Why Secret’s Tech is Changing Blockchain Gaming
As you might know, Secret is the privacy hub for Web3. Customizable privacy has opened up an unparalleled design canvas for builders of all kinds.
Let’s take a look at what Secret is bringing to the Gaming world…
The state of blockchain gaming
The Video Gaming industry is estimated to be worth $178.73 billion in 2021 with nearly 3 billion gamers around the world.
This sector is definitely booming and expected to grow more in the coming years:
Source:https://www.wepc.com/news/video-game-statistics/
How economic models for gaming have evolved
Gaming 1.0 — Pay-to-Play
Most of us know the “Pay-to-play” economic model. That’s where AAA games are developed by skilled and famous game studios. You buy a physical or digital game and enjoy playing it for an unlimited amount of time. You may also spend money on add-ons, expansion packs and other in-game assets but you’ll never own these assets as the studio can decide anytime to shut the game off.
Gaming 2.0 — Free-to-Play
“Free-to-play” model played an important role in the gaming growth. It basically allowed anyone with internet access, a computer or a mobile, to download and play a game with no up front cost.
That economic model is based on the players buying in-game assets to level up more quickly or unlock some part of the game.
Gaming 3.0 — Play-to-Earn
A major paradigm shift changed the landscape a few years back thanks to the creation of smart contracts and NFTs on blockchain.
Blockchain created shifts that opened up a new model: “Play-to-Earn”. Players now have access to a new permissionless revenue stream, ownership of their in-game assets, and a taste of the embedded DeFi coming along with these blockchain games.
The following graph shows the top benefits of developing games on blockchain:
Source: BGA 2021 Member Survey
The blockchain gaming landscape
Blockchain gaming has been on a wild ride since its inception. Huge amounts of investments have been made lately confirming this trend ($1 Billion in January 2022 alone).
Axie Infinity, Gods Unchained, Defi Kingdoms, just to name a few, shone light on this new economic model for gaming.
We are still very early as no AAA game has been yet released on blockchain. There are only 1000 games on blockchain compared to more than 1 million of “traditional” video games.
Different layers are currently being built and the ecosystem is growing at a rapid pace and that’s where Secret will play a major and disruptive role.
Do you see the upside here?
Why develop a blockchain game on Secret?
Imagine having your card deck visible by all players because your wallet NFTs cards are on a public blockchain…
You could have your strategies, your character build or favorite weapon known and analyzed by your opponents as all your history is stored on the public blockchain.
In Clan vs Clan, top players and clan composition could be known even the timezone of the clan by looking at the time stamps of chain activity.
In PvP games, hardcore players will always try to find a way to have an edge against you and this could lead to lose money or be cheated without knowing it…
Customizable privacy for blockchain gaming
That’s where Secret is providing an amazing edge against all that with privacy enabled by default, private NFT metadata and private smart contract.
Let’s take the example of a PvP card game. The developers can choose to reveal your level and/or experience in the gameplay but your deck will still be private by default.
You could choose to reveal some cards (represented as NFT) of your deck or not at all depending on your strategy. Imagine the face of your opponent when you’ll throw your Legendary Lv60 Berserker card on the floor. He couldn’t have predicted that move because your deck on-chain is private.
That’s the beauty of privacy by default.
Leveraging Secret NFTs
Blockchain gaming developers can leverage private Smart Contract and private NFT characteristics and let their imagination go wild about use cases and game mechanics.
Secret Dreamscape, a game developed on Secret, has implemented a powerful feature which writes all the words you played to your NFT private metadata. You could win a lottery prize if you possess the matching word in any of your NFT cards.
You could think of other use cases like unlocking specific skills, abilities or spells during a PvP game based on your experience, number of victories or any kind of event. Your opponent can’t anticipate this as the metadata is private and only visible by you. This is generating a lot of possible outcomes!
Learn more about Secret NFTs here:
Decentralized, trustless, permissionless AND private
Developing on Secret allows you to have a full on-chain game, meaning that you’re not relying on an external centralized server or a game company server. The game is then permissionless, censorship resistant and can’t be shut down.
No data nor transactions can be leveraged against you ensuring a totally fair game.
But wait, there is more — Secret Random Number Generation (RNG)
On public chains, the seed called by a smart contract to generate a random number is visible by all and could be gameable and approximated. To avoid that, the random generation may be realized off-chain but that goes against decentralization and trustless ethos of blockchain.
Secret is solving that issue with its private on-chain randomness number generation which provides fair and private outcomes for gaming.
Would you want your Dark Elf Mage losing against a Baby Unicorn because your opponent is cheating the random number generation?
Learn more about Secret RNG here:
Secret = the blockchain gaming catalyst
We are just seeing the premises of blockchain gaming rising. Clear issues, due to the public aspect of blockchains, are identified and must be solved to reach mass adoption.
Secret is uniquely positioned to deliver, through privacy, the infrastructure and features to tackle all of these issues.
Secret’s tech is a Magic Key which opens this sealed door leading us to the next level of blockchain gaming.
Secret Network is already hosting games which are taking advantage of above powerful differentiators:
- Secret Dreamscape: Secret Dreamscape
- Orbem Wars: Orbem Wars by Domerium Labs
And finally, did you see the new concept introduced recently, Play-to-mint?
SCRT Labs Announces Launch of Legendao
Special thanks to Danny (DreamScape) and Stefan (Domerium Labs) for their time and support with this research!
Want to know more? Head over to our website at https://scrt.network/
