Blockchain technology has excellent prospects in the gaming industry. Alexey Meleshkevich, the founder of Total Games and Melesta Games, thinks so in his column.
Alexey Meleshkevich
Today, the topic of blockchain is very popular.
Some call it the new Internet. Let’s try to figure out how a game developer should approach the blockchain.
Blockchain – the New Digital Trust
Blockchain technology allows you to implement trust relationships without a dedicated server. This is possible due to the repeated repetition and verification of each operation by all users of the system.
Classically, trust was guaranteed by a record on a dedicated trust server or at a notary,. Trust within the blockchain is guaranteed by the fact that a specific record exists and is identical on all client devices.
Today it turned out that this technology is more reliable in terms of trust than the classic ones, because it solved the problem of “Who will protect the watchmen themselves?”.
Nothing in the world requires more trust than money and transactions with it. As a result, Bitcoin appeared – an independent digital currency that is not controlled by any issuing or regulatory center.
Bitcoin has shown its effectiveness and opened the doors to the world of digital free currencies. The market hastened to take advantage of this and spawned thousands of new digital cryptocurrencies and continues to do so day after day.
The essence of the initial token offering (ICO) it just comes down to launching a new digital currency and trying to exchange it for other existing ones.
We are constantly engaged in the implementation of currencies in games. We started doing this long before any bitcoins.
We invent, introduce and configure all these “diamonds”, “rubies”, “gold” and other “hard” and “soft” game currencies. We make a game and implement various motivation mechanisms in it that make the player want to play on. We encourage them to receive game content, attract other people to the game, and finally spend real money. In this way we ensure the liquidity of our game currency.
Today, the rule “the client is in the hands of the enemy” most often works and all the logic of the game is transferred to the server, which already guarantees correctness and ensures trust.
It is critically important for us to ensure trust in the system so that there are no cheaters, pirates and other people in the game who break the system, make the game uninteresting for other players and deprive developers of earnings.
Previously, this problem was solved either by the limitations of the game itself, for example, there were simply no multiplayer elements in the game, and distributions were equipped with DRM systems.
Now we can try to use blockchain in game development, solving the problem of trust in a more elegant way without servers or DRM. Let’s highlight the areas in which this can be done: payment acceptance and cash turnover, gambling, technical optimization of the back-end and new ways of monetization. Let’s focus on each point separately.
Cryptocurrencies as a means of payment
You can join the community of crypto-anarchists by abandoning partially or completely the use of state (fiat) currencies in your game. Ask to pay for access or virtual content with bitcoins, for example.
Currently, there are a number of games and services that implement this idea. Although more often I watched games that, on the contrary, paid the player with cryptocurrencies for viewing ads, installing other applications and paying in them.
The question remains open: how will the platforms look at such innovations. So far, none of them have the opportunity to implement in-game payments for bitcoin.
If you do it yourself, then the application will be banned for violating the platform policy. But it can be a good solution for indies distributing their games without platforms (APK, PC distribution). You can give a link to your game directly in the torrent.
Implementation of gambling
To implement a casino or an online casino, it is required to obtain licenses in every country where it is not prohibited. However, there are already a number of “games” with cryptocurrency and chances of winning.
To be honest, most of the Bitcoin games I’ve seen have been gambling. The anonymity of the use of bitcoins, as well as the legal lack of regulation, still make it possible to bypass the need to license gambling.
At the moment, it is quite realistic to create a game in which there will be a withdrawal of assets in the form of cryptocurrency and it will be quite legal.
New types of monetization
It is also worth taking a close look at the new investment technology. ICO – initial coin offering. This tool is now more often used to attract investment in projects, but why not consider, along with the “classic” purpose, the opportunity to monetize ready-made projects. Let’s say you have released a project in which, as usual, there is a “hard currency” that you sell for inaps.
Imagine that your “hard currency” is a cryptocurrency that you have issued in limited quantities and are selling for use in the game. The more popular your game is, the more liquidity your currency gains. Plus, in this case, you create your own currency trading market, which you have a significant influence on. It is still difficult for me to fully imagine the possibilities of this kind of monetization, although it is very interesting. Players gain the opportunity to earn real money in the game without violating the interests of each other and the developer, without spoiling the balance of the game.
Implementation of game servers based on blockchain technology
Well, at least it’s worth looking at the blockchain technology itself from the side of optimizing the costs of the game servers.
Now the costs for the backend of successful projects are significant. Some own or rent entire data centers to service their games.
Now imagine that you managed to make your game with a server on a distributed registry. Then, when the audience of the game expands, the server infrastructure of the project automatically expands.
So a million new installations will no longer be a headache for developers, there will be no risk of servers falling. Conversely. The new installations will expand the network capacity of the project by a million devices.
However, it should be understood that in such a scenario, the design of the game should allow technical implementation using blockchain. So far, as far as I know, none of the current blockchain technologies will allow us to implement something more complex and global than trivial bets or a lottery.
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In light of recent events, it seems to me that the current blockchain implementations are somewhere at the MK52 level at the dawn of the computer era. The microcalculator was not the most productive solution, was not the most convenient or flexible. But he opened up new opportunities by combining computer and social engineering technologies.