Original author: Everest Ventures Group, Darren
1. Game Development Demonstration
Comparison of four types of games
Web2 Games
In this article, we divide Web2 games into two types: autonomous world games and non-autonomous world games. Both types of games have a common feature, which is that all game-related elements are stored on the game company's server. Whether it is game assets or the setting of game rules, they are controlled by centralized companies. In these games, players often lack true ownership of in-game assets, and game companies have control over virtual items, characters, and game progress, limiting players' ability to freely trade, sell virtual properties, or monetize them.
This situation often leads to a series of unpleasant experiences. For example, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin once played World of Warcraft and was dissatisfied when Blizzard removed his favorite character skills, leading to Vitalik's decision to quit the game. In addition, in recent years, Blizzard has shut down the Chinese servers, which has also caused very unpleasant experiences for Chinese players.
Web2 Non-Autonomous World Games
As shown in the above picture, this article categorizes online games so far, divided into four categories in total. Among them, Web2 non-autonomous world games include games like "King of Glory," "League of Legends," and "Eternal." These games usually set specific goals within the game, such as "rank," as shown in the picture. The decentralization and autonomy of these games are relatively low. Compared to autonomous world games, players' creativity and game openness are also relatively low.
Web2 Autonomous World Games (CAW)
In addition to the non-autonomous world games mentioned above, Web2 games also include a type of autonomous world game, as shown in the picture. This type of game has a high degree of autonomy, but its decentralization is also very low.
"Minecraft" is a typical representative of this type of game. "Minecraft" is a game that focuses on allowing players to explore, interact, and change a dynamically generated autonomous world composed of many blocks.
In addition to blocks, the environment also includes animals, plants, and items. The content of the game includes but is not limited to mining ores, fighting hostile creatures, and collecting various resources in the game to craft new blocks and tools. The open game mode allows players to create buildings and artworks in various multiplayer servers or single-player maps.
In "Minecraft," players do not have a specific ultimate goal in the game. The game encourages creative freedom and brings many new gameplay elements. Players can not only build houses and raise animals, but also engage in advanced gameplay. For example, one player cleverly uses a large amount of TNT to create spectacular explosion effects, and another player even builds a functioning computer in the game, complete with mini-games.
In "Minecraft," there are many amazing gameplay elements like these that are truly stunning.
In addition to the aforementioned "Creative Mode," "Minecraft" offers many other gameplay modes. In "Survival Mode," players need to gather resources, establish shelters, craft tools and weapons, fight hostile creatures, and maintain their health and hunger levels. In "Adventure Mode," players can embark on adventures in maps created by themselves or others, usually with certain restrictions on creative actions, requiring players to follow predetermined rules. And in "Multiplayer" mode, players can play together on a LAN or the internet. This can include cooperative building, player versus player (PvP) battles, multiplayer adventures, and more.
It is worth mentioning that players can install third-party mods to change the gameplay, add new content and features, thus increasing the game's diversity.
These are just a small part of the gameplay modes in "Minecraft." Due to the game's high degree of freedom and expansiveness, players can develop various unique gameplay styles based on their interests and creativity.
Web3 Games
Early GameFi
As mentioned earlier, Web2 games suffer from centralization issues. Therefore, in the field of blockchain games (GameFi), people began to explore whether blockchain technology could introduce more optimized gameplay and economic cycles.
On-Chain Assets
Thus, GameFi was born. GameFi refers to blockchain games that provide economic incentives for players to earn while playing. Players can typically earn cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as rewards by completing tasks, battling other players, and leveling up. As shown in the above image, these types of games have a higher degree of decentralization compared to the aforementioned Web2 games. However, they still lack autonomy and fall short in terms of decentralization.
After the birth of GameFi, famous projects like Axie and Stepn emerged. They tokenize in-game assets as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), creating an open and liquid economy. This not only gives the in-game assets financial attributes but also ensures the uniqueness and tamper-proof nature of player assets.
Insufficient Decentralization
However, despite the assets being put on the chain, the core logic and gameplay of the game still remain off-chain, thereby still having a certain degree of centralization issue. In the early stages of GameFi, game developers had too broad permissions, similar to Web2 game developers, to freely modify the attributes and gameplay rules of in-game assets, and even the value of the assets. For example, in Stepn (a run to earn gamefi), game developers can freely modify the value of in-game assets. Originally, a pair of running shoes could generate $100 of income in a day, but after the game developers unilaterally modify the attributes of the running shoes, this income could drop to $50. Therefore, there is still a certain degree of centralization issue in the early stages of GameFi.
