Gaming on the blockchain
In case you haven’t heard what’s on in the last few years - the blockchain is changing a lot of industries. First and foremost, banking. No longer do you need to trust a middleman to hold your money.
And in other industries, blockchain is useful for keeping tabs on assets without a middleman too.
But anyway, more on topic - gaming on the blockchain.
Where might this be useful?
As a gamer, you like to collect cool items (for example - in magic the gathering, getting rare cards, some worth thousands of dollars).
These items sometimes have a lot of sentimental value to them, and also give a better advantage to the game. Much like in real life where a better car or flying first/business class would do.
But what if there was a way to digitally own these rare items without getting them duplicated (therefore destroying the rarity of it). Computers are good at copying things (see software piracy).
The technology was behind the digital currency Bitcoin, allows for having only one copy. If a transfer was to happen, all the nodes on the network validate it to make sure it’s valid. Therefore real digital currency was born in 2009, and it didn’t take long till it started being used in the real world.
Fast forward to today, you can pretty much live off cryptocurrencies. For a digital nomad, cryptocurrencies is awesome at transfering value across borders. Also nowadays with the economic uncertainty and the money printing going on, it makes even more sense to keep your savings in a finite asset.
Back on topic - Gaming
Anyway back on topic before we go too far down the blockchain rabbit hole, there’s a new game released on April 20th which uses the counterparty protocol to be able to own collectable cards. The game is called Spells of Genesis, and available on iOS and Android.
I’ve given the game a try and it’s interesting. It’s a typical mobile game, but has a bit of a strategy element to it. As usual starts of slow, but then the difficulty and therefore strategy ramps up (and you probably need powerful cards to get past certain stages).
Where blockchain comes in handy in the game is you can link your blockchain address to your game account, so that you actually own the cards as if it was a physical card. I think if you do so, you actually get given a card this month.
My recommended wallet is IndiesquareWallet, which is available for iOS and Android. There is a list of wallets you can choose from on the counterparty site.
Where can you buy cards?
There’s two types of cards you can own in the game:
- Game cards
- Blockchain cards
Game cards can be purchased in game, however I think I’ll spend the earnt game currency to acquire them. The cards I’m most interested in is the blockchain cards, because its like owning a physical representation of it (some cards, only a limited number of cards exist so may be worth more in future).
The interesting thing about blockchain based cards is you can actually trade them on SOG Assets ‘s decentralized exchange exactly the same way as you would trade a blockchain token (Instructions here).
And because the blockchain cards are tokens, you can probably trade with players too for either another blockchain currency or if you like just trade in cash like its done in the old way.
Details on the app
Conclusion
Blockchain is the key technology for bridging the physical world and the digital world.
