GAMEDEV BLOG: 005 - Steem powered game development! - Who needs kickstarter? [idea for integrating with steem blockchain]
This is a different topic from my usual game development blogs, but potentially beneficial
My son started talking about using steem for games
I've been involved in game development for decades, and I am big on game play. My son @theanubisrider and I work pretty closely on a lot of game development projects. Another person that works with us on this @kados is also on steemit and is an artist, but has not posted any blog entries yet.
We've seen people like @andrarchy discuss games using steem. I think a discussion I just had with my son might be beneficial to anyone considering using steem right now for their game.
How could you utilize steem right now?
- Create an account on steemit for the game.
- Blog about the progress of the game using that account.
- Keep the steem dollars (SBD) where they are. Only tap into them if absolutely required to finish the game.
- Use steem power (power down) if you need to get steem for funding. Otherwise, leave steem power alone until you need it. Let it grow.
- Once the game is LIVE do not touch steem dollars again, leave them for the game. (will explain)
- Blog daily (or whatever interval works) about the game in some interesting fashion.
- Blogs should result in up votes which hopefully lead to steem dollars and steem power.
- Tie features of your game so they can pull from the pool of available steem dollars on this account and reward players for completing certain actions, etc. Further Incentivizing people to play.
If people like your game your blogs should hopefully be able to keep useful funding coming in. The steem dollar pool could incentivize people to play your game.
What not to do.
- Do not assume your game will always have steem dollars. Make sure the game is playable and fun without requiring steem dollars. Steem dollars should simply be an incentive mechanism that is provided as interest in the game makes it available.
- Don't assume you can pull or add to steem power. Currently this would not be possible and could easily be exploited to devalue steem and the blockchain, so this is likely never to be available.
Steem Power
You could make things in the game that look at a players steem power and give them abilities or actions based upon their steem power. You would want to be careful with this as this could give the perception of Pay To Win, so if you do this be sure to think it out very carefully and consider perceptions it is likely to cause with players.
The developers could put the account into power down and get 1% of the steem power per week converted to steem which they could then convert to a spendable currency to fund the game. If the blogs are popular there is a good chance your steem power will grow faster than what that 1% takes out each week.
Steem Dollars (SBD)
Steem Dollars should be considered as a pool. Perhaps every time someone completes a level, or a game, or gets and achievement they are awarded 1% (or whatever works) of the pool. They would be visibly rewarded and incentivized to play the game and keep playing it. Furthermore, to keep this possible they would be incentivized to up vote your daily (or whatever) blog posts which will increase steem power (used to fund the game) and replenish the pool.
It is important that this steem dollar pool not be tapped into by the game developers once it goes live to avoid scandals. The wallet will be visible on the blockchain so your players will be able to check to see if you are honest or not, or are simply syphoning off the steem dollars. Perception is important.
Some things you could reward people for
Here are a few examples that I quickly brainstormed on from a large variety of game types.
- Complete a level in a single player campaign
- Complete an achievement
- Your character levels up
- Your team wins a match in a competitive game
- Selling crafted goods in a player generated economy
- Winning the Game
- Completing a quest
- Releasing a MOD for the game - perhaps this one on going based upon how many people use it
I think you get the point
This does not have to be used for game development only, it could essentially be a method of crowd sourcing almost anything, backed by steem. You really wouldn't need anything like kickstarter, indiegogo, etc. This could potentially replace those.
This is tagged steemit as well as it is very relevant to the steemit platform.
It would be really great to have a Steemit game!
Great ideas and hints, useful also for other projects :)
Thank you for helping me explain this idea. I was at a loss on it and you nailed it so thank you.
Now I have been thinking about this same topic in similar ways but my take on Crypto in gaming is that the game would be free to play but the in game currency would be Crypto. At that point all in game player transactions would have a 10% tax applied to them. 5% would be profits and the other 5% would go into a pool that is utilized to reward players for regular game play like opening treasure chests ect.
Players buying items from NPCs would be split 70%-30% as those would quite literally just be micro transactions.
This would of corse mean having to have a game that is very player driven like an MMO though. advanced crafting and gathering systems and a dependency on the economy would be a must. People would be able to mine ore from a cave and sell it for Crypto to spend on snacks outside of the game or better gear in game.
Yes, I think the key though would be the method you use to insure you can continue to function as a company, and that is where steem power can come into play as you cannot give that away. Steem Dollars would need to keep being reinfused some way. I think you may have been considering people buying directly into that pool. I may try some of this pretty soon, but at a very simple level.
My game project that was greenlit is not really some place I'd do a ton of this, but I thought perhaps I would make it so anytime someone completes a single player level, or multi-player level the players are awarded some steem dollars (if they put their steem account name, and public key required to give them money). I would post updates and interesting things related to the game and hopefully fund the game that way. The game would work with or without steem. So it is more of a gimic and added incentive for steem users if I do this.
I glanced over this and laughed my ass off at the gifs! I will definitely give it a full read tonight. One topic I have been very interested in lately has been finding a way to utilize crypto in gaming as a new type of profit model as well. Steemit kind of touches on this topic in a lot of ways.
Hope somebody does implement these ideas, it would be great to see come to live!
I might try to do it in my project. Won't be anything major if I do. Just a proof of concept. Likely would make it so whenever you completed a single or multiplayer game you were awarded from the pool. I'll need to think about it and see if it is feasible. I don't want it to detract from gameplay and simply be a value add.
When I first started reading this stuff I was thinking of going a little deeper even.
What if you could post somehow from in-game? As well as search for content using services like Steam Shovel. Huge sets of blogs could be setup ahead of time. Dungeons Masters could act as whales, in order to control the flow of things. Perhaps groups of people would work against each other in competition for resources somehow... But like... All in-game. Perhaps SBD could be generated in a timely fashion based on posts from DMs, or players, or even NPCs, like bots. All these resources could be tracked in game and move around amongst different accounts through the trading process.
I think we are just scratching the surface here and some really smart folks are going to be putting some really cool stuff together soon!
You could certainly think of posting from within game. I thought this might be picky with the current downvote mechanism I could see such posts becoming popular to tag as spam. This is one of the reasons I didn't recommend it. Then those downvotes could kill any income and chance of success for the game. :(
Interesting post thanks! I keep going back to thinking about how to use steem and gamedev together too. Automated movement of steem dollars in response to in-game events would be very interesting. If you do more in this direction I'll be very interested to see!
Very nice! I love the concept of powering ideas and passions with Steem. Might be trying to do the same for my tour.
Very good ideas man!
Thank you. I think it could work.