Unreasonable economic model
In addition, fundamentally speaking, most early GameFi projects are actually "latecomers' games". Early players were able to obtain a large number of tokens through the game, but these tokens actually don't have any real value.
In the early stages of GameFi, players usually needed to purchase NFTs to participate in the game, while also receiving GameFi tokens as rewards during the game. However, game teams often only profit by forcing players to purchase NFTs, while there is no limit to the output of tokens. This leads to the continuous decline in token value, which can only be maintained by new players constantly buying NFTs.
Therefore, once the revenue brought to the game team by new players' purchase of NFTs is lower than the team's investment in buying back tokens, the team will be unable to stabilize the token price, and the token price will subsequently fall. Then, early players will begin selling off, causing panic and leading to more players rushing to cash out, thus forming a vicious cycle.
Web3 Decentralized Autonomous World (DAW)
Therefore, some people have started to think, since assets can be put on the chain, can other game logics and game data storage be migrated to the blockchain as well? Thus, the concept of full-chain games emerged. A full-chain game refers to a type of game where not only are the game assets stored on the blockchain, but all elements related to the game are also stored in the blockchain network, ensuring complete decentralization and on-chain aspect of the game.
The protagonist of this article, DAW, is one such full-chain game, but the significance of DAW goes far beyond that. DAW is an "infinite game" where no specific tasks and goals are set, and there are no predetermined opponents. It only establishes the most basic basic rules as the constraints based on "digital physical reality." By providing a publicly accessible programmable interface, it allows players to freely create, enhance, and expand the game experience within the boundaries of this digital physical reality, further expanding the game's storyline.
Note: "Digital Physics Reality" refers to the fundamental laws systems that exist in the computational world. Each world has its own set of fundamental rules that govern everything that happens in that world, and these laws make up the physics of that world. Please note that here, physics does not refer specifically to the physical laws in the atomic world where humans exist, but rather to fundamental rule systems that exist in any "world."
As a subset of metaverse games, DAW has additional features and gameplay compared to other metaverse games. Apart from storing game assets, all game-related elements, gameplay, and logic in the blockchain network, DAW also provides players with more autonomy within the autonomous world and further enhances the playability. As shown in the diagram above, DAW surpasses the other three types of games in terms of autonomy and decentralization.
So, what are the highlights of DAW?
Fully Decentralized
As a form of fully on-chain game, DAW is immune to the risk of game operating companies going bankrupt. Even if the game operating company shuts down, players can still continue playing.
In contrast, centralized games like "Minecraft" can cause significant damage to players if the game operating company announces the cessation of game operations or the closure of specific servers for some reason.
In addition, unlike early GameFi projects that only put assets on the chain, all game-related elements in DAW are also stored in the blockchain network. Compared to that, DAW is more secure, and players have stronger ownership.
Greater Autonomy
In DAW, player autonomy is emphasized. In addition to sharing the characteristics of an "autonomous world" with CAW, DAW also allows players to develop plugins for other players to use, such as creating a virtual marketplace for trading. Furthermore, DAW players can engage in many activities that are difficult to achieve in CAW games. As mentioned earlier, they can establish a "world government" and autonomously formulate regulations.
Economic Incentives
As a blockchain-based game, DAW can issue tokens and NFTs as blockchain assets. Therefore, players have the opportunity to receive some economic incentives, such as obtaining specific assets through airdrops. Additionally, in-game, various incentive goals can be set to encourage player participation in different activities.
Take "OP Craft" as an example, the game can encourage players to develop some challenge mini-games within the game, and then players can apply for funding sponsorship from the "OP Craft" official fund to attract more players to participate in the challenges. When players successfully complete the challenges, corresponding rewards can be given to them. This mechanism not only stimulates players' creativity and engagement but also promotes community collaboration and development, which may be the true "play-to-earn" model.
Composability
As a metaverse game, DAW also has strong composability. In theory, different metaverse games can achieve asset interoperability, thus building a metaverse. Let's make a bold assumption, just like the player spaceship assets in "Dark Forest" can be used in "OP Craft," and in "OP Craft" game, other players can see the player driving this spaceship.
Note: Dark Forest is a decentralized real-time strategy (RTS) game built on Ethereum, inspired by Liu Cixin's second novel "The Dark Forest" in the "Three-Body Problem" trilogy. It is an MMO space conquest game where players discover and conquer planets in an infinite, procedurally generated, and cryptographically specified universe.
