Opinion: Hive Needs Simple, Casual Games

The State of Things as I See It

I want to start off by saying I love the games that already exist on Hive, and am certainly excited about ones that are soon to be published. However, I have been thinking about this one particular issue for quite some time now, and thought I would talk about it.

The general public does not have the attention span of years past. I don't think that this is such a controversial statement to make. If the first few minutes of a TV show doesn't wow and amaze you, you're likely to change the channel or skip to the next video. Content has a very short time period to sell itself before completely shutting down the brain of the consumer.

So the fact is, beyond the tip of the iceberg, outside of the small group of braniacs who initially embraced the blockchain, there is a humungous group of everyday people who are interested at all of this but just can't get their head around a use-case for themselves. Or perhaps they aren't even interested in all for the same reason.

The Average Modern Gamer

It doesn't take more than a casual observer to see what has happened over the past 15 years, especially with mobile games. It feels like a return to the days of the Atari 2600 from the perspective of this old Gen-Xer. Over the decades, graphics got better, games became overly complex but the playability and fun-factor suffered. Then when smart phones and tablets emerged, developers were forced to go back to the basics because of the limitations of these devices.

Soon, you started seeing games like Angry Birds come out. Eventually things got even simpler and you got games like 2048. The concept of buying skins and such became quite popular. Eventually, you starting seeing what I would call sort of in-the-middle games like Clash Royale from Supercell. It was very easy to learn, but harder to master.

These new casual games made developers crazy amounts of wealth practically overnight. Look at King, the company that created Candy Crush Saga. They went public in a very short period of time. Now, I am not making any claims to where any of these companies are now, but the point I am trying to make is that these companies made games that you could simply open, and immediately and intuitively play.

How Hive Goes Viral

The things that make Hive great have been preached ad-nauseum. For our subject, the free transactions are a literal game changer. I honestly believe that the way we get people interested in Hive in a broader sense is by generating a lot of simple, easy to understand and play games that integrate with the blockchain in a meaningful way.

I think that the viral casual mobile game formula that has worked for years on IOS and Android might be a great fit for the Hive blockchain. I have been racking my brain trying to come up with ideas, and have a few, but nothing I've really felt good enough about to pull the trigger on.

Just thinking about the standard stuff:

1. In app purchases for premium items. Can be cosmetic or useful.

2. Just looking at the play screen for a few seconds and clicking or dragging a bit is enough to fully understand how to play.

3. Game has a quality that compels the player to keep going. Grind through or potentially buy certain upgrades. But importantly not so much buying that it ruins the game completely everyone else.

I think we really just need a few of these kind of games that are really addictive and easy to digest in order to really start driving traffic to Hive.

I will continue to brainstorm on this. I have had this very strong instinctual drive in this direction for several years now as I watch things develop on Hive.