Why game developers did not come up with crypto currency…

Well…

I look at the entire crypto currency industry and I do wonder…why game developers or indie game developers did not come up with CryptoCurrency….of course…it might be that a game developer did…

But I am more amazed that game developers were using the virtual currency before cryptocurrency finally got things right.

But there were some things…missing things or concepts…that I think game developers/designers missed…that prevented them from developing cryptocurrency. I think it would be nice to explore the concepts missed.

This post focuses on that.

First, it is important to note that there were games in the early to mid 2000s that were using virtual currency in games. Games like EVE Online even hired economists to help balance their in-game economies.

Other game companies were happy to use the two-tier premium/common currency model. Players would buy premium currency with cash but be able to earn common currency within the game itself.

Then there was the idea that inflation in a game economy adds to the fun of things.

So I see there were a few missing concepts in the mid-2000s incarnations of virtual currency.

First…the idea game developers considered was to use currency to help control in-game economy. The in-game interactions.

There was no concept that the currency could be an asset. Even when players would try to use the currency as assets…something that could be sold outside the game. Game companies would sometimes try to limit the use. They might even prevent the sale itself.

One missing concept was the idea that the currency should be or could be an asset that should be able to be sold in the open market. By not considering this…there were benefits…namely, one did not need to worry as much about in-game economy balance or security.

Which brings up another thing that game developers missed…the idea that these “assets” needed to be protected. They should have been protected in a way that would make them portable or moveable outside the game.

Games kind of allowed in-game trading…but once again…the game or the game company itself needed to be a mediator for these transactions…and as was seen…some of these companies would not allow trades or transactions to happen outside the game.

So the missing concept was an open source distributed ledger…something where the game company did not own…but would participate in…by adding to the ledger to confirm certain transactions.

This ledger…as we’ve seen in the case of cryptocurrency…would need to be run by distributed nodes and they would need to be paid or receive some reward. Because the game economies were mainly closed systems where folks could not easily benefit from in-game rewards they could get for hosting…since there was no easy way to sell things on open markets.

So this was another mistake.

The other thing was the idea of cheating or safety of the game currency. Because there was not attention paid to concepts or ideas that would make the game currency feel like real currency…people would not get behind it. These concepts would include things like portability of the money, ability to use money for goods and services outside the game, etc.

One other issue was the goods/services the in-game currency represented. You could only do playful or entertainment things. So it was limited. It was a good start…but the game design was not set up to allow other types of activities that could be considered work-related or useful for other things.

The game developer or designer needed to realize that the currency had to be used or redeemed for things outside the game itself. The game would be one users of the currency, but there could be other services that could also use it. Those uses needed to be beneficial to people in other ways.

One could say … of course one should not take in-game currency seriously … since you could not use it to buy food or shelter. Sure, that is one things…but as we’ve seen…there are so many digital goods and services…that could benefit from a currency…and could have been used to purchase those things…like a network effect.

I think that is one other thing to consider…is that it should have been where game companies made it easy for other companies or people to accept the currency for out-of-game services that supported in-game things. Provided code base or source to have this happen. It would have added more value to the currency itself.

Then there is the issue of the design of the game itself…that would not really benefit or build on the concept of atomic elements of currency. Most of the design was used to make a more profitable business model. But where there games where the gameplay itself built off the properties or effects of tokens?

Inflation management in games. This was not always taken seriously and hurt any real consideration of the currency use itself. Maybe the concept of a limited amount of overall currency…as we’ve seen done with cryptocurrency…might have helped.

Finally…game developers were just looking to provide entertainment…in a way that made the money to focus on the game itself…and in that case…the virtual currency did work.

It really made many game companies more viable…but it was mainly because the opportunity of a virtual currency was so huge…that hundreds of millions or billions made is nothing compared to the size of the market.

So I suppose…thinking of this list…and I know there are more…there were many reasons as multiple levels of the game design that prevented game developers to pioneer cryptocurrency.

So now let’s consider game currency 2.0…this would be game currency that would work with CryptoCurrency in its current state…to make game economies and business models that might work better for this era of cryptocurrency.

