What?
Why 100% onchain gaming?
A very small amount of counter-cultural thinking people (NFTs vs DeFi) bought into punks early. They did this because they wanted to be a part of the community.
💡 A counter-cultural punk community.
"Crypto is a game of positioning for narratives before they even exist"
Unstoppable Fully onchain games [FOC]
Unstoppable on-chain games are counter cultural in the current Web3 meta. People are used to play Web2 sessional games.
It’s hard to imagine an unstoppable game as there were none in Web2 on the first glance. But, there are MMO worlds like World of Warcraft that provide new content through extensions, while the game itself is kind of unstoppable.
Let’s dig in what we have in current unstoppable games meta -
Darkforest - RTS space warfare. Community of SNARK developers competing for galactic dominance. I’d say Darkforest is the first and most successful one. I define success of 100% onchain Web3 games in the amount and quality of code produced the community and # of players. Darkforest community build a lot of plugins, compiler and game client. 650 players got ranks based on previous season, 1866 logged in.
Mithraeum - RTS medieval setting. Relatively new launched project that has been developed for over 3 years! Farm resources form alliances, fight for the map dominance. Community can produce custom extensions(including gameplay mechanics, e.g. alliances) for the game as it’s fully on-chain. Currently Mithraeum is in an open beta test, next launch = unstoppable game. At this point there’re mostly P2E guilds involved. (ReadyPlayerDAO, MetaGuild, Tombstone DAO and others).
💡 There’re other Web3 games that deserve attention but such R&D isn’t the main goal of this write-up.
The narrative of Web3 games is built around the fact that by holding an NFT, one can always access and play the Web3 unstoppable game. While developers and designers can create a new UI, the “database” remains the same.
100% onchain gaming drives developers to build automation solutions, new plugins and extensions for games. It happened with Web2 games e.g. Skyrim and hundred of thousands of mods made by the community (see VR Skyrim mod).
UGC will take over Web3 games and it’s a question of time rather probability.
Imagine still having control over your on-chain Pokemon from Nintendo SP game Fire Red.
Nintendo rebuild the game and you can go through over the whole storyline again, but with new graphics. Is it fair? You spent childhood on catching and training Pokemon for nothing?
Gamified CTFs or Esport for Developers - Beauty of 0xMonaco
One of the great examples of Esport for developers is a 1-D Solidity racing game 0xMonaco -
Simplicity
Each turn a player can either accelerate his car or throw a shell to slow down opponents.
Game theory
Complex economic concept behind the economy of accelerations/shells takes the game to the next level. Gradual Dutch Auction invented by Paradigm’s team manages the consumables open market;
Algorithmic nature
Cars in 0xMonaco are purely automated and represent developer’s Solidity contracts. Participants created dozens of unique strategies to compete between each other for the Grand Prix.
Developers from leading Web3 projects participated in Paradigm’s CTF, Opensea, 1inch, Syndicate DAO, etc.
Participants reviews were extremely positive. Web3 crypto Twitter bloomed with various improvement ideas and excitement.
After such a tremendous success Paradigm decided to launch a second season.
🔑 Currently, no one is building gamified PvP CTFs for WASM developers.
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