Dimensions of Scalability in Web3 Gaming
Gaming is taking off in Web3. The internet of ownership arrives in the fastest growing segment of entertainment. However, so far there is no widely adopted gaming project to rival big classical franchises. The reason for this observation is the scalability of Web3-Gaming approaches. In this article, we classify the different types of technical scalability that are involved in this development while outlining a set of solutions and potential applications of technology.
By Marcel Kaiser & Philipp-Florens Lehwalder
Gaming and its status quo
The most played online games in recent years have had a few aspects in common: they are all free-to-play (or transitioned to being free-to-play), draw massive amounts of players, streamers and professionals, and heavily emphasize the individuality of players. This mechanism is also how they usually generate revenue: sales of individual items for looks (skins), special access to content, premium features, and various gimmicks. This situation can spark controversy if bought virtual goods are subject to change, end of support or “inflation”. While, legally, this generally does not pose a problem for the respective providers of the goods, it can raise questions about ownership in Gaming.
That’s where blockchain technology, SBTs (soul-bound tokens, i.e. for achievements or game ownership) and NFTs can come in. The use of these technologies guarantees real ownership of progress and goods obtained in the context of gaming backed by the blockchain. While not every item, every avatar and every skin need to be an NFT, individual game studios can assess this toolkit to create trust within their user base. Moreover, the use of NFTs can open up items as an entirely new asset market that can play into financial markets as well. While the phenomenon of Gold Farms should at all costs be avoided, a financial co-incentive to play might be interesting for the growing sector.
“Gold farming is the practice of playing a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) to acquire in-game currency, later selling it for real-world money.People who hold full-time employment as gold farmers often reside in developing nations.”
Wikipedia article on Gold Farming.
However, throwing NFTs into a centralized market ecosystem will not add value to the space. An open and decentralized approach to them has to be taken in order to be not misinterpreted as riding the NFT wave for additional short-term money. A careful, yet scalable approach has to be found. And before business scalability can be discussed, technological scalability needs to be considered. Therefore, it needs to be explained and categorized.
Different Dimensions of Scalability
In the following segment, we will dissect scalability in some sub-themes. Their relevance for Gaming becomes evident when considering what is relevant for a technology to be truly in the spirit of DLT.
Temporal Scalability
Temporal scalability describes the speed at which interactions and transactions can be processed. Depending on the type of game and its technological realization, this axis can be crucial. Temporal scalability in regard to gaming is not only defined as not having to wait for 5 minutes until a transaction is completed. Additionally, it can be literal latency between moves. Therefore, a very lean approach is required since 100ms of latency can be, depending on the game, high already.
PolyCrypt addresses this issue on Polkadot together with Ajuna in the Peruna project. This project is supported by the Web3 Foundation.
Cost Scalability
The efficiency of a transaction on the blockchain highly depends on its speed but of course also on its price. It is not realistic that the future of gaming can be sold if any move in a game costs players money. More on general blockchain cost scalability in a past article.
Spatial Scalability
While it is not yet (!) a topic for gaming, the transfer of anything across different platforms and ecosystems can become a topic of interest. The interoperability of different blockchains has lately been a hot topic. Perun-X is a solution of PolyCrypt that uses the Perun channel framework to perform cross-chain transactions and transmit information across ecosystems. It is possible to execute any logic within a Perun channel. From information to tokens and even games across different chains, the right amount of spatial scalability might be something to plan for in the future as well.
Ease
While strictly speaking not a classical subcategory of scalability, ease and good user experience pose an existential challenge for combining Gaming and DLTs. No gamer wants to sign states at every turn of the game. Consequently, this factor strongly determines the market scalability of a given product: if someone new to gaming can not understand every facet of it, it is too complicated. However, in comparison to the others, ease shall not be interpreted as a dimension of scalability but rather a bare necessity for games on Web3.
The next step for Gaming ecosystems
Gaming ecosystems and developers have to get ready for their projects to accommodate future customers’ needs today. While a full transition to a DAO would be unrealistic, gaming stores/infrastructure/access systems need to be at least ready to move on-chain. PolyCrypt can assist GameStudios in that regard along multiple dimensions with security-by-design software products. Erdstall is a plasma-like system based on a TEE (like Intel SGX) and thus auditable but far more cost-efficient. Figure 2 highlights Erdstall as a measure to move from one end to the other without sacrificing the respective benefits of each approach.
Conclusion
Whether we talk about an RPG expert or a shooting star in shooters, players care about fun. But with the advent of the web of ownership, the fun can be supported by keeping one’s inventories. Before we can talk about the scalability of Web3 gaming as a business, technological scalability needs to be considered and defined. PolyCrypt is successfully working on simplifying each type of scalability in gaming, web3 and business.
Remarks
If you are interested in learning more about Perun, Erdstall and how PolyCrypt can help you move to the blockchain seamlessly, visit https://polycry.pt/) and or contact us directly by writing us an email at info@polycry.pt.
