Last week, I took some time to map out the publishing plan, because I’ve now written 30+ narrative-focused newsletters and am close to having enough content for the book (on track for 150+ pages). Over the next few weeks, I’ll share more details about the plan for this newsletter along with the forthcoming book, so stay tuned! One change I’m making starting today is that I won’t be including news articles.
As always, please reply to this email with any feedback, comments, or questions.
NFTs and Gaming, Part 1: Core Game Components
By Elliot Koss
Technical Level: 🛠️
Over the past couple months, we’ve begun putting the pieces together for how NFTs (non fungible tokens) will change the gaming experience forever. The high level concepts were outlined in NFTs, Gaming, and the Metaverse, Smart Contracts, and IPFS: The Decentralized Internet, so refresh on those topics if you need.
As we noted in NFTs & The Art Use Case, the most boring use of NFTs is for art. Games are where the first real utility of NFTs will come into focus.
To understand how NFTs will revolutionize games, we’ll need to review the core components of a game, what components of a game can be improved with NFTs, how the decentralized internet will improve the gaming experience, why games are the logical first real utility for NFTs, and the current resistance and backlash gamers have had. This is a fairly large undertaking, so I’m going to split these topics into a few different sections that I’ll cover over the next few weeks.
Gaming Core Components
When we say ‘Gaming’, you probably already have something in mind, whether it’s a
physical game (ie soccer, football, baseball, etc)
card game that you play by yourself (ie Solitaire) or friends (ie Poker, Blackjack, Hearts, etc)
board game (ie checkers, chess, Monopoly, etc)
trivia game (ie Jeopardy, Trivial Pursuit, etc)
video game (ie Halo, FIFA Soccer, Madden, etc)
app game (ie Candy Crush, etc)
multiplayer online game (ie Fortnite, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, etc).
These are all types of games, and some of these will benefit from NFTs more than others, in particular the digital-based games. To make this all easier to digest and understand its connection with NFTs, let’s break down the core components of games.
Every game has four key components: Goals, Rules, Challenge, Interactivity.
Goals
There is usually a singular goal of each game that determines whether you’ve won or lost. In most cases, you want to accumulate more points than someone else. In a physical game, you’re trying to outscore your opponent. Ultimately, you want to win however the game defines it (chess requires you to capture your opponent’s king while Monopoly requires you to accumulate more assets than your opponents while Fortnite requires you to be the last person standing). Sometimes the goal of the game is up to the user and can be chosen with a particular game mode such as ‘capture the flag’, ‘last man standing’ or ‘most kills’.
For solo games, you either try to beat your own score (shooting more free throws in a row than you did previously) or you simply try to complete the game (like Solitaire or even putting a puzzle together or solving a Rubik's cube).
Some games don’t necessarily have a winner like Four Square. The goal of the game is to not lose, and the longer you don’t lose, the better your chance at being in the serving position where you get to serve the ball into play and have a slightly better chance of not losing. A winner could be the player who has been in the serving position, but there is no real determination for a winner, except that you didn’t explicitly lose.
The point is that there is usually a clear way to determine whether someone has won or lost a given game.
Rules
A rule is some defined way that the game must be played. While a goal is what you’re trying to achieve to determine who wins, a rule is designed to ensure that each player or team do similar things to make the game fair and provide the guidelines for how a winner is determined.
Every game has some manner of rules, and some are so well understood that the rules alone can distinguish one game from another. Think about these rules. Do you know what game I’m describing?
There must be no more than 11 players per side on the field at any one time.
Ten of the players cannot touch the ball with their hands.
Only 1 person on each team can touch the ball with their hands but only in a specifically designated area, and they must wear something that distinguishes their special abilities.
To score, the ball must go into a designated goal and it must completely cross a specific line, and each score is worth 1 point.
The first rule could describe Football or Soccer, which both have 11 players per side on the field. But the second rule makes it clear that the game being described is Soccer.
Some games have similar rules including many first player shooting games. If I asked what game is there where the rules are the below, would you know what I’m describing?
A countdown is used to start the game.
You start with one basic weapon.
Each weapon has different capabilities including ammunition capacity, firing speed, accuracy, range, damage, and more.
You can acquire weapons, gear, ammunition, and health in the environment of your game.
If you are the last person to damage a player and they die as a result, you are credited with the kill.
A tally of kills is kept.
