The blockchain ecosystem is growing rapidly, expanding its audience every day. Although blockchain technology is mainly used in cryptocurrency networks, it can also provide innovative solutions for many industries.
Binance Academy has produced numerous articles discussing blockchain use cases . Notable industry sectors include healthcare , government governance , supply chain , IoT , and philanthropy .Blockchain game Development
But did you know that blockchain technology is also changing the gaming industry.
Today’s gaming industry
Today, the vast majority of online games use a centralized model. In this mode, all relevant data is stored on servers fully controlled by game administrators.
Typically, this type of data includes account information and server history. They record and store all events and in-game assets collected by players (such as collectibles, items, and virtual currency).
The game database is owned by a company, and players have no real ownership of their accounts and items. Additionally, centralized servers have many limitations and vulnerabilities, which may include:
Server failure due to technical issues
Hacking the system
Game stopped
Improper account ban
Lack of transparency about game mechanics and drop rates
Developers and administrators manipulate the game economy
In other words, the power is in the hands of the gaming companies.
Fortunately, blockchain technology can eliminate or mitigate the effects of most problems.
How does it work?
As a distributed database, blockchain-based systems can be used to verify and secure a variety of digital data, including game histories, digital items, and tokenized assets. The whole point of adopting this technology is to take power away from the game companies and delegate it to the players.
In this way, each player can fully control their account and digital assets, and freely trade anytime, anywhere. There are many different approaches to developing and maintaining blockchain games.
How does blockchain affect the gaming world?
This section will look at some of the most common ways blockchain technology is impacting the gaming industry.
true ownership
As mentioned earlier, blockchain-based games allow players to permanently own and fully control their game assets. Typically, each asset is represented by a unique non-fungible token (NFT), such as an ERC-721 token.
These assets may include game cards, skins, gear, and characters. However, regardless of the asset type, it is possible to link to a blockchain token maintained by a distributed network.
Decentralized Market
Game companies have the right to manipulate game drop rates and economics. They can also lock or bind in-game items so that they cannot be traded.
In contrast, games based on blockchain networks can create decentralized marketplaces. In this way, there is trustlessness among players while creating resistance to censorship. All players can freely buy, sell and trade their game assets in a peer-to -peer manner.
Simplify the payment process
Blockchain and smart contracts have the ability to reduce fees and speed up financial transactions. They can simplify various payment processes, and in addition to peer-to-peer transactions between players, transactions between players and developers can also be simplified.
game multiverse
As long as in-game data and items are linked to blockchain tokens, players can trade assets between games. This allows players to recycle digital assets while trying out different games.
Since game items are represented by digital tokens, players can trade these tokens on other game marketplaces hosted on the same blockchain.
fair game environment
Depending on the implementation, blockchain can create open-source, transparent, distributed game servers. In this case, the game mechanics can only be changed if a majority of the participants in the network vote in favor.
Additionally, the distributed nature of the blockchain eliminates a single point of failure, preventing hackers and cheaters from breaking the game.
Unlimited games
If the game relies on a centralized server, developers can abandon the project or close the game at any time. With the blessing of blockchain technology, players can continue to play the game even if the developer runs away.
Games will exist as long as the blockchain network continues to function. In some cases, new developers take over and continue to improve the project.
limit
While blockchain technology opens up entirely new horizons for gaming environments, it still has multiple challenges to solve. These include:
Poor scalability . Blockchains tend to be much slower than centralized networks, potentially limiting the global rollout of games.
The application rate is low . While there are hundreds of blockchain games to choose from, overall demand remains low. Most games have very few players.
Centralized . Not all blockchain games are fully decentralized. Some games use ERC-721 or other blockchain tokens, but are actually still running on centralized servers.
Too simplistic . With the exception of a few masterpieces, most blockchain games are too simple to appeal to players who value image quality or a refined gaming experience.
The threshold is higher . Raising funds to start and maintain a blockchain game is difficult. Adoption and scalability issues also limit the developer’s work.
Competition is fierce . Blockchain games are usually developed by independent small groups (indie games).Blockchain development company It is difficult for these teams to compete with the big game companies in the centralized world.
Fortunately, solutions are emerging gradually. Many teams are trying to solve the scalability problem using Ethereum Plasma , Lightning Network and other Layer 2 solutions.
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