Hafiz Kassam
Aug 28, 2017 · 5 min read

Complementing Worlds: Gaming and Blockchain

Blockchain technology. If you had said those words to someone on the street a few years ago, they probably would have given you a puzzled look, reminiscent of finding gum on their chosen seat in a crowded subway car. I would be willing to bet that the same look would be given if you tried mentioning it to a random person today, although this is quickly changing. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are gaining steam amongst mainstream audiences, and it reminds me, in hindsight, of a few occasions that have occurred in the past, namely, the rise of the Internet and the shift to the free to play gaming model, to name two.

Some of you may remember when the Internet was brought to the masses. I certainly do, although I was a teenager at the time. The possibilities were exciting and once it began to be adopted into mainstream life, it became a technology that most people couldn’t imagine living without, similar to cars, the telephone (and now smartphones), and electricity. But it wasn’t always this way. As with any new technology, there were the naysayers. Those that predict that certain new technologies would bring about the collapse of modern society as we know it. And those who simply dismissed these new technologies as the latest fad. There is a well-known article that was published in Newsweek in 1995 by Clifford Stoll entitled, “Why the Web Won’t be Nirvana”. It talks about what visionaries of the time claim the Internet will become, and not surprisingly, most of these claims became reality. The article also describes in detail the concerns that the author has, and it has a hauntingly similar tone to the concerns of Blockchain tech today. While the concerns in the article had some validity at the time they were written, it is amusing to look back at it now, more than 20 years later, and read it in the tense of modern times.

The next topic is a different branch from the same tree, and more dear to my heart as a near lifelong gamer and career game developer, and that is free to play gaming. The Internet did many things for many industries, but the one thing it did without a shadow of a doubt was revolutionize the gaming world. When I was a kid, playing Starcraft with a friend of mine when he was at his house and I was at mine was mind boggling to me. I would call my grandma and tell her not to call the house for 2 hours, lest she disconnect my gaming session (in the days of dial-up modems), which had the potential of destroying an entire evening’s enjoyment.

Fast forward to the future, and my career as a game developer experienced a similar lurch, with the advent of smartphones and the mainstream adoption of free to play gaming. Now, free to play gaming existed long before Steve Jobs and others endorsed the practice into their business models. Its roots go back as early as 1999, to a company called Nexon. I won’t go into the history of it, but let’s just say that Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (or MMORPGs) gave the free to play model the kick in the pants it needed to become what it is today, and the introduction of smartphones (particularly the iPhone in 2007) were the beginning of a revolution that turned the gaming industry on its head. Now mind you, not all developers embraced this new model. Just like in the early days of the internet, there were naysayers. PopCap Games (the makers of such gems as Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies) as an example, were staunchly against the model and even went out of their way to explain why they would not embrace it. They did eventually embrace it, of course, perhaps too little too late, but it just goes to show that with every new trend there are three groups of people — those who embrace it, those who shun it, and those who cautiously observe. In my opinion, if you are in the last group you may as well be in the middle one, because either way you will likely miss the boat. But that is a story for another piece.

So, you are probably asking yourself, when do we get to the point about gaming and cryptocurrencies being complementary? I don’t think that the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, the rise of free to play gaming shortly after, and the creation of Blockchain technology and Bitcoin in 2008 is a coincidence. Far from it.

Ask yourself — what is the main idea behind the free to play gaming model? The answer is inevitably virtual currency. Players spend real money to buy fake money, which has real value in the game that it was bought for. Outside of the game, it is as worthless as dust. Now ask yourself, what is cryptocurrency? In simple terms, it is itself a virtual currency. Of course, it has much more complexity than an in-game virtual currency as it is built on the shoulders of Blockchain technology, which I won’t get into in detail in this article, except to say that cryptocurrencies use Blockchain technology to be a decentralized form of currency that is controlled by no single entity, and can be exchanged or used in a fully verified and (mostly) anonymous fashion.

So why do cryptocurrencies complement the free to play gaming model so well? To answer this question, one of the major flaws of the digital world needs to be brought to the forefront, and that flaw is, in a word, piracy. Throughout the short history of gaming, piracy has been the number one issue that has plagued publishers and developers alike. Although the problem is not as bad as it used to be, with the emergence of new methods of dealing with it, it is by no means extinct.

The free to play gaming world also has its fair share of piracy. Players getting their hands on in-game virtual coins and items without paying real money is an ever present issue. Add in the fact that developers must cough up a fair percentage of their earnings to the platforms that they sell their in-game virtual currency and virtual items in makes the industry extremely difficult to survive in. And so enters cryptocurrency. A verifiable, decentralized, extremely difficult to defraud method of monetary exchange. A digital asset that holds value only in the confines of the technologies it is used in. A technology owned by no one and everyone. It is easy to see how these two spaces, gaming and cryptocurrency, were destined to be together. Whatever happens in the near future with specific cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, the simple fact remains — Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are here to stay, and the gaming industry is in for another great revolution.

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Hafiz Kassam

Written by

Web/Mobile Game Developer and Entrepreneur.

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