Hi everyone, it's nice to be part of the new season of the crypto academy courses and homework. There have been shocking changes but I would strive to keep relevance. Today, I will be attempting the homework for @imagen's lecture on NFT Games.

INTRODUCTION

Since the invention of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain, a lot of new technologies and features have emerged. One of which is the invention of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). These are cryptocurrency tokens which do not posses the same value to a similar copy irrespective of similarities. This means that there can only be one true copy of an NFT existing at a particular time, and every other copy is not of equal value to its original- This aids monopoly, proprietorship, censorship or authentication as its use might intend.

Non-fungible tokens can exist in form of videos, images, or even as audio files. The use of Non-fungible token is most prominent in the gaming industry as they help gamers create value for their time, efforts and achievements.

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1. Describe in your own words the main Advantages and Disadvantages (Pros and Cons) of NFT Games in relation to other types of games.

Non-fungible token games have lots of advantages as well as disadvantages. Depending on what individual preferences are, the advantages or disadvantages can outweigh one another.

ADVANTAGES

• Gamers are rewarded for their time and efforts: Unlike convectional games, NFT gamers are rewarded with collectibles possessing real-life value. NFT games reward the countless hours investing in playing the games as well as the achievements of the gamers while playing the game. This means gaming can now be a form of investment or means of earning money for living. This help gamers earn while they have a nice time doing what they enjoy doing. It also creates a better motivation to be better gamers.


• NFT games are decentralized: Conventional games exist on centralized servers which has a lot of limitations and disadvantages associated with it. NFT games exist on the blockchain meaning many of the superior features like transparency, decentralization (having no central authority), security are associated with NFT games. Also, there is immutability. This means gamers don't loose their purchase as a result the game shutting down as with conventional games. Blockchain games asset can not be adulterated.

DISADVANTAGES

• Poor user experience: Most NFT games have very poor graphic interface because developers focus more on the blockchain and token value. This is one way the blockchain game are lagging and not attracting enough gamers from arround the world. Gamers priorities graphics, sounds and user experience, when these issues are completely and correctly tackled in blockchain games, more gamers will completely migrate from conventional games.


• Gamers are at risk of losing tokens: Because of the value of value of NFT, they are targets to third-party malicious scammers. NFT can be lost in various ways, on of which is sending to a wrong address. This includes addresses of unknown individuals as well as to wallets not supporting the token protocol.

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2. Name five (5) recognized characters: writers, artists, athletes or others, who have digitized their works (writings, publications, paintings, drawings, illustrations, etc.) to produce NFT. Please indicate the value of the NFT or the collection, show photos or images and cite sources.

A good number of celebrities have gotten themselves involved with cryptocurrencies, most especially the NFT since it help give value to their work. In this section, I discussed a few of these celebrities such as William Shatner, Paris Hilson, Jack Dorsey, King of Leon and the famous Shawn Mendes.

WILLIAM SHATNER

^{Image Source: Cointelegraph}William Shatner is a renowned Canadian celebrity. He is an author, singer, screenwriter, producer and director popular for his role as James Kirk in the Star Trek franchise movie. He has minted over 125, 000 NFT digital trading cards which featured images of his life and media career. One of his rarest card was sold for $6, 800 while most of the rest are sold as cheap as $25 for a 25-card pack.


PARIS HILTON

^{Image source: Business of Business}Paris Hilton is a prominent American actress, singer and business woman. She has appeared in a number of movies like the Hottie and the Nottie. and also popular being heir to the Hilton Hotel family fortune. In August 2020, she auctioned a paining of her cat which she sold for 40 ETH. All the $17,000 (the worth of the auction as at August, 2020) was donated to charity.


JACK DORSEY
^{Image Source: The verge}
This is one of the most popular nft sales in history. Jack Dorsey, twitter's co-founder sold his first ever tweet nft for $2.5 million. This tweet was posted by Dorsey on the 21st of March, 2006. The bid was won by SIna Estavi, the CEO of Bridge oracle.


KING OF LEON
^{Image Source: Rollingstone}The king of Leon is a American four-man rock bank consisting of three brothers and a cousin. Many of their music have topped the chats and even won awards. One of their album, When you see yourself, they minted six NFTs which are being sold for $50 each. These NFTs are sold by live event tcketing platform called YellowHeart.


SHAWN MENDES
^{Image Source: Rollingstone}Shawn is a Canadian singer gained audience in 2013 when he posted song covers on Vine. He is now a renowned singer gaining further prominence when he signed a record label with sland Records A&R. Shawn collaborated with Genie, a blockchain company that mint cartoon avatars for celebrities. Genies minted a collection of Shawn's most recognizable accessories which includes his guitar, gold ring and vest.

