Remember all the buzz about NFT opportunities? They were undoubtedly one of the biggest crypto trends, filled with the promise of revolutionising the creative economy, from visual and musical artists to games developers and interactive designers. Then after all the initial hype and excitement, the bubble burst.
According to the CoinMarketCap website, the NFT market peaked at $17 billion USD ($25.86 billion AUD) volume in January 2022, before utterly tanking by 97% in September of the same year. Reasons included ethical concerns related to climate change, due to the power consumption to validate transactions, while doubts emerged about the quality and originality of NFTs. Furthermore, overall crypto market experienced a significant downturn in 2022.
Nevertheless, while it also suffered because of the market conditions, the nascent Web3 gaming sector appears to be finally rising back to prominence, and this is most notable in Australia. The country is already a widely recognised hub for gaming technology innovation and creativity, and within the transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 and blockchain, companies located Down Under are already taking advantage of their pioneering status.
Blockchain adoption in iGaming
Although the underlying technology of Web3 gaming may seem like a relatively new frontier, blockchain already underpins how many of the best real money pokies casinos function, whenever we look at TopAustraliaGambling site reviews. The iGaming industry was quick to adopt the many benefits that blockchain provides, quickly deploying the technology.
This includes the ability to accept cryptocurrencies for deposits and withdrawals, using smart contracts to execute and control transactions, plus the safety and security that encryption provides to users and operators alike. These are all important considerations for licensed and legitimate casino sites.
Behind the entertainment and variety provided by pokies, casino sites deploy blockchain technologies to increase fairness and transparency of the spinning reels. Immutable ledgers provide systems that are immune to tampering or corruption, ensuring that games can’t be altered or manipulated.
Now the great thing about this kind of adoption, there’s already a solid base of knowledge and understanding among games developers, particularly in Australia, which is leading the way in designing and deploying Web3 gaming platforms. Likewise, many iGaming developers also produce games and software for the mainstream games industry.
Aiming to take Web3 gaming mainstream
Despite many having had their fingers burned by the NFT market drop, this also provided an ideal opportunity for investors to reevaluate the ecosystem surrounding Web3 gaming. While the pace of growth slowed in 2022, according to Game7 studies, there has been a significant upturn in blockchain networks targeting the gaming industry.
And these reports also highlight further interesting data points. Right now, Unity and Unreal Engine dominate Web3 PC game development, and while the majority of Web3 games use the blockchain for the tokenisation of in-game assets, game states and logic are mostly maintained off-chain. Insofar as the biggest digital storefronts are concerned, the Epic Games Store has taken the biggest strides towards increasingly listing Web3 game titles.
Focusing on the overall ecosystem, the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region is home to the most Web3 game development studios and teams, many of which are located in Australia. This is notable because Immutable is one of the biggest and most successful, based in Sydney, New South Wales. They have risen to become the most popular L2 gaming ecosystem, even becoming the preferred developer platform for building and scaling Web3 games on Ethereum.
But aside from the success achieved by Immutable thus far, they are surrounded by a flourishing hub of smaller and equally ambitious development companies in Australia, indicating this country can also provide the bridge between Asia and the Western markets. The latter continues to lag behind, yet with some Aussie ingenuity and experience, mainstream Web3 gaming on blockchains will gradually become globally mainstream.