How Would Fortnite Become An NFT Game?
Fortnite is one of the largest games in the world with over 25 million active players each day. But What would happen if it became a NFT game with it's own metaverse? How could it work to turn Fortnite into a play to earn game on blockchain technology? Let's theory craft together and see how it could work... (intro vid).
Blockchain, NFT and play to earn gaming technology is still in it's infancy stages but has seen tremendous early adoption from many gamers and investors in 2021. Many gamers outside of the crypto world actually hate NFT gaming seeing the headlines of scams, poorly designed games, and the negative impact that NFTs have on the environment from one of the most popular blockchains Etherum.
However before you dismiss the video and idea completely, think about being able to play Fortnite and selling off your hard earned skins, items and Vbucks from your battle pass. A lot of people already play fortnite for hours each day. Imagine turning taking that time spent playing fortnite each month and being able to cash out $250 of rewards each month to buy other videos games, pay off your bills, or buy other items in Fortnite you love. Wouldn't that be a great added bonus to playing Fortnite so much?
Fortnite On Blockchain With NFTs
So let's discuss how Fortnite could become a NFT game. Honestly it's probably easier than you think. First Epic Games would have to put Fortnite onto a blockchain. Now as I said earlier most gamers only have heard of Etherum that has crazy high fees to use and uses up a lot of energy for transactions on the blockchain. However there are plenty of other blockchains that have almost no fees, run faster, and are built well for gaming.
While some of the gaming blockchains such as hive, phantasma, wax or solana may not be ready for millions of Fortnite players right away, these blockchains could scale over time, keep the transaction fees almost to nothing, and have very little environmental impact. Once Fortnite is put onto the blockchain, Vbucks can now become a crypto currency that players can buy, sell, stake and earn interest, amongst other things. Instead of players buying Vbucks from Epic Games, players can now sell extra Vbucks from their battle pass rewards to other players and receive real world value.
Now let's talk about adding NFTs. Those skins you normally buy or earn from Epic, those skins are actually just rented from the game. You don't actually own those assets. You can't sell them, rent them, or transfer them to your friends. And if epic decided to ban your fortnite account for any reason, you'd lose access to all those skins you have. If Fortnite is added to a blockchain, all those skins and items you earn now are NFT assets that you own in your crypto wallet. As you and other players progress in your battle pass, you will earn these NFTs that you can use in the game, sell them, rent them, or transfer them to your friends.
Once that battle pass season has finished, those skins will never be made again, meaning if only 1 million players finish the next seasons battle pass, you could potentially own a rare skin like Dwayne the Rock Johnson that might sell for thousands of dollars in a few years from now when other players want to collect or use the skin that they can no longer earn. Really it's similar to how the battle pass from the game Blankos Block Party works right now.
How Epic Games Still Makes $$$
The point of NFT play to earn gaming is to share the wealth of the game between players, investors and the developers. We talked about how players could earn through battle pass rewards, but how would Epic Games continue to make money if they aren't the ones selling Vbucks and NFTs? No game company can survive without making money. Of course Epic Games would still be the ones to sell the battle passes earning them money each season. They could even raise the price a little bit since players can earn back real world value from purchasing the pass and playing the game.
What Epic Games also could do is set a 5% market fee on transactions that take place for Fortnite. As players sell their Vbucks or NFTs to other players, Epic Games would make 5%. This doesn't sound like a lot but imagine millions of players making 10+ transactions a month. With that amount of volume there would be millions if not billions of transactions a month. Players would take a small 5% hit on all of their sales but that is a small price to pay to keep the development of the game going.
Investors & Fortnite
We've now figured out how players and Epic Games can make money from Fortnite, now how about investors? For people looking to invest into Fortnite we could do what many NFT games are now doing which is creating a two crypto currency system. Instead of Vbucks being the main currency for people to invest in, Epic Games could create what is called a governance token. A governance token is a crypto currency that typically can't be earned in game, or at least not most of it. It also has a fixed amount so it won't experience inflation, and has a percentage of it's crypto tokens divided up into private investor sales, tokens for the team, marketing, and players can also buy in on the public sale.
Think of the governance crypto token as owning shares of stock in the company. Investors, the team, and players who own the token will be rewarded over time if the price continues to go up. Not only that but governance tokens can be used to decentralize power from one entity, to everyone who holds the token. This can happen by proposals being submitted by the community and holders of the governance tokens will be able to vote on what proposals they want to see happen. This allows everyone to have a say in the future of Fortnite, not just Epic Games.
A More Exciting Metaverse!
At this point we have figured out a basic economy for Fortnite. However we can still spice things up from this point to make it even more of an exciting metaverse. One way to do that is for Epic Games to sell land in Fortnite as an NFT. Many NFT games sell land in uninspired ways to make more money from their game. For example, owners of the land could make passive Vbucks when players die in the game where they own land such as Tilted Towers.
Many games have done that to create passive income for investors but honestly I think it's a boring way to incorporate owning land in a game. A different idea would be to sell land in the Fortnite Metaverse outside of the battle royal mode. Players could own their own islands where they can build some of the Fortnite mini games, build concert venues, or whatever else comes to their imagination. Islands that are used the most can be rewarded by Epic Games with Vbucks as these owners of land are generating free content to the game and keeping players interested in the Fortnite Metaverse.
We also can create a more exciting metaverse for Fortnite by adding extra things for players to spend their earned Vbucks on. This will also give Epic Games the opportunity to remove these Vbucks out of circulation in what is called token burning. This will help keep Vbucks from over inflating and crashing the price. To do this, Epic Games could host more tournaments, events and concerts, and allow players to spend their Vbucks to participate.
They also could create limited edition NFT skins that can only be purchased using Vbucks. Because Epic Games already earns profits from selling battle passes, owning their governance token, and taking market place fees, they could take these spent Vbucks and burn them rather than using them for profits. While it may seem crazy for a company to burn crypto they earned, this will again help Vbucks from inflating. If Vbucks maintains a decent price, it will incentive players to continue to participate in the Fortnite metaverse which will lead to more battle pass sales and marketplace transactions.
Your Thoughts?
Together we have now taken Fortnite and turned it into a NFT play to earn game. I want to know though, what do you think about these ideas? What would you change, add or remove from this theoretical Fortnite metaverse? Also do you think it will one day happen? Why or why not? Let's discuss it in the comments below or you can join the Krill Crew play to earn discord to talk more about it there.
