The non-fungible token (NFT) space corrected heavily after its peak earlier this year. Despite the significantly lowered transaction volume, the industry looks like to be out of the bubble and maturing now.
Now, more and more artists and celebrities are launching their work as NFTs. But, another area of NFTs that is booming is gaming. Yes, many game developers are leveraging blockchain technology to enhance the gaming experience with NFTs – Snook is one such project.
Finance Magnates recently sat down with Snook Co-Founder, Hosam Mazawi, to understand more about the game and the overall application of NFTs in the gaming space.
“It’s like Snake – we all know Snake. Only it’s online, it’s multiplayer, and it’s a real NFT game – which is like comparing Bruce Banner to the Hulk,” Mazawi explained.
“Let me unpack what I just said. The fact that it’s online and multiplayer is not big news. It’s an IO game, and there are over a billion people playing these easy-to-play, online multiplayer games. What is big news, and this is also how Snook differs from other NFT games, is that the player’s game character – her ‘lower-case’ snook – is actually a minted NFT. That means that the achievements that she gains while playing are recorded onto the blockchain and basically determine the face value of the NFT.
The Era of Snake
Snake was an extremely popular game on feature phones. Though it could not make an impact on the smartphone ecosystem, the rising popularity of the IO games means there is a massive casual gaming market for games like Snake.
Unlike any new game, it already has a wide fan base.
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“When we started discussing Snook, we wanted to build a game that is simple to understand yet fun. Then when we looked around the tokenomics, we wanted a fast-paced game that is full of adrenaline, and what is better than a snake-like game?” Mazawi said.
The game is now available in beta, but the team has plans to launch it by the end of August. “Our smart contracts audit is ongoing, so once that is resolved, we can go ahead and schedule our accurate launch date. The future of Snook is to become the first NFT game to do e-sport competitions.”
The initial launch will be made on desktop, but the co-founder said that the Snook team is aiming to bring the game on mobile apps as well by the end of this year. They will also add FIAT gateways implementations.
Gameconomics
But, when it comes to blending NFTs in a classic game, tokenomics becomes a key. “Snook allows us to innovate and present a new type of tokenomics to the NFT gaming industry,” Mazawi said.
“Snook has a built-in anti-inflation mechanism. To play Snook, users do not need to hold $SNK, they need to mint basic snook NFT, the minting fee is $0.25, and it can be paid in USDC, $SNK or any other wrapped asset on Polygon. The minting fee is used to buy $SNK and sent to the burn address, and then the value is transferred to the snook NFT.”
NFT Space Is Maturing
While the transactions with NFTs corrected heavily, the launch of games like Snook clearly shows how the existing gaming and art platforms are embracing the blockchain and NFTs technologies.
“The total value of NFT sales in 2020 was $250M USD. In the first 3 months of 2021, it ballooned to $2bn USD! That’s awesome, right? I mean at least 30x (probably closer to 100x),” he added. “Well, perhaps not.”
“In 1636-7 the price of tulips rose ~60x in 16 months (most of it between Nov 36 and Feb 37!). In 1928 the New York Stock Exchange volume was $400M USD compared to $1bn USD in the first 8 months of 1929. The Nasdaq rose 5x between 1995 and 2000. These ‘bubbles’ have been studied for centuries. In a nutshell, they all seem to align with an introduction of major innovation and an initial market immaturity. Basically, something new is introduced and, since at first, almost no one understands it, misinformed and many times unqualified investors are lured by baseless, exaggerated claims and false reasoning.”
Furthermore, he said that solid ventures based on fact, economics and science get drowned out by a tsunami of indistinguishable buzz.
“The rapid growth we’ve seen in the NFT market suggests that we may be seeing a Tulip Bubble. However, as its name suggests, the Tulip Bubble had an intrinsic source of value – the actual tulips. The trick is to find our actual tulips – strong, innovation-centric projects that create actual value. Although these projects do suffer when the bubble bursts, they have the biggest chance of making it,” Mazawi said.
