Ether cat founder Benny: chain life should be more than 100 years

Lead: Yesterday evening, I had a phone call for more than an hour with Benny Giang, co-founder of CryptoKitties, a blockchain game in North America. On the phone, he talked sincerely about his insights into blockchain games and the ideas and stories behind their new game Cheeze Wizards.

Since the end of the 17th year, the CryptoKitties million-dollar cat has been born, blockchain games have attracted a lot of attention. In just over a year, thousands of blockchain games or products called "blockchain games" have been launched online. Some of them are step by step from the bottom of the blockchain, while others use the pass-through economy or digital tokens.

As a global blockchain game head company's Co-Founder, Benny and his DapperLabs team think about "What is a blockchain game?", "What is the future of blockchain games?" They are known as the design concept behind the third-stage blockchain game Cheeze Wizards, which gives some inspiration to anyone interested in blockchain games.

So I strongly invited him to write down the contents of the conversation and share it with the blockchain game enthusiasts in China and around the world.

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The original is in English and can be viewed on the DOGIgames.com website.

Below, Enjoy.

Original title: Future of games (the future of the game)

Benny Giang (Co-Founder of CryptoKitties)

I think the blockchain game industry will go through three different phases.

With the advent of CryptoKitties, the concept of the blockchain game industry was officially mentioned. Non-homogeneous tokens, unique chain metadata, Dutch auction mechanism, breeding competition (grab the mutant cat) and chain assets. People are beginning to realize that the blockchain approach is not just a financial application. Since then, more than 1,000 games have been launched in various blockchains and have generated millions of transactions.

The three stages of the 01 blockchain game

The first stage was the emergence of CryptoKitties and some similar games.

The main gameplay is genetic inheritance and reproduction. Some of these games have added similar functions to combat or land sales, but the core gameplay of these games is still comparable to CryptoKitties.

In the first phase, we came up with a unique idea, the concept of Kittyverse, the open game permissions, allowing third-party developers to make tools, in-game mini-games, and other content that highlights the uniqueness of blockchain games. . This view is consistently used in the third phase of the blockchain game.

The second stage is the rise of blockchain card trading games.

Conceptually, blockchain and card games have a very high degree of fit, and the playability of card games is much higher than that of the first stage.

For many years, we have been paying attention to the ownership of card cards in card games. Now we think the blockchain may be a good solution. Some of these projects have already made a name for themselves and will be available later this year.

In addition to ownership, cross-game collaborations that select different game worldviews and other design elements are beginning to emerge, such as the collaboration between CryptoKitties and God's Unchained.

The third stage is exactly where we are currently.

In view of the success of CryptoKitties, dozens of well-known cryptocurrency agreements such as XRP, EOS, Stellar, TRON and Tezos have created funds, hackathons, and other events that promote game development on the agreement. This clearly shows that the initial assumptions of how the game is driving the new platform are correct.

Blockchain games currently have different types of ways to get cash flow, including ICO, TGE, IEO, agreement grants or investments, project pre-sales, equity investments. In view of this, many veterans of the traditional game industry decided to quit their jobs and set up their own blockchain game studios. This is the industry's best to help drive blockchain games into the next generation of games with a wider community.

But even in the third stage, there are still several companies that have chosen two different paths.

02 two different paths

The first one is we call it Kushiro I. The studio in this road is focused on creating 3A games.

In order to make the game widely distributed and accepted by more people, they abstracted the elements related to the blockchain. They always think that the blockchain is the underlying logic of the game and there is no need to present it directly to all viewers.

In a corner of the game, users can convert in-game assets to non-homogeneous tokens in a specific way. This type of game that issues cryptocurrencies in the game is considered a blockchain game. More often, such games will prioritize graphics and extensibility rather than highlighting the true nature of the blockchain.

Although I think this idea is reasonable, I believe that blockchain games can't be limited to the liquidity of assets, which does not touch the core concept of blockchain.

Kushiro 2 is the sandbox that Dapper Labs is exploring.

The purpose of the exploration is to understand how the platform and content creators work together to create new ways of entertainment for consumers, and to present as much unique content as possible with the most blockchain features.

