Partnered With:

How to define "real on-chain games"?

Read this article in 10 Minutes

Play to earn? no!

Original source: JK @Medellin

Original compilation: tonia.eth

When asked about famous Web3 games, the most frequently mentioned and Illuvium, Star Atlas, BigTime or GalaGames. Surprisingly, however, the games are not fully on-chain. These games could even be called Web 2.5 or NFT games. While it may sound exciting at first, real on-chain gaming is nothing like what you might imagine.

Assumptions of on-chain games

Imagine a game where the entire backend is on-chain. We're talking about every game object, every game interaction, and every game state change being recorded and executed on-chain. The digital physics and the entire underlying rules in the game are defined in the smart contract.

This level of on-chain gaming not only makes the game completely decentralized, but also provides each player with complete autonomy. The game becomes the property of an active player base, and anyone can build on it, or fork it, to produce a completely different gaming experience, all within defined rules. The player community decides on major forks so the game can live on.

The first game to realize this vision is called The Dark Forest. Dark Forest is a massively multiplayer (MMO) real-time strategy (RTS) game. It revolves around the idea of exploring the universe and conquering planets, running entirely on the Gnosis chain, a POS Ethereum fork.

(Dark Forest Game)

In 2020, after 1 year of game development, not only has a loyal player base, but also several community DAOs focused on playing and developing Dark Forest. dfdao not only plays games, but also invents completely different game modes and is accepted by players. So far, however, Dark Forest has only made progress on the potential of on-chain gaming.

After on-chain games

With Dark Forest in the works, some developers are taking the process a step further. Topology is called the reality on the chain, and Lattice is called the autonomous world, which is the future of a parallel virtual world. A world that serves as the basis for a co-existing digital reality, with its own unique digital physics and underlying rules. Each virtual reality may be its own autonomous game or community space.

Even though the blockchain industry does not recognize the word "Metaverse", for the first time, I feel that this is the right word to define this innovative future. Please don't get me wrong, we are still far from this goal, but I firmly believe that this is the starting point.

Limitations of on-chain games

Even with all the excitement, I have not forgotten the current limitations. Back when Dark Forest was first publicly launched 2 years ago as a project to test and push the boundaries of the Ethereum blockchain, it took the ropsten testnet down. Additionally, its gas fee usage is higher than the entire Ethereum mainnet combined. This is all done by 300 beta players. Since then, our scaling solutions (rollups, sidechains, plasma chains, etc.) have improved.

Half alignment. As it stands, the level of gaming that can be played entirely on-chain is limited. However, classic games like DarkForest, Sky Strife or OPCraft prove that games can still be fun within these constraints.

(Sky Strife game)

In order to push this field further, more infrastructure and standards are needed to enable gaming and autonomous Development is more scalable and easier. More tools are needed to deal with blockchain backends and solve simple problems like hiding information on-chain (solvable by zk snarks).

This is exactly what MUD (the engine for autonomous worlds) and MatchboxDAO (the infrastructure for on-chain games on StarkNet) are doing.

Why are on-chain games important?

I've been looking for an answer to this question. Why do we need a game on the chain?

No -- digital asset ownership is not a good argument for me at all. Who cares if I own a game item but can no longer play the game because the servers are down?

No -- Play to earn is just an unsustainable growth marketing driver that contributes nothing to the gaming experience. In the end, there always needs to be a balance between token earning and burning.

No -- the availability of data may be great for investors and data scientists, but how do gamers benefit? Indirectly through more money flowing into the industry? This can't be the solution.

Yes - I believe true on-chain gaming is the answer. This is an innovation that belongs only to the blockchain and cannot be replicated by a centralized organization with centralized servers. It's an absolutely new form of gaming that we've never seen before, allowing for a completely new gaming experience.

We still need more time and more innovations to get there, however, I believe this can finally convince my fellow Web2 gamers that blockchain is the good playing field.