4 Blockchain Games That Need Your Attention — NOW

Mecenkoy
Mecenkoy
Nov 3 · 5 min read

I see blockchain gaming as the future of video games. I also consider it the best possible vehicle for the road to blockchain mass adoption. What better way to teach people about blockchain than giving them hands-on experience that allows them to see and understand its benefits in real-time.

I’m extremely interested in Blockchain Games as both a consumer and an investor. Over the course of the past few weeks, I’ve created criteria that I use to analyze blockchain games.

The goal of the criteria is determining commonalities between successful games, as well as identifying other factors that may positively contribute to a games’ success. I used to use a similar process when I would analyze ICO’s for crypto accelerators, some of the criteria I used in the past still applies to gaming.

At the end of the day, we have to remember that these our businesses. You may absolutely love a certain blockchain game, but take a step back and look at its business model — if you’re going to invest your time in a game, it’s in your best interest to perform due diligence to ensure it’s not a game that might disappear when fundraising is complete.

At the moment, most people who play blockchain games are investors. They’re gamers, but they’re playing to make money. They saw what happened with CryptoKitties and want to catch the next wave. This is a problem, it’s not conducive to a positive gameplay experience.

We’re entering an interesting phase in blockchain gaming, where if we want the industry to grow, we need to transition into games that also accommodate casual players.

My criteria will likely change as I begin to learn more and more about the space, but here it is:

  • The Team
  • External Fundraising
  • Public Fundraising Mechanism
  • Ease of Play-to-Win vs Pay-to-Win
  • User-friendliness/First Time User Experience
  • Ease of Use for Non-crypto Savvy Users
  • Blockchain Implementation Method

I don’t mention a couple of blockchain games that have already reached certain levels of growth and user acquisition. For example, Gods Unchained is doing amazing things for the space by being one of the first blockchain games attracting users from outside of the crypto community — but chances are if you’ve heard of blockchain games, you’ve heard of games like Gods Unchained and CryptoKitties.

For now, let’s look at what I believe are promising blockchain games on the horizon.

CryptoSpaceCommanders

Game Genre: MMORPG/Space Themed
Status: in Aplha, pre-sale active

CryptoSpaceCommanders is a space-themed MMORPG where players can acquire ships, mine resources, craft items and ships, battle Non-Player-Characters (PvE), and battle other players (PvP). I’ve written about them in the past as one of the games I’m most excited for right now.

Think of it like World of Warcraft or Eve Online if you owned all the assets you used in-game and could re-sell items that you grind to obtain.

The reason I have CryptoSpaceCommanders at the top of the list is that it’s a game that both has the team necessary to execute on its plan, and I genuinely enjoy playing it. The game is currently in Alpha, and is running a supply crate pre-sale where users can purchase crates at varied prices, all offering various ships and modules of differing rarities.

Some upcoming features that I’m really excited for are the in-game marketplace, that will allow players to trade with one another for cryptocurrency within the game itself, as opposed to sending their NFTs to third-party marketplaces such as OpenSea. CSC is also about to implement version 0.6 later this week, which introduce the mission system.

The mission system is incredibly complex and will offer new players the ability to play-to-earn.

What really excites me about the future of CSC is how focused they are on making this game easy to play for non-crypto savvy users. It’s really important to the CSC team that a user with no blockchain experience is able to get started in the CSC universe with ease.

This is one of the most important issues for a blockchain game to tackle. The blockchain gaming community isn’t that big, you see a lot of the same people if you spend enough time in the community.

If we, as an industry, want to grow — we need to focus on increasing the size of our target demographic from crypto-users, to gamers as a whole. I see CSC, and a couple of other games on this list as pioneers in doing just that.

CSC is being developed by Lucid Site. A Blockchain gaming studio based in Los Angeles, CA. The CSC team immediately checks all my boxes. The developers and designers have incredible experience in the space, and they’ve already taken on outside investment.

This means that they’ve been validated for their ability to produce quality games and that they have the funding necessary to focus on making this game an amazing game, over making it an extremely profitable game in the short term (like many of the past blockchain games we’ve witnessed).

The only area where CSC falls a little short is in user-friendliness and ease of use. But this is something they’re aware of, and actively working to fix. CryptoSpaceCommanders is an extremely deep game, with complex trading and crafting features that allow players nearly endless customization options.

At this point in time, it’s a little difficult to understand how to get started. There are plenty of guides scattered across the interwebz, but the game in its current state needs more information for new users, so the transition from “noob” to “pro” can happen at a faster rate.

I interviewed Lucid Sights’ CTO last week, and he mentioned that focusing on First Time User Experience is a high priority item for them. Judging by their track record and how adamantly they’ve prioritized game experience, it’s safe to assume that this pain-point won’t be around for much longer.

CSC incorporates a hybrid blockchain solution: the game is built with Unity and held on central servers, but the game economy is blockchain-based. This allows them to scale the game and userbase at a rate impossible with Ethereums scalability issues, while still retaining all the benefits of blockchain in video games such as digital ownership, interoperability, etc.

Mecenkoy

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Mecenkoy

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