INTRODUCTION
Good day steemains, i welcome you all to steemit cryptoacademy season 4 week 1. Professor @imagen has impact some knowledge to us. The topic was well explained and i was able to understand the lecture. Below is my homework post.

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1.) Describe in your own words the main Advantages and Disadvantages (Pros and Cons) of NFT Games in relation to other types of games.

NFTs have been incorporated in games to represent in-game collectibles or items like weapons, game rewards, avatars, lands e.t.c. It gives them real values and makes them really exist in digital form and on a blockchain which enables them to be stored, transferable and tradeable.

Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages of NFT games.

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Advantages of NFT Games

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In-Game Ownership Control

NFT games allow gamers to win collectibles and any item that can be owned that is in the game and the gamer has full control of the collectibles and items won, because of the power of blockchain which NFTs are run on. It is not like the traditional gaming system where gamers can only view their assets won on the game no matter how much they paid to play the game. Each of the items won has a unique identity that is tied to a gamer's account which shows that the gamer owns it. So even if the game provider shuts down the game, the item won cannot be lost because it is within the wallets of the gamer. This allows gamers to have a secure means of storing their collectibles and items won without the fear of theft. And these assets can be monetized by trading them for cryptocurrencies or fiat currencies in the marketplace.

Unique and Secured

The in-game collectibles or items won cannot be duplicated because they are non-fungible. Also, they cannot be possessed through fraud. They cannot be lost when a game shuts down because the assets can be transferred to any appropriate wallet.

Transparency and Provable Scarcity

A gamer can check the history and existence of a collectible or item because the information is accessible to the public powered by blockchain and is immutable. And the use of block explorers makes the items to be fully transparent and also attaches provable scarcity to them.

Branding and Creativity

The use of NFTs in games can be used as a tool to increase brand awareness as NFT games can be displayed in the NFT marketplaces. When creative elements are added to the design, it can help bring in more interest and thus adoption.

Owned of Assets can be Transferred

A gamer can decide to sell his game collectibles whenever he chooses and gets value from them. The intending buyer becomes the current owner after the transfer of ownership and this process is recorded on a blockchain.

Collectibles Used as an Investment Opportunity

The NFT collectibles from games have a very huge underlying investment opportunity to them due to the uniqueness of an NFT because they become scarce items that others can want or need and this would increase the value of the item and give the owner a good return on investment.

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Disadvantages of NFT Games

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Seen as Money Making Venture

Due to NFTs being incorporated into gamers and the benefits that come along with it, gamers would be inclined to engage these games as a money-making activity rather than a relaxing activity. An integral part of NFT induced games should be to have the right balance between engaging gameplay and money-making. This means that having a game where the gamer has an objective to get as much value as possible without contributing so much is not sustainable.

Standalone Game

In an NFT game, the game should have a high quality and prove itself by having a high appeal to gamers through good designs in the gameplay and savvy mechanics of the element of the game. Without this gamers may not be interested in the overall gameplay but be only concerned about making money.

Environmental Issues Arising from Blockchain Technology

A major concern of an NFT game is in minting new collectibles or items won by a gamer. This issue comes from the energy-hungry Proof-of-Work PoW consensus mechanism which the NFT blockchain (Ethereum) uses to verify its activities.

A New Concept

NFT games are new and the concepts surrounding them are relatively new to gamers. This is new terrain for them. The process of getting cryptocurrencies, then creating a wallet, and then making a transaction with NFTs can become scary to most gamers. This issue is usual in the production.

2.) Name five (5) recognized characters: writers, artists, athletes or others, who have digitized their works (writings, publications, paintings, drawings, illustrations, etc.) to produce NFT. Please indicate the value of the NFT or the collection, show photos or images and cite sources.

The recent surge in awareness and popularity of Non-Fungible Tokens NFTs has brought about a great demand for them. This has led big names such as celebrities, high-profile artists, and business leaders to cash in on this new phenomenon. I shall be pointing out a few of these big names.

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Steve Aoki

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Steve Aoki is a DJ and a genre-bender that embraced the digital collectible craze as he created an NFT which he dropped in March. He partnered with Antonio Tudisco to create the Dream Catcher. This piece of digitized art went on to earn more than $4.29 million. Physical copies were also created for it.

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Jack Dorsey

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Jack Dorsey is the CEO of Twitter and Square. He created an NFT for his first tweet (the first-ever tweet on Twitter). The tweet is 15-years-old in age, that was posted in March 2006. The composition of the tweet simply said "just setting up my twttr". The NFT collectible ended up making him a whopping $2.9 million when all bids ended. It was then converted to bitcoin and donated to GiveDirectly, which is a charity.

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Kate Moss

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Kate Moss is a supermodel. She joined the digital collectible craze, by giving something unique: a new video of herself sleeping. "Sleep with Kate" is an NFT that gives an intimate view of the model. The NFT sold for $17,000 and was donated to the nonprofit organization Gurls Talk.

