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Is it an NFT game or a game NFT?

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How to "make a game like a game" and even "make an app like a game" is probably the first problem that all blockchain game teams need to solve.

Original title: "Dawn of NFT Games"

Originally written by Antonia Avenue; Instant Matataki community users

Game assets versus NFT is a well-worn topic, and it's a well-worn topic. Since CryptoKitties to the present day, from the coarsest card to Decentraland, the Web3 version of the simulated life, there has still not been a single blockchain game that has touched the hearts of traditional gamers, generated a massive player community, or set a record on the market. As a native of the web, who has been playing games since childhood, I don't think it's appropriate to use the term "chain gaming" to make Web3 games shine. Putting a "chain" on a game is like putting a cage on a crane.

There's an article on refresh these days: A Brief Talk about NFT and Metaverse by Vincent, founder of Daapp Review. It talks about "Don't NFT for NFT's sake" and "Connectivity is the most invitable feature of NFT and Metaverse". I think so. The once popular chain leader is a bit of "chain for chain's sake", which leads to a deviation from the "game" itself.

NFT male chain & have spent Flow The development team believes that the first way a new technology goes out of business is always in entertainment applications. Surprisingly (or sadly), the major online/mobile gamers, naturally accustomed to virtual assets, have been slow to embrace chain assets. Blockchain, though, has the potential to bring more to gaming than just enrichment: asset validation, a new power system for the player community, a redefinition of the relationship between the player and the authorities, and even a whole new way of playing. While creating conflict and antagonism is an effective way for a new generation group to establish itself, the problem may not lie with traditional games. How to "make a game like a game" and even "make an app like a game" is probably the first problem that all blockchain game teams need to solve.

So, what is a game?

From rules to games

Almost all discussion of what a game is can be traced back to two books: Schutz's Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, and Jane McGonigal's Games Change the World. In the former, Schutz's definition of a game is that playing a game is a voluntary effort to overcome unnecessary obstacles. As for the "how" to overcome it, Jane McGonigal identifies four elements that make up every game: goals, rules, feedback systems, and voluntary participation.

Take basketball for example. Essentially, a basketball is just a ball that any part of the body can interact with to roll, move or fly into the air. But if we set up a "basket," all of a sudden, all the moves make sense. Gradually, we realized that a low hoop was no fun, so we set the hoop higher than a normal person could easily reach. It can be seen from this that an "unreachable hoop" is not a necessary condition for making a shot.But accomplishing it feels extra meaningful.

Gradually, we began to set up how to transport the ball, form teams, set up defensive and offensive sides, and score the difficulty of the ball. So we have the hoop (the goal), offense, defense and scoring (the rules), and feedback systems (the sense of accomplishment in shooting or winning a game). As long as someone is willing to play, a game is established.

The difference is that "mechanics" are not "rules," and many apps today have mechanics, not rules. For example, clicking a button can generate a cryptokitty, which is the mechanism; But if the number of kitties that can be made is limited and subsequent kitties need to be made in pairs, that's the rule. In a sense, design rules are "unnecessary barriers." We all know it's "unnecessary," but it makes us feel "fun." "Fun" is the ultimate point of a game.

NFT game Axie Infinity card battle interface

In this sense, the current metaverse representatives Decanaland and Cryptovoxels are not games, because they have mechanics, not rules, goals, or feedback systems. This is why many traditional gamers can easily feel "just here" when they come to Metaverse: the current Metaverse fails to meet the thresholds of gamers who have been entertained by all their senses for decades. Sure, we can buy land, model, renovate, dress up, look at landscapes, see exhibitions, own NFT, trade NFT, talk around NFT, but that's it.It's as boring as real life, but the biggest motivation for Internet natives is to find meaning beyond reality in the endless digital world.

Decentraland screenshots

A screenshot of SimCity

Economic boundary

If Metaverse is all it is, then Minecraft, with its rules, goals, and feedback systems stripped away, is a Metaverse. Some might say that without the token economy, there would be no soul; Game economy design has long straddled the real world and the virtual world. Anyone who has done a commonsense study of the job structure, game design, and game operations of game manufacturers will know that there are many jobs in game planning, and one of the most important jobs is "numerical planning". One of the core responsibilities of numerical planning is to design and ensure the stability and sustainability of the in-game economy system. It is fair to say that good numerical planners are natural economic whitepaper writers.