Although there are currently no actual projects that can fully realize the above-mentioned ideas, theoretical assumptions like the ones mentioned above are conceptually feasible and there are continuous efforts from various projects to turn them into reality. With the growing ecosystem and the increasing collaboration among project teams, perhaps these ideas will be successfully implemented in the near future.
Additionally, as GameFi, DAW can issue Tokens that can be combined with DeFi. Players can stake Tokens in mining pools and potentially re-stake the generated trading pairs in other DeFi projects to earn secondary income. There are various DeFi "nesting doll" gameplay options that add value to DAW.
II. Implementation of DAW
In the previous section, it was mentioned that DAW has its core competitiveness compared to other types of games, so how is DAW implemented?
Decentralization transfers game rights from traditional developers to players as creative entities, and composability breaks down the long-standing barriers of closed gardens and gives players true ownership.
However, in the early days of GameFi, we did not see the true decentralization and composability as claimed by the Web3 world - players lacked autonomy and participation in gameplay and game content, and different game projects did not actually share the blockchain state.
Core Problems
To achieve true Decentralized Autonomous World (DAW), several core problems in blockchain games need to be addressed:
1. Lack of game development frameworks: Most development teams tend to build their own frameworks, which leads to inefficiency and fails to fully utilize shared system knowledge to solve the same problem and continuously optimize the best solutions.
2. Lack of code reusability: Taking many current blockchain games under development as an example, only a small portion of game code can be reused to create different games. There is a lack of clear distinction between different layers and components of different games, which limits the potential to use similar codebases to build next-generation games.
3. Lack of data composability: How to address the problem of sharing the blockchain state between blockchain games and how to effectively use the data from game A and game B to mutually construct are still unresolved challenges.
Therefore, building a true DAW requires starting from a lower level and solving deeper problems beyond "how to build a game": how to find a more universal and blockchain-friendly game development framework or engine.
What is a game engine?
A game engine is essentially a modularized code library and set of tools. Game developers can complete tasks such as graphics rendering, physics simulation, and network communication by calling various interfaces of the engine, without needing to engage in relatively low-level and low-level programming work. This feature greatly saves time and allows developers to focus more on game design and content creation. In the field of commercial game engines, the most common engines include Unity and Unreal.
Currently, many Web2 games and even some so-called "weak-chain games" still use Unreal or Unity. However, as full-chain games continue to develop and mature, some Web3 game studios are developing their own game engines so that developers can write complex decentralized game logic and interactive content.
Although the on-chain game engine conceptually does not differ much from traditional game engines, they both aim to simplify the game development process. However, in terms of implementation, due to the fact that the game state in on-chain games is stored on the blockchain, the encapsulation of on-chain game engines fundamentally differs from traditional engines. On-chain game engines are more concerned with issues related to state synchronization, game security, gas cost efficiency improvement, and maximizing composability and interoperability. Therefore, developers can focus more on the game itself, reducing concerns about blockchain compatibility issues and lowering the cost of learning the Solidity programming language.
What are the on-chain game engines - using MUD as an example
In on-chain games, there are currently four main engines, including MUD, Dojo Engine, World Engine, and Keystone. Among them, MUD and Dojo Engine are the most notable, and this article will focus on introducing the first on-chain game engine, MUD.
MUD is the pioneer in the field of on-chain game engines and is a framework that can be used to build EVM-compatible applications. It revolves around the ECS framework and focuses on solving three core issues in on-chain game development: contract and client state synchronization, continuous content updates, and interoperability with other contracts. By providing a set of code libraries and tools, it makes it easier for developers to build dApps, especially for developing complex dApps such as game applications. In theory, MUD can be used to develop any application, but its specific properties make it particularly suitable as an on-chain game engine.
Background team
The development team behind MUD is Lattice, Lattice is a part of the 0x PARC sub-project and is also a very important component. 0x PARC was initially formed by the Dark Forest team, the pioneer of on-chain games, and several other projects.
It is worth mentioning that the creator of the concept of "Autonomous Worlds" is also 0x PARC, and from mid-September to mid-December 2022, 0x Prac organized an offline event called "Autonomous Worlds Hub", which included participants such as Lattice, Dark Forest, DFDAO, CAPSULE, and Moving Castle. The purpose of this event was to bring together teams building or interested in building autonomous worlds, blockchain-based games, and related technologies in a face-to-face setting to foster collaboration, exchange of ideas, learning, feedback, and ultimately shape and guide this emerging field.
