I’m Selling An Entire Video Game As An NFT
Exploring NFTs For Indie Game Development
I bet you have been hearing the hype about NFTs, recently. Elon Musk tried to sell one of his tweets as an NFT. Apparently, he rescinded it recently after a millionaire offer.
I had a great idea to release small games as NFTs in order to pioneer in the space. NFTs are already being used to sell unique in-game items like microtransactions… but I want to sell whole, even if small, unique games.
I’m not sure if I’m the very first person to release a whole game, rather than just an in-game item, as an NFT. But het, if the claim is available, I will take it.
What even is an NFT?
NFT stands for non-fungible tokens. To understand this, we need to first find out what fungible means. Fungible means something like money. A one dollar bill is the same as another one dollar bill. If you switched a dollar bill with another dollar bill, your accountant will never know the difference. The most important thing is that you end up with the same amount of money.
So something non-fungible cannot be exchanged the same way. Why? Because unlike each piece of money, non-fungible things are unique and one of a kind. Original and unique art is something non-fungible — it is one of a kind. When you start making exact replicas of it, it becomes more fungible.
So an NFT is the non-fungible version of cryptocurrency like Bitcoin and Doge and Ethereum. Instead of functioning like money, they function like collectible art and other unique things like that. So this appeals to collectors and speculators.
Apparently, prices are so high and business is booming. OpenSea claims that creators made an average of $400 per month selling NFTs in a closed beta. There are some more ridiculous figures out there. This is one reason many want to get in on this.
An Entire Game As An NFT?
So as I said, I planned to sell one of my games as an NFT.
I chose my small game Waiting In Line, which is free to play on PC. Waiting In Line is a game about… waiting in line. But there is more to it than meets the eye.
But if it is free for all, why are you selling it?
Ah, but I’m not technically selling the game itself, I am selling something unique from the game, its source code. No one has ever seen it but me.
The source code can also be accessed only through specific old software or a new version of that software with backward compatibility.
Check out this review of the game.
It is a psychological trip, yes.
Let’s make it an NFT.
So You Want To Get Into NFTs.. This Is What I Did
You need:
- An Ethereum wallet. I used Metamask.
- Enough ETH for gas fees.
- An account for an NFT marketplace. OpenSea is the most popular and apparently easiest to use and also free, apart from the gas fees, which will be present in all blockchain transactions.
- Things you can sell as NFTs like photos, art, and so on. You can only upload an image. You must link extra files in the Unlockable Content area for OpenSea.
If you are using OpenSea, first, you create a Collection, which is your storefront.
You create your listing and fill out the information. Upload the image for your NFT.
Add in the Unlockable Content. This will be the unique data for the owner of the NFT.
Put in prices. The price favored seems to be over 1 ETH.
And then when you hi the list button, you will get with a surprise that may be unpleasant.
Gas fees!
I spent $100 on gas fees.
Now, this is only a one time fee. Or rather, both one time fees, the first was to allow initialize the account, the second was to allow WETH transactions, which was another type of token used.
But that $100 also includes the gas and network fees of buying the ETH. Without those, it would be just $66. The extra fees are $44!
I bit down and ate the cost.
Do note that gas fees are dependent on the time zone, day, and time you are in, because it is calculated by how busy the network is. The more busy, the more expensive.
Well, I Released An NFT Game
If you want to check out the listing, here it is.
If you want to own the unique source code that has never been released, consider buying it. Bids start at 0.01 Ether, which is about $20 at the time of writing.
You can play the game for free if you have a Windows PC here. The NFT is for owning the source file.
I plan to make more games like this, some will be completely unique and only accessible by the owner.
But I also have other ideas for entirely different NFTs. I’m not only a game designer, I’m other things. Maybe books…
