Time to Chain Up: Is Blockchain About to Change the Gaming Industry?

[Goodcat49]

The gaming industry has grown dramatically in recent years, partially because the world of video games is keeping up with the latest technological advances and even tries to get ahead of them. As such, it couldn’t bypass the blockchain. It’s not surprising that, from time to time, gaming companies announce the development of games based on this technology. So, the French gaming giant Ubisoft, known for the Assassin's Creed and Far Cry franchises, has announced that a blockchain will be integrated into its games. So, what can a blockchain give to the world of games and does it even need to be included at all?

Game monetization
The video game industry is currently alluring for any entrepreneur. So, it is no wonder that initial coin offerings (ICOs) are very popular among video games developers. But why exactly is the blockchain so useful that it is now becoming so attractive to the gaming industry?

Gaming apps that use blockchain began to emerge back in 2014, when players started to earn money with HunterCoin or CryptoKitties, the latter of which managed to become extremely popular in its first year. Their popularity was due to the main component of blockchain: the immutable ledger, in which players are unable to change the data. This means there is an established trust between all industry participants, from developers to players.

In addition, this trust has also been monetized. Using a blockchain in a video game implies issuing and supporting cryptocurrencies. A game token is a single currency used to express the value of all items traded within the game and smoothes out the problems of transaction systems with multiple currencies. The purchase and sale of in-game items in cryptocurrencies is secured by a smart contract, which significantly increases its transaction reliability and security.

On the back of the success of such minigames, developers and companies that develop bigger games began to pay attention to the new technology. In early 2017, online store Gameflip launched a platform on which anyone could buy and sell digital goods. This platform gives players true ownership and flexibility to trade their goods in the ecosystem without any fraud.

At the end of October 2017, OPSkins, which developed the world's largest centralized marketplace of virtual goods for computer games, announced the creation of a decentralized platform called WAX for exchanging in-game items. The platform is a repository of virtual values ​​containing a catalog of all items available for sale that is updated in real time. It is based on a blockchain protocol that allows the use of an unlimited number of scalable trading platforms.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/time-to-chain-up-is-blockchain-about-to-change-the-gaming-industry