From Zynga To Ubisoft, Top Game Publishers Weigh In On Blockchain
It was an impressive debut for Pocket Gamer’s Blockchain Gamer Connects San Francisco last week, where key insights were shared across top publishers from AAA to indie on whether blockchain was fad or future. Some are leading the pack, while others are waiting on the killer app.
While Matt Bromberg, COO of Zynga, brimmed with excitement for the development of HTML5 Instant Games on Messenger and Kristian Segerstrale, co-founder of Super Evil Mega Corp, gave thoughtful remarks about the evolving competitive landscape for high fidelity mobile eSports and the recent explosion of Fortnite and PUBG onto the charts, both were lukewarm when it came to the question of blockchain.
Bromberg explained, “We had a company all hands a couple of days ago and one of the folks we work with stood up and was very worked up about it and said, How come you’re not doing more in blockchain? How come you aren’t building blockchain games? My response was, I don’t even know what that means. What is the consumer experience you’re describing that we’re missing?”
Segerstrale agreed, “If you run a game like our title Vainglory which has an economy entirely centralized in that we handle the database of who owns what, there’s no real role for blockchain. Could we implement it? Sure, but it wouldn’t really change the consumer experience. Is the world we’re moving to a place where there is some demand for decentralization, where I want my entry in the ledger that proves I own my digital sunglasses. That requires a pretty big sea change in mindset, but then again everything in computer games is driven by titles. There’s no room for blockchain because everything is centralized until someone is going to come up with that experience when you just go WOW! That is why you need to decentralize stuff.”
Ubisoft out in front
Always an early adopter of emerging platforms, Ubisoft is leading the way for AAA publishers to produce fresh gaming experiences leveraging the blockchain.
Announcing its first ever blockchain games hackathon, Blockchain Heroes, taking place in Paris this summer in partnership with CryptoKitties, Ubisoft Strategy Innovation Lab manager Nicolas Pouard expressed tremendous enthusiasm for what the technology can deliver.
“We strongly believe that blockchain is a huge thing that will change the gaming industry. We don’t know how but we have the means to explore.”
The support is unmistakable in this video tweet from Ubisoft’s legendary founder Yves Guillemot, “We are very excited about blockchain. It is a disruptive technology that is going to change the video game industry a lot.”
Showing off Hashcraft, Ubisoft’s prototype of a world-building blockchain game in which players earn tokens for creating challenges on procedurally-generated islands, Pouard went on to explain the three reasons why blockchain is going to revolutionize gaming:
1. Player as Stakeholder — Players feel rewarded when community runs the economy and they can trade or sell their own user-generated content, particularly when blockchain mechanics are moved to the backend and out of the consciousness of the consumer.
2. Transparency — Players control their privacy with Digital ID while making it possible to follow their consumer journey across different games and digital experiences. Wallets and KYC create accountability that deter toxicity and inappropriate behavior, while facets and avatars assure anonymity.
3. Massive Collaboration — Blockchain creates trust as programmatic interactions offer auditable contracts that provide proof of odds and skills to eliminate speculation of cheating, also measures how much each player brings to the table to ensure fair share of profit.
In conclusion
The promise of blockchain, a utopia in which a decentralized economy is run by the players not the publishers, where no one server can shutdown the community after a studio has been shuttered, where permanent ownership of powerful rare items from beloved franchises can be taken into any game, bought and sold for real money and traded on legitimate exchanges for all eternity, and where the coming transformative consumer journey has the potential to deliver some of the most thrilling player experiences yet to be imagined, may or may not be far off. All someone has to do is nail the next Pokemon Go and everyone will follow.
Originally posted in BuzzFeed Community, May 22, 2018, by me!
