Lucid Sight contextualizes its latest game
This is a guest post from one of our launch sponsors Lucid Sight.
DApp gaming – gaming with decentralized applications – is a revolution far beyond new graphics and game mechanics.
It’s a revolution in the fundamental relationship between developer and player.
Dapps are a revolution in the fundamental relationship between developer and player
Decentralized applications are the new kids on the tech block, and they’re already making an impact on the way we live. DApps like the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum can power entire economies: it’s estimated that in 2017, there were 2.9 to 5.8 million unique users with a cryptocurrency wallet.
Yelp allows users to filter by businesses that accept Bitcoin for payment, and the Ethereum blockchain has the potential to revolutionize the banking industry as a decentralized means of facilitating financial transactions.
From big business to routine daily transactions, blockchain dApps are poised to change the way we interact with technology, and the world has already started to integrate these changes.
DApps also have the potential to disrupt another market – gaming.
For the first time, players can have true ownership over their game world. DApps give players agency over the in-game items they invest time and effort in earning instead of relinquishing complete control to game developers and publishers.
This is an evolution and fundamental seachange in how players and consumers will perceive ownership of digital goods.
The birth of dApp gaming
City of Heroes was a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Cryptic Studios that launched in 2004 and shut down in 2012, when the game’s publisher terminated its development team.
Because Cryptic didn’t allow user content – whether earned or generated – to live outside of the game’s ecosystem, players lost access to the heroes and items they spent hours cultivating when the game shut down.
Since aDpp games exist on a decentralized peer-to-peer network, any in-game items are owned by the player directly, not the developer.
Dapp game developers publish their apps and push their updates to the Ethereum blockchain, but they don’t own the app or its assets in the same way that Cryptic Studios owned City of Heroes.
With the advent of aDpp gaming, games like CryptoKitties run on the Ethereum blockchain and allow players to purchase, breed, and auction their unique virtual cats in a real marketplace for profit. The Kitties have a range of varied traits and players vie for the ability to breed with those Kitties with the most desirable traits creating a meta game to produce the most fruitful offspring.
When the aspects of traditional gaming are combined with Dapp gaming, the result is a unique hybrid where gameplay and economics fuse together.
Interest in crypto games and Dapps in general continues to grow with no signs of slowing
Game logic, graphics, and even player interactions can be moved off-chain while inventory, marketplace, and crafting systems remain on the blockchain. This creates a synergy between the blockchain and the centralized server by allowing for a symbiotic relationship between game developers and players.
DApp gaming today
EtherBots is another dApp game that allows players to purchase crates used to build robots that, like CryptoKitties, can be bought and sold in the EtherBots marketplace.
However, EtherBots adds another element to aDpp gaming – player-versus-player competition. One player’s bots can battle against another player’s bots in duels and tournaments to level up and increase in value.
Instead of breeding like in CryptoKitties, EtherBots turns blockchain-based collecting into a competitive sport, adding another branch in the ever-growing tree of dApp gaming.
CryptoCities is yet another dApp game that draws on the excitement of being the first to make a discovery. Users buy locations, giving them the opportunity to discover new locations that the developers hope to use as the basis for future blockchain-based games.
In the last week, more than 5,000 blockchain transactions have taken place in CryptoCities, which averages about 150 daily active users. Still one of the reigning blockchain dApps, CryptoKitties boasts an impressive 1,000 daily active users and more than 50,000 weekly transactions to total a balance of 318 ETH, just north of $117,000.
Interest in crypto games and dApps in general continues to grow with no signs of slowing.
The ease with which people can sign up and immediately buy, breed, and auction off unique virtual cats has made blockchain gaming more accessible to the average gamer.
You don’t need to be a cryptocurrency insider or expert to have a hand in the CryptoKitties economy. Anyone can buy a CryptoCity or an EtherBot as easily as you can buy a loot box in Overwatch.
CSC and the future of Dapp gaming
At present, many developers are attempting to turn to dApp gaming to make a quick profit which has resulted in a flood of dApps that present themselves as “investment opportunities” but are pyramid schemes.
This is where games like Crypto Space Commander excel at leading dApp gaming towards a positive evolutionary direction. It’s not an investment opportunity – it’s a game.
CSC is a space exploration game where players command their very own starships, travel to different star systems, mine for resources, craft items, and battle other players. We’ll introduce some ships to the players and set up a basic framework of gameplay, but the economy and course of the game ultimately falls into the hands of the players.
Ships and other items are written to the Ethereum blockchain, giving players complete ownership of their in-game assets and the ability to do whatever they want with these assets.
In CSC, the standards and rules of the game will be established by the players
Most of the gameplay occurs off-chain, much like any other traditional game. Players’ interactions with the blockchain will be limited with a focus on gameplay first and foremost.
In CSC, the standards and rules of the game will be established by the players. As the developer, we want to create a world where players are empowered by their decisions – we know when to take a step back and let the players take control.
The future of CSC and dApp gaming in general is one that, for the first time, players will have the opportunity to shape.
DApps and beyond
Dapp gaming is in its infancy. Like the emergence of Web 2.0, the potential for dApps have opened up to reveal a massive opportunity for developers to tap into.
What if we take the pleasure that comes from opening loot boxes in games like Overwatch, the crops that grow and flourish in Farmville, the weapons earned in World of Warcraft, and add player ownership to the mix?
Instead of lending these digital items to players until the game eventually fades away, dApp games can give ownership and agency to players to do what they like with the items they pay for.
The fact that dApp games are so young provides developers and players with a fresh canvas on which to experiment.
DApp gaming exists solely on the web, but we don’t expect that to be the case for long. Multi-platform dApp gameplay is just around the corner.
Further, we believe that the hybridization of off-chain logic and on-chain interactions will be pivotal for the future success of dApp games. And we want to be right on the forefront of these advancements as they happen.
You can find out more about CSC via its website.
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