1) The in-game currency should be tied to one of the cryptocurrencies. So that folks could cash out the currency for an cryptocurrency asset. This needs to be set up so that miners could come in and host the game itself and get paid to provide compute services.

2) Inflation considerations taken into consideration up front…with a clear and open way to address inflation or a limited number of coins through lifetime of the game.

3) The game would need some kind of block chain variation that would help to clarify token generation and exchanges … so that the currency could be taken seriously.

4) Game developers would need to be able to let folks use the currency outside the game itself. This could be set up by the game developers … where they exchange in-game currency for the cryptocurrency…and put it in a players wallet.

5) The game itself would need to make use of game currency to do unique things not doable or emotions in-accessible with other game designs. We saw semblances of potential with some social and multiplayer games in the mid-2000s…like games where you could buy and sell people for in-game currency. Folks would buy the game currency to do this fun thing. The mechanic was built on the virtual economy…but there was no easy way to be able to sell the game currency earned in the game.

There was also other things missing to make the currency an asset class.

Ultimately, it seems like game developers … to be able to develop and make the most use of potential new business models that would help games generate revenue…would need to be able to create a new token/currency that is tied to cryptocurrency and offers some unique goods or services or transactions or interactivity…aside from just entertainment…to provide utility to players. So that their investment in the currency would provide unique utility that might also have some fun use cases.

an example could be a game that lets folks interact with their smart contracts…or smart contracts that control other people…are managed…or created in this game. Now this might not be the best example…but it does show how games could be built on tokens to do new forms of gameplay or interactions.

These could be the new “Player vs. Player” games…

Yet there would be other things like “Player vs. Environment” games…where folks might interact with real-world tokenized concepts to do things or new interactions. The game would profit from providing unique services or interactions around these concepts.

The game’s business model could then be to take a percentage of a sale…but everything else around the game…including the game itself would be open source and free?

Games would need to be more than an interaction system…but a token generation system…where the tokens themselves could have different roles and properties that allow folks to interact and benefit from the game token ecosystem. Some of these tokens generated could also feed into certain gameplay itself.

I wrote a book on “game utilities” a while back…and it was kind of interesting…I do wonder how this is different than the data mechanics mentioned in that book. I think one thing is the tokens…might have properties outside the data itself. These properties then help it to be used in new ways or other ways.

With the advent of metaverses…I see that the in-game economies that adhere to some of these principles and help to then treat metaverses as virtual nations that would then give the metaverse new effects that would make it more attractive than other metaverses.

Game Utilities – Final Considerations – Chapter 7

Chapter 7 of the Game Utility book…it covers some various ideas, thoughts, and experiences related to game utility concepts…

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/game-utilities-chapter-7-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

This book was written a while ago but never got released…until now. It is a long book and I think it’s best to release parts of it.

Game Utilities – Interviews – Chapter 6

Chapter 6 of the Game Utility book…it covers an interview with a game designer…

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/game-utilities-chapter-6-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

This book was written a while ago but never got released…until now. It is a long book and I think it’s best to release parts of it.

Game Utilities – Game Utility Designs – Chapter 5

Chapter 5 of the Game Utility book…it covers Game Utility Designs…

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/game-utilities-chapter-5-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

This book was written a while ago but never got released…until now. It is a long book and I think it’s best to release parts of it.

Game Utilities – Fun Generators, Part 3 – Chapter 4

Chapter 4, Part 3 of the Game Utility book…it covers Fun Generators…

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/game-utilities-chapter-4-part-3-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

This book was written a while ago but never got released…until now. It is a long book and I think it’s best to release parts of it.

Game Utilities – Fun Generators, Part 2 – Chapter 4

Chapter 4, Part 2 of the Game Utility book…it covers Fun Generators…

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/game-utilities-chapter-4-part-2-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

This book was written a while ago but never got released…until now. It is a long book and I think it’s best to release parts of it.

Game Utilities – Fun Generators, Part 1 – Chapter 4

Chapter 4, Part 1 of the Game Utility book…it covers Fun Generators…

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/game-utilities-chapter-4-part-1-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

This book was written a while ago but never got released…until now. It is a long book and I think it’s best to release parts of it.

