Scaling your business in the gaming industry is easy if you know how to adapt, pivot, and conquer.  Innovation should always be the goal for the gaming industry which is exactly the direction that the industry is heading since day one.  The gaming industry has been undergoing massive evolution and adoptions that range from virtual reality to promoting microtransactions with blockchain technology in gaming.

Gamers’ Advantage

Blockchain is said to be the pillar or backbone for rapid developments going on in the gaming industry – which makes it all incredibly exciting. When you see it through the lens of a gamer, blockchain technology is meant to add new and exciting elements to the full gaming experience. This allows gamers to claim and gain ownership of all items they get in the game – from reward items to special characters.

With that being said, the gamer owns these items and gets to keep them forever. In the event that the games are upgraded or no longer supported by the developer, the gamer still gets to retain the full ownership of game assets.

Cross-Game Interoperability Enabled

Blockchain unlocks digital ownership for its users. With cross-game interoperability, you can freely share items with other gamers, use them in other game environments, or sell the items on the digital asset marketplace. With this setup, gamers are allowed to engage longer while also allowing both in-game assets and virtual currencies to flow and move in multiple game environments.

• Blockchain also ensures that the gamers and in-game items or assets are authentic to guarantee fair play. Blockchain technology holds as much opportunities for both game developers and gamers. Now, a lot of games are developed with the free-to-play model or having their own virtual currency in-game purchasing model.
• With blockchain’s entry, game developers can either adopt their their own in-game cryptocurrency, or use an existing cryptocurrency such as EOS, to sell game assets while offering reward incentives to creators who build in-game assets.
• Blockchain games allow developers to create assets with tangible and transferable value with incentives geared towards both gamers and developers.  Also, with blockhain gaming, even the small developers are able to participate in the gaming market as opposed to just the giant gaming studies monopolizing or taking the huge slice of the market pie.

A couple of major problems in the gaming market today would include the slow transactions and poor user experience which blockchain tech aims to solve. As blockchain tech is relatively new, it is yet to gain traction in the global gaming market, although it has already been making waves in the blockchain industry.

The best is yet to come in blockchain gaming with the looming advancements that are bound to happen in the mobile gaming space give the industry’s growing accessibility and size. There is so much potential to be tapped right here. All you have to do is to target and retarget if and when necessary. Once blockchain tech is established, this is bound to be the mainstay technology in the gaming industry.

Online Gaming on a Centralized Model

Most popular games we know today follow a centralized model. That means that all related data is stored on a server that the game administrators fully control. Data would often store in-game assets and records that are collected by gamers such as items, collectibles, and virtual money. As the database is owned by a single company, players don’t have actual ownership of their accounts and items. In other words, the power is in the hands of the game companies.

What Do We Get From A Blockchain-Enabled Gaming Industry?

Let’s take a look at a few ways blockchain technology is changing the gaming industry today:

Asset Ownership

Gamers can fully own their assets in the digital world. Thanks to the blockchain tech. With the integration of blockchain, gamers can freely streamline and secure the ownership of in-game items and collectibles which is one of the main NFT use cases today. Typically, each asset is represented by a unique, non-fungible token (NFT), such as the ERC-721 tokens. Regardless of the asset type, they can all be linked to blockchain tokens maintained by a distributed network.

Transforms Gaming Industry

New game launches are indeed very exciting! However, the majority of online games strictly follow a centralized model. Following this model, game administrators are completely in control of the data stored on the server. Data would mean server history plus account info that stores all the in-game assets and events achieved by the players like in-game items or assets, virtual money, and other collectibles.

As a central authority owns databases, players don’t have actual ownership of items, collectibles, and accounts. It also comes with many vulnerabilities and limitations, such as undeserved bans, infiltration by hackers, game economy manipulation by owners, and more. In other words, the power lies with the developers. That is what blockchain technology changes by mitigating or eliminating most of the issues.

Function of the Blockchain Database

The blockchain database is distributed, and you can use a system based on that to secure and verify all kinds of digital data, including digital items, game history, tokenized assets, etc. The idea is to create a decentralized system and provide more power to players. This gives players full control over their digital items, collectibles, and accounts and to trade digital assets anytime.

What is Blockchain Gaming?

Blockchain gaming is a type of game that allows actual ownership from the same technology that powers cryptocurrencies, popularly Bitcoin and Ethereum. Before now, players have accepted that their items are stuck forever in games and can’t be moved in and out freely. Blockchain gaming operates to break those barriers and bring even more exciting developments.

Blockchain gaming allows a whole new player-driven economy. Players can verify if they hold rare items and send particular items to anyone and not sell the entire account because the buyer wants one little thing.

Blockchain Technology in Gaming  – How It Works

Here, we introduce how the gaming industry can successfully implement blockchain technology.

