At GDC 2022, WeMade Choi Seo-sil gave a keynote speech about NFT’s previous, current, and future trends.

1. The previous trend

Choi started her keynote speech by breaking down the concept of NFTs to their building parts, particularly the NF part of it, i.e. "non-fungible". Each NFT has a unique, identifiable form, and nothing can be added or subtracted from it. 

In the early NFT games, people focused on NFT’s inalterability. Gamers were able to buy NFTs through the NFT market and they could use them in games, breed new NFTs, farm them, or resell them for profit. 

Examples of early NFT games are CryptoKitties and Axie Infinity. In CryptoKitties, gamers could use kitty NFTs to create kitties of a new generation. In Axie Infinity, gamers could form teams with their Axies, fight with them, and earn tokens as rewards. In these games, gamers needed to have NFTs to start.

2. The current trend

The recent trend is a bit different. Newer NFT-related games focused on the word “token” rather than NFT’s non-fungibility. In the blockchain economy, the word token has several meanings, but the important part is that these tokens are\ verified, movable, and tradable assets.

Therefore, recent NFT games do not force gamers to own NFTs. Whether or not they own NFTs, they can still play the game, and it is possible for them to earn new NFTs or trade key elements to create them. This opens some new possibilities.

NFT markets exist as a separate platform from games. This makes it easier to cash in unique assets like game items or characters. Market users can choose to purchase NFTs in advance before they start the game or not. As a result, the NFT market can get more active and this motivates all games and gamers that share the same blockchain system.

3. The next trend

The next trend is expected to combine the key characteristics from the earlier and later trends. The NFT derived from one game can be used in another, allowing NFTs to be "multi-used". Items from MMORPG games can be gathered to convert to NFTs and they can be used in racing games to purchase a new car, for example.

This is already possible in Mir4 and Mirage. Mirage is affiliated with Mir4’s economy, even though they’re separate games. In this case, gamers can stake NFTs to earn more resources or compete with other users.

Another way to utilize NFTs is to converge them with DeFi [Decentralized Finance — Ed.]. NFTs have diverse forms, but they’re still “tokens” that are used in the blockchain economy system, so they have the same properties as general tokens. This means that they can be utilized with DeFi, which is a financial service using cryptocurrency.

This article is part of coverage sponsored by WeMade.