Key Points
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In less than a year, NFT games are poised to approach the popularity of PC games.
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Compared with traditional PC titles, only 10 PC games outpace the top NFT editions in active users.
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Blockchain games raised $2.5 billion in Q1 2022 and are on track to reach $10 billion this year, versus $4 billion raised in 2021.
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Although gaming token prices have plunged along with broader markets, user growth and investment have been substantial.
As NFTs wobble and markets enter full risk‑off mode, I dug into the statistics for a sector I consider one of the most compelling practical use cases for this technology: gaming. Many NFTs are clearly overpriced and driven by speculative mania, but the combination of gaming and NFTs feels like a natural evolution. Players invest huge amounts of time and real money into games and in‑game items, so establishing on‑chain ownership and a persistent history makes sense.
How do the numbers for NFT gaming adoption compare with conventional gaming, and do they offer a more positive picture than the dramatic token price drops suggest?
Annual Growth
Growth in active users over the past year has been dramatic for NFT games. A report from DappRadar calculated blockchain gaming growth at roughly 2,000% since Q1 of the previous year.
In Q1 2022 alone, blockchain games and related metaverse projects attracted $2.5 billion in funding. That figure predates the market decline that followed, yet it is still impressive: the entire year of 2021 saw $4 billion raised while the bull market was in full swing. At that pace, gaming and metaverse projects are on course to raise around $10 billion in 2022. Even a highly conservative 60% reduction in projected funding would still leave totals above 2021’s level.
NFT Gaming Users
Funding is strong, and user numbers are too. The chart below of the top 10 NFT games confirms the sector’s rising popularity, showing more unique monthly users across leading titles.
To put these figures in context, a useful benchmark is PC gaming. The next chart shows the top 10 most-played PC games on Steam, displaying the average number of concurrent players over the past 30 days (rather than total unique monthly users, which the NFT chart uses).
Assuming roughly 5% of a game’s active players are online simultaneously, the following comparison maps NFT games (in blue) against the most popular PC titles (in orange).
The comparison shows that while NFT games have not yet overtaken PC games, they are closing the gap quickly. Only the top 10 PC games draw more users than the leading NFT game, Alien Worlds, and the margin is small—around a thousand users.
Despite impressive user growth, many still label these games as fads because crypto markets have declined sharply. The chart below for two of the largest tokens—Alien Worlds and Axie Infinity—illustrates how precipitous the fall was after last year’s explosive run.
But if we look past token prices—which are heavily influenced by speculation—and focus on user growth and the investment flowing into these platforms, the outlook remains promising. The underlying technology is tangible and disruptive, even amid a bearish market. Reaching the cusp of the top 10 PC games is a notable achievement for such an emerging space.
Whether the associated tokens represent good investments at current prices is a separate discussion for another time.
Sources
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1266486/blockchain-games-user-number/