’s identity was confined to what the game provided by default. The entry of video game skins starting with Sonic Adventure 2 in 2001, changed the visual perception of gaming forever. Gamers began to crave an identity for themselves in the virtual gaming world as much as they enjoyed it in the real world.

The entry of such skins paved the way for microtransactions in video games, which had a decade’s head start before video game skins with Double Dragon 3 in 1990.

As game graphics improved, fashion also began to make inroads into gaming. Although game fashion and attire have come under heavy fire of criticism, it cannot be denied that fashion and clothing became an integral part of the gaming character you played. It was so intense that certain types of clothing started to become associated with a particular game, an example of which is Assassin’s Creed. 

How Big Is The Gaming Skins Market Today?!

More than the game itself, people started to value the game’s cosmetic elements for the right reasons. It is interesting to note that among the gamers who were aware of in-game cosmetics, 81% of them would trade skins for real-world money. 70% of those interested in such trading confessed that they are more likely to spend on such game cosmetic items if they had any monetary value outside the game. While beauty might not even be skin deep in the world of gaming, a staggering 43% of the players claim that they use skins to change the appearances of the character in the game.

Juniper Research expects gaming skins to generate about $50 billion by the end of this year. This is a massive growth from the value, which was just under $30 billion in 2018.

It is quite evident that people care for their identity in the game, even if they are virtual characters. The likelihood of people spending on cosmetic assets in the game, even if it costs real money, is on the rise. The introduction of value for such cosmetic assets in the game is likely to take an exponential spike if real-world monetary values for tradeability were introduced.

The Downside Of Using Gaming Skins

Unfortunately, a lot of games have a limited shelf-life and the validity of the game skin as either a cosmetic asset or a power-bestowing entity is limited to the game itself. The gaming company, might at times, also decide to bring down the powers of certain characters and skins in the game.

While some people have the courage to create an entirely new blockchain because the game developers nerfed a World of Warcraft character (yes! We’re talking about Ethereum and Vitalik), most of them might not welcome the idea.

The life of the game skin and its validity as an asset is confined to the game itself. This would mean that the moment the game developers or the game company decide to pull the plug on the game, all the money that you spent in developing the cosmetic aspects of your character in the game goes down the drain.

While some hard-core gamers do not mind spending money on such assets with limited validity, most of them refrain from spending money on game cosmetics like skins and fashion only because it is not of any value outside the game ecosystem.

Enter NFTs

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have transformed the world of gaming forever. By incorporating the benefits of the decentralized ledger technology, the gaming assets can now have an established validity even outside the game.

These assets can be sold on the marketplace and traded for real money. This might not have been otherwise possible. In addition, the convergence of NFTs and gaming has led to the creation of gaming metaverses.

The gaming metaverse, along with NFTs, makes a deadly combination. On the one hand, multiple games can be integrated into a single metaverse, making the gaming asset live for a long time, theoretically, forever! In the metaverse, every player has their own unique character/avatar. These avatars can have skins that either give them a distinct visual signature or grant them certain powers in the game. 

The metaverse and the NFTs represent the current pinnacle in gaming. They converge tradeability, visual distinctness, and validity of the game assets outside the game itself. The introduction of NFTs has spawned a new genre of gaming called play-to-earn gaming, abbreviated P2E.

The prize systems in blockchain games ensure that the gamers’ time, effort, and skills are proportionally rewarded. The rewards have been so intense that in certain countries like the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia, people consider gaming a full-time profession and source of livelihood.

Gaming As An Alternate Universe – The Jump.trade Way!

The number of attempts to create games that people are already familiar with has been quite scanty in the blockchain/NFT/P2E space. Most games involving NFTs are about creatures, breeding, and sometimes, duels. 

GuardianLink, in its endeavor to make NFTs available for everyone, launched the world’s first-ever P2E cricket NFT game on its flagship NFT marketplace Jump.trade. Cricket, as you may have known, is the second most popular game on the planet after football/soccer. 

Today the game Meta Cricket League launched on Jump.trade stands as a strong case study for how the metaverse world would perceive its heroes differently than the real world, especially when it comes to games. Let us take the NFT bats, for example.

The Meta Cricket League game has multiple NFT bats, some signed by legendary cricketers and some by special entities.

People who have watched cricket during the 1990s and 2000s would recall the healthy rivalry between the master blaster Sachin Tendulkar and the king of length bowling, Glenn McGrath. The Meta Cricket League has a bat signed by both these legends, and the bat was sold for a staggering $1101.

Surprisingly, an Alien DNA signed Immortal MCL Bat, which did not have any signatures of such legends, was sold for an unbelievable $12,000. This proves that an alien in the metaverse is more powerful and popular than a legend like Sachin Tendulkar himself! As an extrapolation, we can also infer from this that users have started to explore the possibility of creating their own brands and new-age heroes in the metaverse. This gives a fresh and lucrative alternative to the existing ecosystem of brands, celebrity endorsements, and intellectual property-related aspects. 

To End The Innings

Games have started to evolve! They are no longer just the activities of entertainment they used to be. They are a symbol of pride and a source of income. Perhaps this transformation triggered people to have distinct identities even in the gaming world.

The NFTs and the metaverse make it possible for them to have distinct identities because of gaming fashions and skins.

This is just the beginning of a new era in the world of gaming. Let us see how far this will go and how lucrative this will get!!