Gods Unchained: Hearthstone Clone or Evolution?
The digital collectible card games (CCG) market is expected to generate 1.3 billion U.S dollars worldwide this year. Most of this revenue will go to the publishers, developers and marketing companies behind these games. Hearthstone, a collectible card game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment back in 2014 takes a big chunk of this pie. It has been consistently the top CCG game in the world since its launch 4 years ago.
What if some of this wealth can also go to the players through trading, selling, and true ownership of game items? Are players who spend hundreds, if not thousands of hours playing, evangelizing and supporting these games entitled to some form of compensation too?
A CCG is Also A TCG
According to Wikipedia, a collectible card game is also called a trading card game, but the important element of trading is absent in games like Hearthstone. And when a similar idea is implemented, such as in the case of Diablo III’s Auction House, it eventually fails because of fraud, scams, hacking, or simply being incompatible with the core gameplay itself. Most players are also against the idea despite the demand.
Don’t you wish you can trade, sell, and actually own cards in Hearthstone?
Unfortunately, whether trading is enabled or not, when a game dies, your items also die with it. So, after spending countless hours on the game, you’ll just end up with nothing. As the lowly player, you never really owned anything. Talk about being at the bottom of the food chain.
Some will argue that the player is already compensated through the enjoyment of the experience of playing the game itself. I’ll talk about why this is unfair, disingenuous and a bad business model in a separate essay.
Blockchain to the Rescue
Gaming can be thought of as having different phases like the trends in music and fashion. The 1970s was marked by the popularity of arcades. The 1980s of home consoles. The 1990s of desktop or PC gaming. The 2000s of online and competitive gaming. The 2010s of mobile and social gaming. And now we are approaching the 2020s which I think will be the rise of blockchain and VR gaming.
Blockchain technology has the potential to give control back to the players. Game items can be represented as unique tokens with attributes like rarity, strength and even genetic information by implementing smart contracts. Ownership is secured by cryptography and trading is already an integral part of the system. Gaming could be blockchain’s next killer application after Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
I won’t be discussing any technical details in this essay, I’ll leave the research and further learning to you. There are several great resources available here on Medium and around the web. Keep in mind that a fundamental understanding of how blockchain works is essential in gaining a deeper appreciation of its impact in gaming, finance, and other industries.
Gods Unchained: Next Generation CCG
Gods Unchained is an upcoming collectible card game that takes advantage of blockchain technology to give players and the community true ownership of the cards and the ability to sell or trade them. To quote their FAQ:
Gods Unchained is a decentralized competitive card game that takes some of the best lessons learned from games like Hearthstone, MTG, and Fearia and turns them into a truly community-focused game. At its core Gods Unchained is a state of the art blockchain-based game, enabling users to trade and sell their cards freely, with the same level of ownership as if they were real, tangible cards.
Gameplay will be familiar to existing Hearthstone players. Some may say too familiar, but I think it’s a good move that will reduce the barrier to entry for existing players. Gods Unchained is being positioned as an eSports game so it should also appeal to the more hardcore, competitive players. The gameplay is being balanced, designed and implemented by a strong team of game designers and developers. The highlight of the game is the amazing artwork done by over 100 top notch digital artists from around the world.
Gods Unchained is one of the many blockchain-powered games that are gunning to disrupt the gaming industry. It is being developed by Fuel Games which recently raised 2 million U.S. dollars from Coinbase Ventures. Fuel Games was founded by blockchain gaming pioneers Robbie and James Ferguson from Sydney, Australia. Two brothers who achieved early success with another blockchain game called Etherbots.
If you love Hearthstone, Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, and other CCGs, then check out Gods Unchained. Buy a genesis pack now while they’re still on an early bird sale (7% off as of this writing).
A Game or an Investment?
Many early adopters view this opportunity as an investment. They speculate that the value of the cards will increase as the game becomes more popular and the demand for unique cards increases. As a gamer and investor, I personally view Gods Unchained as a game that I’ll enjoy and won’t mind spending hours playing with and at the same time, a good investment.
With a strong team and the backing of Coinbase, one of the biggest digital currency exchanges in the world, Gods Unchained is poised to take some of the market dominated by Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering.
Do you want a free Golden Blessed Chimera card? Enter the Genesis Giveaway to unlock a Golden Blessed Chimera and chance to win $10,000 in packs!
Get in touch with the GU team and other players on Discord. Please note that some of the links in this article are my referral links.
