Crypto-games — how crypto are they really and how much game is in them?

Practically everyone who has ever had anything to do with cryptocurrency has heard about CryptoKitties. Their success was mind-blowing and started an avalanche of crypto-game imitations. Although, none of them repeated the same trajectory of success as CryptoKitties. Today, we hear more and more the critical question, that is — Where’s the game in all this? Because in reality, the point is just to collect some virtual assets that have a bit of a speculative component to them. There’s really no game process in CrytoKitties!
These observations have a point — it’s impossible to create an in-depth and involved gameplay on blockchain due to the obvious technical limitations. If a developer switches all game logic to a smart contract, the game will be too slow and too expensive, because any change that takes place on a blockchain costs some amount of gas, which is usually paid by the player. One of the solutions could be sidechains like Plasma.io, but currently, such technologies are still being developed.
Even if we set aside the technical issues, the developer still has some open questions, with the most important being: Who is the target audience — gamers or crypto-enthusiasts? What is your ideology — being faithful to the ever important in the crypto-world decentralization, or creating an enticing and engrossing game with a high-quality gameplay?
We at Ether Kingdoms discussed these questions with our colleagues in the gaming world. Some of them are sure that crypto-games will move towards an exciting gameplay, while the collectible aspect will be a bit less important. Some believe that crypto-games must evolve into genres that will be a melting pot of blockchain technologies and some type of game mechanics. Some say that there’s no need to reinvent the wheel — there are plenty of successful genres on the market, which can be taken and adapted to include crypto-tokens and some other crypto-elements. Yet there are those who are full of skepticism and think that crypto-games are another wave of the “blockchain for the sake of blockchain” projects, which will not get a lot of inertia.
Each of these sides has its arguments, but it’s impossible to say for sure if anyone is right at this time. It may take 1–2 years before we see who wins the argument. At Ether Kingdoms we are sure that crypto-games have a great and prosperous future ahead. There are many reasons for this.
First of all, CryptoKitties have proven that even a small crypto-community (MetaMask only has about a million installs; compare this to billions of mobile devices out there on the market) can be a fertile ground for the success of a project. Second, we think that people will take to the idea of making some type of money for the time they spend while playing. Think of professional cyber-athletes — they do exactly the same thing, which is making money for playing video games! Cyber-athletes earn through their gaming experience, but the entry level to participate in competitions is too high — it often takes years of practice and a big financial investments to organize a training base. Crypto-games will give an opportunity for anyone, not just professional gamers, to make money while playing. Of course, there’s always an element of luck, but in general, it’s specifically skill gaming, with the end possibility to be rewarded for your time, strategy and tactics.
Many other arguments in favor of the development of crypto-games can be brought, but the above are the most important ones. Possibly, the opportunity to monetize the time one spends playing is the main advantage of crypto-games over the classic F2P games.
Additionally, crypto-tokens are perfect for taking the role of hard currency that is widely used in F2P games. This means that the mechanisms of monetization of crypto-games are quite clear — they’ve been polished over the last decade of the F2P boom (we’d like to remind you that games provide for three-quarters of the revenue of mobile stores, with three-quarters of those being F2P games).
In our opinion, all of the above opens great horizons for crypto-games. And these horizons aren’t even around the corner — they are already here!