Source - Landscape

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William Shatner

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William Shatner is an actor who starred in the movie Star Trek as Captain Kirk. He created a pack of NFT cards of himself. The cards featured images of his life and career, including an X-ray of his teeth. The total amount was 125,000 NFTs. They were sold at $25 for a 25-card pack. But the resale value has gone up since then, as they sell up to $6,800.

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Grimes

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Grimes is a synth-pop star and a girlfriend to Elon Musk. She made a collection of 10 NFTs called "WarNymph". She collaborated with her brother to create the digital artwork. It sold for $5.8 million in under 20 minutes on the Nifty Gateway platform.

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Choose one of the following games:

MyDefiPet

Mist

CryptoBlades

Dragonary

WavesDuck

3.) Describe in depth the selected game: founders or developers, launch date, objective of the game, operation, native token (price, market capitalization, position), availability in the various operating systems and any other relevant information. Show Screenshots.

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CryptoBlades

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CryptoBlades is an adventure game that depends on the roles of a character. The game was established by Riveted Games. Back in 2014 it was launched on the Binance Smart Chain. It is NFT based and works only on the web and is available on any browser with no option of a download. It is a very simple game that requires only the click of a mouse.

The objective of the game is to allow gamers to have more control of their collectibles or items won, which are digitized through NFT, and turn the game into a Play-to-Earn, which leads to user's adoption of blockchain technology in their everyday lives.

To play the game, gamers must access the internet to enable them to play the game on their official website: cryptoblades. Also, the contracts that take place on CryptoBlades are run on the Binance Smart Chain, and players need to have a certain amount of Binance coins BNB to pay for transactions that take place.

The game rewards players with what is known as SKILL Tokens. To get this SKILL token players would have to pay defeat stage enemies and also participate in raids. In addition, it is possible to hire characters to help win battles and thus SKILL tokens earned so as to require stamina to continue. The weapons used can be forged and reforged as the game goes on to increase overall power. Finally, the characters and weapons that players possess can be traded on the open marketplace and players can bet their SKILL tokens earnings to enable them to receive additional SKILL tokens later as rewards.

Getting Started

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For a gamer to get their first character, they need a nominal amount of 1.2252 SKILL and 0.001 BNB as transaction fees. And players would need 0.0015 BNB required for engaging in battles.

In order to process the necessary transactions, players would have to:

1. Install MetaMask Wallet on their browsers.
2. Create an account on Binance to purchase the required BNB coins.
3. Transfer the BNB coins purchased to their MetaMask wallet.
4. Go over to ApeSwap to get the SKILL tokens.

How to Play and Earn in CryptoBlades

CryptoBlades is a Roleplaying Game RPG. It is a fighting game where the character of the player can be upgraded and gears can be wonderfully crafted. The game has four distinct elements namely, Earth, Water, Lightning, and Fire. The characters, weapons, the properties of the weapons, and the enemies have an element attached to them. The chances of winning a battle increases or decreases with the elements. Such elements have it's costs and benefits.

The elements have different properties they are:

Elements	Strong Against	Weak Against
Fire	Earth	Water
Lightning	Water	Earth
Water	Fire	Lightning
Earth	Lightning	Earth

Players are required to start in a plaza so that they can choose a character for battle. At any given time during the game a player can only have a maximum of 4 characters and each character costs 1.2252 SKILL to mint. Each of the characters is given 200 stamina to enable them to compete in five battles. The stamina regenerates at 1 every 5 minutes. The game combat is exciting and straightforward. Players choose a character and an enemy that is randomly generated to do battle with. But before a player goes into combat, he must pay the BNB nominal fee. The game then brings out the results of the combat and records the result on the blockchain. It is at this point that the players receive their SKILL tokens and earn experience on the characters. The amount of SKILL earned is dependent on the difficulty in defeating the enemy; if the enemy is stronger, then the SKILL rewards are higher and if the enemy is weaker, then the SKILL rewards are lower. The SKILL tokens and experience that was earned are being stocked for so long as the player commenced a transaction to convert their SKILL tokens to their wallet and to make and entreaty or put in the experience of their characters or role as required.

Weapons used in the game can be obtained. They have different ratings from one star to five stars and the chances to obtain them. The overall combat power for a player's character can be increased by forging new weapons at the in-game blacksmith. The forging process utilizes RNG and the chances to obtaining the forged weapons include:

• Having a One-Star gives a player a 44% chance
• Having a Two-Star gives a player a 35% chance
• Having a Three-Star gives a player a 15% chance
• Having a Four-Star gives a player a 5% chance
• Having a Five-Star gives a player a 1% chance

Reforging can also be done in the game and it is done by combining one weapon with another by burning the weapon that is of less value. This helps players to upgrade to better weapons from their former low-strength weapons.

