Gaming has played a crucial role in reviving Web3 after a long period of stagnation and has also been instrumental in driving mass adoption. However, fully realizing the potential of Web3 gaming comes with its fair share of challenges, particularly the seamless integration of on-chain elements while maintaining the core principles of decentralization and player empowerment.
The goal is to minimize friction for new users, allowing them to experience it only when necessary and as late as possible. Unfortunately, most existing Web3 games fail to achieve this. Users are required to connect their wallets and sign transactions for verification before even getting a chance to try the game. This starkly contrasts with the vision of a gaming world that fully embraces on-chain mechanics and aims to be accessible and seamless.
Games like Axie Infinity and CryptoKitties, although groundbreaking, fall short of being fully on-chain. Fully on-chain games store all game assets, mechanics, and states on the blockchain, ensuring transparency, security, and player control. This enables a truly decentralized gaming experience where players have ownership and control over their digital destinies.
To build the best Web3 games, it requires a combination of on-chain elements and the rich user experience found in traditional games. Comparing Web3 games to Web2 standards is like comparing apples to oranges. Despite serving similar audiences, their requirements, value propositions, and scopes differ greatly.
Web3 games aim to solve long-standing issues such as top-down models, lack of user control, and dominance by gaming corporations. This can only be achieved by implementing alternative models, processes, and principles unique to Web3, rather than emulating outcomes from Web2.
Terms like “engaging,” “seamless,” and “hassle-free” take on new meanings in the context of Web3 gaming. They are enhanced by community orientation, real in-game value, and user-generated logic.
When building Web3 games, the most critical requirement is to address novel challenges by embracing innovative technologies and models that align with the principles of autonomy and community governance. It’s about creating “Autonomous Worlds” (AWs), a concept introduced in 2022 by Ludens, the founder of Lattice.xyz, to describe a world built on a blockchain substrate.
Furthermore, new-age games must cater to the expanding community of problem-aware gamers who seek genuine solutions to the challenges they face in traditional gaming. This goes beyond mere profit-seeking and bounty hunting.
Ironically, games like Axie Infinity and CryptoKitties served as catalysts in the evolution of blockchain gaming but were not fully on-chain. They were experimental, niche, and focused heavily on cryptocurrency, resulting in clunky user interfaces. They also lacked user control over the rules and direction of the game, with only parts of the game states being on-chain.
A notable example of a fully on-chain game is Dark Forest, a decentralized real-time strategy game released in 2020. It used zero-knowledge proofs (zkProofs) to create a “fog of war” in the gaming experience, ensuring confidentiality of players’ strategies while maintaining a publicly accessible distributed ledger. This approach set a precedent for real-time strategy gaming on the blockchain and provided a blueprint for future on-chain game development.
Dark Forest and other similar projects sparked the proliferation of community-oriented, bottom-up Autonomous Worlds. They put everything on-chain, including game states and logic, unlocking flexible and resilient digital realities where users have a greater say in the game-world.
In these Autonomous Worlds, players are incentivized to attach greater significance to their on-chain gaming activities. They have a meaningful say in what’s legitimate in the game-world and are not mere passive consumers playing at the mercy of corporate publishers. Rules and norms emerge through community consensus and serve grassroots interests. Players can build, contribute, monetize, and participate in ways that were impossible in Web2 games.
The empowering nature of Autonomous Worlds fosters a stronger desire for mastery among gamers. They are driven to find creative solutions, create mods and plugins, and establish separate economies within the game. This participatory approach encourages creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration within the community.
As we look to the future, the journey towards fully on-chain gaming is not without its challenges, but the promise it holds is immense. By redefining engagement, ownership, and control within the digital realm, on-chain gaming offers experiences that more closely mirror real-world interactions and relationships. It establishes a new standard for gaming, one that is truly immersive, empowering, and reflective of the players’ desires and aspirations.
The principles of decentralization, player sovereignty, and community collaboration will guide the future of gaming, creating an inclusive, democratic, and exciting digital frontier.