What if I can make money playing video games? It’s a popular question that many gaming enthusiasts dream of. Unsurprisingly, it is a viable thought since the current gaming industry sits at a whopping $91.5 billion revenue in 2015 alone.
This gave way to many video game related niches such as the YouTube Let’s Play videos which Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg was best known for. Essentially, it’s a compilation of YouTube videos where gamers record themselves while playing games. YouTubers earn revenue through the monetization of their videos and Patreon donations of their loyal subscribers.
PewDiePie's videos has a total YouTube view of more than 15.3 billion. His comical reactions while playing games won the hearts of many.
A more direct way of earning money is by “Farming Gold”. This method involves meticulously playing massive multiplayer online games and trying to earn as much in-game gold as possible. This however, is highly frowned upon by game developers and usually leads to them banning the account of the gold farmer. Despite this, the underground market for digital gold is thriving.
Despite heavy sanctions by Blizzard, World of Warcraft's gold remain as one of the most lucrative commodities in digital exchanges.
There are however, a few online games that allows players to cash out their in-game currency into real money. One such game is Entropia Universe which has a fixed rate of 10 PED (its game currency) is equal to $1. This 14-year old game was so lucrative that it held the Guinness Book of Record for the most expensive virtual object ever sold which was “Club Neverdie”, an asteroid space resort which was bought for $635,000 in 2010. Other games that fall into this category includes Diablo 3 (before the real-money auction house was removed), Second Life and more.
In 2007, a teenager named Andre Pires made $3,000 a week selling 'virtual beds'
In this regard, Mine that Digi, the private Minecraft server that Digibyte is relaunching soon, has huge potential in terms of becoming a very popular game. For one, Minecraft is a highly fun and addicting game on its own which was the reason why it was hailed as the second best selling video game of all time. And if Minecraft players caught wind that Mine that Digi allows them to take out the in-game currency into real cash, it will probably gain significant attention and player base. Earning cash while having fun is a great incentive for both new and veteran players.
The success of this project also relies heavily on the developers themselves. In order to keep the game engaging and entertaining, they have to provide regular content updates as well as fixing bugs and errors reported by the player base as the game progresses. If they can provide that kind of support, then we might be heading to a significant milestone where the cryptocurrency and gaming industry merges.