A few weeks ago, I came across this fantastic post by Guilty Gyoza about Crypto-native Games. Given the existing size of the Gaming market, I’m willing to bet that crypto gaming will in 5 years be one of the most profitable areas of applied crypto, second perhaps to financial or DeFi applications.
As quoted by Frank Ng., CEO of Allied eSports, “There are 2.3 billion gamers around the world, and as an industry, video gaming is already bigger than music and movies combined, we project that eSports will be the biggest format of entertainment. Every publisher in the world is getting into this”.
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The businesses: Following up from Gubsheep’s post, GuiltyGyoza ideates on two different directions of movement for crypto gaming. (1) On-chain Generative Gaming and (2) Autonomous Games. We’ll investigate each seperately.
First On-chain Generative Gaming. In their piece, Gyoza describes the example of an infinite on-chain grid-based dungeon where initial boundaries expand as players explore and players can fight monsters that are controlled by a generative algorithm. Players then would be rewarded in the form of NFTs or tokens. While an interesting idea, I think the potential for on chain generative gaming is even bigger: rather than having algorithms on-chain, this generative gaming could incentivize player participation through real-time staking of tokens that can be distributed to players as rewards. Imagine, for instance, a clash of clans game or a Fortnite game where you are rewarded for the number of games you win in a day, month, or quarter. One value of on-chain gaming (whether generative or not) is in its distribution potential to individuals of payouts. These payouts could even be tied to characters through NFTs allowing for liquidity and/or persistent avatars throughout multiple games.
Second, Gyoza describes Autonomous Games. They challenge readers to consider an autonomous chess contract where “upon game contract deployment the private key is burnt so that the game is truly autonomous – no backdoor for any person/contract, which is to say the game is developer-free upon publication.” Unlike today’s games which require maintenance, patches, and frequent updating these types of autonomous games are deployed once and played by the public infinitely. I would improve on his description by not only allowing games to be deployed and run autonomously, but also allowing forking and mods: if a player wants to take a game and improve on it then they should be allowed and encouraged to do so.
The world of crypto gaming is evolving quickly, and inspirations can come from anywhere (as Gyoza writes, “this idea coincides with my earlier thinking on The Autonomous Dimension. I believe we are helping to create a new species that live entirely on-chain - a tribute to Primavera De Filippi’s Plantoid project and the ArtDAO idea by Simon de la Rouviere and Trent McConaghy.”). I’ll be watching this space with a keen eye to see what may be growing and happening next.
Monetization: Sales of game or percentage of proceeds.
Contributed by: Michael Bervell (Billion Dollar Startup Ideas)