The Future of Gaming is Decentralized
Whether it’s CryptoKitties or Tron Dogs, most people who follow the blockchain space have by now heard about the rise of blockchain gaming.
Aside from pushing the boundaries of what’s possible on the blockchain, as CryptoKitties famously showed when it caused a congestion crisis of transactions on the Ethereum network, blockchain games also act as an easy and fun access point for new cryptocurrency users to enter the blockchain sphere.
So far, most blockchain based games have centred around unique collectibles stored on the blockchain — with little or no usability beyond novelty value. But just like second generation cryptocurrencies, new blockchain games are emerging with increased functionality beyond that of their predecessors.
Here we take a look at the main value blockchain has to offer the gaming industry, and how new blockchain games are evolving.
Isn’t Blockchain Gaming just…. Gaming?
Technically, yes. So what is the major difference between traditional gaming, and blockchain based games?
The gaming industry is, by any standard, pretty huge. Estimated to be worth over $180 billion by 2021, you’d be forgiven for wondering, what does blockchain actually have to offer this giant industry, with a global audience of over 2.5 billion regular gamers?
What all of those 2.5 billion gamers currently have in common, whether they know it or not, is that they don’t actually ‘own’ their digital items. Not provablyat least, and online property rights have so far proven to be a tricky bag.
In traditional online games, such as MMORPG’s, players have the opportunity to buy in-game items, such as cool vanity clothing, vehicles or weapons, with real Fiat currency. These items are then granted to the inventory of a players character, free to use and enjoy in the virtual world — for a time at least.
Here’s where it gets tricky though — your character might be proudly parading around that unique cape you spent hours designing, but you as a player don’t actually own it, you just licence it. Your item, and your character, belongs to the game operator, and is hosted on their servers. Once the game fades in popularity, and the servers are closed, your items disappear into the ether, never to be seen again.
So despite putting long hours in to creating your perfect character build, obtaining that most sought-after skin, and most importantly paying for in game digital items, you never actually own them. Depressing right? But what if you could turn those items into unique and un-erasable assets? That’s where the blockchain comes in.
The tokenization of virtual items on the blockchain turns your custom cape into a real asset in the form of a non-fungible token, a digital representation of a unique item. On the Ethereum network, where many blockchain games have been built, these digital assets are ERC721 tokens — having no real function like ERC20 utility tokens, but possessing unique and collectible traits like traditional digital assets.
Because your cape, for example, is now stored immutably on a distributed ledger, it is there for everyone to see — and provably yours for all of time. In the future, game developers could choose to make digital assets purchased in other games and stored on the blockchain available in new titles of the same game franchise, ensuring your digital purchases are yours and usable forever.
Ownership is one thing, but what about Usability?
Much like Bitcoin was the first generation cryptocurrency, and Ethereum the second, blockchain based games are expanding their features, functionality and most importantly their fun factor.
Whereas the first blockchain games were largely limited to collectibles represented as a digital asset (e.g. a digital cat), newer blockchain games are combining provable ownership of digital assets on the blockchain with usability, both in game and within real life. At Nugbase Flowerpatch, we’re doing this in multiple ways.
Based around ‘FLOWER’ cards, each representing a unique and collectible cannabis genome, the Flowerpatch Farming RPG goes one step further than other decentralized games to date. Like our crypto-critter counterparts Tron Dogs and CryptoKitties, players can collect, breed and provably own their ‘FLOWERs’ on the Ethereum blockchain as ERC721 non-fungible tokens.
But unlike previous blockchain games, we’ve also built out an immersive, massively multiplayer isometric game world, reminiscent of traditional RPG farming games like Harvest Moon, where players can plant and tend to their FLOWERs, spend SEED tokens, and eventually earn NUG tokens.
Our SEED tokens serve as the basis for the Flowerpatch economy. An ERC20 token, SEED can be spent by players in the Flowerpatch game world marketplace for things like new FLOWERs and upgrades, and will function as the games only currency. Earning SEED is directly linked, just like in real life, to your FLOWERs. Once your planted FLOWERs have completed their life cycle, they can be harvested for SEED and NUG.
NUG tokens are really special. NUG functions as a cryptographic gift card for cannabis — real life cannabis — at our partner dispensaries in California. The price of NUG is determined by the price of 1 gram of cannabis in California, so in essence, NUG is a cannabis backed stable coin and a in-game reward, redeemable in real life.
So not only are your FLOWERs digital assets which are provably yours, you can also plant, harvest and breed them to get great rewards both in game and in real life!
The Future of Gaming is Decentralized
The next few years are going to be huge for blockchain based games, and it’s a great way for crypto adoption to grow and become mainstream in the future. Gamers will have greater control over the way they play, more sovereignty over their digital assets, and access to greater in-game economies — all of which we’re sure will make games more interesting and fun to play.
Stay tuned for our next blog update!
- Nugbase
Written by Elliot Hill, founder of Blockwriter, copywriting for the hottest new tech trends.
PS: Work continues on Flowerpatch Alpha. We hope to post a demo version of the game towards the end of February. This demo will introduce some basic gameplay, and tie FLOWER breeding to in-game farming mechanics. In preparation for the game, we will be running a world design contest, where players will have an opportunity to shape the game's landscape
