In NFT game development, to create a game, naturally, the questions of cost and complexity come up. How hard is it, how expensive it can potentially be? And what is the potential of launching an NFT game? How many obstacles are there? How do you make an NFT game overall? 

In this blog article, we will define what NFT game development basically is, what are the most popular games and their examples, what benefits can it bring, as well as the budget line it may require. Let’s try to figure it out in-depth. 

However, there are several things that actually are influencing factors initially. They are namely:

• Game genre and setting – the more unique the game, the higher development cost it will require
• In-house or external development – in case you’d like to create the game from scratch, get ready for a long-lasting hiring process, in order to hunt, onboard, and create the team. For a smooth and 3x times faster pipeline, it’d be reasonable to partner with external teams.

However, it is not as defined as you might think. Let’s go further. 

Despite it being quite trendy, many are still not aware of the essence of NFT game development. This type of game is a fusion and combination of any conventional game in addition to the high-tech. NFTs are based on blockchain that secures their running and ownership. As the main trend of the past years, it will be inevitable to ignore it in 2022 too. 

Non-fungible tokens are in simple terms digital assets or currency, boosted by blockchain technology. NFT allows the creation of unique game assets and allows gamers to earn money by selling their assets. And blockchain here provides high security and reliability for NFT play-to-earn games. 

What is so special about it? Let’s have a closer look at the advantages of NFT in the game development industry. 

• Value, interoperability, and ownership

  NFT is referred to as unique in-game items aimed to improve the rankings of gamers and constitute the game economy creating the play-to-earn approach. 

  The non-fungible tokens can be also transferred across various platforms due to the blockchain technology. 

• Economy and income

  NFT games as a trend is widely popular in massively multiplayer online games (MMO) or massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG). 

  Currently, the world of game development is growing and developing tremendously, and not the last role is played by NFTs and in-games economies they deliver, helping gamers make money. 

• Industry growth

  There are around 3.3 billion game players all over the globe and each year brings more. According to Reuters, DappRadar tracks sales across multiple blockchains, said volumes hit just under $2.5 billion for the first half of 2021. 

2021, for example, brought a real bloom to play-to-earn games. 

However, going a bit back, the first NFT game – CryptoKitties was originally launched in 2017. Since that time, NFT game development has significantly evolved giving birth to the next generations of games. 

So, the success of NFT integration with some of the already most popular games boosted the application of the trend. NFTs have become enabled within the known game genres. Respectively, game developers and users were now enabled to play and earn from unique digital assets.

By providing you with this list, we rely on our expertise, gamedev industry market overview, as well as official statistics. Let’s see what 2022 already has for us and NFT games.

• Splinterlands

  Also on track just like Axie Infinity for 2022. Splinterlands is a card game, where cards are non-fungible tokens. The cards are purchased and sold, exchanged, and can be also rented out. 

• Axie Infinity

  This game is Ethereum-based and has adopted quite a lot from Pokemon, however, instead of Pokemons there are digital creatures called Axies, which are unique and individual. Axies are NFTs and are tradable on markets. They are able to transfer their features to the next generations. It successfully keeps marching into 2022, according to Statista. 

• Alien Worlds

  Alien Worlds also has its own metaverse. Moreover, it has its own economy and some kind of governance. The game stimulates users to compete with each other through in-game quests for Trilium (an NFT-based asset) and look for other planets and unknown worlds. 

• Splinterlands

  A card-based free-to-play game, where users are gaining rewards for getting rare cards or their combinations. 

• The Sandbox

  An NFT-based game that operates in its own metaverse. The game has an option to create and trade virtual assets. In its essence, it is a continuation of Minecraft and Roblox. 

• NFT Champions

  NFT Champions is an adventure game and also some kind of continuation of Pokemon, where gamers are collecting unique creatures – Champions, each of them is an NFT, which can be developed further to gain more value. 

• Gods Unchained

  The game is partially NFT and also free-to-play. Gods Unchained is a ranking token-based card-trading game, where gamers utilize and exchange cards. 

• Illuvium

  Illuvium also distantly reminds us of Pokemon a bit, as it was inspired by it. However, it is an open-world adventure game, backed by Blockchain. The game is all around Illuvials, unique and customized NFT creatures. The gamers are utilizing them to fight and capture others. The game is in fact quite similar in mechanics to Axie Infinity.  

• Spider tanks

  This is an MMO game,boosted by blockchain, where gamers are utilizing tanks as unique digital assets. 

• Bombcrypto

  The Bcoin-powered adventure and battle game where gamers have to defeat monsters. 

• Thetan Arena

  A multiplayer battle NFT game, where heroes are unique digital NFTs. This game has beautiful mechanics and can be played over PCs, as well as smartphones.

•  StarAtlas

  The game has an AAA ranking and is powered by Unreal Engine 5. In 2022 its main goal is to deliver its own economy and empower users to have even more digital items as non-fungible tokens. 

• Decentraland

  According to Business2Community one of the best NFT 2022 games is Decentraland, where players are able to create metaverse unique LANDS, basically constituting the new worlds.

Largely it depends on the core game requirements, which is reliable information for any game development. However, we suggest the initial team composition as follows:

• NFT game developers
• game designers
• 2D/3D artists
• 2D/3D animators
• VFX artist
• art director
• UI/UX designer
• sound designers 
• QA
• DevOps
• project manager
• producer

Moonmana, as an NFT game developer company, has all the necessary team members on board available to carry out projects of various complexity and intensity.

So how to calculate the possible cost of NFT game development? For that, we suggest the following scheme so when you hear ‘it depends’ you would know that it particularly depends on:

• type of game
• number of platforms
• NFT game project complexity and duration
• team composition and its size

Every company has its rates, teams with various FTEs of different seniority levels. But from our experience, developing a P2E game that takes about 1,000 hours costs from $57k – $114k and higher. This depends greatly on variables along the game development pipeline that will influence the final price. 

So at least for the beginning, one should roughly estimate and sum up the month or weeks of work in addition to the number of people engaged on the project.

To successfully deliver this type of game to life, one can choose a reliable partner, which is able to provide qualitative NFT game development services.

• estimate precise costs, discuss and prepare the budget 
• create a dedicated team of developers, artists, designers, and managers that will deliver the project within this budget and agreed timelines
• provide you with all the necessary skills and expertise of the game development industry
• deliver the game and support it, investing all our experience and passion to make it successful on the intense game development market arena

You can easily start your journey to the NFT games. We will be happy to help you and share our vast experience in NFT game development – just hurry up to contact us