The founder of blockchain gaming development platform Defi11, Ritam Gupta said in a panel discussion in Dubai in 2021, “Today, I believe we have already entered the era of [blockchain] mass adoption.”Three years ago, and a comment like that would not have made much sense. In the world we live in today, blockchain technology has become the staple of every web and mobile development company. The gaming business too has seen quite a journey to get to where it stands today. Let’s look into the emerging trend of blockchain game development and how we can use tools available within the crypto space to build games. From 16-bit gaming consoles to a treasure hunt of online enthusiasts trying to get their hands on something valuable, we have all come a long way.
Do Gaming and Blockchain Go Hand-in-hand?
Blockchain essentially keeps electronic systems decentralized unlike a simple database, where data is arranged in tables. In blockchain, data is stored in “blocks” as the name suggests. To make it appear simpler for a novice, these are strung together to make the decentralized structure.
When it comes to the gaming industry, we have seen a massive appeal to real-life simulation like power games often run on massive consoles. More so than that, mobile gaming has become this intrusive genre of gaming in itself that it is hard to miss now when talking about video games.
By 2025, the gaming industry is all set to generate $260 billion per annum in revenue. With the flood of such games also came a new wave of gaming where people are interested in buying items necessary for the game using semi- or real monetary funds. And this is where the gaming and blockchain collude.
Key Benefits for Blockchain Gaming Industry
Over the span of a decade (2008-2018), blockchain technology has gone on to incorporate four essential key features which is crucial for modern gaming industry:
- Decentralization
- Anonymity
- Enhanced security
- Transparency
Because of these features, any information stored in a blockchain is nearly impossible to alter or change. There is a complete record of everything as it happened, which is a key element for a lot of games where save stations help players retrieve their progress.
The decentralization helps keep the game out of the grasp of ownership or control by a single entity or authority. The game items and collectibles are often NFTs which can be used as digital assets for inter-wallet transfer. They are even valuable after you have stopped playing the game i.e., hold real world value. Coins such as crypto coins (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Doegcoin, etc.) are prime examples of collectibles in blockchain games.
Blockchain Gaming Trends
For the rest of 2022, we can see gaming development trends taking concrete shape and form, and may extend the trends for even years to come. Many of these trends have only been possible due to the integration of gaming development with blockchain, and would not have been possible before.
These trends to look out for include:
Social Gaming
Even though social games were already a thing without the induction of blockchain technology, it’s been significantly revolutionized due to the addition. Social gaming allows players to interact with one another using social media or certain features within the game app.
Thanks to blockchain, an uninterrupted gameplay can happen with your friends, even remote ones. For many fantasy combat games, the social collaboration aspect of defeating a boss is a key feature. All of this would not have been refined to such degrees without the use of blockchain.
Now players collaborating in real-time can create innovative game characters and assets of their preferences, and Blockchain will facilitate managing, storing, and accessing these game characters and virtual assets as per specific requirements. Blockchain-based social gaming networks exist to create, collaborate upon, and deliver custom gaming experiences
Tokenization
Tokenization is the swap of sensitive information or data with seemingly ordinary “tokens.” These tokens represent the information or data but are not actually that entity. With blockchain, even your physical items can get “tokenified,” meaning they have a digital asset value, and they can be sold on crypto marketplaces.
The same principle gets used in the gaming industry. Many blockchain game developers are purposefully designing simple game collectibles as tokens. These include game skins, coins, diamonds, weapons, tools, and even some characters which can only be accessed after a certain game level is achieved. The users can get them and put them on a marketplace to get profit. You know your transactions will have a ledger which is recorded and unaltered because this is the whole purpose of blockchain. Users can also check the authenticity of the games using their token collectibles via marketplaces.
Current trends in tokenization are aiming for converting whole teams, contracts or even dealerships as tokens for safekeeping. We have seen this recently with the tokenization of the Dota 2 esports team.
Open Web Gaming
Another growing blockchain game development trend on the rise is the increased participation of gamers in playthroughs which are decentralized. It means that each player can affect the mechanics of the game to a certain extent, and can bring in their NFT characters to the experience since there is no sole proprietor.
Studies show that the use of non-fungible tokens in open web gaming opens up a golden opportunity for non-game players to own and eventually play the NFT game. The concept of digital collectibles allows users to access game assets via multiple sources, which anyone can buy via crypto. The way the whole feel of the immersion changes because of this key change says a great deal about the entertainment industry. To make matters interesting, these games are usually free of cost, pulling in thousands of players every day.
Virtual Gaming Collectibles
You’d think that the NFT phenomenon is relatively newer, but it goes back to 2017 when CryptoKitties was launched. In the game ecosystem, players can purchase, breed, collect and sell any digital cat NFT.
Another popular virtual gaming development efforts lauded everywhere are those of Axie Infinity. With more than a million user base, the users can buy and sell game battle pets known as “Axies.”
What the future holds can be more promising than the present. With virtual blockchain gaming development, we are already seeing apps and games made to boost productivity and focus. Ignite, a NFT-based motivational game, allows people to get coin tokens in exchange for doing real-world tasks.
Future Expectations
Blockchain gaming development paired with a stable and functioning metaverse of vast proportions would warrant a whole universe of games and entertainment. Users can get a sense of what’s to come by using their VR sets now. Imagining the possibilities just five years down the road are immaculate.
If you wish to be a dominant gaming entity using web and mobile development methodologies in the near future, you need to find everything there is about NFTs, metaverse and blockchain, and invest in some dApps. Since the crypto game horizon is pretty clear, there are some opportunities to reap before the saturation of competition hits the roof.