Game Utilities – Data Mechanics – Chapter 3

Chapter 3 of the Game Utility book…it covers data mechanics…

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/game-utilities-chapter-3-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

This book was written a while ago but never got released…until now. It is a long book and I think it’s best to release parts of it.

Game Utilities – Data Streams – Chapter 2

Chapter 2 of the Game Utility book…it covers data streams…

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/game-utilities-chapter-2-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

This book was written a while ago but never got released…until now. It is a long book and I think it’s best to release parts of it.

Game Utilities – Introduction – Chapter 1

This is blog post/audio book post…

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/game-utilities-chapter-1-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

It’s been a while since the last post. I’ve been busy working on various things.

This book was written a while ago but never got released…until now. It is a long book and I think it’s best to release parts of it.

This book is also an experiment since I may make audio versions to listen to for various parts of the book.

I thought it would be nice to have game design/development books in audio form to listen to when doing other things.

Let’s begin…

Game Utilities – Introduction

Game utilities are play experiences that are a useful and additive part of a person’s normal life/needs/desires. As the world gets more interactive and playful, Game utilities will increasingly play a larger role as the set of redesigned playful activities that people use to satisfy their core needs and desires.

If we look at the current game utility paradigm, let’s treat it like a new computing shift. Let’s compare it to previous shifts like the desktop pc and the web revolution and even the mobile compute shift.

let’s draw parallels from those spaces…

Netscape helped to catalyze the web revolution.
Facebook gave more reasons for the Web 2.0 revolution
Apple also came in and helped to catalyze the mobile revolution.

Each of these revolutions came from “Moore’s catalysts.” In relation to Moore’s Law, these “Moore’s Catalysts” are catalysts or valuables where the costs went down to zero and then people were able to build value on top of it.

For example, with desktop computers, it was computing cost that went to zero. It went from an hourly billing for compute times at computing terminals to something that could be used at anytime for just the cost of electricity.

Each paradigm shift had it’s own new/unique design space. The proper leverage of these new design spaces helped to create the outstanding value within each of these mediums.

For the PC, it was the GUI that was the new/unique design space that unlocked the value. For the Web, it was websites/information. For Web 2.0, it was photos, comments, newsfeed, etc.

Game utilities will need to tap into new design spaces that leverage the new useful/fun elements/concepts/systems that “Moore’s catalysts” have made them zero cost. This may include sensor data, mobile computing, location-context compute and other elements.

The important thing about these utilities is that they become accelerators of new types of value, experiences, and activities. These utilities are games that can accelerate real-life experiences by orchestrating, directing, amplifying, and socializing experiences that are necessary for people to have fun and satisfying lives.

The design space for game utilities uses a few new design dimensions that are different than traditional games. These include user-generated content and advanced game interaction systems built on user-generated content. This content can be manifested in the form of photos, GPS data, or other types of user-data streams. In a way, game utilities are a powerful subcategory of the game genre of user-generated games.

These user-generated games can be perceived as providing an automated service for the game because the game utilities have systems that use user-generated data to provide the gameplay.

Even with the advent of “Games as a service”, the designers would still have to provide the daily content for the game. With the user-generated games, the players are creating the value and content for the game. The role of the game designer is to provide structures and systems to make the user-generated content added to the game more useful, fun, interactive, and playful.

Some people might ask about the difference between user-generated apps and user-generated games. User-generated apps focus more on the user-generated content. User-generated games apply advanced game and interaction systems to the user-generated content to make it more fun and engaging and useful for players and may even allow new types of user-generated content.

For example, in the Fun Friends game – a game utility that revolves around dating – the game leverages user-generated content in the form of photos.

In the Fun Friends game, players buy and sell each other in the game. When a player buys someone, that other person becomes a “pet.” The owner can then do various activities to the pet. Additionally, each player has a set of “fun pics” that can only be viewed by the person that buys them. The owner can add comments to these photos amongst other things.

The fact that these photos are hidden and only available to the owner that buys the other player as a pet is a reflection of how a designer would design mechanics to revolve around user-generated content. The mechanics and designs for user-generated content really revolve around making the content more valuable and compelling to the other players in the game. This means, providing new content structures and systems to do this.