During this event, 0x Prac also provided funding assistance to all successful applicants, specifically reimbursing £600/ $720 for transportation expenses and £1,500/ $1,800 for accommodation expenses per month. In addition, 0x Prac also offers additional grants, which will be considered on a case-by-case basis and will depend on the scope of the project, team, and level of commitment.
Furthermore, as shown in the above figure, 0x Prac recently launched the Autonomous Worlds Network, which focuses on the following areas:
1. Research and development: Supporting experimental methods and projects that push the boundaries of autonomous worlds within and beyond the blockchain.
2. Open-source tools and infrastructure: New worlds require new tools and infrastructure, encouraging the development of these tools based on open ecosystem values.
3. Education and ecosystem development: Supporting a creative ecosystem consisting of developers, technologists, artists, writers, and designers to contribute to the definition and development of autonomous worlds.
ECS (Entity-Component-System Framework)
ECS is a classic framework in the traditional gaming industry, built on top of general-purpose engines, used to solve relationships, interactions, and operational updates between game objects.
Compared to other software architectural patterns, ECS has many advantages. It is highly efficient because it only loads the data required for the current scene. It is also very flexible as it allows developers to easily create new game objects and systems.
Here are some benefits of using ECS in game development:
1. Efficiency: ECS demonstrates excellent efficiency in terms of memory and CPU usage, thanks to its ability to load only the data needed for the current scene.
2. Flexibility: ECS presents great flexibility in the way game objects are created and modified. This is because entities themselves do not contain any data or behavior but are defined through the components attached to them. This allows developers to easily create new game objects and systems.
3. Scalability: ECS offers excellent scalability for large-scale games because it does not rely on centralized data structures. Instead, entities and components are stored in a distributed manner, making it possible to create games with millions or even billions of entities.
Issues with OOP
Before ECS became widely adopted, the game industry typically used Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) to handle data. This approach involved nesting various game objects under class structures to inherit their properties and functionalities, thus constructing the entire data framework.
This approach has several obvious problems:
1. Inheritance: The relationships between game objects often need to be defined at the initial stage (which is almost unrealistic). Otherwise, when new types of objects appear and need to utilize the functionalities of multiple old classes, inheritance becomes complex and difficult to achieve.
2. Maintenance issues: As game content increases, the number of classes gradually increases, making maintenance work extremely burdensome.
3. Performance bottlenecks: For game engines, there are many modules that have no direct relationship with each other. For example, there is not much connection between the rendering module and the network connection module. However, when all properties are stuffed into one object, performance is inevitably affected.
ECS Solution
Note: This section is referenced from Full-chain game 3: Mud & Dojo — Engine and Ecology
MUD, through the adoption of the ECS framework, abandons the OOP path and decomposes all properties into separate components, such as hit points, position, elemental attributes, and so on.
In ECS, an entity is simply a data identifier that is used to uniquely identify a collection of components. Therefore, the "Player" identifier corresponds to a set of components such as {"HP", "MP," ...}. It is important to note that neither entities nor components contain any computational logic, as all computations are handled by systems. For example, a movement system handles entity movement, and a damage system handles combat value calculations, and so on.
To better understand this, let's compare it with a case study from an article by Boreal Games. Let's say we want to develop a very simple game that includes four elements: rocks, trees, enemies, and players. The traditional OOP implementation would be as follows:
And the implementation using ECS:
Image source: [9] Full-stack game development: Mud Dojo
Therefore, it is evident that ECS is a highly modular data management system. The concept of "entity" in this design completely changes the way game designers work, as they no longer need to rely on programmers to modify game logic every time. Additionally, the relationships between entities are also easier to adjust as needed.
Decentralized Space
One of the notable features of MUD is that anyone can create new ownerless spaces for states and logic. Component creators can collaborate seamlessly on this framework, efficiently querying data from the central World contract without requiring full node blockchain synchronization. Furthermore, the inherent interoperability of MUD allows different worlds to interact with each other, paving the way for exciting and permissionless possibilities.
Core Components
With the maturity of the Web3 ecosystem, new methods for building applications and achieving scalability will emerge. While much attention is focused on zero-knowledge (ZK) technology and modular/DA (Data Availability) blockchains, MUD offers a notable alternative.
For developers interested in using MUD, the framework comes equipped with several core components. These include the Store, World, Foundry, and Mode.
Store serves as an on-chain database optimized for gas efficiency and inspired by SQLite. It provides developers with the ability to store and retrieve data using tables, columns, and rows, offering a more self-managed alternative to traditional Solidity storage mechanisms. Through Store, developers can define custom data structures (e.g., AllowanceTable) and interact with the data using set and get operations.
