If you have you ever heard about changing tires on a moving vehicle, we are about to witness something similar from many multiplayer video game related corporations. I am of this opinion that single player games are definitely going to be an important part of the industry and they won't be going anywhere in foreseeable future. When games have multiplayer and have in game economies that include real players, things will have to face some significant transformations.

As a side effect of the changes that will be made and conditioning of players towards certain behavior, even single player games that heavily depend on in game purchases to help with the advancing of the game (mostly mobile games) will face serious repercussions as time goes by.

Demonstration on Final Fantasy XIV

I like a good exploit in a game to get the best out of it. Although I have never gone to extremes, among my friends, I used to be the one to play it clever and find a smart way to figure things out with a game economy even in a single player game. Obviously I loved the content and it goes to show the state of in game economies of one of the most popular MMO games in the market.

Another Indirect Example

This "exploit" has been fixed now. You are not going to be making any money off of this. Instead take some time to think how something like this would work out in the cryptosphere:

Playerbase would have immediately caught on the potential "exploit" and something as poorly designed as this likely would not have been implemented in the first place (although the LUNA/UST scenario makes me wonder if I am being too generous in assuming the intelligence level of cryptocurrency investors).

Tokenomics > Skinner Boxes

I have noticed how hard it is to get back into a non-crypto game after getting used to Splinterlands, Rising Star and others. Why bother completling some task for a virtual reward when I can earn a cryptocurrency with a real exchangeable value! This mindset change caused by #Play2Earn is going to slowly work its way against traditional game design. Those games that focus on unique experiences and narratives won't be affected much.

Video Game Giants Are Not Economic Experts

In contrast to this, cryptocurrency is full of Austrian economists who learned their craft in the trenches of real life trading making and loosing real money while getting smarter, richer and more prosperous (or getting REKT). The old tricks have litter power here.

Ubisoft Entrepreneurs Lab announced their partnership with @splinterlands and many other blockchain games in 2020. I reported on this event, but I did not followed up on what happened afterwards. There are attempts from the traditional gaming giants to learn from blockchain gaming. How successful that would be is questionable.

Take A Look At Film Studios and/Vs Netflix

We do have the likes of Disney+, HBO Max etc. These projects came nearly a decade later as the parent companies had to change the wheels of a moving car. Transition of video game companies towards blockchain is going to be an even more daunting task of changing the whole car into something else while it is being drive.

When asked about Twitter going Web 3, @khaleelkazi echoed somewhat similar sentiments. Somethings are better built from scratch. Blank slates are a great thing free from the need to unlearn what has already been learned.

Happy Blockchain Gaming!