Characteristics of the gaming industry:
There are specific characteristics and dynamics of the gaming industry, besides, stakeholders also have specific tasks. These make it a rapidly growing segment of the global technology sector. They also make it a prime candidate for disruption! These are the following:
- You need money to play the most popular games. While some of them allow a player to accumulate in-game currency, that’s too inconvenient for most players because it takes a long time. Most players spend their fiat money to buy in-game assets.
- Game entrepreneurs and developers need a safe and secure environment to develop and launch games and subsequently, monetize them.
- Players need to securely buy and sell in-game assets; hence they need safe platforms for that.
- Players may play many games, and they create their profiles there. They would like the profiles to be interoperable across games, and this is another area where technology can help.
- The trend of people projecting value on intangible assets is real, so we will see more and more real money spent on virtual games. When a sector enters this phase, it’s ripe for technological disruption.
- When they are not playing an online game, the players would need to store their virtual game assets securely. Currently, these assets are stored in the centralized server of the gaming company, making them an easy target for hackers. This is another area where technology can make a big impact.
- Do you play online games? Then you have experienced this. You never really own any of the in-game assets, rather the gaming company owns them. This presents another opportunity for disruption.
- Did you ever feel disheartened that your favorite online game shut down? Or, did you feel that the rules were changed suddenly and arbitrarily? Technology that can give greater control to players will disrupt the current gaming market.
- Have you ever felt that you have the talent to make a game even more interesting, but you can’t do so because the gaming company won’t employ you? A technology that opens the field for talented developers will be a game-changer.
- As a player, did you ever feel that you could make a game far more exhilarating if you could collaborate with the developer? If technology can spawn a business model enabling closer collaboration between players and developers, it will change the industry forever.
- Did you ever feel that if the gaming company allows creating rarer forms of in-game assets, then the game would be a lot more fun playing? The technology could help here.
- Players often face fraudulent transactions in virtual game platforms, which is another aspect where technology can make a difference.
- Axie Infinity -
Benefits of Blockchain Gaming
We will dive into the possibilities in which this Blockchain technology can resolve problems for the gaming industry. Many concerns about NFTs and NFT Gaming and the use cases they have has constantly been a talking point. The gaming industry is no different as debates rage on whether the blockchain technology is bringing anything new to the industry that hasn’t already been done. Below we’ll take a look at some key points that outline what benefits the blockchain has in the gaming industry:
1. Making payment processing cost-effective
With an enormous popular interest in cryptocurrencies, buying and selling crypto tokens securely is now easy. If you develop your game on blockchain and allow players to buy and sell in-game assets using digital currencies, they have enough secured means to do those transactions.
The gaming industry is accessible from all over the world. Though players get a chance to leverage fiat currencies, they are not effective in terms of cost-effectiveness. A player has to pay expensive fees to utilize online gaming.
With Blockchain, gamers can keep their debit or credit cards away. No matter how small a payment is, this technology offers a decentralized method for it. There is no way for a scammer to steal information or manipulate the sector.
For e.g Onixcoin has a good web wallet for the players. They can also keep their digital currencies safe when they aren’t using them, with the desktop wallet from Onixcoin.
- Onixcoin -
If players secure their private keys, their transactions are safe. However, they need to maintain a disciplined approach to their computer security, for e.g. take regular back-ups, avoid risky websites, and avoid keeping too many cryptocurrencies in web or mobile wallet.
2. Minimizing fraudulent activities
The gaming industry suffers the maximum hit of online frauds. Hence, the industry constantly looks for techniques that can save lost revenues.
Blockchain technology can save billions of dollars by eradicating every chance of fraud. Companies such as B2Expand have already started using the crypto economy to reduce fraudulent activities.
Smart contracts running on top of a blockchain network can be vulnerable if they have bugs. It’s possible for hackers to exploit such bugs, an example was the Ethereum DAO hack in 2016.
In the case of the Ethereum DAO hack, malicious agents exploited a loophole in the ‘Decentralized Autonomous Organization’ (DAO) smart contract. They were about to make off with ETH 3.6 million ($ 70 million at that time), however, the transparency of blockchain prevented it.