On the other hand, World acts as the entry point kernel, providing standardized access control, upgrades, and module functionality. It acts as an intermediary between contracts and storage to ensure secure and controlled access to data. The system itself is a stateless contract representing the logic of the entire world and interacting with storage for data reading and writing. By using custom permissions, MUD enables modularization and upgradability by dividing logic between different contracts.
In addition to Store and World, MUD also provides a fast development tool based on Foundry (client-side data storage reflecting on-chain state) and MODE (a Postgres database mapped one-to-one to on-chain state). MODE allows developers to use SQL queries on the on-chain state and provides efficient materialized views for real-time data synchronization with client applications.
By leveraging MUD's Store and World, developers can easily create on-chain applications without the need for additional indexers or subgraphs. On-chain data becomes self-managed, and any changes are propagated through standard events. MODE plays a critical role in synchronizing the on-chain state with client applications in real-time, eliminating the need for complex polling or subgraph subscriptions. This simplifies the development process and improves the overall efficiency of on-chain applications.
With MUD, developers can harness the powerful capabilities of Ethereum and other EVM-compatible chains to build complex applications and games. This framework provides a solid foundation for creating decentralized and centrally managed worlds with strong interoperability. Developers can design and implement their own components and systems as needed, making it a flexible and scalable platform.
MUD has a wide range of potential use cases. It can be used to build decentralized games, virtual worlds, decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, social platforms, and more. Its modular architecture and compatibility with various chains make it suitable for different project requirements and environments.
In summary, one of the main advantages of MUD is that it solves the challenge of scalability. By utilizing off-chain storage solutions like MODE and efficient data synchronization mechanisms, MUD allows developers to create high-performance applications without compromising on-chain security. This scalability is crucial for building applications that can handle a large number of users and transactions.
III. DAW Games
MUD Category
OP Craft: The Most Representative DAW Game
Note: This section referenced the OP Craft official article
OPcraft is a fully integrated 3D Minecraft-themed game created by Lattice, a team from Dark Forest, in October 2022. It is currently the game that best embodies DAW features.
In OPCraft, a set of simple rules are established. Players can only perform four in-game actions, including breaking blocks, crafting blocks, placing blocks, and claiming a 16 x 16 plot of land (becoming the top diamond staker of that chunk). Additionally, players can customize the front end, deploy custom components and systems using the open plugin system provided by the official.
However, surprisingly, within just two weeks of its launch, this game with simple rules exceeded the developers' expectations. It not only achieved tremendous success in terms of data, attracting over 1,500 participating players and over 3.5 million on-chain records, but also sparked various user-generated pixel art, individually created plugins by players, and a series of spontaneously formed competitions, games, and collective governance activities, as well as both malicious and friendly player behaviors.
Unlocking the Creativity of Artists, Architects, and Developers
OPCraft unleashes the creative talents of artists and architects. From simple wooden houses and towers to the exquisite craftsmanship of constructing amazing artistic buildings such as Mario and Fire Flower, and the breathtaking giant Phoenix statue spanning hundreds of blocks.
On the other hand, engineers and "scientists" can explore the limits of the OPCraft world using the weapon of coding. With the user-friendly and license-free World 1 plugin system and "component system" provided by the system, players begin to use their wisdom to explore the potential of technology. For example, players have released a plugin for automated material collection that does not require consideration of geographic coordinates. There are also players who have released an automatic diamond mining drill tool and a chat plugin tool for text communication, and more.
Digging and Filling Holes
For some prank or malicious fun, or as a result of group gaming behavior, some players in OPCraft started digging deep holes, causing many unsuspecting players to fall into traps.
However, a turning point occurred with such malicious incidents. When someone fell into a hole, some players launched rescue plans and saved the trapped players by filling the hole or directly placing stairs in the hole. Some players even developed a teleportation plugin that can be used to avoid pitfalls.
A player who fell into a hole called for help in the DC chat
Evolution: Improvement of Tools and Productivity
Initially, players in OPCraft only performed basic operations such as collecting flowers, chopping down trees, mining ores, digging caves, building rudimentary wooden houses, and constructing towers of a single block width. In addition, some rough-looking and unrecognizable digit objects were made.
Over time, players gradually gained a deeper understanding of this virtual world and mastered the skills to create more complex items, such as making glass, dyeing wool, and producing bricks. As a result, these more complex materials can be used to create larger and more intricate artworks and buildings, fully demonstrating their combinability.