Numerical design planning can't do it through the economy, some people say that because the in-game currency is closed, no cash, but the game economy includes including resource output speed, the difficulty of resource acquisition, resource and goods/equipment conversion ratio, the flow of goods in the inside and outside the game value, all players may produce all aspects of arbitrage. The transaction of game assets has also become a mature industrial chain, from third-party game trading platforms such as Trading Cat and 5173, to official endorsement trading platforms such as Onmyoji and CTOC against the cold water, to the player groups of vertical game player platforms such as YY Voice, Tigers and Taptap, and even the CTOC transaction of any game union's own group. The player community has always been permission-free, decentralized, and even more intertwined with the real economy.

Notes for thinking about numerical planning in a game

"Onmyoji" hidden treasure cabinet trading interface

Many Web3 games and KOLs initially cast game manufacturers as the imaginary enemies of players, believing that the Web3 token economy will save traditional players from the fire and water, which is actually a pseudo demand from the psychosexuality. The relationship between the player community and the game manufacturer is also extremely close: the player community of most game projects recruits core players, artists, and writers to create the core content before the Open Beta so that when the Open Beta arrives, the largest audience can solve all the problems in a timely and quick manner. Better game companies such as WY, TX, and MHY have QA/ UX posts in place to capture and listen to feedback from players at all stages of a project and gather it for planning/development/operations adjustments.

Halo Player Forum

TapTap "Light · Encounter" zone

NGC's Ark of Tomorrow section

A game project without a token economy is walking on thin ice: the only measure of a game's success is flow, and flow is largely determined by word of mouth and business during the initial public beta launch. Any bug can be magnified infinitely, not to mention the fatal flaw of economic design, which can ruin years of research and development at any time.In this sense, game economy design is not a closed, rollback simulator, but rather an ecological design that involves high trial-and-error costs and the interlocking of goods and commerce.

By contrast, Metaverse/Web3 games with a token economy, with easier access to funding, more resilient economic design, and a longer trial and error period, are a natural hotbed for both developers and operators. But just because they are a hotbed shouldn't mean they are less engaged in economic design and the game itself.

If you have more experience with games, covering classic console and arcade games, the consensus among many player communities is strong enough to affect reality.People spontaneously belong to a larger story, find their roles and identities, and devote themselves to a world that never ends.SBF's rivalry with Wall Street was born out of the anger of a group of players, as there were always people who purchased landmarks in major cities to celebrate the birthdays of their favorite characters. This super strong community connection, in addition to the effective shaping of collective meaning, more from a solid, sustainable participatory economic design.In this economic design, everyone finds his or her place, feels valued, knows what he or she is supposed to produce, what resources are available and what they mean. From this perspective, good economic design equals good social design.Good economic design requires the realization of a cyberutopia, a better society that everyone aspires to but is doomed to fail to achieve in reality.

NFT games are games NFT

Blockchain games are neither long nor short. In 2017, Cryptokitties was born and created the concept of "NFT". According to Roham Gharegozlou, CEO of Dapper Labs, the original intention of Cryptokitties was to verify the feasibility of NFT. It didn't occur to me that just one year later, the NFT app market would be worth $180 million and projected to reach $710 million by 2021.

Compared to the vast epics of traditional games, which have lasted for nearly a century, blockchain games are much thinner and have relatively monotonous dimensions of exploration. In addition to the common cards, battles and cultivation shown in DapPreview, blockchain games do not form a complete upstream and downstream industry ecology: There are no strong game studios (or very few people with the ability to do blockchain games), and no community of players like TapTap, NGC forums, and Bilibili Game Center cold start vertical traffic pools. In this context, it doesn't make much sense for one small project after another to say they are a blockchain game /NFT game. Because essentially, you're just a Web3 demo that borrows traditional game mechanics (or even doesn't have any mechanic innovation), incorporates NFT, but doesn't do as well as the traditional game experience, and doesn't follow the traditional game business/distribution channels. Traditional games have raised the player threshold too high, and players are pushing traditional game makers to improve. If you take a skeptical look at the top 10 in each category below, you'll find yourself gradually persuaded. It may be ugly to eat, but you can't deny the precision of its insight into human nature and the commercial success that comes with it. Talent, development experience, commercialization experience, data, users, channels, everywhere are moats.

