Topic: Why building games on top of blockchain technology? (Read 342 times)

Imagine to turn your work (zine, character, comics, game) into investment whith value while being viewed / readed / bought. Imagine to buy a work (zine, comics, game) and later to exchange it for money without undoing the publication. But before that we will present the saga that gave rise to the project and that is the purpose of this campaign: Epic - a crossover of Brazilian characters having artists like Emir Ribeiro, Mike Deodato, Michèlle Domit and others Marvel/DC Comics artists collaborating with that.

In Blockchain that is possible.

See: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/epic-entertainments-comics-in-blockchain-games-animation

If Blizzard will decide to end the game, all those blockchain items will lose their value, because they are useless without the game. Furthermore, Blizzard control the properties of those items - on blockchain they are just strings of data, and Blizzard can change how this data is decoded on their servers - for example they can swap the model of some rare mount stored on blockchain for some common mount.
Without control over the game this ownership of blockchain assets is useless. Ability to trade in-game items for real money is a feature that must be supported by the developer, even if items are on blockchain, and the reason why Blizzard is not doing it is because they don't want to - they've tried it with Diablo III for some time, but then decided against it.
Blockchain is not panacea, you can't slap it on everything and think that you have achieved decentralization and immutability.

For me the true benefit in doing this, is to open the possibility for users to really own their game items. Let's take World of Warcraft for example, because it's such a popular game. Users sell rare items for real money outside the game because the platform itself doesn't allow it. Also, if suddenly Blizzard decides to end the game, users will lose all their items and gold, etc. If game items are stored in the blockchain, they will really belong to users and can be easily sold on a free market. Items will now really become collectibles, because they cant be faked and users will have a proof of ownership over them, and this will revolutionize games in my opinion.

If the game is like lottery or a casino game, it's still make sense especially they are decentralized so the player can decide their move. But for open-source? Whether it will be the same as capitalized one when it comes to game update? (especially on items, rawrr) believe it or not, you'll be tempted to buy better one over and over again if coming to the game updates.
But the Augmentors look so epic tho', lol.

People of all over the world show their interest to gambling and it is so interesting for almost all people now a days. Gaming department is bringing new games and many new systems into their game for that reason. That is not enough, game programmers have to bring some new episode and stage for keep running their game and it needs so much data and technology which are stores at blockchain so that it is so much necessary to the gaming programmers.
Blockchain technology is going on top and that building games on top because it is very challenging thing to do work without blockchain technology.

Open-source doesn't mean that the whole in-game content is free, it means that the source code is open so users would have the ability to play the game even if developers would make some changes that community is not agreeing on - this is necessary to make the whole game decentralized, because storing assets on blockchain is pretty useless if developers still control the whole game - for example they can change in-game models, stats for blockchain assets and also ban accounts. There's a good article covering this issue in CryptoKitties: https://www.coindesk.com/scratch-cryptokitties-isnt-ethereums-vision-apps/


Reversing payments is another big problem - anyone who played popular MMO's knows how often accounts get hacked to steal in-game currency and items or resell them later - and thanks to centralization original owners are usually able to get back their stolen items.

why does truly owning your character matter if it's operable in the game's environment?  you can't port it somewhere else?  unless it's a matter of trust and gaming platforms might wipe or lock your character due to "policy violation"

Now a days gaming is very interesting thing and people of all over the world shows interest to gambling. For this reason, gaming department have to bring many new systems at their gaming site and create new and brand new games.
Even they have to discover new episode or stage at their games and these things need some technology and data and these things are stored by blockchain so that blockchain is growing them at high level and though it is needed very badly this system is becoming the most needed thing to the association of gaming programmers.
It is very challenging thing without blockchain technology so that blockchain technology is going on top and that building games on top.

plus cheaters/hackers ruin so many online games.

interesting one thanks

This is a very concise explanation.I don't know the game should be totally open-sourced just to have their assets on the blockchain.Blockchain could be a part of their environment where assets are stored.How else do you expect games to make money if everything is given out for free ? One major issues of having assets on the chain is what if user loses access to their private keys ? The game developers wouldn't be able to restore his purchases if any...

We built Coindroids on a blockchain for a number of reasons..

