Gaming industry disrupted by blockchain.
Ok, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I was 13 and there was a short period of my life spent in front of my computer screen gaming my nights away — literally. I ended up spending 10 hours (10 pm to 8 am) playing and missing school due to “feeling sick”. After that, my parents banned me from my computer for one month which probably saved me from becoming an addict:) I have to admit that all was exciting, and yes there was one boy at school that always talked about games… Initially, I started gaming to have something to discuss with him, but soon enough that grew into a stand-alone affection. But this post is not about my teenage crush, it’s about the gaming industry.
Since the birth of the Internet computer games have been evolving at the speed of light. When I was a child I literally felt like I could count pixels on the screen, but now I use my Oculus and don’t feel dizzy (most of the time). But what hasn’t changed that much is how most people see games. We find them fun, entertaining, defend our hobby as being “educational” or ‘brain-training” but, to be honest to yourself, it’s still kind of a waste of time.
Now, finally, the situation’s changing. Blockchain technology is revolutionising the gaming industry in 2 main ways. Firstly, you will now be able to trade assets (in-game items, I like how we now call them swords, arrows, helms & pets) and make some cash or coins out of it (mom won’t mind your hobby anymore). Secondly, the blockchain makes everything transparent and in this case you will be able to see how many of those guns are out there and are they that unique, also you can see who owned the item before (they used to auction off John Lennon’s guitars, soon you’ll be able to buy the 15-year-old-world-Dota-2-champion’s lucky axe).
Ok, let’s dig a bit deeper. This is what I believe we will see in the next few years. The tokenization of games will ensure secure ownership and give people the opportunity to trade in-game assets. When people can make money out of something (not being an e-sports player) and have fun at the same time, things are going to grow rapidly. We can already see many games done on the Ethereum blockchain. Heard of crypto kitties? Yeah, a cat was once sold for $63,000, and that was not a one-off incident. New Blockchains like EOS are promising to be a great foundation for game developers. (By the way, we are working really hard to support EOS on our Lumi, get in touch with us hello@lumiwallet.com to get a notification once we do).
Real-money incentives for players will be the main fuel for the development and adoption of blockchain games. Will that mean we will see angel investors or Venture Capitalists pouring money into certain in-game assets, or games themselves? Will there be new exchanges that let you trade blockchain game assets & wallets that let you store them? Yes, I certainly think so.
In fact, my whole team and I are committed to developing one of the first wallets that will let you store & manage your kitties or AK47s. We are building something we call Lumi Collect (since any game asset is a collectible). Check out these screenshots and let me know what you think, guys? Are there any certain features or games/assets that you would like to see in Lumi Collect?
“At the moment crypto wallets are an essential part of blockchain games reality, they store funds together with game tokens and it is our duty to make user experience of such apps better and better. This is where LUMI Collect excels.” — Vladimir Tomko, CEO of Blockchain Cuties.
P.S. I haven’t gamed in ages, has there been anything groundbreaking out there? What would you recommend? I was always more of an RPG fan.