Crypto vs NFT Games: What is the Difference?

Over the past couple of years, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology has been at the center of attention. The use of such technology has the potential to revolutionize many industries with gaming aligned as the first one to be overhauled. 

Introducing blockchain technology to games led to the birth of an entirely new segment in gaming usually referred to as crypto or NFT games. However, we often see both of these terms online and it is hard to distinguish their difference.

In today’s article, we will take a look at crypto and NFT games and find out their differences.

The Difference Between Crypto and NFT Games

Let’s get one thing straight from the beginning, both gaming concepts rely on the same principles of using blockchain technology and smart contracts built on a network. This technology allows games to have in-game cryptocurrencies and NFTs as digital collectibles that are distributed among the players that play such games.

In other words, such games provide ownership of digital assets directly to players’ wallet addresses. So, what is the real difference between these two types of games?

Well, crypto gaming is a term often used to describe the entire blockchain gaming industry. This industry is constructed by many smaller segments such as NFT games, dApps and more. So, basically NFT games are a sub-category of crypto gaming.

Crypto Games

The biggest difference between crypto games and traditional games is in the centralization or decentralization in their nature. Traditional games are centralized, which means that in-game valuable assets like weapons, skins, cosmetics, characters and the coding behind them are not owned by the players and cannot be used in another game.

The situation with crypto games is entirely different. Crypto games are decentralized and operate on the blockchain network, which means that all the in-game assets are owned by the players and can be used for various purposes.

Blockchain technology in crypto games can be used for various purposes. It can be used to create an entire game on top of it, or just for the in-game currency.

Crypto games run with the same principle as NFT games but the only difference is that most of them do not include NFTs and are based only on providing a tradable game token (cryptocurrency). This means that crypto games have their own currency (just like Bitcoin or Ethereum) that holds some actual value and using this token you can buy certain in-game items.

NFT Games

NFT Games go a step further and provide a wide range of digital assets including NFTs (non-fungible tokens) that represent skins, collectibles, cosmetics, or in game times that people can actually own. Instead of creating a game that only has a decentralized system and its own token (cryptocurrency), NFT games put all of their in game assets on the blockchain in form of non-fungible tokens.

Non-fungible tokens are digital collectibles that are stored on the blockchain and can be minted and purchased for real money. 

There are certain things that give NFTs value, such as the popularity of the game, demand for that particular NFT, its utility in the game, and how rare it is. NFT games are sub-category of crypto gaming but they provide more wide range of options that players can use in order to make money.

Most NFT games also have their own in-game currency, which operates just like a normal cryptocurrency with a supply limit and price per coin, and the game’s economy is based around that currency.

On top of that, all digital assets like skins and other in-game items are presented with NFTs that people can purchase and own on their digital wallets. These NFTs give people many other options to make some money by selling the NFTs for a higher price, staking the NFTs to receive tokens, and using the NFT to make more money in the game.

There isn’t a great difference, at least on paper in the definition of crypto and NFT games. Considering that we are talking about a relatively new market with still no visibly illustrated borders, the term crypto games and NFT games can literally mean the same thing.