NFT games have an edge over "money in, no money out" games: Polygon's Urvit Goel

NFT game business models could represent an attractive innovation for game publishers as they begin to make more of their titles available for play on the blockchain.

New Polygon's Vice President of Global Business Development for Games, Urvit Goel, believes that games that incorporate non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have a natural advantage over traditional games that don't allow users to sell their in-game items.

Goel spoke candidly with Cointelegraph in Seoul last week about Polygon's desire to help NFT games proliferate and why South Korean game publishers like Neowiz and Nexon are diving headfirst into space .

One of the main arguments made by Goel is that the traditional business model that NFT games compete with may be inherently weaker. In traditional games, users typically purchase in-game items with real money, but they cannot sell those items to recover a US dollar value.

However, with most games in the game funding space (GameFi), users can buy items as non-fungible tokens and sell them when they are done playing. Goel called the traditional model "money in, no money out" and emphasized that players should be able to recoup at least some of the dollar value they invested in a game:

"We just want to give users the ability to own the content they buy. And if they choose to sell it, great if they choose to keep it, great [...] But even if you get a penny back, it's better than nothing, right?"

Goel said he's seen clear signals that traditional game publishers are gearing up for big pushes into GameFi, starting with South Korean gaming giant Nexon, which owns the MapleStory title. It announced in June that it would channel a version of its flagship title as MapleStory N according to mmorpg, a gaming news outlet.

Polygon has also partnered with South Korea's Neowiz to channel new and existing titles.

He noted that the entry of these large companies creates "a...