In the past year, we've seen debates in our forums questioning the value of NFTs, citing the fall of marketplaces or declining trading volumes. Some have already written off NFTs as a fad, a passing wave. But that’s a mistake. While marketplaces may have cooled, NFTs as a technology—and more importantly, as an enabler of creator economies—are rapidly evolving.

The question we need to ask ourselves is this:

If Polkadot is investing in the future of gaming (Mythical Games, DOT Play, and beyond), how can we build a successful gaming ecosystem without empowering the very people who make games immersive, playable, and memorable—our artists and creators?

Gaming Is Booming. And It Runs on UGC

Let’s talk data. In 2024, Roblox paid out over $923 million to creators. Not to game studios. To creators. That includes 3D artists, environment designers, and digital fashion designers who contribute game assets, skins, worlds, and avatars. These aren’t just coders—they’re visual storytellers and digital craftsmen.

Epic Games, via Fortnite Creative and its new Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), launched Creator Economy 2.0 and paid $352 million to UGC creators last year. That’s nearly one-third of all Fortnite player time spent in user-created islands—not the base game.

Platforms like Core (by Manticore) share 50% of revenue with creators. Even niche platforms like Dreams by Media Molecule built global communities of digital artists who went on to get hired in top game studios purely on the strength of their creations.

The ROI here is undeniable:

  • More creators → better content → higher user engagement → greater monetization.
  • More artists → diverse aesthetics → wider appeal → longer retention.

Gaming’s flywheel is not just gameplay mechanics. It’s experience design, and that comes from artists.

NFTs Are Not Dead. They're Evolving

Yes, the speculative era of PFPs and overpriced JPEGs is largely behind us. But NFTs aren’t gone—they’ve just matured. Today, NFTs power identity, ownership, and economics in user-generated content ecosystems.

  • In Roblox, digital fashion sold by creators as ‘limiteds’ (or tokenized assets) is a $280M+ business.
  • Fortnite may not call them NFTs, but every player skin and emote is a digital asset with real-world value, often co-created with community contributors.
  • Mythical Games, part of the Polkadot ecosystem, is built on the idea of digital ownership in gaming, enabling players to buy, sell, and trade items tied to real value.

And here’s where it gets interesting: NFTs allow artists and creators to retain attribution, royalties, and agency. In a world moving toward AI-generated content and interoperable digital assets, NFTs will be the atomic unit of identity, traceability, and commerce.

For Polkadot, this isn’t a peripheral feature—it’s a competitive advantage. With XCM, NFTs can move across chains. With parachain composability, we can build a true cross-game, cross-platform digital asset economy.

Polkadot’s Gaming Ecosystem Needs a Creative Core

Polkadot is making major moves in gaming:

  • Mythical Games joined the ecosystem with serious ambitions for player-owned economies.
  • DOT Play is shaping up as an incubator for game innovation.
  • Several parachains are investing in decentralized gaming infrastructure and AI-powered game tooling.

But here’s the missing link: where are the artists? Where are the creators building assets, environments, and identity layers that will define the aesthetic of Polkadot-native games?

Gaming isn’t just about FPS or PvP mechanics. It’s about:

  • Avatars you identify with.
  • Worlds you want to live in.
  • Digital items you’re proud to own or trade.

These are all creative outputs. And they’re all monetizable.

If Polkadot wants to lead in gaming, we need:

  • Creator grants focused on artists, not just coders.
  • Low-code/no-code tooling to enable world-builders and fashion designers.
  • NFT standards that empower attribution, cross-chain royalties, and community co-creation.

Our friends and partners at KodaDOT, an NFT art-centric project in the Polkadot ecosystem, showcase how eccentric real-world art can be transformed into something beautiful on the blockchain.

In short, we need more creator and artist communities that drive this next wave of digital art – empowering creators to turn their creations into something new and vibrant.

Creators Drive Engagement. Engagement Drives ROI

Let’s bring it back to numbers and outcomes.

  • Roblox creators collectively earned $3.3 billion since 2018.

  • Fortnite has over 37 creators earning $1 million+ per year just from engagement.

  • UGC accounts for 70% of playtime on these platforms.
  • The best-performing games aren’t made by studios—they’re made by small teams of artists and builders.

Polkadot has the infrastructure. It has the technical foundation. It even has funding and developer interest. But unless we also build a thriving community of digital artists and creators, our gaming and creator economy strategy will underperform—because games without soul don’t scale.

Next Steps for the Polkadot Community

If you're a developer, investor, or founder in the Polkadot ecosystem, here’s what you can do:

  1. Champion artist-friendly grant programs: Fund not just backend protocols, but creative contributors who bring worlds to life. Importantly, align support with outcomes that advance Polkadot’s priorities
  2. Create and nurture artist communities with purpose: Build communities of creators and artists, but align them with Polkadot’s strategic priorities: interoperability, scalability, user-centric experiences, and cross-chain applications.
  3. Host design jams, not just hackathons: Let’s create space for digital fashion, world-building, and storytelling that enhances our gaming and engagement layers.
  4. Support NFT standards that reward creators: Embrace attribution, royalties, and asset mobility via XCM and open composability.
  5. Collaborate with platforms like Unique Network, Mythical, KodaDOT and more: These projects are already proving how NFTs can become real infrastructure for engagement and art, not just static and boring collectibles.

Final Thoughts: The ecosystem needs some art

The next generation of the internet (whether we call it Web3), the UGC ecosystems, games, or the programmable economy won’t just be built by developers. It will be co-created by empowering creators and artists.

Let’s make a home in Polkadot, the home for that creative renaissance that will feed the virtual worlds we are hoping to be a part of.

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