As GDC rages on, I’ve been able to bring you news about amazing games, but I’ve also spent a majority of my time talking to developers, engineers, and artists about the possibilities lying ahead for the gaming industry thanks to blockchain technology, and how pixEOS is on the leading edge of this trend.
When people think of blockchain technology, often their minds jump straight to cryptocurrency, massive volatility, and perhaps even lambos. While this is all fine and good it doesn’t begin to even scratch the surface of what blockchain based systems can do for gaming.
A Wave Of Non-Fungible-Tokens Approaches
What is a non-fungible-token (NFT)? Simply put a NFT is a blockchain based token that represents a digital object. It could be a picture, or a Cryptokitty in the case with the Ethereum blockchain, or a song. A NFT resides within an individual blockchain based account, or wallet address, holding it, and the owner of that NFT essentially can prove that the digital object associated with it belongs to them, since the NFT will show up as a token on their public wallet address.
As it stands before us the entire landscape of the gaming industry hinges on the use of digital assets. When it becomes possible to use blockchain backed NFTs to keep track of these digital assets, something wonderful happens. Digital assets backed by NFTs suddenly become provably scarce, counterfeit proof, unique digital objects whose ownership can be proven and tracked.
Practically anything can become a NFT, and pixEOS is hard at work with the dGoods initiative in order to stratify the standard for NFTs across the EOS ecosystem. The teams have been making some amazing progress, and in the near future it will be possible to use NFTs to substantiate ownership of music, digital art, and 3D rendered objects.
Impacting The Nature of Gaming
I see a future where you log into a virtual EOS blockchain backed world on the pixEOS platform. Imagine you have a football in this world and that the football is backed by a NFT. Throwing the football back and forth between your friends in this virtual world would be tantamount to transferring a token between wallets. If someone logs off while they’re holding the football, or decides not to throw it, the football is no longer in play. Now if someone does “steal” the ball, conjuring a new one might be as simple as spending some CPU (which you might have in excess for having staked tokens to pay for it etc), and voila, you can play again. Mind you, we’re not quite there yet, but we’re CLOSE and that’s what so exciting.
If we can begin to equate the base value of a NFT as equivalent to the amount of computational power required to process rendering that object on the network we set a sane baseline for assessing game object value. Add into this the game theory of consumer driven market dynamics and we’ll begin to see the marketplaces arising where players will pick and choose which objects they think are more valuable. Taking an approach to this marketplace that utilizes smart contract driven multi signature exchanges will facilitate efficient commerce.
When dApp developers begin to code their games around the parameters of interoperability afforded to them by NFT backed blockchain based resources, they can begin to interweave various facets from other games into their platforms in non-game breaking ways. For instance it would be possible for a rare frost resist helmet you find an EOS blockchain based dungeon crawling dApp to be recognized as apparel you can wear in a golfing dApp, and perhaps the developer of that golfing dApp would add a particle effect reflecting that rare frost resist helmet's rare attribute, so that it glows blue. The clothing might not change your golf swing, but as can be seen in popular games such as Team Fortress, or services like the WAX exchange, being able to customize your character's aesthetics with rare gear is a booming industry. I know some of you reading this are already coveting that frost resist helmet (gotta stay warm!), and it doesn't even exist yet!
A Marketplace That Serves Creatives
Assets backed by NFTs will serve as the mortar between the bricks of an entire ecosystem of commerce centered around creative designers. One way this will come to manifest is the pixEOS Art Gallery, scheduled to launch in the very near future, which will allow artists to make their original art into a NFT and sell it. As we continue to expand the pixEOS platform we are looking into making it possible to substantiate 3D modeled art in the form of a NFT as well as other forms of digital assets.
Once you can generate your own distinct, unique, and counterfeit-proof NFT to substantiate your digital assets, pixEOS intends to give you the means to earn! In the pixEOS Art House artists like you will be able to use NFT tokens as a way to connect with everyone from big studios to indie developers that need their raw talent to bring projects to life. We want to empower you by directly valuing the assets you create, allowing you to set the market rate for your designs and digital assets, earn your fair cut, and thrive.
As the gaming world evolves and continues to encompass new technologies, when it comes to the integration of blockchain and gaming, NFTs will go a long way towards eliminating the counterfeiting of assets, creating robust platforms that have the padded assurance of blockchain based provenance. I look forward to the bright future ahead, and I'm proud of the role that pixEOS is playing as we make these possibilities reality.