The creation of a new attention and content economy in video games based on micro-transaction.

The social media platform revolution.
John Lennon wrote a song in the sixties called "Imagine", it told of a world with no war, no hunger, no sickness and no injustice. It was popular amongst the young in the 1960's because they dreamed of making the world a better place. Our world is filled with inequities and injustices. One of them that cryptocurrency is attempting to fix is the unequal distribution of profits from Social Media and the new labeled Attention Economy.
Social Media platforms have taken the world by storm and have become the most popular means of communication and sharing ideas in the world. They are also one of the most popular and efficient means of sharing content created by millions of artists of various types all over the world. The problem is that content producers supply their content for free and content enjoyers supply their attention for free. While both do so voluntarily, it is clear that the owners of Facebook and Instagram, as well as other social media sites profit monetarily from the labor and time of the content producers and content users.
Here in the cryptocurrency universe we dream of changing the attention economy to something better than it is now. One of the main ideas behind decentralized alternatives to these platforms is to share the wealth. It was with this in mind, that decentralized platforms like Steem, Hive and others were created and many people have enjoyed the financial benefits of this revolution in social media content and the attention economy.

The video game economy revolution
This article is about another revolution taking place in society, which utilizes technology from the the cryptocurrency community, to create a revolution in the video game community. The video game economy is different from the social media economy because the creators of video games produce the content and video gamers consume the content. But gamers still provide their time and attention. I feel the video game revolution is based on more then one premise, but one is that the time of gamers isn’t free. The time and attention of gamers has proven itself to be valuable to video game manufacturers. Additionally most gamers agree that there are other unsatisfactory things about the video game experience; such as lack of ownership over items won inside the games and lack of portability of these items between game sequels or related games. The revolution of which I am speaking is one in which video game players time spent playing games can be reimbursed, as in the players can be paid to play the games. Additionally the revolution to which I speak involves the players achieving ownership of in game reward items and being able to move them between characters, between games and to sell them in a market frequented by other players.

One such game prototype is a game called Light⚡️Nite, a first person shooter type game being created by Satoshi Game Studios. This independent game studio believes that players should be able to earn money playing the game and that players should own their loot. The leadership of Satoshi Game Studio also feels that Cryptocurrency is the perfect store of value to monetize video games to the advantage of gamers. They believe that Bitcoin is widely known enough and valued enough to be the best cryptocurrency to carry this mission forward. To this end, a gaming studio with a dream, partnered with a blockchain company with a certain set of unique skills to make this a reality. The blockchain company Blockstream was the major player behind the development of the Bitcoin Lightning Network, which is a side chain of the famous Bitcoin main chain. By utilizing this side chain, Blockstream was able to speed up transactions on the Bitcoin lightening network and to reduce transaction fees. This technology allowed the creation of micro-transactions, micro transaction fees and a revolutionary way to use Bitcoin in micro-economies worldwide. But a perfect place for this technology appears to be video games. I will write more later, but first I wish to tell you about the game.

What are the game mechanics for Lightnite?

Lightnite is an online multiplayer battle royale game where every specific digital interaction between players triggers a monetary reward or penalty.
In simple words, players earn bitcoin by shooting other players and lose bitcoin when they get shot. However, some of the items in the game are worth real bitcoin and can be picked up (usually they are left on the ground by dead players and sold for Bitcoin in the in game store. So you get paid to play the game, you own the loot, you can collect the loot in an in-game wallet, you can sell the loot at an in-game store and you can withdrawal the Bitcoin to your personal Bitcoin wallet or to an exchange.
Lightnite’s store allows users to purchase in-game items in exchange of bitcoin, using the in-game balance or through a micro-transaction from the player’s wallet; the in-game bitcoin balance updates in real-time every time a player shoots get shot or pick up a valuable item (the player can then exit the game when he wants to and instantly withdraw his balance into his own-wallet). The game creator, Satoshis Games u the Lightning Network (Bitcoin’s transaction layer) to integrate Bitcoin micro-transactions within Lightnite. The only thing that players need to do in order to play Lightnite and enjoy the full potential of the in-game Bitcoin micro-transactions is downloading a wallet that supports the Lightning Network (e.g. Bluewallet), send a small fraction of bitcoin to that wallet and start sending and receiving bitcoin over the Lightning Network while playing Lightnite.
Source

**Many things make this new economy possible, a Bitcoin sidechain, non-fungible coins, specialized wallets and sidechain mainchain interoperability. **

The Bitcoin Lightening Network
Sidechains
A side-chain is a blockchain that runs parallel to another Main blockchain. It’s purpose is to enable new features and capabilities while leveraging the Main chain’s security. A sidechain supports the secure transfer of assets between chains. The Bitcoin Lightning Network is a Bitcoin blockchain sidechain. It provides the structure for a new micro-economy the video game. Transactions occur on the Lightening Network side-chain, but are ultimately recorded on the main chain, the Bitcoin block chain. The Blockstream developer took this concept and created a sidechain where micro transactions or very small fractions of Bitcoin could be conducted at faster transactional speed, lower transactional cost and then recorded on the main Bitcoin blockchain. This concept of micro transactions, micro-transaction fees and faster transaction times allows small transactions to occur on the Bitcoin sidechain, and in this case they are transactions inside a video game. You kill a player, you get 500 Satoshi. While 500 Satoshi is very small, and the transactional cost or miners’ fees would make it economically irrational on the Bitcoin main chain, it’s not expensive on a sidechain.

Non-fungible Tokens
An important part of any video game is the weapons, gear and game specific items. These items are usually won by a character and are only useable by them. But as we learned in the Steem Based game Splinterlands if we make those in game items unique visa vie non-fungible tokens, they can be traded, or bought and sold between players. If the in game reward currency is something with value outside the game like Steem or Bitcoin then winning games and obtaining items of value takes on a whole new meaning.

Closing Comments
If you think a first person shooter game, where you earn Bitcoin (Satoshi) for killing opposing players and where you can sell clothing and weapons you take off their corpse for Bitcoin sounds fun and profitable, I suggest you buy the game!
Follow this link to give them your money; https://buy.lightnite.io.
Use my discount code and get a 20% Discount on Pre-Order Price of 20 Euros, Save 5 Euros!, Plus Get 500 SATS of Bitcoin and a free Skin!
https://lightnite.io/ref=shortsegments U

written by Shortsegments

Here’s the trailer for the game below

Further Reading About This Article’s Subject is Below

https://medium.com/lightnite/lightnite-a-bitcoin-integrated-battle-royale- game-2ec9f3746b0e

https://bitcoinist.com/play-and-earn-bitcoin-btc-with-litenite-game/

Reference https://bitcoinist.com/play-and-earn-bitcoin-btc-with-litenite-game/
Reference: https://twitter.com/hashtag/LightningNetwork?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Reference: https://t.co/Hiy5cC4A46
Reference: https://mainnet.satoshis.games/