Market Analysis

Growth of Game / Metaverse / Digital Asset Market

Since the invention of the Internet, gaming has always been at the center of the entertainment industry. In 2019, the gaming market alone overshadowed the market size of the music and movies industry combined by over two-fold and continues to grow.

While the gaming industry continues to grow, the emergence of metaverse was the biggest sensation of 2021. From the name itself, metaverse is the virtual universe expanding upon reality. There are multiple answers to what the metaverse is. MMORPG Games like World of Warcraft set an important reference model for the future direction of metaverse development. We believe that it is a convergence of game, virtual reality and digital asset backed economy, a decentralized ecosystem of creators and consumers. The potential of the metaverse is undoubtedly promising. With even large corporations like Facebook (Meta) jumping into the trend, the market witnessed numerous attempts to capture the idea of metaverse. However, most of these projects do not support interconnection between each other. As a result, communities are fractionalized and sustainability has become an issue.

For most of its history, games and virtual services have followed a centralized model in which they control both the in-service economy and virtual assets within.The use of blockchain technology has begun to change this structure completely. With the help of NFT technology, users can now have true ownership of digital assets. Popular blockchain game Axie Infinity is a good example. Holders of each ‘Axie’ (Playable character) own the copyright behind the character in NFTs. Therefore, they can freely utilize their NFT for commercial and entertainment purposes at will. This concept can be developed further, where NFT based digital assets can not only be freely utilized in and out of the services they were first produced but also have extended legal rights in the commercial aspects. Furthermore, the users can now generate direct financial profit without becoming a professional gamer from the new Play-to-Earn reward models. The market responded quickly as the metaverse, P2E games and NFT industry exploded in 2021.

The future of the NFT market is still to be witnessed, and is full of potential. All gamers and virtual space users have dreamed of the possibility to transfer the results of their efforts in and out of the services they used. Users fear the situation where the services they’ve been using abruptly shut down with all the assets the users have accumulated. All the efforts of the users would be lost in that case. NFT technology will enable transferability and interchangeability of digital assets across services and blockchains, expanding the horizon of metaverse experience and preventing such disasters from happening. Some of the pioneers in the blockchain gaming and metaverse spaces such as Axie Infinity, Sandbox and Decentraland proved monumental hits. Following the success of these projects, many have tried to follow their footsteps and thousands of new projects are releasing even at this very moment. Nevertheless, the market begins to propose new problems and questions. MEXP platform envisions to address those challenges.