In recent years, the Play to Earn gaming concept has grown in popularity, with more and more games embracing this strategy. Everyone wants to know how to develop an NFT game. The NFT gaming market has risen rapidly, and it had a reach of $3200 million in 2022. This expansion is projected to continue in the future years since NFT gaming offers several benefits to both gamers and creators.
NFT gaming allows users to earn real-world incentives for their games, which may be used to buy in-game items or exchanged on external markets. This increases the feeling of ownership and involvement in the game while also improving its replay value.
What Is NFT Game?
Despite its popularity, many people are unaware of the importance of NFT game creation. This sort of game is a fusion and mixture of any traditional game as well as high-tech. NFTs are built on blockchain technology, which ensures their operation and ownership. As has been the case in recent years, ignoring it in 2023 will be unavoidable.
Non-fungible tokens are just digital assets or cash that have been enhanced by blockchain technology. NFT lets players create one-of-a-kind game assets and make money by selling them. And, in this case, blockchain enables excellent security and dependability for NFT play-to-earn games.
Checklist for NFT Game Development
While you’re setting out to make an NFT game, there are a few things you should keep in mind. Here is a checklist to ensure you don’t forget anything!
Game Concept
Creating a unique and appealing game concept is just the beginning. To turn into a strong game that shakes up the gaming world, a clear vision and unwavering execution are required. A game concept includes creative ideas, market research, competition analysis, estimated production time, business strategy, game art, and other information. One straightforward approach to NFT game production is to identify the kind of games people like playing. Science fiction, adventure, battles, shooters, sandbox, an online multiplayer war arena, real-time strategy, or party games?
Once you’ve determined the genre and concept, it’s simple to answer the difficult questions –
- Who is your target audience?
- What will the game’s features and mechanics be?
- What will the game size be?
- What will the revenue model be?
- What is the plot?
- Your game development team’s size
Stack for Development
The most popular game development engines among game developers are Unity, Unreal Engine, and AppGameKit. These game engines include 2D and 3D interfaces, tools, and APIs that allow for the creation of amazing p2e NFT games.
To create an NFT game, the tech stack must authenticate players, be blockchain-based (such as Ethereum, Solana, and Cardano), offer enticing in-game assets, link to a smart wallet, and produce smart contracts. Once your game has been developed, you will need to launch it on NFT markets like as Binance, Rarible, OpenSea, and others.
A team of developers who understand what is expected of them is required for game development. To enhance the gameplay, the development team needs to know which platforms the game will be launched on.
Also, be sure to explicitly characterise your game’s audience so that developers know how sophisticated the game mechanics should be.
Cryptocurrency Wallet
A virtual or physical wallet may be used for routine money transactions, but cryptocurrencies are stored on the blockchain network. The next stage is to develop crypto gaming wallets that allow players to store digital money, utilise it to purchase in-game items, and exchange NFTs. Crypto wallets operate on various hardware and software and need a greater level of security. Before choosing a cryptocurrency, do your research and learn about the suggested apps for your in-game crypto wallet. Among the greatest crypto wallets are Metamask, AlphaWallet, and Ronin Wallet. Again, make sure your NFT wallet has strong security, cross-platform interoperability, and blockchain support.
Smart Contracts
As previously stated, smart contracts are maintained on the blockchain, which contains information on asset transactions when preset criteria are met. Users may get access to their NFTs by entering their crypto wallet address. Smart contracts are digital assets that are automated and safe for both buyers and sellers. They are a time-saving agreement method that is very secure and does not involve any other parties.
Smart contracts provide the following benefits to every crypto asset transaction:
Transparency – both sellers and buyers, can read and view the contract
Verification – the copy of the contract is conveyed on the blockchain ledger to many node computers to be validated publicly before any transaction
Non-changeable – once the contract is created, it is practically unalterable due to the thousands of copies produced on the blockchain
Game Development
The way you include art into your NFT game concept has a significant influence on its success. The characters, environment, props, features, and other components must be designed in the next phase of NFT game production. Plan ahead of time; you must know the solution to any detail your game designer may throw at you.
For an extended UI/UX design, you may need to enlist seasoned designers at the game design stage. In retrospect, a skilled game designer would structure the plot, rules, incentives, and objectives for the best market fit while keeping user expectations in mind. They also have a good idea of who the target audience is. What is their age group and demography in order to create user-friendly characters? Experienced game designers have planned design approaches to finish the art on time and under budget. Put asset design, theme selection, and template allocation in place to accommodate blockchain components, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs.
Cost of Developing an NFT Game
How should the potential cost of NFT game creation be calculated? For that, we propose the following approach, so that when you hear ‘it depends,’ you know what it specifically relies on:
- Type of game
- Number of platforms
- The complexity and length of the NFT gaming project
- Composition and size of the team
The Primary Costs of NFTs
The following are the expenses connected with developing an NFT game:
Costs of creation – These are the expenses incurred in creating, developing, and producing the game. Everything from artwork through programming and audio production is included.
Minting expenses – To mint an NFT, specific equipment is required, which is not cheap (although not as much as it would be if you were using traditional methods).
Development costs include any costs associated with purchasing licences or employing programmers/designers, as well as travel expenditures for visiting studios where these professionals work (which can be expensive).
Every organisation has its own costs and teams with varying FTEs of varying seniority levels. Creating a P2E game that takes about 1,000 hours costs between $57k and $114k. This is heavily influenced by factors in the game production pipeline that affect the ultimate cost.
So, in the beginning, one should estimate the total months or weeks of work, as well as the number of individuals involved in the project.
Why Do Certain NFT Games Cost More than Others?
A few things may influence the price of an NFT game. The first is the number of assets to be developed, which is determined by the number of various aspects you want to include in your game and the number of characters or things you have in mind for each.
The second factor is complexity: if your project needs more developers or languages than typical, it will almost certainly be more costly. Third, platform selection factors into this equation—games distributed on mobile devices often have smaller costs since building applications like this requires less overhead (and therefore less money spent on development).