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3. Describe in depth the selected game: founders or developers, launch date, objective of the game, operation, native token (price, market capitalization, position), availability in the various operating systems and any other relevant information. Show Screenshots.

CRYPTOBLADES
CryptoBlade is one of the most popular NFT games, ranking number 1 in the Binance Smart Chain portfolio. It was developed by the Riveted games with a primary objective of rewarding players with SKILL tokens after defeating enemies. Player can accumulate arrays of warrior character which in turn participate in raids. A cool part of the game is that the SKILL token can be staked to earn more SKILL.

Founders and Developers

CryptoBlades is a web based game owned by a Chicago based independent developer company called Riveted Games. They have produced a number of popular games such as the award - winning space simulation game Spoxel, Lightspeed Frontier and Nations at war. CryptoBlade is an NFT role playing game which was developed by the Riveted games four-man team. They include Philips Devene, Dan Karsai, Ray Hammarling and Kyle Kemp.

Phillip Devine is the owner of Riveted games. He started the operations of Riveted games in 2014. He selects his team of developers based on their experience in developing game web application.

Dan Karsai is the team lead developer at Riveted games. He joined the company in 2016 and he specializes in blockchain development. 3D graphics, programming, game design and unity of Riveted game company. He worked on Riveted games popular Lightspeed Frontier, Spoxel and Nations at War.

Ray Hammarling is Riveted games' lead blockchain developer. He joined the company's team in 2009 and contributes his expertise in backend technologies, experimental technologies and architecture to team. During the creation of CryptoBlades, he developed the core smart contracts focusing on design and efficiency.

Kyle Kemp is the Riveted games team Lead front-end developer. He designed the web user interface of CryptoBlades and he constantly updates them to optimize the players' gaming experience.

Objective of the game

CryptoBlades is a web based NFT game created so that players can have fun and profitable experience while being part of a healthy blockchain gaming community. With CryptoBlade, gamers are given the control of their digital asset, they play to earn and in the process, increase the utilization and adoption of blockchain technology in their daily lives.

Operation

CryptoBlade is played as a web application on https://app.cryptoblades.io. It's smart contracts are deployed on the Binance Smart Chain, hence a player requires a substantial amount of the BNB token to pay for transactional gas fee. BNB will be stored in a wallet like MetaMask which will be linked to the game application. Players will also need a minimum of 4.5 SKILL, the official token of the NFT game in order to start playing. The 4.5 Skill is needed by player to mint their first character. This token can be exchanged or swapped on ApeSwap.

Characters, weapons and enemies are assigned random elements which determines actions within the game. There are four elements in the game, they include: Water Fire, Earth and Lightning. Each element is a weapon against another.

When playing newly, there is no need to mint a weapon as the first newly minted character comes with a one. The character has 200 stamina which enables it to compete in five different battles as each battles costs 40 stamina. Players will need to understand the element of their opponent in order to strategize their victory.

Native token (price, market capitalization, position)

The native currency of the CryptoBlade is called SKILL. It is one the reward along with Character experience earned when an opponent is defeated.

The price of Skill as at the writing of this post is $20.03. It is ranked number 1007 on coingecko. Skill has a market cap of $12,082,277 and a circulating supply of 603, 515.

Availability in the various operating systems

CryptoBlade is a web application and is available across almost all web browsers. It is however not limited by the computer's operating system.

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4. Show the complete process to acquire the tokens (it does not necessarily have to be the game selected in the previous question, as long as it is within the list provided). Indicate the platforms (wallets or exchanges) where it is available; the process for downloading, installing and configuring wallets or networks. Show Screenshots.

SKILL This is a token that can be traded on a number of different platforms. In this task, I'll be using the ApeSwap platform.

• Open https://apeswap.finance on your browser.


• Click on the Connect button found at the right hand corner of the website. A new interface will pop up, here you can link your wallet to the platform. This is required to keep what ever cryptocurrencies you are exchanging. In this task I chose the Binance Chain Wallet


• A new window popped and I clicked on the connect button to authorize the linking from my binance chain wallet


• Now my wallet has been successfully linked to Apeswap.io


• At the left column of the site, locate Trade drop-down menu. Click on it and choose the exchange option.


• In the new page, click on the drop down option to change the exchange token as shown in the screenshot below.


• Choose SKILL, now you can exchange your BNB for SKILL token.

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Conclusion

Non-fungible tokens has taken the blockchain ecosystem to another level as they can be integrated into games. In a few years to come, it is highly predictable that the NFT games industry will completely disrupt the currently existing conventional gaming systems with decentralization, transparency, immutability and off course, gamers can now earn while having fun.

Thank you!