Allows Decentralized Marketplace

Gaming in a blockchain platform creates a decentralized marketplace or avenue for players while getting rid of the power of gaming companies to take control of many elements in the game’s economy such as locking in the game items and digital valuables so players cannot touch or trade them. Additionally, this also provides players an open and trustless space to buy, sell, or trade assets on a peer-to-peer transaction.

Full Control and Ownership

It’s exciting to note that with games running on blockchain tech, players gain complete control and permanent ownership of all their in-game assets, collectibles, skins, cards, game characters, equipment, and the like. Each asset is represented and seen as NFTs, which takes the industry to another level where players would know if the items they have in their possession are rare or common.

Games like Gods Unchained enable players to own their in-game assets through smart contracts. It means that the ownership of the asset is passed down to the player once a particular predefined condition (such as purchasing the asset) is met. This condition cannot be reversed even by the developer, as data on the blockchain is immutable. It presents an opportunity for players to monetize their progress or skill, e.g., sell or auction a tournament-winning asset.

Economy of Gaming

With blockchain token enables, players can now freely trade assets or in-game items and even with other game environments. More so, players can sell these in-game items or cards and other assets in other gaming markets because they are represented by digital tokens hosted on an identical blockchain or even different blockchains.

Following a decentralized gaming economy, players complete missions or objectives to earn cryptocurrencies. This is another way blockchain can totally turn the gaming industry into an intense and massive revolt that players are looking forward to.

For instance, in the game Age of Rust, players complete specific goals to receive $ENJ which is an Ethereum coin. They can now use $ENJ to swap to other digital coins, get gift cards in big brands, or hold as its price increases. It’s exciting to witness the developments happening in blockchain tech and gaming. This provides players an opportunity to make real-life transactions with their in-game actions. This and a lot more developments create an exciting arena for the gaming industry.

What are the Limitations of a Blockchain?

A new dawn is coming with the emergence of blockchain tech but this is also bound to bring in a lot of challenges and limitations to the gaming industry. There is scalability, which is the potentially crippling problem blockchain gaming face at the moment. When a blockchain game becomes popular, it would often require thousands to millions of transactions to maintain its operation. The ability to transcend these limits is the challenge that many gaming companies face today.

Poor UX

Poor UX and lack of adoption is a lingering problem not just today but it’s one element that could make or break a game. The reality is most games have poor UX compared to other platforms, and there are also not enough professional development companies to focus on developing blockchain games. Blockchain gaming requires another level of genius. As a matter of fact, blockchain gaming needs enthusiasts and professionals who understand blockchain and gaming, and there are not enough specialists. It needs developers who believe in the power of blockchain tech and what it can do to power up the tempo of gaming in today’s full-speed generation.

Transparency

Transparency is often a common limitation with many games. Developers can create self-dependent economical systems within games. Because the structure is decentralized, a level of transparency would be a great extra dash of benefit.

Democratic Gaming

Freedom has its limit but gaming provides you the opportunity to ride in the fast lane and dash into the freeway. The implementation of blockchain tech creates a free and more democratic gaming space for every player. By introducing voting rights as per the number of tokens, developers can make decisions that players find appealing. This becomes a win-win setup for both players and developers.

Time- and Cost-Efficient  

Time is a real-time asset and currency. It is said to be a superpower in the gaming arena. By enabling blockchain tech on games instead of using centralized servers, games can now run at lightning speed and thus, cut down the time and even the costs spent on transactions.

Scalability

Scalability is one of the most significant limitations of blockchain since centralized networks tend to be much faster than blockchains. The problem here is the ability to scale fast and to keep up with the demands of a rather fast-paced generation of gamers.

Lack of Demand

If you’ll notice, the demand for blockchain games is quite lower compared to traditional games mainly because of scalability issues that tend to be the main problem for many developers.

Maintenance

Maintaining a blockchain-enabled game can be very expensive. With that being said, developers often tend to struggle when it comes to raising funds in the effort to maintain a blockchain game.

Lack of Resources

Blockchain tech holds a lot of promise and potential but it can be a tedious and challenging feat especially when it comes to financial investments and manpower. Due to small groups, blockchain game developers find it challenging to compete with major centralized game developers.

Rebuilding the Gaming Arena

Blockchain tech can rapidly change the phase and pace of the gaming industry. This can greatly rebuild the gaming world as we know it, and this could end to the monopolistic reign happening right now with game developers and publishers.

Online gamers would usually prefer digital items or assets sold as in-game tokens compared to traditional purchases which possess no unique value-for-money proposition. Although it could take a while before blockchain in gaming becomes mainstream, we can then look forward to more democratic, secure, transparent, and financially empowered players and gaming environments in the future.

Blockchain technology was seen to be just another disruptive blotch or hump but now people are seeing the potential of using it extends way beyond bitcoin. The technology revolutionizes the gaming industry by creating a decentralized system, enabling players to discover, play, socialize and compete without friction.  Implementing blockchain technology isn’t just another innovation but it’s bound to empower and create opportunities for the gaming space.