1) It was/is a fun challenge and learning experience

For the same reason that we wrote a space battle game in a database, we wanted to see what we could do with different blockchain ecosystems. It was a way to learn more about blockchain technology ourselves, and also helped us to research security requirements and best practices which were incorporated into the CryptoCurrency Security Standard.  

2) Games can help people learn about blockchain technology and get comfortable interacting with it

We have hosted the game at conferences unrelated to blockchain tech and the patrons there had a chance to install their first wallets, get their first coin, and make their first transactions, all through playing Coindroids. People who were generally unfamiliar or agains the concept suddenly had a better appreciation for the technology.

3) It is a completely new paradigm where new mechanisms can be explored

There is so much possibility to explore when it comes to games. The fact that you can so easily play a game with real value at stake, without it being gambling, is huge imo. It's hard to know what will be popular, fun, or what will end up cumbersome and frustrating until you give a concept a try, but it is exciting to get to be the first to explore these new options and platforms.

Data on the blockchain, incentive in tokens that can be used also out of the game instead of in game currency that can only be used in 1 game
The developer of the game dont control the value of the in game currency.

Yet it's not easy to achieve good token economy in game by using tokens

The best part of having a game built on or around the blockchain technology is that every single resource/item/gold is accounted for on the blockchain itself. This rules out possibilities of duping and other such bug abuses. Also, in the case of trade scams, the items and account of the accused can be tagged making sure he cannot get away with his act.

Yes it makes sense, you can get rid of online black markets and keep the entire game economy transparent, check out Skara (my signature) they are working on this.

Hey,
Buiding game base on blockchain brings more benefit than you could imagine.
Let talk about trustless, I think it's the most important when you play a game.
For example, when do you play the lottery, do you totally believe that the generated number is uncontrolled by someone?

There are much more thing to consider, let think about privacy, payment, etc ...
Thay why we are building a new online gambling platform which helps to connect all bookmarkers around the world and allow every individual to participate on our system. If you feel interested in our project, let visit us at https://let.bet

This is fascinating stuff, and more and more coins and tokens are being specifically designed for their use in games and, unfortunately, gambling (even relatively mainstream coins like Electroneum). It seems to make sense, as the market there is huge.

There are even some services that are developing cross platform Blockchain technologies. The asset is saved on the Blockchain and it can be used on different platforms or games. Let's say you bought a special in game A and you want to use it on game B, then the Blockchain will validate that you own that sword in game A and you will get credited for that sword in game B.

How many virtual assets expire, once game development stop or the game gets pulled. This will solve that problem.

People have been building games on the blockchain for a long time.
XCP - Counterparty system allows people to create games with blockchain technology.

Some examples can be seen here :

https://counterparty.io/projects/

There are some very specific benefits related to blockchain like immutability and decentralization. I think blockchain is really good for lottery and casino games.

I guess the best example as to why is cryptokitties. Owning a decentralized cat for instance means developers can't suddenly in the future decide to edit its breeding ability or whatnot, the cat remains immutable. Same will be the case for other game objects.

Currently, game objects are stored in centralized and closed databases, so with blockchain those objects (like currency, items, comsetics etc.) could be stored on blockchain, which is a public and distributed environment.
However, a game has to be open source to benefit from the blockchain, and be very lightweight so running a game server would be cheap. Without those two requirements blockchain loses almost all its benefits - game objects are only useful if you have access to the game, and this is usually under full control of the company who runs this game. Blockchain can be used as a proof that all in-game item are created according to the rules, i.e. the company is not creating them out of thin air to sell for money to players, but for this to work users who want to verify it have to run a full node, which can be very cumbersome if there's a high amount of transasction (not only p2p, but also events like item drops). If players are connected to the blockchain via SPV client, it's pretty much useless, because they can't verify all the rules of blockchain.

In recent years, games have entered the markets using Blockchain features such as wallets or tokens to secure and back in-game items. This way players have more ownership of the items or currency they loot and purchase. With a Blockchain record, players are guaranteed ownership which gives their items value to both the owner and other players.

Take this game as an example ---> https://www.augmentorsgame.com/

Every creature will be backed by the Blockchain, allowing users to truly own their assets within and out of the game.

The Blockchain will help with the proof of ownership and also the transfer of ownership. 

Hey guys,

I don't understand what benefit are for a game to be built on top of blockchain technology, makes it really sense? what benefits are there? What is exactly stored on the blockchain? User game info?

Thanks