Since CryptoBlades is a game based on NFT and runs on a blockchain, players own their earned NFTs and have the right to sell and trade any collectible or item earned. CryptoBlades have a marketplace integrated into the platform which makes the process faster, easier and trustless. Players list their character and weapons where other players can search for and obtain.

The Team of CryptoBlades

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The team of CryptoBlade includes Philip Devine who is the owner you can get to his Linkedin page, Daniel Karsai – blockchain developer, Raymond Hammarling – backend developer and Kyle Kemp – front-end developer.

SKILL Tokens

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SKILL is the native token for the CryptoBlades game. It is listed on CoinMarketCap. As of the time of writing SKILL is ranked 798 and has a price of $19.58. It has a MarketCap of $17,223,901 and a Circulating Supply of 879,524.81 SKILL

4.) Show the complete process to acquire the tokens (it does not necessarily have to be the game selected in the previous question, as long as it is within the list provided). Indicate the platforms (wallets or exchanges) where it is available; the process for downloading, installing and configuring wallets or networks. Show Screenshots.

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How to Obtain SKILL Tokens

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In this task we shall be going through 3 different platforms namely: MetaMask, Binance, and ApeSwap. This are the required platforms to obtain the CryptoBlades token – SKILL.

MetaMask

These are the processes involved to install MetaMask on your device:

• Go to metamask.io and on the page click on Download at the top right corner of the page. You can also click Download Now at the bottom left corner of the page.

• Another page would display indicating the platform MetaMask would be installed. At the bottom of the page click on Install Metamask for Brave.

• It would direct you to where you would add MetaMask as an extension on your brower. Click on Add to Brave.

• A prompt would pop out. Click on Add extension.

• Congratulations you have added MetaMask to your browser extension. Next you click on Get Started.

• Click on Create a Wallet.

• Next click on I Agree.

• Another page would display where you create a new password. Input your password in the two sections provided, then show that you have agreed to their Terms of Use and click on Create.

• A new page with a video describing how to secure your wallet would be displayed. Click on Next.

• A Secret Backup Phrase would be displayed, click on the padlock icon to get to your backup phrase.

• The padlock would open and you would discover your backup phrase. Copy them and then click on next.

• Then you confirm your Secret Backup Phrase by putting back the phrase in the spaces given. When you have put them, click on Confirm.

• Congratulation you have successfully completed the necessary tasks required. Click on All Done.

• You have successfully created a MetaMask Wallet

To Register on Binance

• Go to binance.com. Then click on Register. A page indicating how to register would be displayed. I chose Email, then input your Email address and Password. Then click on " i have read and agree ". After that click on Create Account.

• an email will be sent to you on your email address. Confirm your email by inputing the verification code in the spaces given.

• Congratulations you have created your Binance Account.

To get the SKILL Tokens

• First you have to obtain BNB coins. So go to your Binance account, click on Wallet, then click on Funding Wallet.

• On the page click on BNB, then a pop up indicating the amount the crypto coins you want to obtain and the amount would show. Input the amount you want and click on Confirm.

• After that you go to MetaMask to connect it with your Binance account. Click on drop down arrow close to Ethereum mainnet. A dropdown list of network would display. choose Custom RPC. This is done to create a new network.

• Next a page would display where you input the necessary data required to create the new network. Input the data and click on Add Network at the top right corner.

• A new network would be created. Since we want to connect our MetaMask wallet to Binance, we then create a Binance network.

• After that you connect the MetaMask wallet with ApeSwap. Go to apeswap.finance, then click on connect.

• It would take you to another page where you choose the platform you want to connect to. Click on MetaMask.

• A prompt would pop out indicating your MetaMask wallet. Click on Next.

• Another prompt would display, click on Connect.

• Your MetaMask wallet has been successfully connected to ApeSwap. You can confirm by the wallet address at the top right of the page. Then go to Trade at the left side, click on it and then click on Exchange.

• A new page would display showing you to Swap or Provide liquidity. Leave it at Swap and then go and choose the crypto coin you want to swap to. Click on it.

• A search space would show where you type the coin you need. Type skill and click on SKILL.

• Then you input the amount of BNB you have to get SKILL. After that click on Connect Wallet.

• A list of wallets would show, click on MetaMask.

• Then a page with the amount you of BNB coins you want to swap for SKILL tokens will show, click on Swap.

• Finally, you confirm the transaction by clicking on Confirm Swap.

Note: All images in No. 4 are from MetaMask, Binance and ApeSwap respectively.

IN CONCLUSION
Professor @imagen was awesome, he nailed it. I have been able to under this particular topic about NTF games, the advantages and disadvantages etc . Thanks to professor @imagen for well explained lecture i really appreciate.
Cc:
Professor @imagen

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Thanks for going through my post