Qimai chart game application area

To sum up, NFT games need to be good games in order to be as good as any of the categories above. From the mechanics, the rules, the visuals, the experience, to user guidance, marketing event design, player community.At least, they can keep up with The Times. It's also a role-playing game, and when you're using tile models while everyone else is scrolling, it's obviously a little bit retro.

In other words, a game producer should figure out how to do a "game NFT" well before making a "NFT game" :

1. Why would a player buy/hold this NFT in the vast NFT market -- because it's a game asset

2. Why should players invest their time/money in this asset instead of other game assets -- because it's strong/rare/cool...

3. Why is it strong/rare/cool -- the mechanics make it so

In the core needs of the core audience (players), "increase in value/make money" is never the underlying logic.The core motivation for most gamers to stay hooked on a virtual product for decades on end is to spend money, and spend it happily.

Before putting a NFT shell on equipment/pet/card sets, and giving cool meaning to equipment ownership and equipment interoperability, one should first ask why the player would want to own this equipment/pet/card. Maybe it's rare, maybe it's powerful, maybe it's the appearance of growth, maybe it's a status symbol, maybe it's more fundamental,Why should players open your app in their spare time, instead of a game?

"Tomorrow's Ark" source stone mining activities

"Against the cold" game mining system Fuxi Tongbao

The dawn of NFT gaming

If NFT games are just a platform full of NFT assets, Enjin has learned from its past experience. One mistake that all equity trading platforms make is that they focus too much on the platform's aura, rushing to give meaning to their platform tokens. But throughout history, online and offline, the true meaning of games has come from the player community.

One positive trend is that we are seeing some blockchain game makers return to the games themselves. The former CEO of Decentraland has assembled a team of talented players from Blizzard, Riot Games, and others to produce a triple-A 3D ARPG NFT game called Big Time. All new players need is a wallet to get started, and no need to learn what NFT is, they can team up with friends or travel alone in different worlds, collect items and equipment from different countries, and fight against monsters with varying abilities. Once the player character reaches a certain level, they have the option to export their equipment/weapons for trade or exchange.

GIF video source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CPYh0w_BBV_/

Big Time is in every way similar to traditional ARPGs, and the game itself has yet to reveal any in-game economy design or token economy design. The only difference is that, compared to traditional game stores, player shops, and third-party trading platforms, Big Time players trade equipment with all projects in the Big Time ecosystem and the world -- Big Time wants to be OpenSea's version of Steam.

According to the official blog and Discord Q&A, the first batch of NFT weapons will be available on Binance on June 24. Soon, Big Time's private beta credentials will also be available as an open access NFT. Although Big Time currently has nothing but a website and a few teaser videos, there are already video commentaries on YouTube by game bloggers, and the total number of Big Time-related videos is approaching 100,000.

The idea of a widely available NFT working with a big studio or even a big IP is definitely exciting, but the problem is obvious:

1. How to coordinate the strength and value of the same NFT game asset in different games?

2. How do you coordinate different game players' different values for the same NFT game asset?

3. How to unify the cross-game NFT low-level development standards?

4. How can NFT game assets be accepted by the traditional game industry to reach the largest group of users?

An obvious example: "Original God" and "Collapse 3" Linkage, we all know that Miha you just played a model doll, but you in "Original God" for the carve fine to throw money, in "Collapse 3" will be smashed again. This is partly because the development team really has to spend time and energy designing cross-game adaptations and skills for a character, and partly because the dolls are a significant source of revenue for game manufacturers. Up to now, recharge assets of different servers in the same game are not interchangeable, let alone cross-product and cross-company.

The simplest solution is to make cross-game settlement of NFT assets mainstream. It will take time, but at least the NFT game production team will have the power to make the rules.