Why‘Native’ Crypto Games/ Applications in 2019 is important-Intro
‘Native’ crypto games are still very early now but likely will be especially important for this 2019 year.
Often got asked why am I interested particularly in crypto games/dapps throughout this past 2018 year. Here’s one of the process I often use:
A. Defining ‘Games’
“Words are created to define things rather than things being created to match the definition of words”.
Game as a definition can be very different depending if you ask each person. (*Inside joke- same as ‘NFT’/Non-fungible token, ‘governance’ and ‘AI’). It’s important to recognize and re-examine what it means to be a ‘game’ in this new crypto platform.
Here a few broad definitions of games:
1)“Game is a system of rules in which agents compete by making ambiguous endogenously meaningful decision”
2)“Game is a closed, formal system that engages in a structure conflict and resolves its uncertainty in an unequal outcome”.
(*And usually use this metaphor- Similar to when social/mobile games were coming out, many would had the argument over the definition of the game as well eg: whether angrybird/farmvile was a “real game” or not comparing to hardcore console/PC games.)
*Will you consider Cryptokitties, game of stakes, Decentraland, fcoin, Blakos, EOSbet, cryptotitties, prediction markets, or even exchanges as games?
B. New platforms & Early stage/Indie teams
“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes”
Gaming had always been and still is the forefront of new technologies platform.
E.g Gaming+ deep learning- OpenAI; https://openai.com/five/,
or Gaming+VR- Recroom- https://www.againstgrav.com/rec-room/ & beatsaber; http://beatsaber.com/
If you look at past ‘new’ platform trends- internet, social, mobile or even prior- games were the early killer applications in earlier stages (and applications implementing similar mechanisms as games). And one can argue it’d be very similar for crypto.
- FourSquare earlier on used to call themselves “Mobile application that helps you keep up with your friends using game mechanics to encourage & reward users for experiencing new things”
Also in early stages of a new platform, indie/early stage developers & teams often were the ones developing the killer applications at the new platform.
- Tony had a good article about this too: https://www.tonysheng.com/crypto-adoption-games
With 2018’s emphasis &many new ‘infrastructure’ crypto platforms & the emphasis on adoption, we’d very likely to see more crypto games.
C. Let Product speaks
“Must come from the seeing, not talking”.
Many projects talked about the benefits of crypto games- such as (*inside joke- skin trading & the concept of seeing a gaming item cross platform), but personally prefer teams that are focus to show through building.
A question to ask: what would be good the elements of a native crypto game application that had shipped?
‘Godsunchained” & “Axieinfinity” were in my opinion top great examples of earlier stage projects started in 2018, and had consistently shipped.
They had showed gameplay (the utility of its assets), interoperability, its community networks’ effects, unique IP aesthetics/ designs and more.
Godsunchained:
- Gameplay(Alpha)-video and screenshots. *Streaming Video: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/342753972
And Check out the amazing designs and rarity of each cards: https://godsunchained.com/genesis-set
- Currently ~2.8M cards created; Tournament prize pool incentives: ~400k
- 3rd Party Community projects/tools:
GUDecks- deck builder, forum, marketplace and more
Godsunchained info- Explorer, global stats/ranking
- Interoperability-
Demonstrating actual early examples of cross platform assets (*From turning assets from Fuel Games’s previous title Etherbots into special Godsunchained assets)
And the recently announced partnership with Cryptokitties- unlocking special godsunchained Tailsman & packs through your kitties. (*And getting special cats) https://godsunchained.com/cryptokitties
Axieinfinity:
- Gameplay- Video and screenshots. *Streaming Video of its tournament: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3cS5Zhy8dw&feature=youtu.be&t=43
- The NFT asset having multiple in game utilities already. (And check out its designs, animations and stats of Axies) https://axieinfinity.com/encyclopedia
- And cool 3rd party community projects.
Team builder/dex/parts tier list website: https://axie-dex.kikoweb.ch/teambuilder
Axie Toolsets: https://freakitties.github.io/axie/
And the very interesting community extension game- Flappy Axie
D. Drawbacks & ‘Metrics’
The drawback of these crypto game including the difficulties of UI/UX issue of crypto. Another major one was the lack of users in crypto space comparing to users comparing to games/applications from mobile/consoles/web.
While true, the # of users for dapps space can sometimes being over criticized at the moment.
*Social platform previously being criticized as having no revenue and only users numbers. As metric change (including growth rates)
As the space evolves, it’d be interesting to see what long term metrics separates a good and bad game for crypto space.
*What are some other cool crypto games/studios?
-More cool games &studios:
Plasma dog: https://sadyba-plasmadog.hoard.exchange/
Microverse: http://www.microversegame.com/
EOS Knights: http://eosknights.io/
Loom games: https://loom.games/
Cryptowars: https://cryptowars.jp/
And Horizon: https://horizongames.net/
#also hackathon projects from ethglobal hackathons such as http://www.cryptoagainsthumanity.net/ ; https://github.com/shamatar/go-snarks
What to expect in 2019?
- More Decentralized apps/ marketplaces/ platforms/defi products/ protocols adding gaming mechanics in their applications.
- Top crypto game development studio teams would be even more highly sought after (Especially with relative abundance of platforms).
- Large gaming studio officially coming in to play.
- More new economic game theory models or decision making experiments being tested through crypto games.
e.g IOWA gambling test- risk preference test making rewards,uncertainty and penalities; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39A3z3S6aY0
- More new weird stuff *hopefully lol
May write additional detailed follow on pieces later (*fingers crossed).
