CryptoCat's first anniversary, is the blockchain game zoo OK?

Games with their own virtual currency and traffic have always been regarded as a field where blockchain's killer applications are born; none of them are there. Yesterday was exactly one year since CryptoCat went live, and the blockchain game industry experienced a round of heat and seemed to be falling into a trough again. Most likely, the effort went in the wrong direction.

Today last year, the first blockchain game “CryptoKitties” was officially launched, surprising players who previously stayed on exchanges to trade cryptocurrencies. Apart from allowing the assets in their hands to increase value, there are also adorable virtual cats to play. Players scrambled to enter the market for a while, becoming the first phenomenal application in the blockchain industry.

The landmark significance of CryptoCat is that it proved to everyone that on Ethereum, there is more room for imagination and scenarios to use and create. At this point, the curtain on the blockchain gaming era has slowly been unraveled.

The industry is beginning to emerge, and a series of blockchain games, represented by animal breeding games, are flocking to the market, dubbed blockchain zoos. Over the course of this year, let me take the stage for training, betting, and financial games, advanced blockchain games or the next “IG.”

After a year of accumulation, the industry has completed the first round of elimination, but there is no time left for the surviving teams to take a break, because there are also major traditional game manufacturers watching.

Last chance, blockchain games will enter the Warring States period

One year is not long, but it is enough to complete the fission that could only be completed in previous years. Some blockchain games are already cool; some are struggling on the verge of survival; others are trying to transform, hoping to break through the existing model to find a new direction.

CryptoCat announced the KittyVerse project in June of this year, claiming to transform CryptoCat from a product to a platform. In other words, users' cats will be able to be used in all kinds of game development, racing, battles, and costumes, and even offline products can see Crypto Cats. Originally, a single game will transform into an IP operation. Each user's cat is a separate IP. Whether you can get copyright fees depends on your cat being unpopular.

However, the only thing that can be played this way is the most phenomenal crypto cat in blockchain games. As for the rest of the following genres, its IP value is far below the point where it can be converted.

On the other hand, traditional game makers smelled the smell and stepped in. More professional teams, richer models, more exquisite graphics, transformation or death left little time for these mini-games.

If the beginning of 2018 was still a war between countries during the Spring and Autumn period, then the next 2019 will probably enter the game of great powers in the Sengoku period.

Internet giants Tencent, Baidu, NetEase, and Xiaomi quickly entered the market in the first half of this year. However, the following products went directly into the “zoo” to play personal dances. While the trick of getting lucky cats, dongles, and crypto rabbits online was astonishing, it also showed that the giants did not plan to miss out on this emerging industry trend.

Of course, this is just a test for the giants. Using a game to follow up technology and experience the team may be their real purpose.

Domestic insanity is raging, and foreign giants have also announced their entry. Following Ubisoft's announcement of the blockchain game “HashCraft,” Sony also recently announced that it will launch a blockchain game “Plague Hunters” based on the PS4 platform. Gamers can trade their game assets on the market, and the trading market will use Ethereum technology.

Predictably, next year may be the year of transformation of blockchain games. It will also usher in a more brutal round of elimination. Big manufacturers will follow, capital will settle in, the zoo gang will escalate to Star Wars, and the Sengoku era of blockchain games will soon arrive.

How to play Daikoku game

NetEase is an internet company with a large number of blockchain applications on the C-side, especially in the gaming field. The large-scale game “Against the Water Cold”, which was launched in June this year, should be the biggest experiment in integrating games with blockchain.

Hu Zhipeng, vice president of NetEase and president of NetEase's Thunderfire Gaming Department, is also the producer of “Against the Cold.” For the introduction of Fuxi Tongbao, Hu Zhipeng treated it as a large-scale virtual social experiment: “The number of players in large-scale games is huge, and the attempt to introduce blockchain applications can be used as a large-scale social experiment. The problems that can be solved within games are very hopefully applied to real life.”

Hu Zhipeng believes that the essence of a game is whether it is fun or not; it is that the content, creativity, and appeal do not attract players. New technology can make games more fun and make players' investment more valuable. It's an upgrade, but it can't be called a replacement.

“I still play gyroscope with my kids. The game has always existed, but the format has been enhanced as technology has improved. It's like computer games back then. No one calls them that anymore, but computer games haven't replaced the original game format. Blockchain can be used as a game technology, but it's not game content. It also doesn't solve the problems with the game's content itself.” Ho Chi Pang said.