As shown in the figure below, players use colored wool blocks to create huge pixel art, such as the Union Jack flag, pandas, and some even showcase their own NFT projects. In addition, some players use synthetic materials such as sand, stone, wood, and bedrock to build magnificent sky pyramids. There is also a massive space-themed planet that pays tribute to "The Dark Forest," created by a player using 6360 blocks of bedrock.
Example built by players
SupremeLeaderOP Republic
Furthermore, something very interesting happened in the "OPCraft" game. On October 29th, just two days before the end of the OPcraft test, a player named SupremeLeaderOP announced the establishment of a world government on Discord and Twitter.
This player mined a large number of diamonds in various ways (official reports say 135,200), and claimed a large number of plots in the game by using diamonds (once claimed, other players cannot build or cultivate without permission).
This player directly announced the establishment of a world government in the game and used the apro-comrade plugin to allow other players to swear allegiance to the Republic and become citizens of the world government. However, after becoming a citizen of the world government, they must give up all private property (player inventory), but they can use the government treasury. Once players become citizens, they can use the smart contract deployed by the supreme leader to mine materials for the government treasury and use treasury materials to build on government-owned land.
The World Government Republic even established a "social credit" system to prevent citizens who seek cheap gains from obtaining more materials from the treasury than they contribute. Citizens who do not meet the credit standards can only continue to use the treasury if they "repair social credit" through their labor contributions.
Afterwards, many players spontaneously welcomed this player as the supreme leader of the World Government Republic, and even built statues for the supreme leader. However, there were also some participants who strongly opposed the supreme leader, condemning their control and collectivist policies, and calling for resistance and fighting for freedom.
Powerful Playability
In just two weeks, OP Craft has witnessed the emergence of many new social behaviors. For example, players set traps for entertainment, and then other players cooperate to overcome these traps, sometimes even resorting to filling caves to solve problems.
During these two weeks, we have witnessed developers creating plugins at an unprecedented speed, without the need for special authorization and with the freedom to do so. What is even more surprising is the rise of new governments and the voluntary adoption of new rules and systems that were not pre-designed by the game officials, or even imagined to occur.
In the DAW game, infinite possibilities spread out, and the occurrence and evolution of anything are not controlled by anyone. Based on this freedom, the game has also derived more engaging gameplay. Compared to early GameFi focused on "Play to Earn," DAW has taken an important step forward in game playability, sometimes even providing a more interesting gaming experience compared to Web2 games.
Dojo System
Loot Realms Series
The development team behind the Loot Realms series is BibliothecaDAO. It is worth mentioning that, due to its community nature, BibliothecaDAO has not conducted any institutional financing, but chose to issue its own governance token $LORD in December 2021. On February 1, 2023, a community-oriented private round of financing was completed based on Community Proposal 7 (BIP-7). Due to the strong cohesion of the community, it achieved a fundraising of 6.35 times the original target.
The Loot Realms series currently has two main games. One is Realms: Eternum, which officially opened the Alpha test version in early 2023. The other is LootSurvivor, the first "play to die" Roguelike game released at ETHGlobal Lisbon in May 2023.
Realms: Eternum
Realms: Eternum is an economic and military strategy game developed by Bibliotheca DAO on Starknet using L2 scalability. Eternum combines gameplay from popular web games like Travian and Tribal War, as well as game modes from board games like Catan and Risk, while referencing some economic elements.
Within the game, there are 8,000 eternal realms (Realms of Eternum), which are independent territories managed and developed by the lords of each realm. It is important to note that Eternum is an eternal game (infinite game), which means it will run as long as Ethereum produces blocks, and the events occurring in this world will determine the direction of the game.
However, the game is currently still in development and there is room for improvement in terms of interactive experience.
Loot Survivor
Loot Survivor is a fully on-chain survival game where players can devise RPG-style strategies and compete with other players to obtain loot, which helps them survive traps and boss battles. During the adventure, if a player's character survives and ranks in the top three, every new adventurer entering the game will pay homage to that player in $Lords until the achievement is surpassed.
In the game process, if a player's character dies, the $Lords possessed by the player's character and the loot obtained during the player's progression will be dropped and become the revenue of the level developer. This intriguing game mechanism has gained favor from many players.
However, in terms of interaction, due to the slow and unstable speed of the L2 network StarkNet, each interaction of the game deployed on StarkNet requires a waiting time of 3-5 minutes. In Loot Survivor, reaching the top 50 rankings takes at least 3-5 hours, and the developers revealed that it took them about 6 hours to enter the top three. Considering the current number of participants, the required time may be much longer than 6 hours.
