Proof of Play CEO Why is On-Chain Gaming the Future of Game Development

Proof of Play CEO explains why On-Chain Gaming is the future of game development.

Note: On September 21st, the blockchain gaming company Proof of Play announced the completion of a $33 million seed round of financing, led by a16z and Greenoaks. Proof of Play CEO and co-founder Amitt Mahajan shared in a post why Proof of Play was created, the future of game development, and the role of decentralized technology in the future. Translated by LianGuai0xjs.

Proof of Play is both a game studio and a technology company. Its mission is to create fun and accessible blockchain games, while developing innovative technologies to make it easier for everyone to develop blockchain games.

Fun is the most important

Players only want to play fun games. They don’t care whether their favorite games are on AWS or Ethereum. Unfortunately, many blockchain products are currently considered complicated or require expensive purchases to get started.

With that in mind, Proof of Play aims to create fun and accessible games where the underlying technology is invisible to players. By providing a smooth and free gaming experience, we believe that players will initially enjoy the fun of the game. Over time, as they delve deeper into the universe they play and create, they will discover the benefits of blockchain games.

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We are currently focused on building and enhancing our first game, Pirate Nation. Pirate Nation is a fully blockchain-based role-playing game (RPG) where players can recruit their own pirate crew, battle with magical creatures, and compete with other players for the top spot on the leaderboard. We recently made the game free so that more people can easily try out blockchain games. Pirate Nation is also our sandbox; it is our research project aimed at solving the challenges we need to address in order to bring blockchain games to everyone on every device.

Why blockchain games?

Blockchain games are games that run entirely on decentralized blockchains and have all the data. Full-chain games do not use centralized servers. Instead, decentralized node networks handle the logic and history of the game and ensure that players make valid actions. Therefore, blockchain games are more secure, more resilient (as long as the blockchain exists, they will continue to exist), and can be infinitely scalable by anyone.

It is also worth distinguishing blockchain games from other types of blockchain games. Many other blockchain games are regular games that replace their optional downloadable content (DLC) or in-app purchases with NFTs. As a result, players no longer use credit cards to purchase items in a database, but instead buy NFTs stored on the blockchain. In these games, the game server and the continuous operation of the game still rely on the game creator, a centralized entity. It’s like players pay for and own a set of chess pieces, but still have to use the chessboard and rulebook from the chessboard manufacturer. This is not a judgment on these projects, many of which are excellent games created by talented teams. Instead, it highlights the technical complexity and subtle differences that players must master when deciding to invest their time in games that use blockchain technology.

On-chain Games are Permanent

In traditional server-based games, players do not own their in-game items or the underlying utilities behind them; whether they were won, purchased, or gifted by other players is irrelevant. Once a company decides to shut down the game and stop paying for server costs, virtual items and the ability to use them in the game disappear.

As one of the creators of the game “FarmVille,” I witnessed firsthand the situation where 300 million players invested over 1 billion hours in their digital farms. In 2020, due to the shift from web game technology to mobile game technology, FarmVille was shut down, and the players’ investment of billions of hours was permanently lost. There must be a better way.

My journey into on-chain games began with this observation: any data not on the blockchain is inherently transient. However, data stored on the Ethereum blockchain is replicated across thousands of nodes worldwide and is the closest thing we have to data that can last for thousands of years. Anyone can write data to Ethereum as long as they pay. In many ways, Ethereum is a modern time capsule, containing collective knowledge and digital art that anyone chooses to place there.

Through on-chain games, players can continue running blockchain nodes or create full game copies and continue self-operating and developing. On-chain games are truly permanent games: when players level up their characters, create worlds, or collect loot, their game progress will be forever stored on the blockchain and available for their use, without the risk of losing progress. Anyone can extend on-chain games.

Since the earliest computer games, players have been modifying (modding) games in various ways. Whether it’s adding new maps to Doom or creating entirely new games (Counter-Strike from Half-Life, DotA from Warcraft III), modding has been a part of game and game development culture from the beginning. I personally started game development by modifying Quake.

Being able to build and remix on top of existing games takes on the daunting task of creating new universes and simplifies it, making game creation accessible to anyone. However, as games have transitioned from downloadable software to services, players’ ability to modify games has been limited by centralized, isolated databases and lack of data portability.

On-chain games reverse this trend and empower user-generated content (UGC). By default, on-chain games are open source and have open data, meaning anyone can add new features or components to the game. They can extract data from the game and create their own websites or even create their own game clients. This is similar to how the internet was initially created: a set of open, publicly accessible protocols and content where anyone could publish, link to, or create new browsers. On-chain games are a return to the open, decentralized, and collaborative nature of game development.

Evolving Game Development

Modern games are typically a mix of common game mechanics balanced in unique ways. Game developers repeatedly recreate the same mechanics in each new game they develop. Most of the code and logic is the same, with minor adjustments for specific games.

By putting source code and data on the blockchain, we are laying the foundation for the future of game and community building. In the blockchain ecosystem, this is known as composability, a powerful concept that allows applications to leverage each other to build faster. In games, this can enhance creativity and provide a collaborative environment for creators to quickly remix or enhance each other’s game creations. Your creativity grows exponentially in scale. This is a new paradigm for game development.

Here’s a bold prediction: I believe that eventually, on-chain games will be faster and more efficient than off-chain game development. Without the need to run your own servers or worry about security, and benefiting from collective open-source packages and modules, developers will be able to deliver faster than ever before, saving time and cost.

Beyond Games Towards a Decentralized World

Complex games are no longer just games; they start to resemble societies with their own economies, complex governance, and politics. MMOs today have dynamics such as virtual item markets and crafters similar to real-world markets and traders. MMO guilds have intricate control structures to manage their raid actions and determine fair loot distribution.

The physical world is a zero-sum game with scarce energy and resources. In contrast, the digital world has no such limitations. Digital scarcity doesn’t exist unless introduced by creators or game designers. One of our goals in building tools is to make everyone a creator and let the creator community govern their world rules. If our designed technology doesn’t limit creators and makes building on others’ creations trivial, we believe user-driven content will experience explosive growth. The best example is games like “Minecraft”, where simple “place a block” and “remove a block” actions allow people to build entire universes, create prefabricated sets for others to use, and even create computers within the game itself.

As an analogy, in computer science, a Turing complete computer is a machine capable of executing any possible computation. Similarly, a Turing complete creative tool can be created to enable creators to build any type of world. When infinite creativity is combined with the permanent and composable (non-zero-sum) nature of on-chain applications, we can create self-sufficient rich digital universes.

These new fully decentralized digital universes are referred to as autonomous worlds within the broader blockchain ecosystem. We believe on-chain games are the gateway to this new positive-sum digital realm, and we are excited to contribute to creating this future.

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