‘Peridot‘ is the newest game from Niantic, the company behind Pokemon Go. This game lets you collect and raise pets with unique traits. I’ve enjoyed my first few days with it, but I’m noticing a notable omission — where are the NFTs? Every aspect of this game seems to lend itself to NFT integration, and sources like The Gamer and The Verge have reported on Niantic’s interest in Web3 technologies. We don’t know when or if Niantic will pull the trigger on ‘Peridot’ NFTs, but there are numerous reasons why they should.
‘Peridot’ has a Trait System
This was the first aspect that caught my attention. Each Peridot you hatch and care for has a series of traits, each with rare and common versions. Some of the traits include the Peridot’s pattern, tail, ears, horns, material, and face. To hatch a new Peridot, one of your creatures must mate with another player’s Peridot. Your creature will pass some of its traits to its child, and it may inherit characteristics from the other player’s Peridot if you’ve unlocked them by playing.
Each trait has an assigned rarity, just like those you’d find in an NFT collection. For example, monkey ears have a one-star rarity, while fairy ears have a two-star rarity.
Peridots aren’t Free
In its current state, the game requires you to use a “nest” each time you want to breed a new Peridot. The beta version let you create nests by foraging various items and using them to build one. However, nests are now locked behind a $5 paywall.
Players were understandably upset by this change; the game now has a three-star rating in the Google Play Store, which is a shame because it is actually a pretty fun concept. A quick look at the one-star reviews makes it clear that the $5 paywall is one of the primary reasons players are upset.
Niantic could easily get away with this paywall if players were incentivized to spend the money. Personally, I wouldn’t mind buying a $5 nest each time I hatched a Peridot if I knew I could later sell them on the secondary market. Niantic could even emulate “Gods Unchained,” which allows players to spend money to mint their cards as NFTs while letting them earn the non-NFT cards for free. This method would appeal to casual players and Web3 enthusiasts; Niantic could still charge money for less-essential in-game items, let players mint Peridot NFTs for $5, and rake in additional profits by adding a royalty to NFTs minted with their game.
“Peridot” could be the biggest location-based NFT project
‘Pokemon Go’ quickly took the world by storm, and Niantic has earned a reported $4.6 billion since its release. If the company could bring that same successful formula to ‘Peridot,’ it could easily make it the biggest location-based NFT project.
Location-based NFTs are a relatively new concept, and there has yet to be a breakout project to achieve mainstream success. If Niantic chooses to add NFTs to “Peridot,” it will likely become the first major success story for location-based, experiential NFTs.
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Image credit via: Niantic
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