Start the Engines — CryptoCarz Debut Tour
From our debut at Consensus in New York, CryptoCarz has been on the road, taking our vision of immersive, blockchain-enabled gaming to audiences in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong. What every audiences gets — whether they are a gamer or a crypto-enthusiast — is that we are different.
We are using blockchain to tackle a fundamental limitation in gaming: the question of ownership. CryptoCarz is not using ERC721 because of the buzz or that it merely adds something to our game — it is central to the logic and economics of the game. For the first time, gamers will have an irrevocable asset that they can own, trade, customise, and utilise across different platforms and environments, on their terms.
The conversation at most blockchain conferences always started with ‘why.’ Why do you need to use blockchain? Why are you creating a game? Why are you using VR? By the time we came to Nifty in Hong Kong, we were in home territory. The whole conference hinged on the emerging link between blockchain and gaming, specifically through non-fungible tokens.
At Nifty in Hong Kong, we displayed the latest iteration of our virtual showroom. Using a VR headset, we have given attendees in New York, Tokyo and Hong Kong the opportunity to sit in a CryptoCarz driving seat. Suddenly the prospect of an immersive driving experience becomes more tangible — people then want to know when they can start the ignition and drive their own car.
We said in each of our stops that there are 20 different VR models — people who came to our booth could experience two of our models. Our smart contracts are complete and open for audit. The cars will be sold as tokens or assets in a phased auction, which will in turn drive the development of the full, multiplayer game.
We crossed an important threshold in Hong Kong, which we will cover in more technical detail in the next post — we got the cars running. As part of the NIFTY hackathon, we loaded four virtual reality CryptoCarz into a Decentraland environment, and ran a drag race based on our smart contracts.
Gamers and crypto-heads alike, want to see cars in action. In three months, we’ve gone from a spark of inspiration to a minimum viable product. We’re only at the start of our journey, but we are fully charged by the feedback and enthusiasm we’ve received on the different road we’re taking.
In the next post, we’ll explore how, in the space of 20 hours, we brought the cars to life on Decentraland.