A public blockchain allows everyone to read all transactions, and the Ethereum community soon discovered the hack. They implemented a hard fork to prevent drainage of funds and refunded the money to DAO investors. Read about the DAO hack in “ The DAO, The Hack, The Soft Fork and The Hard Fork “.
If you are developing a game on the blockchain, make sure you code your smart contracts well. However, a completely open ledger of all transactions helps in preventing frauds, and that’s another support blockchain provides you with.
Gaming and blockchain are natural partners. If you are planning to build that next viral game, consider the advantages of blockchain tech for game distribution, along with other advantages.
3. Storage safety and security
Game items constantly face a security threat from the hackers. Hence, storing data online seems a risk for game companies. But Blockchain encryption has come out to be a sustainable solution.
Data stored with blockchain encryption makes it impossible for hackers to breach. This technology requires correct nodes at a correct time in order to breach. Which is why game items get a double security that saves from breaches.
Hackers love centralized servers! It’s just one stationary target for them, and if they can break the encryption, all assets stored on the server are theirs.
Blockchain technology in the gaming industry can change that. When players buy digital collectibles in your blockchain-based game, they can store them securely in their crypto wallets.
Blockchain can be used for securely hosting games without a central server. This is also a reason why most blockchain games are turn based. Having a way to securely host games without user limits or cost per bandwidth is a key driving factor in adopting blockchain gaming.
4. Better control over gaming economy
The government can put bans or regulate the economies of an industry. Harsh regulations give rise to black markets, which is never good for any industry. Gaming companies have been suffering from this problem as well. Game developers are losing their control over the trade. And that harms their ability to gain maximum revenues.
With Blockchain, there is no need to create policies. A developer can collect royalties from every gaming ecosystem on an ongoing basis. Plus, blockchain allows a game developer to begin or stop selling assets without any restriction.
Unlike the current scenario where you really don’t own your in-game purchases, a benefit of blockchain in gaming is that players own their assets. A blockchain-based game will use smart contracts to govern transactions inside the game, and that makes the difference.
Smart contracts are executed automatically upon fulfillment of conditions coded in them, and the result is irreversible. When you launch a blockchain-powered game, all in-game assets that your players bought using smart contracts are transferred to their public addresses. Smart contracts also allow for full transparency and every player can view the rules.
Smart contract execution results are recorded in a decentralized blockchain, and those records are immutable. No centralized agent can change the public address where the assets are stored, hence no one can change the ownership of the in-game assets.
An already visible gaming industry trend that will become more pronounced in the future is that rarer digital collectibles will attract greater price. This drives up the revenue of the sector.
Blockchain smart contracts can be a great way to create “IF-THEN-ELSE” conditions that will produce rarer in-game assets based on certain types of interaction. For example, CryptoKitties smart contracts produce even rarer breeds of kittens in some cases, and they attract a higher price.
5. Reducing the price of gaming items
High price of gaming items limits the customer base for developers. This is also a reason why gamers look for stolen game items in the digital market. However, Blockchain comes with affordable micro-transaction benefits. This can allow developers to sell their power-ups at cheap prices without losing profits. Moreover, a user can control his expenditure when playing online games.
These pointers make it clear why Blockchain is the next gaming industry disruption. It is visible that Blockchain is the future of a secure and thriving gaming industry.
- Army Of Crypto -
Crypto traders and investors have the public address that they can use for transactions across different blockchain networks. If you create your games on the blockchain, your players can take their unique public addresses from one game to the other.
They can transact with their cryptocurrencies from the same public address, across those different games.
6. Blockchain/NFT gaming opens new territory for developers
Assume you are a talented developer with a great idea for a killer game app, however, you have no experience in the gaming industry. Centralized gaming companies operate in a highly competitive environment and experience is of premium value for them. You will likely wait a while before you land that job in a gaming company to develop that killer game of yours.
You can learn to develop a DApp game, there are excellent resources. For e.g., the Loom Network has built an interactive course for developing your own DApp game. Check out their CryptoZombies coding school.
I have mentioned about Onixcoin earlier, but they aren’t the only blockchain start-up to provide SDKs for developing a blockchain-based game. Loom Network provides their Unity SDK, and you can use that to build your game. Check out the GitHub material for Unity SDK, to get started.
Written by: TreyTrillionair
