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Proof of Play, a $33 million blockchain-based gaming platform, is the future of game development.

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Players only care about playing fun games, they don't care whether their favorite game is on AWS or Ethereum.

Original Title: "Proof of Play CEO: Why On-Chain Gaming is the Future of Game Development"

Original Source: Amitt Mahajan, Proof of Play CEO

Translation: Jinse Finance

Editor's Note: On September 21, on-chain 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 he founded Proof of Play, the future of game development, and the role of decentralized technology in the future. Translated by Jinse Finance 0xjs.

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 technology to make it easier for everyone to develop blockchain games.

Interesting is the most important

Players just want to play fun games. They don't care if their favorite game is on AWS or Ethereum. Unfortunately, many blockchain products are currently considered complex or require expensive purchases to get started.

Considering this, the goal of Proof of Play is to create fun and easily accessible games where the underlying technology is invisible to the players. By providing a smooth and free gaming experience, we believe 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 on-chain gaming.

We are currently focused on building and enhancing our first game, "Pirate Nation". Pirate Nation is a fully on-chain role-playing game (RPG) where players can recruit their own pirate crew, battle with fantastic 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 on-chain gaming. "Pirate Nation" is also our sandbox; it is our research project aimed at solving the challenges we need to address in order to bring on-chain gaming to everyone on every device.

Why is it blockchain gaming?

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

It is worth distinguishing between on-chain games and other types of blockchain games. Many other blockchain games are ordinary games that replace optional downloadable content (DLC) or in-app purchases with NFTs. Therefore, players no longer purchase items in the database with credit cards, but instead buy NFTs stored on the blockchain. In these games, the game server and the continuous operation of the game still depend on the game creator, a centralized entity. It's like players paying for and owning a set of chess pieces, but still having 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 blockchain technology games.

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 are earned, 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 players' billions of hours of investment were lost forever. There must be a better way.

My journey in the world of blockchain games began with this observation: any data that is not on the blockchain is essentially temporary. However, data stored on the Ethereum blockchain is copied to thousands of nodes around the world and is the closest thing we have to data that can last for thousands of years. Anyone can write data to Ethereum for a fee. In many ways, Ethereum is a modern time capsule, containing collective knowledge and digital art chosen to be placed there.

Through on-chain games, players can continue to run blockchain nodes or create complete game copies and continue to operate and develop them independently. On-chain games are truly permanent games: when players upgrade their characters, create worlds, or collect loot, their game results will be permanently stored on the blockchain for their use, without the risk of losing progress. Anyone can expand on-chain games.

Since the earliest computer games, players have been modifying 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 gaming and game development culture from the beginning. Personally, I started game development by modifying Quake.

On the basis of existing games, the industry practitioners are able to build and remix, taking on the arduous task of creating new universes and simplifying it so that anyone can create gameplays. However, as games shift from downloadable software to services, the ability of players to modify games has been limited by centralization, isolated databases, and lack of data portability.

On-chain games have reversed this trend and enhanced user-generated content (UGC). By default, on-chain games are open source and open data, which means anyone can add new features or components to the game. They can retrieve data from the game and create their own websites, or even create their own game clients. This is similar to the way the internet was originally created: a set of open, publicly accessible protocols and content that anyone could publish, link to, or create new browsers for. On-chain games are a return to the open, decentralized, and collaborative nature of game development.

Continuous Development of Game Development

Modern games usually mix together some common game mechanics and balance them 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 only slight adjustments made for specific games.

By putting source code and data on the chain, we are laying the foundation for the future of gaming and community. In the blockchain ecosystem, this is known as composability, a powerful concept that allows applications to leverage each other for faster building. In gaming, this can enhance creativity and enable creators to quickly remix or enhance each other's game creations and environments. In terms of scale, your creativity grows exponentially. This is a new paradigm for game development.

Make a bold prediction: I believe that ultimately, on-chain games will be faster and more efficient than off-chain produced games. There is no need to run your own server or worry about security, while benefiting from collective open source packages and modules, saving time and cost, which will make developers' delivery speed faster than ever before.

Beyond Gaming Towards a Self-governing World

Complex games no longer look like games, they begin to resemble societies, including economy, complex governance, and politics. Nowadays, MMOs have the following dynamics: virtual item markets and craftsmen who drive them are similar to real-world markets and traders. MMO guilds have complex 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 limits. Unless introduced by creators or game designers, there is no scarcity in the digital world. One of our goals in building tools is to enable everyone to become a creator and allow creator communities to manage their world rules. If our technology is designed to not limit creators and make building on others' creations trivial, we believe user-driven content will experience explosive growth. The best example is games like "Minecraft," where simple actions like "placing a block" and "removing a block" allow people to build entire universes, create prefabricated setting blocks for others to use, and even create computers within the game itself.

For example, in computer science, a Turing-complete computer is a machine that can perform any possible computation. Similarly, a Turing-complete creative tool can be created to enable creators to create 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 a self-sufficient and rich digital universe.

These new fully decentralized digital universes are referred to as autonomous worlds in a wider blockchain ecosystem by https://m.jinse.cn/blockchain/3659628.html?source=m. We believe that blockchain games are the gateway to this new and positive digital realm, and we are excited to contribute to creating this future.