The Japanese Blockchain Game Market: A Year Ahead of the Others
Japan is one of the top 3 markets in digital gaming with revenue of over $19.2B in 2018. It is also leading the blockchain gaming market - My Crypto Heros (MCH), since it is launched in Q4 2018, MCH has become the largest blockchain game in the world with over 17,000+ users on the mainnet. And the local community are also catching up quickly—big gaming companies, game studios, and indie developers have joined the trend.
How did Japan become the leader of blockchain gaming? Dapp.com took a trip to Tokyo with a mission and deep dive into the community to find out the secret and meet with the major dapp builders and players.
Identifying the Huge Opportunity for Blockchain Gaming
“Ownership and liquidity of virtual items are the current problems,” said Tran Ngoc Son, the CEO of TomoChain Japan. According to Tran, blockchain in gaming opens new territory for developers since:
- Blockchain in gaming enables interoperable profiles of players and game virtual items;
- Cryptocurrency enables in-game economics-incentive mechanism;
- Blockchain-based games allow players to truly own their in-game assets and greater control over their favorite games.
Players can collaborate with developers to improve a game on the blockchain. In the case of TomoChain, developers or game companies can make mobile friendly games by using TomoWallet dapp browser.
Gen Kanai, Director of strategic partnerships at Animoca Brands addressed, “As Japan is one of the top gaming markets and is quickly adopting blockchain into gaming, we can see numerous games in development today which we hope to enjoy later this year. We are happy to see the interest in The Sandbox and look forward to expanding the blockchain gaming community with this and our future games in development.” 
Overcoming the Usability Challenges: Gas Fee, UX, and Scalability
Shunsuke Watanabe from My Crypto Heroes opened his presentation about the challenges the team was facing during the game development. “When you build a dapp, you have to deal with blockchain related UX difficulties, such as gas fee, scalability, transaction times, and so on”, said Shunsuke, “the thing that blockchain games compete with ‘normal’ social games is usability.” He continues explained that if we want real user adoption, we need to get to the level of current browser / mobile games, while adding the positive aspects of blockchain gaming: Ownership of assets, the democratization of revenues, interoperability of items, etc.
Shunsuke mentioned that their team solved the Ethereum related UX challenges as follow:
Battle-system beta runs on a side-chain to avoid the gas fees and long transaction times, and also provide a smoother game flow. The hybrid on-chain / off-chain infrastructure was crafted by the MCH team and it connects a gateway in-between—to ensure a trust-less gaming experience, which is true ownership of assets and scarcity of heroes and extensions.
An Ethereum proxy API that built and implemented by the team to speed up the data transmission significantly and smooth a better user experience ultimately.
“Users want a pleasant game experience that is comparable to ‘normal’ games while enjoying the benefits of Blockchain. It is our task as a developer to build systems that enable good UX while securing our user's assets on the blockchain”, said Shunsuke.
Facilitating the Decentralized Ecosystem: Tools and Infrastructure
Nana H.Tanaka, the country manager at Pundi X Labs Japan talked about “How PundiX Ecosystem Facilitates Dapps.” He introduced their product - XPOS’ main function. It has the payment as well as allows anyone to buy ETH. XPOS will certainly solve one of the major pain points for people to start using a dapp, which is helping people to get crypto as easy as possible.
Taisuke Horitsugi, the Evangelist at Kyber Network Japan told audiences about how Kyber tackles the issue of in-game transactions and provides an on-chain protocol that provides liquidity to dapps. Kyber combines multiple transactions into one and gives gamers a simple and hassle-free experience.
We’d like to say Tokyo meetup was a huge success and the blockchain gaming community in Tokyo for being amazing!
Special thanks to My Crypto Heroes, TomoChain, Pundi X, Kyber Network, Animoca Brands and some upcoming new games from Tokyo CryptoSpells, NovaBlitz, Cipher Cascade, and Crypto Derby.
Shoutout to our amazing partner and media: Neutrino, Asia Blockchain Review, Blockchain Game Info, dApps Market, and Nikaku Nemoto for supporting the meetup -- we couldn’t do this alone without you guys!
ありがとうございました! Stay tuned for our next meetup!
If you’re interested in exploring the potential of blockchain and decentralized technology, Dapp.com is a source of inspiration, tools, and information you can trust.
Follow us online here:
Too bad that Steemmonsters didn't had a live presentation.
I mean it already combines great userinterface, fast Blockchain transaction speeds and true ownership of cards in a great way.
Its IMO the best example out there how Blockchain games enhance the gamers experience.
Next time!!!
Posted using Partiko iOS