For example, when the iPhone was launched, many Flash game developers ported their games to the app store. However, according to Ben Xuanke's gameplay has never really maximized the potential of the iPhone.

A number of new game developers emerged, maximizing the use of the iPhone's internal sensors as the core of gameplay. Forget about existing game development experiences, start from scratch and rethink how to make games on the blockchain innovative.

However, the universality of 3A-level graphics and games is not currently the focus of Dapper Labs (at least for now). We chose to build our digital world on the Ethereum mainline instead of using sidechain or Layer 2 solutions.

Any separation between digital assets and the network can pose even greater challenges for consumers, and it can also jeopardize the useful life of assets. When considering the value of digital assets, time and source are very important factors that give meaning to the digital characters and objects we design.

We believe that the existence time of each encrypted cat and encryption wizard should exceed our longevity and become part of this revolutionary technological revolution. Dapper Labs often thinks very far, about a hundred years later.

We will choose the network that is most likely to survive multiple damages and turbulence, so stability and security are the most important factors. Speed ​​doesn't mean everything… Although this has become the focus of many game developers, continuity is equally important.

The significance of many agreements is to compensate for the lack of creativity through acceleration.

But the reason is simple, can faster speed really make the game more creative? In particular, the current ternary paradox that the blockchain needs to face. In order to provide faster speed, it is necessary to sacrifice something. In most cases, the benefits of speed are short-term and do not take into account the future rights of consumers. They did not consider what would happen in 100 years and only considered things within 1-2 years.

As game developers and creative people, we should create better experiences for our communities, our fans, our investors, our team members and ourselves. These experiences are not just convenience, but also considerate. responsible.

Several studios agree with this idea. They also believe that the digital world is a real thing. They create digital assets that last longer than themselves.

03 Cheeze Wizards some attempts

Another interesting topic I mentioned above is that we found that Kittyverse and the community around blockchain games are indispensable, and it is actually the core concept of our new game Cheeze Wizards.

Building your own games through community collaboration, or at least enabling community collaboration, is the main difference between our new games and other blockchain games and traditional game companies.

In the game, using the items you own to build your own world is unprecedented. This is what we dream of, and we can't wait to realize this potential.

Cheeze Wizards, as part of Stage 3, extends the structure of the blockchain game . The concept of the prize pool is not new, but the way to build a prize pool by purchasing assets is unique. This helps to promote participatory economies and push participation enthusiasm to new heights.

When the user casts a spell to other wizards, the distributed ledger on the blockchain records the valid results through a simplified game mechanic. In the smart contract, the concept called “Blue mold” is written, and low-performance or inactive users will be eliminated. This concept means that the “big escape” game is introduced into the blockchain game. among.

At the same time, because all the core logic of the tournament is predetermined, so the future decentralized tournament is also feasible.

Participating in an official competition organized by Dapper Labs means that the user needs to summon a wizard first. After the wizard exited the game, his power was not constant, but the wizard itself was constant.

Therefore, re-joining the official tournament is as simple as paying the same amount of money as the wizard's highest combat in the previous tournament. However, using the community building platform to organize competitions with other players in their own city takes this concept to a whole new level.

Since the logic of the tournament smart contract is open, each player or organizer can organize his own tournament, and the official is completely unable to intervene. And this is the very powerful and unique concept behind the Cheeze Wizards.

Not only that, but we also encourage community developers to explore predictive markets, secondary markets, combat robots, rival combat analyzers, DAO parties, NFT mini-games, social media robots, streaming media extensions, decentralized tournament platforms, and margin trading tools. Wait a minute to develop a thriving ecosystem.

The true essence of the blockchain is to build its own global community, believing that a particular digital world is the world they want to live in.

As a game creator, our job is to organize the right environment to inspire the creativity of the player. In the world of blockchain, the boundaries between players and developers are very blurred.

All in all, the third phase of the blockchain game has taken shape with the investment of capital and well-known teams and brands. Understanding the differences between teams building native blockchain games and teams based on experience-transplanted games will determine the evolution of this early industry.

The successful indicator building is a sustainable income-driven company whose ecosystem is both sustainable and income-generating. The digital world that blockchain games are building should provide a deeper experience that traditional game companies cannot match.

We will continue to update Blocking; if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us!