Importance of Brand Storytelling, Emerging as the Next Trend in Web3

In today's rapidly changing, overly-automated, and digitally driven culture, it's hard to see or experience humanity in its essence. Additionally, the internet is constantly warping us in its incredible convenience and gratification, making personal interaction especially scarce.

With attention spans and social interaction being as fast-paced as it is now, businesses can no longer afford to be faceless organizations. Brands today need to engage customers deeper than ever before to survive. This is where storytelling comes in place.

You need to be able to build a story that convincingly integrates the rational and dynamic components of your brand if you want people to remember it. You need to give your community a "why" to buy your product, service, or business by sharing a story or narrative on why it matters consistently on all platforms.

Today, brand storytelling isn't a luxury; rather, it's crucial to make sure your brand makes its mark, boosts sales, and has an influence. Considering the rise of social media platform products like TikTok, Youtube Shorts, and Instagram Reels, it's hard to be unforgettable.

Millions of Brands are exhausting their resources to capture as much of the pie's share for seconds of short-lived attention from audiences constantly bombarded with similar messages. A Brand needs to stand out in a lot of noise to make a connection, let alone an emotional one.

This is where Web3 comes in.

Web3 and NFTs: The Evolution of Storytelling

The internet isn't going anywhere now that it has become a monumental part of everyone's lives.

In its current state, the internet is an unending rabbit-hole that keeps sucking you in with its accessibility, entertainment, and, now, value, with the introduction of Web3.

For those who don't know, Web3 is a truly decentralized internet where people come first. It's a utopian state of the internet where everything is possible for the common person, be it communicating, working, playing games, or even partaking in leisure activities.

A lot of Web3 mainstream attention can be attributed to Non-Fungible Tokens. The newfound success of NFTs and the financial potential it brings is evolving everything around us.

NFTs, despite taking its start as pixelated digital collectibles geared towards the crypto community and being sold for a fortune, are now at the center of every metaverse, powering its economy, branding, and value by introducing a much-needed utility-driven and rewarding functionality.

The major success of the NFT market has allowed brands to redefine their identity and image and make a much deeper connection with their community.

Today, NFTs are more than just aesthetically pleasing images; they're a form of expression for both well-established and upcoming brands to tell their story within different mediums.

Companies like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Campbell, and more are using Web3 to build an emotional connection with their community and stand out with their exclusive narratives.

By incorporating their brand's story in a game, exclusive videos, or audios, Brands are strengthening their identity, showcasing brand values, and envisioning their brand future on Web3.

A New Form of Engagement

Web3 coupled with NFTs has introduced a new form of engagement for business, creators, and brands. By introducing exclusivity, value, and importance of holding an NFT collection through a narrative, Brands are redefining what it means to be a community member.

The narrative-forward approach of NFT collections, upcoming games, and brands has made enough of an impact to keep collectors and the community more dedicated to the values.

Web3 has undoubtedly given rise to a plethora of new mediums of storytelling, with NFT collectors now more than invested in holding on to their tokens rather than selling them for a profit.

NFTs, ironically, have become the 'golden ticket' for community members to be a part of the community. The introduction of governance, exclusive perks, and utility that comes with some NFT collections is incentivizing enough for community members to stick around.

This is because a brand creates value for itself and its members. Web3 is revolutionizing how brands and community members engage with each other by redefining relationships, bonds, values, and engagements.

One great example of this can be taken from the Blockchain gaming space.

Blockchain Gaming: Bringing Games to Life

Initially, Blockchain games were the pioneers of using NFTs as a storytelling medium.

However, in its early stages, Blockchain games took the crypto-first or value-first narrative instead of the story-first narrative with their NFTs.

Many Play-to-earn games are trying to capture an audience of gamers and crypto-investors to invest in the game and its NFT collection, pump up the value, and sell it for a fortune, making both the player and the developer a fortune.

But with most game developers doing exactly that, it was hard to stand out amidst all the noise. It is one of the many reasons why crypto games haven't seen the same success as brands have with NFTs.

Most crypto games use the blockchain-first approach to their games. They're introducing governance, perks, decentralized autonomous organizations, tokenomics, etc. However, rarely do we see any interesting stories, visuals, or narratives that we see in AAA games.

This approach has made the blockchain gaming space very saturated.

Every game is set to promote its exclusive value-generating perks but not the actual game. On the contrary, most games look very poorly made. They don't have the visuals, they don't have a story, and they don't give players a reason other than money to play.

Play-to-earn games are ideally the next best thing for gaming space. It's every gamer's dream to make money off of a game they enjoy. Emphasis on the "enjoy." Games like Axie infinity were becoming a great example until investors started sponsoring gamers to play the game, turning it into another 9-5, unenjoyable job.

MetaBlaze: An Interstellar Approach to Storytelling

Interestingly not all games follow the value-first approach. It's pleasant to see games like MetaBlaze take the story-driven narrative with their game instead of the value-first. By prioritizing developer-player connection, MetaBlaze's series of intergalactic immersive gaming ecosystems is taking a solid and plausible approach.

Set in Galaxia Blue, an intergalactic metaverse, MetaBlaze combines important elements of science fiction, fantasy, action, role-playing, strategy, lore, and more to its storytelling, alluring players to keep playing the game.

What's more is that MetaBlaze, as a platform, is consistent with its storytelling in all of its products. So whether it's their decentralized app, the metaverse, NFT collections, games, or website, you can see components of its interstellar lore influencing everything.

As a gamer, I can see that the story is at the center of the MetaBlaze metaverse. Although necessary for a play-to-earn game, you're not bombarded with tokenomics, value, and governance.

With MetaBlaze, the story of Galaxia Blue comes first whether it's through MetaRoyals, MetaGoblins, Blaziverse, the $MBLZ token, or MetaMinez. And I believe it's quintessential for crypto games and play-to-earn games to do that so players can stay invested through innovation.

Closing Remarks

Web3 is the next generation of the internet, evolving how brands, games, and products connect and engage with new and old users. While still in its nascent stages, it could be long before we can see mainstream adoption of the new internet.

However, with the innovation that constantly happens in Web3, we may likely see that utopia sooner than ever. Storytelling has become more important than ever in Web3 than in Web2.

And before games from Playstation Studio, Rockstar Games, or Ubisoft enter the space, it's nice to see ecosystems like MetaBlaze create a story-driven approach, take advantage of brand storytelling and create a valuable connection with their gamers. If you're interested in finding out more about MetaBlaze, I highly recommend you to check out their telegram and website and find out more about their platform.

I found this project a couple of weeks ago and really liked the game-first narrative instead of the blockchain or crypto-first narrative that most NFT-based games employ. Let it be noted that I am not invested in the project, and this article is an information/opinion-based article about MetaBlaze. Please do your own research and read more about the project before investing. I hope you enjoyed reading this article.