Report Says 56% Of Gamers Aware Of NFTs Prefer Earning Them In Games

A study from market research firm, Interpret, polled 1,500 console and PC gamers found that 56% of them are interested in earning NFTs through gaming. That isn’t to say that many gamers don’t remain concerned that publishers will use NFTs to nickel and dime them through NFT transactions rather than make fun games that games will happily pay for. Gamers are evidently concerned about scams, money laundering, environment effects, and over-monetization — whether those things are accurate or not when it comes to the practices of individual NFT game companies, which have raised a lot of money.

Interpret received answers to its survey from 1,502 players. Those players were drawn from a group of 24,160 players. Interpret asked the broader group if they had heard of NFTs, and then it received more than 5,000 positive responses. It asked those players (who were incentivized to respond) if they were willing to earn NFTs in games. The survey ran from December 10th to December 17th, 2021. The panel represents Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, mobile, and PC players “who are interested, are not interested, have previously owned, or currently own an NFT or cryptocurrency.” And 56% said they are interested.

Interpret also said that NFTs could play a major role in retention (of critical importance to live-service games), as over 45% indicated that being able to earn NFTs through gaming would increase their current engagement levels with games. Additionally, over 53% indicated that earning NFTs is the primary driver, compared to being able to sell/trade NFTs, and the idea of building an NFT collection.

The Interpret report has its limitations. Interpret did not collect qualitative comments from gamers about why they liked or didn’t like NFTs. Jesse Divnich, Senior Vice President at Interpret, compared the sentiment around “play-to-earn” NFT games, where players can own their NFTs and resell them to others (criticized as ponzi schemes by opponents) to the origins of free-to-play (F2P) mobile games a decade ago. F2P games were greeted with derision by those who didn’t want to pay microtransaction fees for scammy items. But eventually, F2P games became the bulk of the game industry’s revenues, Divnich said. Of course, it is quite possible that players who engage in F2P purchases don’t really like them and remain resentful of the business model.

All of the new business models — like F2P, downloadable content, subscriptions, battle passes or season passes, and full digital downloads — went through murky periods when games resisted them. Gamers were split about these at the time, but eventually they adopted them. Divnich thinks NFTs represent a new discovery, or new way of doing business, and he sees why some are embracing it. But he also expects it will take five to ten years to filter through the whole industry.

(All information was provided by VentureBeat)

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