Once you’ve been killed, you must wait until the game is finished before you can play again
You wouldn’t be able to determine what game I was talking about. It could be multiplayer mode for Halo, Counter Strike, Fortnite, Goldeneye, or any number of other first player shooting games. It doesn’t diminish any of these games that they have similar rules, in fact it highlights that some specific combination of rules are highly popular and could serve you well, if you are a game designer, to follow these well-established rules of successful games.
Challenges
A challenge is something that needs great mental or physical effort in order to be done successfully and therefore tests a person's ability. In the context of a game, a challenge is one of the reasons the game is considered fun. If you won every game that you played without having to exert any effort, then over time, you may lose interest in the game.
For instance, even though you may not win Tic Tac Toe every time, the simplicity of the game combined with the fact that if you start first then you have a clear advantage for winning means that once you reach a certain age, the game loses its magic. When’s the last time you’ve seen two adults play Tic Tac Toe that wasn’t a part of a drinking game?
For a game to be exciting and interesting, there must be some challenge that keeps things engaging. In chess, as you play, you earn a rating. This rating helps you determine who you should play so that the game has some challenge. If you had a rating of 2500+, meaning that you’re a grandmaster, then playing someone with a 1000 rating (basically a beginner) would likely not be engaging or fun for either of you. The same is true if you’re a professional athlete. You likely won’t feel much of a challenge if you were to go play in an amateur league, though you may feel grateful to be the best player.
But the quality or skill of your opponent isn’t the only way that a game can be challenging. Chad Kilgore does a great job breaking down various types of challenges, and my main takeaway was that the mechanics of a game can present their own challenges. For instance, the logic for completing a specific level can present its own type of challenge. Or the difficulty setting could increase or decrease the challenge you face. At expert level in a shooting game, perhaps your opponent is more accurate or fires more frequently or there are simply more of them. A chess game may allow you to adjust how well the computer can play against you to suit your needs so if you’re a 1000 level, you can play a 1200 level to try to get better. Sometimes there are explicit challenges in a game whether it’s to complete a specific level in a designated amount of time, number of points accumulated, minimum accuracy or something else.
Back in high school, one of my friends was so good at Goldeneye that he’d play with slaps only and let my friends and me play with whatever weapons we wanted. He would still win, but by forgoing any weapons but slaps (the lowest damage attack), the challenge was heightened for him while allowing him to still play with his friends. Of course, it was also embarrassing (and more than a little funny) for his friends to be beaten by someone who was only using slaps. People would think we were bad at the game when they heard this story, but the reality is that he was simply incredibly skilled. If there were pro gamers at that time, he likely could have gone pro, and I believe he placed 3rd at a national Halo tournament at the end of high school.
Interactivity
Interactivity can be defined as the back and forth between the player and the game. This covers everything from the story of the game to the setting of each level to the communications from the game to the player.
Goldeneye was based on the movie of the same name where James Bond is trying to stop a powerful weapons system called Goldeneye from falling into terrorists hands. Halo is a space marine team fighting aliens who are trying to eradicate humanity. Counter Strike is a team of terrorists trying to carry out acts of terrorism while a counter-terrorism team is trying to stop the terrorists.
The game itself tells a story that unfolds as the player engages. In some types of games, there is information in the game that the player must locate in order to know how to complete a specific task that’s required to finish a level.
The exchange of information from the game to the player and the achievement of specific objectives makes the game interactive, and the infinite possibilities of interactivity make games increasingly difficult or fun, depending on the skill of the team creating the game.
One key aspect of interactivity is the in-game currency that is used to acquire items. In many games (such as Zelda and Super Mario), you must accumulate the in-game currency to then buy specialty items that are required to complete a specific level. Other games provide ways to either speed up your game play or level by using the in-game currency to acquire skills or items. Plus, the in-game currency can be used to customize your character in the game, which can also have the benefit of upgrading how your character interacts in the game.
The in-game currency can always be earned by playing, but there is often a limit to the speed and amount of what you can accumulate. In many games, there is a way to bypass the speed and amount limitations by paying real money to buy more-or-less whatever you want.
Next Week
Next week we’ll build on these core concepts of games by exploring 6 ways that NFTs can make games better. We’ll tie each of these improvements back to the core components we mentioned today to make it clear how games will stay the same yet see big value adds to the players. This is the sort of stuff that I find exciting, and I can’t wait for next week.