Blockchain Gets its First Ever Dedicated Stage at E3 Gaming Expo
Blockchain to Make Historic Debut at E3
DGA (Digital Games + Assets) Summit announced last week that blockchain gaming will be getting its first-ever stage at the annual E3 Gaming Expo held in Los Angeles. Considered to be the world’s largest and most renowned gaming expo, E3 reached a record-breaking attendance level of almost 70,000 gamers, journalists, fans, and industry insiders in 2018. Hosted and organized by DGA Summit / CoinState, the blockchain gaming stage at E3 signifies a huge milestone for the blockchain space as countless projects race for mainstream adoption.
One Small Step for Gaming, One Giant Leap for Blockchain
Blockchain and gaming are two industries more closely related than most think, and their audiences often intersect. In fact, many of crypto’s brightest minds drew inspiration from the gaming industry, as the concept of digital (or virtual) economies was first realized in games such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft. The concept of virtual economies — although not decentralized — undoubtedly influenced some of the fundamental principles of the blockchain industry.
The Blockchain Gaming Stage at E3 comes at an interesting time, as more financial & academic institutions, multinational corporations, government agencies, look to blockchain for solutions spanning countless use cases. Many industry leaders and developers predict the gaming segment to be one of the first adopters of blockchain technology, ushering the next wave of mass adoption of blockchain technologies.
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, will play a fundamental role in the development of the blockchain gaming industry. NFTs show great potential as a way to “mine” in-game assets such as trophies, rare items, weapons, player skins, land, and so forth simply by playing. CryptoKitties, one of the blockchain stage sponsors, was the first to gain mass exposure in the NFT space back in 2017. The popularity of the game forced the Ethereum network to a grinding halt and propelled the value of early-generation kitties into the stratosphere. The value derives from several characteristics of NFTs:
- Rarity / Scarcity: an item that is limited to only one or a very small number of players within the virtual world.
- Persistence: the item exists throughout the virtual world and can be seen publicly outside the virtual world, on the blockchain.
- Interconnectivity: the item’s influence or value can be affected by other mechanisms in the game, as long as it is within the games’ rules and boundaries. The item can also be traded between users with completeness as NFTs are typically not divisible.
- Secondary markets: demand for unique items create a secondary market outside of the virtual world, and can be traded and recorded on the blockchain
Even though CryptoKitties’ implementation of NFTs was very simple, it was the first of its kind.The game was slow and expensive (although much better today) — revealing some of the drawbacks of a truly decentralized system. Had the game launched today, the developers would have much more flexibility and choice in dealing with scalability issues.
Matic Network, another Blockchain Gaming Stage sponsor, is an example of a second-layer protocol that solves scalability issues within the Ethereum network. Matic lists games in its whitepaper as one of its biggest use-cases; it’s already attracted projects like Decentraland, an Ethereum-based virtual reality platform, to build on its plasma-based protocol. When asked about the future of blockchain in gaming, Sandeep Naiwal, COO of Matic, commented:
“Gaming is long expected to be one of the primary use cases to catapult Blockchains towards mass adoption. We at Matic consider gaming as one of our core focus areas. Matic provides smooth developer experience as well as easy onboarding and usage for existing Ethereum users which has by far the biggest mind share within crypto community. This has resulted in some of the biggest names in Blockchain gaming space like Decentraland gravitating towards Matic Network”
The brutal crypto winter was not enough to stop the blockchain pioneers. Despite the vast majority of projects failing to gain a stronghold in price, developers continued their work in laying the foundations and infrastructure to prepare for mass adoption. Although there is still much work to be done, the future of blockchain gaming is looking bright and promising.
The Lineup: 2019’s Speakers & Sponsors
Speakers: Randy Saaf (MLB Champions), James Ferguson (Gods Unchained), Mickey Maher (Dapper Labs / CryptoKitties), Fred Krueger (EOS Lynx), John Jeng (Annu Gear), Greg Zinone (Klout Blockchain), Ivan Soto (MoonPay), Austin Davis (Blockchain Beach), Caterina Zhang (Cocos-BCX), Justin Wu (CoinState), Justin Mavandi (FaZe Clan), Nolan Bushnell (Atari & Chuck E Cheeses)
Sponsors & Media Partners: Altcoin Buzz, Blockchain Beach, Blockchain Game Alliance, Chromia, Cocos BCX, CoinState, CryptoKitties, EOS Lynx, Fuel Games, Global Gaming Tech Corp, Gods Unchained, Ikigai Asset Management, Klout Blockchain, Lucid Sight (MLB Champions), Lunar Digital Assets, Matic Network, MoonPay, The Rabbit Hole, Wave Financial
About CoinState: CoinState is a Blockchain community & media team based in Los Angeles. Focused on building communities & events around Seattle, Vancouver B.C., Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco. CoinState launched BlockchainNW, the first Blockchain Conference in Seattle on June 2018. The conference had 700+ attendees and speakers from Bittrex, T-Mobile, MyCrypto, New Alchemy, Caesars Entertainment and more.
“The Video Games industry always leads the way for lot of innovation and mass adoption of disruptive technologies. The true will be the same for blockchain where it’s been a perfect use case to bring true ownership of digital assets. We decided to build this stage to generate conversations and connections with the games industry directly. If we want to achieve adoption, we have to escape the blockchain industry bubble and go directly to industry leaders to bring adoption and education.” — Justin Wu, founder of CoinState and DGA
Originally published at Lunar Digital Assets.
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