Blockchain Games
To test some of my assumptions around blockchain over the next two weeks I wanted to create a game to help inform people about the technology. I started by creating a series of different games at a low fidelity to test which direction and style of game was most promising to pursue.
My general direction going into the project.
User:
Non technical but curious
Minimal knowledge about blockchain
Primarily concerned with impact of technology more than how of technology but still some curiosity about the how
What need to communicate:
Roughly this is the tech
Eg car moves me to new place
Internet allows quick communication
BLOCKCHAIN permits trustless record keeping
Use cases:
- Kickstarter without intermediary
- Uber without intermediary
- Notary
What want to answer? / Test?
- What do you need to know to feel secure with this technology?
- Reward outweighs risk: bitcoin
- How does platform make money? Weiting suspicious
- Value is illusory will it all just dissapear
- How do know it’s actually secure?
Feedback:
- Frontload goals
- Explain what bitcoin is before coming up with hypothetical/experimental game
- Make game less experimental more straightforward , minimize cognitive load as much as possible
My first thought for a game was based upon a recommendation by my classmate Nour Malaeb and that was to create an incremental game similar to Universal Paperclips.
I started thinking how it could be adapted to illustrate blockchain principles.
- Players are mining and the number of cryptocoins they have is increasing
- After mining they can convert them to fiat
- The exchange rate could be randomized or track the first 7 years of bitcoin
- They can use fiat to upgrade their mining rig to earn more bitcoin
I didn’t think through precisely where it would ultimately go, but roughly thought of some further possible progression:
- You can invest in smart contract blockchain
- Implement smart contracts to speed up transactions lower costs
Ultimate end goal:
- Positive: Integrate blockchain platforms across society in government, law, insurance, etc.
- Negative: Gain 51% computer power and illustrate that weakness in the network
I took a look at the source code of Universal Paperclips and started adapting it to this, but quickly realized it didn’t make sense to spend so long coding this out and that I should make some wireframes and throw it into Marvel to get a rough sense of how it would feel to click through.
I made a few other simple prototypes.
One was an app where I just wanted to spell out in the simplest the translation of the mechanics of mining to a game framework. Not thinking at all about how fun or not it would be to play.
I thought of another idea of visualizing transactions as tetris blocks and then when one of the miners had figured out the hash it is ready to be added onto the larger block, but didn’t develop it at all.
Feedback from Cryptocurrency Investor
I was feeling a little at an impasse and so had a long discussion with someone I met who invests heavily in the cryptocurrency space but is not an expert on the technology. He explained to me that what made him initially invest in bitcoin years ago was that it solved the double spend problem with digital currency. Even though he didn’t 100% understand the working of the technology, the concept that blockchain technology had made it so a digital token could not be duplicated immediately signaled to him that this was something very valuable.
Additionally he said when Ethereum was first introduced, he got extremely excited because it “unleashed blockchain technology” through customizable smart contracts.
He explained, “When it was just bitcoin I wasn’t too excited in a way because it was only that one use case digital cash and that just wasn’t that exciting to me.”
I spoke with him about my initial idea for a game where people are playing the role of miners and the mechanics of the game have them going through the processes of competing to win the block and then verification by losing nodes to approve it to be added to the blockchain.
He felt this could appeal to a certain user. More “geeky pioneer” user type that may be interested in learning more about the mechanics of blockchain because they potentially want to invest in it, they generally tend to be early adopters with technology, and/or simply curious about how things work. He felt this type of game though would probably not appeal to the general user. The general user is more just interested in use cases than mechanics.
Translating the mechanics of blockchain into the mechanics of the game is a very different challenge than more broadly communicating use cases and added value of blockchain technology through a game. I spent a while developing potential ideas to communicate more broadly about blockchain.
The key features to communicate in terms of added value seemed to be removal of intermediaries you need to trust.
I ultimately most fully developed a type of city management board game. Initially it was structured as a head to head competition where you are working to gain 51% control of the network. It sounded like a decent idea but the second we started it testing it, it was obvious that blockchain is not about head to head competition and trying to gain more control than other people of the network and so I scrapped the idea.
I moved on to a game where you run a country with three cities. You are competing with another person but not head to head. You’re competing who can level up the network between your cities to a fully blockchain based one quickest. Moving fiat between cities has a high transaction cost, whereas moving crypto does not and there are costs from disasters, etc. that can be mitigated by deploying smart contracts if you have leveled up your network enough.
We tested it and it was playable but it seemed to be missing the mark, it was more about disaster management and revenue streams than blockchain.
I had been trying to make a fully fleshed out game system that did two things:
- Educate the user on blockchain
- Be a compelling system in and of itself to engross yourself in
This was as much a challenge of game design as it was interaction design.
My main goal with the project was not to create a game per se. My main goal was to communicate blockchain clearly and valuably using interaction.
I changed my direction instead of trying to create a self contained game system that was compelling in and of itself and had potential for repeated play. I want to do something that focused more on communication and education and did so through “game like” interactivity.
Look up and survey people to get a sense of what are the common misconceptions about blockchain, points that are most confusing and points of the tech that people want clarification in most and then create a series of “mini games” around those whose primary function is to educate and it does that in a compelling way through interactivity.
