GSC Game World, the Ukrainian video game development company that made S.T.A.L.K.E.R., announced that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 will be using blockchain technology to create the so-called “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Metaverse“. That means there will be NFTs in the game to “let the community own piece of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2″. Out of all the in-game NFTs in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, the most notable NFT is the “first-ever metahuman”. GSC Game World defines the metahuman as a non-player character rendered in very high detail. The company is partnering with NFT Platform DMarket for these new items.
Players will need to bid for an NFT offering during an auction that takes place in January 2022. Whoever owns this NFT to become an NPC in the game will be able to buy it and sell it until a specific date after the auction. According to GSC Game World CEO Evgeniy Grygorovych, whoever ends up owning the NFT will need to go to their studio for a detailed scanning procedure. Then they will have everything to make this person appear in the game world as one of the characters, recreating its owner’s identity within the game through one of the NPCs.
GSC Game World is also planning to release other NFTs, though they did not reveal what these items might be. The NFT drops will allegedly not influence the gameplay itself nor give any in-game advantages over other players. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. isn’t the only game that plans to incorporate blockchain technology, both Ubisoft and the well-known game designer Peter Molyneux announced the use of blockchain technology in their upcoming games. While Ubisoft’s announcement on using blockchain technology wasn’t received well by even Ubisoft developers themselves, Peter Molyneux plans to release a business simulator where players can trade NFTs to design and start their own businesses in the game, which they will be able to sell to other players. The surge of cryptocurrency shows lots of correlation with the concept of metaverse. NFTs are a new trend that more and more games will incorporate as the boundary between video games and reality becomes vaguer.