Isaac is a large-scale cooperative game that references Liu Cixin's "Three-Body Problem". In the game, all players reside on a planet located in the Three-Body System (a star system with three suns), which has a high probability of being destroyed by the suns, leading to the end of the world.
Therefore, in order to survive, players must collaborate to build infrastructure, with the ultimate goal of creating a similar NDPE (Stellar Propulsion Engine) as in the movie The Wandering Earth. The NDPE can provide acceleration to the planet and allow it to escape the Trisolar System. In addition, players also need to devise proper plans to change the planet's orbit, in order to avoid the dangers of the Trisolar System and achieve escape velocity.
Topology
Topology was founded by @guiltygyoza and @iamkunhokim. Unlike other teams focusing on on-chain games, engines, and other developer tools, they focus on the underlying implementation of DAW. So far, Topology has launched three projects: ISAAC, MuMu, and ShoShin.
It is worth mentioning that, as shown in the image above, Topology recently held a tournament for Shoshin.
IV. Limitations of DAW
Note: For more detailed content, refer to this article.
The first part of the article discusses the core competitive advantages of DAW compared to other types of games. So what limitations does DAW face in its development? In fact, DAW itself does not have specific restrictions, but because it is a full-chain game running on the blockchain network, its development is constrained by the progress of blockchain technology. This results in the following two limitations for DAW:
Limited game categories
Although full-chain games have opened up new areas in game design, some important trade-offs limit the types and functionalities of the games. The most significant limitation is the impact of blockchain synchronization delay on full-chain games, which adversely affects user experience.
The game state is stored on the blockchain, and when a player updates the state, another player has to wait for on-chain confirmation and game index update, which greatly restricts the nature of the game. This makes full-chain games more suitable for asynchronous turn-based gameplay like "Minecraft," but it is difficult to implement games like "Endless Journey" that require strong real-time interaction. With frequent user operations, frequent reading of smart contracts through public RPC endpoints can cause network congestion.
The solution is for users to run nodes locally to avoid RPC congestion. In addition, Ethereum's stateless client, Verkle trees, Mina's recursive zkSNARKs, Polkadot's Substrate Connect, and other solutions are all moving in this direction.
Poor gaming experience
All the logic in on-chain games runs in smart contracts, and players need to sign transactions to confirm every operation in the game. This can be quite a cumbersome gaming experience. Moreover, compared to Web2 games that only require one-click logins through popular social software, on-chain games still have a barrier for novice players in terms of wallet usage. Of course, many corresponding solutions have emerged.
"Burner" wallets are a strategy adopted by many on-chain games. These wallets have a temporary nature and are stored in the local browser. When players participate in the game, the wallet automatically signs transactions in the background. Therefore, players can start the game without downloading or connecting a wallet, and they do not have to confirm transactions frequently.
Another solution is "Account Abstraction" (AA). This solution allows external Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) to have the characteristics of smart contracts. It abstracts the interactive experience of the player's wallet to achieve secure deployment and highly customizable smart wallets.
Account abstraction supports modular logic in hot wallet logic. Players can generate a new account with temporary "local key pairs" for any game (relative to the main account). The functionality of this set of temporary key pairs can be limited to only having limited capabilities, such as: 1) the ability to transfer assets back to the main wallet; 2) calling limited functions within the proxy contract from a whitelist.
This modular architecture not only reduces frequent in-game signing operations but also retains the strong security of the main wallet.
Additionally, compared to EOA wallets, AA wallets lower the entry barrier. Some AA wallets even implement features that only require facial recognition for login, greatly reducing the usability threshold of blockchain wallets.
Five, Economic Model Prospects
Importing External Resources to Enrich the Treasury
Building on the experience of early GameFi, we may reasonably speculate that a reasonable GameFi economic model should encompass external cycles rather than being confined to internal vicious cycles.
In order to stabilize the in-game economy in the long run, it is crucial to introduce diverse and lasting resources through external business expansion. Such resource interactions can be external fund consumption (external users paying for and purchasing game-related assets) as well as internal fund accumulation (introducing external scarce resources and guiding internal players to pay). Referring to folius Ventures' "Ten Suggestions on P2E Game Economy," we put forward the following points:
Regarding the import of external resources, the following aspects can be considered:
1. Direct advertising revenue: In the Web3 era, user attention becomes scarcer, and marketing activities within the community are more likely to attract users' attention precisely.
