Most people that have used Steemit.com will have come across a game of sorts during their time on the platform; whether it’s guessing the lottery numbers to be drawn, guessing the missing words, guessing the celebrity from a picture, getting votes from @randowhale, steem-pocalypse survival, Dungeon and Steem or Steemitquest.

We have some incredibly smart, creative and talented people in the community that feel strongly about the benefits that simple games on Steemit.com bring to the community.

@Papa-pepper is a huge advocate for community interaction and fun. I believe that contests are a great way for us to be able enjoy our time together, interact, and try to win some STEEM or SBD.
_@papa-pepper

The problem is that as people become more imaginative, creative and ambitious we’re hitting a “scalability wall” that is limiting their potential.

There’s a lot of interest in this new breed of story-based, role playing games, but since the people running these are only human it becomes time consuming to track all of the different options for the players, ensure that they are responding in time and tend to the administration of keeping the game going and the story progressing.

This is without even adding the sort of complexity that we have grown used to in computer games such as inventories containing large numbers of items, combining and interacting with items, stores, non-linear stories, non-player characters (NPCs) and moving images.

we’re hitting a “scalability wall” that is limiting their potential
_@avarice

Here are some reasons why I think that creating a game as a post in steemit.com has merit.

The community

With users having captive audiences of 100 – 1000+ people following their blogs and 100,000s of active users on steemit.com it’s possible to reach more people than they would easily be able to if they created the same idea on a website or tried to launch is as a mobile app etc.

On the whole, I’ve found the community on steemit.com to be incredibly kind, generous and an encouraging one; I believe that this is in part because of the mechanics of the community – the inbuilt reputation system and the financial incentive to care about your interactions on the platform.

What more could you ask for?

Blockchain technology

Because of the Blockchain technology, Graphene, that steemit.com is based on, there are a number of other qualities that are baked-in to steemit.com that make it a great springboard for ideas:

Decentralised, open database

there’s an opportunity to use code to reduce the burden on the people that want run games through steemit.com
_@avarice

The fact that all of the posts, interactions, comments, votes and payments are constantly being recorded in what can be thought of as a database; which has no permissions and anyone can access programmatically means that there’s an opportunity to use code to reduce the burden on the people that want run games through steemit.com.

Imagine a bot responding within seconds of your comment, to tell you that you correctly guessed the identity of the celebrity.

Imagine a bot acting as an NPC or shop in a game; quickly responding to your questions or requests.

This isn’t far off and it doesn’t have to be hard to integrate into your game.

Immutability and proof

Blockchains in their very nature are designed to be immutable – once something has been stored in a blockchain it cannot be deleted; it can only be built upon to be amend it.

This immutability allows us to prove at a later date that the rules have not been changed; that outcomes were predetermined.

Encrypted documents could be stored on the steemit.com blockchain and the secret (key) handed out after the game has finished to prove that game played out exactly as originally intended and that there was no bias or unfairness. This could also be solved by including ‘Fair Hashes’ to the same document - as I have previously used in one of my games

Free and quick transfer of value

It’s great to be able to incentivise people to play your game and to reward those that do; quickly and for free.

By using steeemit.com you get a mechanism to do just this swiftly and easily for free.

As demonstrated by @randowhale, code can automatically be triggered by sending a payment to a user on steemit.com.

Best of all, you get the added benefit that you can prove that the payments were made.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to be able to buy in-game items from a shop and see them in an inventory seconds later?

What about if you could trade those in-game items with other players; peer-to-peer without any middle-man?

This isn’t far off and it doesn’t have to be hard to integrate into your game.

More Interactive gaming

The future of gaming on steemit.com will involve ... moving images
_@avarice

It’s possible to update the contents of a post after it has been initially posted to Steemit.com and this opens up the door to some interesting possibilities.

One of these such possibilities, that I am excited about, is updating the image on a post. This opens up the ability to simulate existing turn-based games in a visual way – characters can be moved around a map, items can be placed on or moved around a board etc. It’s like a screen with a refresh rate of around 1 frame per 3 seconds – it’s a step back in time/technology, but it is suited to collaborative, community-based games and this is why I think that the future of gaming on steemit.com will involve, programmatically updated, moving images.

Unique ideas

These are my main two ideas at the moment, but new ones come and go regularly =)

A “treasure hunt” type game where people try and find the treasure by guessing which square on the map the treasure is buried. This can be extended to include buying items that could help detect a region on the map where some treasure is located or buying clues etc.
A “Guess Who” type game where characters are flipped down on the page as guesses are made until the correct person is selected. This could be extended to include wagers on whether you can correctly guess the person within a specified number of guesses etc.

Frameworks

Not everyone here is a developer and to lower the barrier to entry we need to create and provide the building blocks for running more sophisticated games on top of steemit.com.

I’m aware that @whatageek is looking to build a gaming community , @swolesome is interested in these sorts of progressive ideas, as is @decimus.