Whilst I see a lot of potential in blockchain games and have personally thought up several game designs that creates a competitive playing environment that largely rewards the users and the developers, a lot of what I be seeing with blockchain games lately are highly engineered scams and it's quite sickening.
I mean, blockchain games do not need to have 100 different tokens, that's just insane. 1 token is enough for some sort of game gas, asides that, funds flowing in and out could quite comfortably be literally any crypto out there already, say a stablecoin for example.
But why is nobody doing this?
Oh nevermind, I think I can answer that: The financial incentives with the current system are quite enormous.
Oh well.
It's just greed. And greed majority of the time is just stupid.
The system can be better and the financial incentives would still be enormous for developers, you just have to give the people what they want: a game design that sells a story of hope!
Hope that one can win, because truly, it's coded into the system.
Think about this real quick.
People love to gamble, it's exciting, even when one loses, with enough story to stir up one's hope, the habit continues, so yeah, that works.
So instead of being a d*** and outrightly exploiting that without building any backflow of value, one could actually build a system that exploits this while staying in the middle to earn and leaving the left and right open.
That must sound weird, I know, I typed it, and could hear how it sounds as I read along.
But here's an analogy to clear things up:
Futures Trading
At the fundamental level, futures trading is basically two people betting against each other.
There's absolutely no system rigging nada for the other, so it's all left to chance. At the end of the day, one player must emerge as a winner, creating the hope for others watching that it works: one can actually win!
Winning funds comes from the opponent to the other, a zero-sum game within the markets.
I lose so you can win. Or you lose, so I can win. I cannot blame anyone for my losses just as you can't because we both made a bet and left it to chance.
Now you're probably wondering, what does this have to do with blockchain games?
Well, here's a game example that can follow this pattern.
Note that, in a features market, the platform enabling these trades to take place smoothly often charges varying fees. So there's definitely revenue for developers and it's pretty enormous because we are dealing with a high risk/high rewards game, people keep coming back.
That said, let's apply this to a blockchain game.
Feel free to build it if you can.
I love car races, everything about it turns my spirit up, hence why I don't drive IRL cause I can't afford to attempt a drift thinking I'm just gonna click some love button to get my life back or watch a 30secs ad.
Hehe.
Moving on.
A car race as a blockchain game is really just one of those game types that can attract gamblers, generate actually sustainable income for both the players and the developers.
How?
Simple: Each live race is a bet. All players pledge some funds to a pool. And the race is on.
The top three best racers at the end split the total pledge that was made after the platform takes it cut.
A game like this can have several in-game mediums to generate extra revenue for hosting “platform-led” race battles, maybe with a free entry pass and so on.
A game like this doesn't need some dumb hundreds of NFTs or tokens. It just needs to have a badass graphic and overall game design, and everything else is revenue.
Have you ever stepped into a game store? Do you see how much people spend to play for free? How much do you think would be generated if rewards for playing were involved?
Crypto needs to stop robbing its users and start developing structures that actually bring sustainable revenues.
Create a system where the only thing standing in the way of someone earning is another hustler like himself and you're created an ever running cash train.
Again, the futures market is proof of this!