2. Product resource collaboration: Once the community ecology flourishes, collaboration with teams of similar styles can be established, exchanging product resources as scarce rewards to promote user participation and achieve the consumption of in-game currency.
3. Esports broadcasting and event betting: Only applicable to highly intense, highly watchable, and high-level PVP scenes, generating revenue by obtaining broadcasting rights and betting income.
4. Peripheral product distribution: Perhaps collaborating with fashion brands that match the style or independently launching popular products such as clothing and shoes.
Of course, the above resource import plan is difficult to implement before the establishment of user community and brand culture, so the team still needs to design a stable economic mechanism with game play and content at its core, and prepare relatively abundant capital to gradually expand from cold start.
Reduce value outflow, increase value inflow
Unlike the pure value input of traditional game players in the past, Web3 games have property rights and leasing rights, which enable users to obtain value from them, making it easier to attract gold-farmers and speculators who are purely seeking returns.
In addition, early GameFi games mostly lack sufficient entertainment value and are difficult to create "non-return-oriented demand", which results in a significant outflow of overall game value far exceeding value input. To make up for this unsustainable phenomenon, games need to rely on the investment of new players to compensate for the loss of value, which is not only an unsustainable practice but also a waste of the entertainment and enjoyment value that the game itself brings.
Therefore, game teams should understand the behavioral habits of cryptocurrency users in order to reduce the loss of their value and strive to increase their economic contribution to the ecosystem. Encourage players to increase their value input by improving user experience, creating emotional value, and other methods. At the same time, enhance the emotional experience in the game to encourage more players to become holders after receiving economic incentives, and even gain a sense of achievement from holding limited edition NFTs.
In addition, it is necessary to expand the target user base and provide more convenient and cost-effective ways for traditional game players to enter. At the same time, it can try to guide cryptocurrency players who have similar goals and behaviors to transform into players who focus more on entertainment (refer to the two tables below). In this way, players of different types can enjoy the game together, contribute to the ecosystem, and receive rewards from it.
Summary of DAW Economic Model
In summary, whether it is external resource import or reducing internal value outflow, the underlying principle is actually to return to "playability". Only when the game itself has enough attractiveness and can attract real game players rather than just financial speculators, the token economy can return to a healthy cycle.
DAW performs well in this aspect, not only has advantages over early GameFi but also surpasses traditional Web2 games in terms of autonomy and others. Therefore, we have sufficient reason to believe that DAW will be able to attract more real game players with its excellent playability, thereby solving the problem of the unsustainable token economy.
VI. Conclusion
From the discussion in this article, we can understand that DAW is still in a very early stage, with a lack of ecological projects and many challenges in terms of technology.
But as mentioned above, there are already many corresponding solutions being developed, and DAW also has its core competitiveness compared to other games. We have reason to believe that after its technical deficiencies are improved, DAW's decentralized advantages, strong autonomy, composability, and economic incentives will attract more players.
Moreover, DAW itself is a strong narrative. Based on this, can we imagine the emergence of a decentralized autonomous world game similar to "Ready Player One" in the future? In DAW, the game itself can serve as an economic system, with its own currency, market, and economic rules, creating a new type of economic organization that coexists with traditional economies. Such a completely autonomous world itself has a high degree of openness and possesses an independent economic system. All these factors make it possible to achieve a game like "Ready Player One" in DAW.
In short, DAW itself contains fascinating narratives, numerous interesting gameplay mechanics that go beyond traditional gaming boundaries, which are enough to attract a lot of attention. With the continuous development of technology and the increasingly improved ecosystem, it is foreseeable that DAW, along with its parent concept "Metaverse Gaming," will become an important component in the future blockchain space. Perhaps, with the continuous progress of technology and the development of the ecosystem, DAW can become one of the key players in the next Web3 bull market.
References:
[1] https://twitter.com/0xNing0x/status/1692845209150005589
[2] https://twitter.com/Dacongfred/status/1693249435751338394
[3] Making of OPCraft (Part 3): What happened in two weeks of OPCraft
[5] https://twitter.com/0xAikoDai/status/1490880076207968261
[6] Autonomous World: The Beautiful Concept of a Digital Utopia based on Metaverse Gaming
[ 7 ]In-depth analysis of the full-chain game engine MUD
[ 8 ]The future of on-chain gaming: 'The promise of MUD ECS engine'
[ 9 ]Full-chain game ③: Engine and ecosystem of Mud & Dojo
This article is for research and exchange purposes only and is not intended as investment advice
