How Blockchain Turns Game Characters Immortal
Blockchain is transforming the way we store, evolve and trade video game assets. Let’s dive into the exciting world of player-owned & decentralized items and how they may reshape the gaming ecosystem
Back in June 2018 the ERC-1155 Multi Token Standard was introduced by Witek Radomski, CTO of Enjin. Fungible and Non-Fungible Tokens (FT, NFT) could now be represented by a single Smart Contract. While fungible tokens are commonly used as cryptocurrencies and interchangeable assets, a non-fungible token provides a unique set of an ID and an index on the Blockchain, enabling one-of-a-kind digital entities.
In Bitcoin Hodler every Blockchain character is fully player-owned and has an individual identity, which allows for a unique history and skillset. Represented by decentralized NFTs, game assets become highly independent. They can be held, evolved & traded on a public, distributed network, outside of their virtual realm and beyond the control of their original creators.
This enables an asset-oriented cross-game experience, which is paving the way for an interconnected ecosystem. One that allows deep community engagement and the generic growth of a decentralized network of collaborating games. Blockchain platforms like Ethereum and Enjin provide the powerful toolsets for games, brands and communities to easily get started and leverage this exciting innovation.
Lets talk about how this is going to transform the way we build and play video games.
Do we truly own our digital assets?
First, let’s have a closer look at our ownership status! — In the physical world, the transfer of ownership usually involves the exchange of exclusive rights and control over an object. The fact that an asset, product or good literally changes hands makes it easier for us to determine its ownership status at any time.
In the digital world however things are a bit different. The missing physical reference often leads to confusion and a lack of clearity about the scope of our rights and control over an asset. Things that we believe to own at some point turn out to be out of our legal reach and control.
In most cases this perfectly applies to digital items in conventional video games. Access and ownership often are confounded.
Let’s assume you purchase a character in your favourite video game. Now you might have permission to access & use it, but you propably won’t truly own it. What you’ve most likely acquired is a switch or a variable on the company’s server (game studio, publisher, etc.), telling your device weather you have the right to access a referenced digital resource and its function. The access key however remains under the control of the company! The most conclusive way to check your ownership status is to try and trade the item on an independant marketplace — just like you would with your used car or TV.
You may quickly realize that your control is highly limited to the services provided by this one specific company, while it is technically and legally tied to your user account. The image above is meant to provide a very simplistic view in order to demonstrate a likely scenario: Joe who has access to a copy of the character “Mike” may not be able to pass his copy over to Bryan. Bryan will potentially need to purchase a whole new copy of Mike.
Empowering the Players
In a Blockchain-based asset economy however, game items are tied to fungible and non-fungible tokens (FT, NFT) with explicit public IDs (and an index in the case of NFTs). These tokens are fully player-owned and managed outside of the game on a public distributed ledger. In contrast to an account-based access management and data storage, game characters now become independant entities and can move freely & peer-to-peer between multiple users. By transfering the NFT to another user you literally hand over your access keys and transfer your ownership of the bound resource while preserving the meta data including individual stats or item history. Resources can be anything like specific characters, items, functionalities or complete areas of the game.
Besides peer-to-peer trading, this degree of control enables players to tap into new and exciting ways of collaboration: Let’s assume that now Joe tries to level up his Mike with the index #21 and is stuck in level 6. So he might send his Mike#21 to Bryan in order to fight the next battle and unlock level 7. Bryan then can send the upgraded character back to Joe. NFTs that are based on the ERC-1155 multi token standard can be stored, viewed, traded and managed on Blockchain wallets like the Enjin Digital Smart Wallet.
Characters in Bitcoin Hodler are all bound to NFTs and enabled to evolve individually. Their stats will be referenced to unique combinations of token IDs and indexes. Based on the preferences of the owner, every character will end up having different levels and skill structures. While all characters start equally with no skills, you will be able to gradually evolve them to higher cycles, solve challenges and uplevel different abilities like “timewarp”, “shrink” and “boost”. Once launched, the evolution of the skills will permanently remain with the character and can be passed over and traded with other players through the bounded NFT! This NFT-based character evolution is estimated to launch in Q4 2020. Be prepared and get your own & individual character here.
An Interconnected Future
Now let’s discuss what this shift in ownership and the decentralization of game assets may bring to players, games and the overall gaming experience.
As in the example of Joe and Bryan, NFTs empower the players to fully own and control their digital assets. They open up new and independent channels of interaction beyond the bounds of a single game. Players now can trade freely and transfer their assets to help each other out. Let’s assume you are excellent at a game, you could for instance open a boot camp to train and evolve characters for other players as a service.
Now that game assets live on the Blockchain, they become publicly availible and can be seen and accessed by other games and services who decide to provide a usecase in their virtual worlds. Obviously this is exciting for players who can use and potentially evolve their assets across different domains. At the same time, independent games can leverage this opportunity to join forces and build huge cooperative networks. By sharing assets and communities they can benefit each other and organically grow their player base. Cross-game quests, puzzles and multi game treasure hunts now become a real option!
This so-called Blockchain Gaming Multiverse was originally introduced by Enjin back in 2018. Initially 6 games including 9Lives Arena, Age of Rust, Bitcoin Hodler, CryptoFights, Forest Knight, and War of Crypta decided to join the Multiverse and commited to contribute to one of the largest cross-game experiences. Countless games have joined the Enjin community and the growing Multiverse eversince. An all-in-one Blockchain game developemnt platform which was recently introduced by Enjin allows games and apps to interconnect and cross-benefit their players, customers and members.
Embracing this exciting ecosystem, we are already supporting tokens of our partners in Bitcoin Hodler. The Mike units, from the above example, are Enjin Multiverse characters whom we gave the ability to access the world of Bitcoin Hodler alongside a multitude of other FTs & NFTs from different projects, brands and communities.
Many more joint token cooperations are yet to follow! We truly believe that Blockchain-enabled games are going to change the way we play, collaborate and shape virtual experiences.
Join our community and lets explore this exciting new ecosystem!
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