Recently, I was trying to understand the hype around blockchain and video games. What could the blockchain truely bring to the gaming industry. A few things did stand out in my opinion.
1. A connection between games
Imagine you are playing your favorite game. For exemple, let say your favorites games are the NHL series. So you create your own character which usually start with pretty bad stat. His stats are improving while your playing and you end up having a decent character. Currently, the next game would come out and you'd have to start all over again. What if the stats and appearance of your character would be stock on the blockchain? It means you could buy the new game and directly start using your character if both game are in sync with the blockchain. Now imagine if the NFL series in also in sync with the NHL series. You could use the same athlete in both type of game. This principle could be applied to a lot of games and we could see the creation of parallel gaming universe. There is currently some companies like Ubisoft (located in Montreal) which are trying out the blockchain technologie in order to implement it to their games.
2. The possibilitie to create real virtual items (unique asset)
Now let say you are playing another type of game like an mmorpg. The first game that comes to mind is WoW (World of Warcraft) obviously. Now imagine that the items would be stored on the blockchain as digital asset (funny fact: cryptokitty was actually a test in that matter). It means that every item would be unique in a sense that it occupy a space on the blockchain but it mean more than that. For exemple, a high level player with a certain specialisation in alchemy or any other kind of skills could enchant an item with a rare enchantment creating a real unique item. That item could be a unique and it would be possible to look it out on the blockchain to make sure of his scarcity.
3. Virtual item are safe on the blockchain
Using the same principle that most cryptocurrencies uses, your item would be safe on the blockchain. Some games are easily hackable and some rare items are stolen to be resold on the black market. Building your game on the blockchain could remove a big part of that threat.
4. Positive impact on the in game economy
Currently, a lot of money is being lost by gaming companies because of people selling or buying items or gold on 3rd party website. If the game was built on the blockchain, they could keep track of the asset and they could even sell the items themselves. The big deal here is mostly linked to the possibilities to control the parameters of trade. For exemple, making an item only tradeable through certain restriction.
5. Ohhh theres way more than only 5 positive things about the use of blockchain in the gaming industry!
I mention only a few positive things the blockchain could bring to the gaming industry but there is way more then that. There could be open source game where players are also developpers of the game. There could be a democratic game in which every new patch would be voted on by the users. Those are only a few things that come to my mind and I'm not even going into the development of VR.
I really look forward to video games made on the blockchain and I hope that you do too!
P.S. English isn't my native language so there might be a few mistakes in the text.
Presco