In the case of these “fun pics” that are secret, it adds value to a player in the game. If a person is browsing people’s photos to see who to buy and notices that someone has 20 “fun pics” that can be seen if the person buys them, it adds more fun, value, and interactions to the game and adds to the gameplay. The player unlocks more fun for themselves by getting to see these fun pics.

The game also has a shared virtual economy that is overlaid on top of the user-generated photos to help make the browsing of content more fun and engaging. The virtual economy helps to also filter out the relevant and most valuable user-generated content.

The way the virtual economy in the game works is that as people buy other players in the game, it raises up the price of the person that got bought in the game. So then another person has to come in and buy that person off the owner for a higher price. When they buy that person from the owners, the owner earns a profit in the game. So there is a tycoon aspect to the Fun Friends game utility.

It is like a bid/auction system.

Contrast this with traditional utility design where the designer would find a way to make the photos easier to see or more accessible to people. The game utility designer, however, has to make the user-generated content feel like a reward or part of the fun flow of the game.

User-generated photos are a main driver of the Fun Friends game. The game takes these photos and uses them to power advanced game and interactions systems within the game that are fun.

We call these advanced game and interaction systems “Fun Generators.” Much like the electricity generators generated electrical power for people to use, Fun Generators are advanced systems that provide fun for players within the game. We will discuss these fun generators in more detail later on in the book.

It should also be noted that the virtual economy of Fun Friends, while making monetization much more easy given the current level of game monetization understanding, is one of the more primitive and not-so-great types of “Fun Generators” mainly because it involves zero-sum mechanics where you bid agains other people to buy a pet.

The other design dimension used in the Fun Friends game is the concept of utility. While other games focus on providing entertainment, these game utilities are meant to be both playful and purposeful. A game utility amplifies the emotions and motivations for utilitarian activities people engage in including shopping, daily routines, collaboration, and social interactions.

Additionally, game utilities are different than traditional games because game utilities are meant to amplify/accelerate/funify real-life whereas traditional games focus on being a diversion from real-life.

A game utility designer is working on designing data systems that can provide emotions and utility on a consistent basis to the player. Unlike other art mediums such as stories and cartooning, these utilities are services and the proper designs offer fun systems that have variation within a system/structure/context.

The data stream flowing into the fun generators should allow for varied repetition and advanced fun. We will discuss these data streams in a later chapter.

The variation of data/user-generated content can give a sense of newness to the player even though the actual fun generator systems overlaid on top of the data are fixed.

For example, we could consider Digg or Reddit their own game utilities. Their point system for news could be considered a fun generator. The Digg/Reddit fun generator offers a system that allows for players to constantly peruse the latest news. With their news rank point system, the data variation of the news content and user comments help to inspire people to keep using the system.

This goes to show that finding the unique fun generator overlaid on top of the data can keep people engaged with the service even though the actual fun system does not change much. The content underneath the system varies enough to keep people engaged.

Unlike traditional games, these game systems need to offer fun in a way that works with the user-generated content or data. The game designer cannot be necessarily focused on the content, but the systems that make the content engaging, fun, and addictive.

With Fun Friends, the social favor generator is a system where players can post little jobs, gigs, or favor requests for other players to do. It is constantly updated. Players can check the favor stream to find other players that want to interact and play.

Ultimately, effective game utilities will give players strong, compelling emotions that avoid boredom while also giving them utilitarian value. This utilitarian value can be social interaction, news, information, learning, understanding, and other core desires and needs found within the human psyche.

Good game utilities have powerful core data loops that can create fun and useful interactions. One example of this would be the Digg/Reddit news system. Bad game utilities can lead to boredom, unclarity, and lack of emotions.

Game utility designers are working on building addictive and fun games that satisfy/amplify/accelerates a person’s real-world desires and needs.

Unlike traditional games, that are meant to be diversions from real-life. These game utilities amplify/accelerate/funify immersion in real-life.

A properly designed game utility can be a new form of distribution. The game utility is so fun and compelling that it is the preferred and new way of doing things.

In the next chapter, we will look at the different types of data streams that can be used for game utilities.