Divided by platform, mobile games have long occupied the game industry.
Approximately 51% of the global game market share comes from mobile. It is expected that by 2021, mobile phone game revenue will grow to 100 billion US dollars. Currently, mobile game developers need to pay a 30% handling fee to obtain any information from the application store (paid APP) or transaction in the game.
In contrast, blockchain games and other similar games are niche markets with unique economic models. In the blockchain, the most famous digital asset game/collection category is CryptoKitties. In 2017, CryptoKitties was launched on Ethereum, and players obtained tokens by collecting, feeding and auctioning cats. This model creates a new economic model for game players, creates new game assets, and sells them to other players as regular cryptocurrencies.
The most expensive CryptoKitties asset was sold in 2018 for more than $1.7 million. Later, the development of the game changed to feeding and selling “real cats”. This situation became more obvious after Ethereum slowed down due to transaction overload.
At present, CryptoKitties is the main part of KittyVerse, and KittyVerse is also the expansion industry of CryptoKitties, composed of dozens of game developers. The community has developed dozens of products that use ERC-721 cats as game assets, such as Kitty Race, which expands its use in other games and provides players with a good gaming experience.
Blockchain game economic model
Since the CryptoKitties upgrade, many blockchain-based games have progressed and begun to show the potential for future development. Up to now, there are 750+ blockchain-based games or collection applications active on various platforms.
Blockchain game developers use the assets in the game to profit through pre-sales, crowdfunding and online games. Get a small amount of fees from other digital asset transactions (as mentioned below) to help game developers monetize.
How to optimize the economic model in blockchain games?
The possibility of free transfer of assets makes blockchain-based games surpass Internet 2.0-based games. In centralized games, game players may lose previously accumulated assets due to account theft, game cancellation, or decentralized decisions.
In contrast, blockchain provides security for players’ collections or digital assets, tamper-proof ownership records, and allows cross-game asset transactions, and also provides players with more options for realizing their assets in the secondary market.
The current state of blockchain game philosophy
Despite the unlimited market potential, blockchain games have yet to make great progress. The reason is the lack of interoperability (cross-chain) between current blockchain games. Although blockchain-based digital assets (such as game prizes or collectibles) come from interoperable networks, game developers refuse to use this feature.
why? Once most game developers have their own user groups, in order to prevent the loss of users, they would rather only profit from creating the game world by themselves. To trade in value or assets between any games, you risk losing users. This may lead to the destruction of the transaction economy in the game, allowing various unrestricted games to flow into the free and open market economy.
Therefore, most developers refuse to use their financial returns for the purchase of game merchandise or game links. This market separates the entire game ecology from previous models. Next, let us analyze in detail.
Game Ecological Economic Analysis
In 2019, nearly 12,000+ addresses are processing transactions for at least one decentralized game application every week. At that time, 70% of them had active users, but 90.77% of players were only active on 14 projects in 2019.
This indicates that there is little interaction between cryptocurrency games or NFT communities and other game communities. The My Crypto Heroes game with the most active users or players is currently the project with the least interaction with other game communities, and 93% of players do not play other blockchain games.
In order to expand the blockchain game ecosystem, we hope that users of decentralized game applications will try more applications. Except for CryptoKitties, almost all projects have less than 10% of common users in other projects.
What can we do
The blockchain requires NFT tokens to provide new token standards, allowing token developers to set license fees and cross-platform use. This approach enables developers to grasp the economic returns of games in the free market and go further in the market.
The NEAR Protocol (NEAR Protocol) makes the right of the protocol level break the isolation of developers. Developers can directly set the proportion of developer fees when they create on the NEAR protocol. When their smart contracts are activated, this fee will be reflected in the transaction fees.
This opens up a new world of large-scale automated rights and license-based business models, and it was difficult to add this feature to DAPP before. As the problem of uncontrollable variables arises, new projects (developers) can collaborate with other projects to create asset applications in other game applications.
For example, select two games from other blockchain games participated by users active in CryptoKitties and MyCryptoHeroes, and create their digital assets and interact.
For example, CryptoKities can join the invitation of the MyCryptoHeros game and make special CryptoKitties bread. This feature not only increases developers’ income, but also increases user engagement and encourages users to try other applications.
In addition to increasing opportunities for developers to increase income, the NEAR protocol also simplifies user interface design for users. Considering the high threshold brought by the complexity of decentralized applications, developers will use cryptocurrency or blockchain community users as trial objects for game applications.
The NEAR protocol simplifies the use of applications, allowing developers or entrepreneurs to expand the user base to the cryptocurrency novice group. Here is how to do it:
Let startups consider developing products based on the blockchain-based NEAR protocol, and guide users to try decentralized applications, just like trying other applications without charging any fees. Developers can advance transaction fees for users in advance, so that users do not have to face the problem of insufficient funds in cryptocurrency when using the application.
In addition, users can register via email address or password. Once the user is ready to update the account security, the application will automatically and safely transfer the access permissions to the user’s account. Users can use the NEAR wallet with an identifiable name to create a unique account system.
The introduction of the blockchain system allows users to experience a smooth gaming experience. The process of using decentralized applications with NEAR-based is similar to Faceboook and Instagram.
For startups that are considering developing products based on the NEAR blockchain, they can use Open Web Collective’s acceleration program to release successful products. By joining the accelerator program, start-ups can use Open Web Collective’s huge community and industry consultant team to establish a unique model for their business development.
The foundation uses entrepreneurial methodology to help start-ups define value directions, target user groups and establish business plans, and verify the feasibility of ideas in the market. This mechanism can ensure the successful launch of the product and avoid problems.
The blockchain game world has been opened, and promoting the basic layer or protocol to serve a wide range of mainstream users or developer communities is one of the future development tasks. Through simple cross-game asset usage and beautiful user interface, the NEAR protocol promotes the process of reshaping the blockchain game ecosystem, which is the neglected part of previous blockchain games.
