In recent months, there has been a lot of talk in the indie development scene about the cost of creating games and how many game developers (even successful ones) often make far less than what people assume. Like most industries, there is overhead, licenses, fees, and taxes that must be paid out by the developers. Though expected, we believe that Hive is in an amazing place to offer relief from some of these costs while offering new revenue streams that other platforms fail to offer. So let us begin.
Making the Game
Core
It goes without saying that game development is a huge discipline and encompasses every creative process (modeling, animation, coding, art, writing, sound, music, etc.). Not surprisingly, many teams don't realize the scope of these tasks and opt in to third party solutions to speed up development. Of course, each external asset or plugin increases the cost of the game or, at the very least, increases the number of licenses that are required.
Along with creating services to streamline various aspects of the game development process, we also intend to create a series of standards for blockchain-backed assets for use in games and other applications. Our plan is to use Thicket to distribute these assets and keep track of the legalities of them. Our hope is that by creating standards for these assets that other stores and interfaces will adopt them. Imagine that you pay for the rights to play a music track on one service and on another you upgrade your license for the track to allow it to be used in content or your game: the purchase, the change in license, everything stored on the chain and accessible wherever the standards are enforced.
Network
The next step in game development is how you plan on allowing multiplayer interactions, cloud saves (for those who want to play on multiple locations), achievements, global high-scores, user management, in-game economies (both vanity and exchangeable tokens), taking payments for things, etc. (everything that isn't the "game" but is required to keep the game running) and each of these costs something.
Hive Gaming Services aims to tackle all of the above using Hive as the main backbone to these services. When it comes to multiplayer interactions, our plan is to create a simple to use, simple to understand distributed server network based on how Hive rewards node operators for making the blockchain tick. Of course, we intend to create standards for all of the above and hope to work with the community to create these services in a way that means everyone can use them.
Building the Community.
The player base is the most important thing about a game. If you don't have something to hold their attention, or have never gotten their attention, how can the game improve? How can the developer continue to support those who have been playing? We have no desire to get into the advertising world, but thankfully Hive can do it for US!
Outside of Hive, game developers have to constantly talk about their game, their development, their sales---everything to make sure that maybe, just maybe, someone will see the game and pay for it. Hive (thanks to the reward pool) incentivizes players to talk about the game, play the game on their streams, and post highlight reels on 3speak. Imagine that every time you write a review in Steam you could receive enough upvotes to purchase a new game! No other platform has such a wonderful return on investment.
Consoles, Mobile, and Other Distribution
After all of the above, there are even more fees and cuts from the bottom line of the game developer whether it be in paying a third party to port their game to consoles (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft) or just publishing the game on an app store like Steam or Epic Game Store. Either through taking a cut from each sale or a larger upfront cost or both, it all has to be considered in the final costs of developing and releasing a game.
Unfortunately, there isn't a great way to curb these costs using Hive or any other blockchain, but, if done right, the communities that support the game could offset the cost substantially, and, who knows, maybe one day there will be a third party porting company that takes HBD as currency! Now wouldn't that be something.
Our Current Proposal
Hive Gaming Services aims to not only make integrating Hive into your next game project possible, but also decrease the overhead of creating games and applications. If that is something you're into, or if you see the benefit of initiatives like it, give us a like and a follow!
Vote for the proposal HERE