Fuxi Tongbao played a key role in the exploration and layout of NetEase games in blockchain technology. Hu Zhipeng said that three different types of games were selected separately: the large-scale mobile game “Against the Water Cold,” the mobile game “Ghost of the Water,” which charges for free items, and the hardcore mobile game “Meteor Butterfly Sword,” which charges for items, were introduced to Fuxi Tongbao for testing. In the future, corresponding follow-up and development will be carried out based on the test results.

Hu Zhipeng believes that the most critical thing about blockchain technology is solving the trust mechanism in games. In the past, transactions between players took a lot of time to gain the trust of each other, and there were even guarantee intermediaries. Currently, the main development direction of domestic blockchain is an alliance chain, because it is expandable and can be supervised. By establishing an alliance chain such as a highly reliable economic model platform, Fuxi Tongbao has enabled it to achieve modular operation. In the future, any game manufacturer can join the alliance to achieve convenient transaction methods by connecting to Fuxi Tongbao, so that developers can focus more on game development.

NetEase hopes to rely on Fuxi Tongbao to build a future blockchain gaming platform. Whether the rest of the giants will continue to follow up or cooperate for a win-win situation, and whether blockchain games will come next, the Blue Ocean or the Red Sea, everything is unknown.

The future of chain gaming: the battle between decentralization and centralization

Hu Zhipeng's attitude towards blockchain also represents the attitude of traditional game giants: blockchain is just a technology. Therefore, games with blockchain content currently appearing on the market will surely become unnoticed as public awareness continues to deepen, like the term “computer game.” Current blockchain games may be classified as gambling games that meet the needs of specific players in the category of metallurgical games, and are no longer called blockchain games.

However, the biggest controversy brought about by the combination of blockchain technology to games is actually centralization and decentralization.

The concept of decentralization allows players to see the possibility of taking control of the game through blockchain.

Xu Yiliang, marketing manager of a sandbox-type blockchain game, said that the development of this sandbox game provides an environment for players, but does not restrict players' behavior within the game. The gameplay in the game is all created by the players themselves, and the benefits obtained also belong to the players. Although players are very free within the game, their essence is still centralized. However, in game operation, there are many voices from players, which also affects the direction of the game.

Developers generally believe that game development is centralized, and how games are operated is also centralized. In the current business environment, even with the addition of blockchain technology, centralized games are still mainstream.

Tan Yanfeng, vice president of Shanda Gaming, once told the media that the essence of blockchain decentralization is the opposite of the concept of games. The output of game content is based on a core team, and complete decentralization is contrary to this. The application of blockchain in games is probably not mature enough, and no suitable application scenarios have been found.

Wang Tian, a veteran e-sports person who has worked as a producer for companies such as E-Soul and Qifan, believes that after decentralized game operations, problems that can be solved, such as game companies changing game rules at will, game companies arbitrarily modifying and deleting game data, and ownership issues of players' game assets can indeed solve some pain points. At present, there are advantages and disadvantages between centralized game rules and decentralized player communities. Perhaps the future of e-sports+blockchain technology+sandbox is the next hot topic.

A collectible blockchain game is a decentralized game led by a community of players. The game recently initiated a community vote on whether to launch features such as a synthetic breeding market and synthetic registration lock. Its founder, Peng Jun, said that the community must bear the responsibility for any outcome of players' decisions. This is also the biggest difference between blockchain games and traditional games. As for the future direction of his game, Peng Jun admits that he is not sure, but he believes that time will eventually stand on the side of decentralization.

Decentralized games are decided by players, and players must bear the consequences. This is also the appeal of decentralized games. Decentralized social tests have been created where netizens enter instructions to operate the protagonist of the game. Netizens enter instructions in the chat room of the video platform Twitch to control live games. The games are mainly Nintendo's Pokémon game series, so they are called “Twitch Plays Pokemon.”

Since its launch, the game received a huge amount of attention. Not to mention tens of millions of viewers, at least 1.16 million people “participated” in entering instructions. One million levels of instructions were entered, and an average of 80,000 people “played” the game together. The system needs to process up to 100,000 instructions at the same time. These “chaotic” operations make the game progress extremely slow, and the protagonist of the game performs irregular “Brownian movements” under the control of millions of people.

But even so, the game struggled in the right direction and successfully cleared the game after 16 days of live streaming.

The trend of decentralized blockchain games is not pessimistic.

Source: Computing Power Think Tank