First a definition, when I say “Blockchain Games” I refer to games that in one way or the other utilizes blockchain technology as part of their tech-stack. It could be anything from having an in-game currency using ERC20 tokens, to games that has almost everything on the blockchain, from assets to game logic. In this article I want to discuss the state of blockchain games centered around the upcoming flagship title from indie game studio Blockade Games, Neon District.

You are very welcome to check out my previous blog post, Neon District, What We Know So Far to learn more about the game and its features.

If you haven’t already, go sign up to the Neon District waitlist in order to join early access which is launching on the 1st of May.

The waitlist closes on the 22nd of March!

Brief history of blockchain games

CryptoKitties

The first ever cryptokitty sold for almost 120.000$ on the 2nd of December 2017

Arguably the first blockchain game to go viral in cryptoland was CryptoKitties, which gained a lot of traction in the end of 2017. The game is rather simple, each kitty has a unique genome. If you have two kitties you can breed them and the genome of the offspring is derived from their parents. The value of the kitties are defined by the rarity of the “cattributes” and the subjective opinion on the cuteness of the kitty. The entire game is on the Ethereum network and it caused transaction fee’s to skyrocket and general congestion of the network. This really made it readily apparent that Ethereum was not ready to scale by itself.

Copycats and Exit-scams

Ever since CryptoKitties went viral, there has been many other projects attempting to create similar games. In the aftermath of CryptoKitties came the ICO-craze and the cryptowinter. Many projects ran out of funding or straight up exit-scammed, leaving players angry and dissapointed. A lot of users lost a lot of money in these project, and for many people it created an aversion against blockchain games, that still is apparent today.

There is hope

Some games made it through and has built up amazing communities, Axie Infinity comes to mind. It has the same breeding aspect as CryptoKitties, but the game has PvP. You can create teams of 3 axies(cute monsters) and fight other teams for EXP. A huge expansion is planned and will open up for more gameplay.

Why hasn’t current blockchain games reached the mainstream audience?

The majority of these games require technical knowledge about blockchain tech. The players need to have a wallet to interact with the game, they need to practice safekeeping of their private keys and they also have to pay fees for each transaction. Currently each transaction takes at least 13 seconds, in most cases more.

All of these factors are detrimental to usability, and means that it is extremely hard to widen the player-base to mainstream gamers. So how do we eliminate these hurdles?

The Layer 2 solution

If we take a look at Ethereum, it simply does not scale by itself. In the future we will probably see huge performance increases, but that doesn’t help us right now! Another solution is Layer 2 or “sidechains” to Ethereum, these chains rely on the basechain for security and finality. But they allow for more throughput and speed at the cost of decentralization.

Loomy, the Loom mascot!

Loom is a company that specializes in building a scaling solution for the Ethereum network. I highly recommend giving their article “Games Will Be the Catalyst for Blockchain Mass Adoption” a read!

Loom provides high-performance DPoS sidechains to Ethereum, they have zero fees and speedy blocktimes. Their Plasma Cash solution secures the on-chain assets with the security from Ethereum Mainnet.

Neon District RPG

Please check out my previous blogpost for an intro to Neon District.

The Neon District Tech-Stack

Take a look below to gain a general overview of the components that make up Neon District. Most of this info comes from the great presentation by Blockade Games CTO, Ben Heidorn.

So the game, Neon District is built on the Unity platform. Initially a desktop version and a Nintendo Switch version will be supported.

In the future Xbox and mobile will potentially be supported as well.

All characters, equipment, consumables and probably much more, will be stored on a Loom sidechain as NFT’s(Non Fungible Tokens). These NFT’s are also stored in a caching layer in the server backend, meaning that they can be used directly in the game. When a player receives a new item, it is minted on the Loom sidechain, where in traditional games the item would be stored on a central server. This means you end up with a game that has the opportunity to feel exactly like any other game built on Unity.

So what is the difference from a traditional game and a Neon District from the perspective of a mainstream gamer?

The players have complete ownership of their game assets! Meaning that even if Blockade Games, decide to turn off their servers, the players still have their items. But How?

At anytime the user can use the transfer gateway, to exit their NFT’s to Ethereum mainnet. From here they can sell it on various marketplaces such as OpenSea. This part is not easy for a mainstream gamer. But again, it is only required if they want to sell their assets. So the idea is that this feature should be something EXTRA on top of the game. And if the user is not interested in getting their assets on the Ethereum mainnet, they can just disregard that feature.

But who cares about the game assets if the game servers are turned off? These NFT’s have out-of-the box interoperability. Meaning they can be included in other games! This also means that new games being developed can choose to integrate game assets from other games, which is a pretty cool marketing opportunity for game creators. But it also puts power in the hands of the players.

Conclusion

I think we are moving into the next generation of blockchain games. We’ve seen many simple breeding games which are mostly speculation based, we’ve seen a lot of exit scams or projects that didn’t last the cryptowinter. I think what we are going to see next is games that rely on Layer 2 tech, to provide something that feels like a contemporary game.

We will see games that can on-board users that doesn’t know anything about blockchain, even though their game assets are tokens on the blockchain.

We don’t expect users in traditional games to have opinions on the underlying tech-stack, or to write SELECT queries to the databases of the games they play, and blockchain games should be no different.

Loom has been driving this revolution with determination and I think Blockade Games, has the team to gain mainstream adoption for their upcoming game, Neon District.

You are very welcome to write your opinion down below!

Remember to sign up for the Neon District waitlist! :)