Genuine on-chain gaming: what it is, what opportunities it brings
TL;DR
Today blockchain technologies often draw the attention of game developers. But most Web3 game titles simply utilize them to store in-game assets in the form of NFTs.
Genuine on-chain games utilize blockchain technology is an alternative to conventional game servers for storing game data and recording states.
The main advantages of on-chain games include system sustainability, lack of censorship, and community involvement in building the project. On the contrary, its disadvantages are making it impossible to create a truly on-chain AAA title at this point.
0xMonaco and Dark Forest are some of the first on-chain games. Despite having a modest user interface, they have attracted active gamer communities that introduce new features and hold various competitions.
OPCraft is another outstanding on-chain gaming experiment where all the objects, like lakes, clouds, and mountains, exist on the blockchain, and every player's transaction is stored on the Ethereum network.
On-chain gaming is an emerging model which requires more solutions for blockchain limitations. However, there are some advanced on-chain games, like Pirate Nation or Shattered EON.
Introduction
Today more game developers are paying attention to Web3 technologies, but they are mainly focused on asset management solutions allowing to purchase and store NFTs. These solutions are certainly leveraging blockchain technologies. At the same time, other important components of the games, such as backend architecture or rulesets for gameplay, are still running on private servers like Amazon Web Services. These titles include Illuvium, Undead Blocks, BigTime, and many popular GalaGames projects. Sometimes they are even attributed as “Web2.5 games” or simply “NFT games”.
Private servers may suspend operations for many reasons and potentially harm gamers’ assets. NFTs may lose their main functions in the game, and players may face financial losses.
In contrast, there are Web3 games that are designed differently. This group does not simply store assets on the blockchain. The whole game logic is generated inside blockchain smart contracts. In this article, we will dive deeper into the concept of fully on-chain gaming, its cons, and pros, and describe the most vivid experiments and game worlds leveraging this breakthrough technology.
Different ways to build blockchain games
In a wider sense, the term on-chain may refer to several types of games, including projects with optional NFT mints for cosmetic purposes, games storing assets on the blockchain, and completely on-chain games. These three types have different levels of blockchain integration in them.
Web3 games offering optional cosmetic NFT mints are designed as traditional Web2 titles. They store the assets and transaction data in off-chain databases. At the same time, users may choose to mint some assets as NFTs and trade them. These games may also use NFTs to introduce special bonuses and events for players.
The second approach involves building games that store assets on blockchains. Though, important parts of these games, including backend solutions, are still running off-chain. States of assets remain local to the game server, and they are altered on-chain only after significant changes, for example, when a player wins a match or receives an upgrade. This approach works best for turn-based games like MMORPG or fast-paced titles like shooters. However, this approach requires effective infrastructure for indexing and updating metadata and for keeping on-chain and off-chain states interoperable.
Finally, the third approach is exercised in completely on-chain games that utilize blockchain technology as an alternative to conventional game servers for storing the game data and recording states. In these projects, the entire backend of the game is running on blockchain, and the rules of physics and gameplay are established by smart contracts. These games are absolutely decentralized and can be referred to as completely on-chain titles. They introduce a new experience as they are entirely owned by active players and allow them to build other games on top of the existing titles based on the defined rules.
The last approach to building Web3 games has many other advantages, including system sustainability, lack of censorship, and community involvement in building the project. But it obviously comes with a number of disadvantages, including slow block creation time, costly operations, or lack of breakthrough scaling solutions. In this regard, we have to emphasize that it is impossible to create a truly on-chain AAA title at this point, and the last approach can be applied only to certain types of games. However, there are still a lot of brilliant experiences which we will cover later.
First experiments: Dark Forest, 0xMonaco
0xMonaco was one of the first successful experiences in on-chain gaming. It is a multiplayer racing game allowing players to compete against each other. But, basically, it is a coding competition where all the racing cars represent a smart contract deployed by a player. In total, there are three cars in each race. And players have to reach a distance of 1,000 before their competitors to win. There are two extra features that may help players to do it:
Gamers can buy acceleration points.
Or they can use shells to slow down the car ahead.
Despite having a modest set of functions and the simplest user interface, 0xMonaco managed to attract many gamers that organize tournaments and form DAOs to add more features and user interface solutions to the game.
Another example of early on-chain games is Dark Forest built on the Ethereum blockchain and leveraging the zk-SNARK protocol. It is a decentralized MMO strategy where participants have to explore space and avoid attacks from their other space travelers.
Players begin their journey on their own home planet. They have to venture to enter into space and compete with other players, capture different resources and planets, and grow their empires. The procedurally-generated universe is filled with tons of hidden planets. At the same time, gamers can see only a small portion of the map, while most of the area is cryptographically hidden from them.
For that reason, Dark Forest is also known as the first on-chain game with incomplete information. The game is leveraging a powerful cryptographic tool, zk-SNARKS, to validate the moves of the players without disclosing them to other participants. Dark Forest is played in limited rounds lasting between one and two weeks and stored inside blockchain smart contracts.
Dark Forest was released only in 2022, but the game has already attracted many loyal players. The audience is forming community DAOs, like dfdao, for playing, developing, and modifying the game.
Autonomous world generated by blockchain
OPCraft is another outstanding on-chain gaming experiment. This fully on-chain 3D voxel world is running on MUD, an open-source on-chain engine developed by Lattice, and OP Stack, a modular roll-up solution by Optimism used to increase throughput and decrease the block creation time.
OPCraft is an autonomous world where all the objects, like lakes, clouds, and mountains, exist on the blockchain, and every player's transaction is stored on the Ethereum network. On top of that, players enjoy a lot of different ways to create buildings and monuments, modify the land and environment, or craft items like in any other voxel world.
Autonomous worlds supported by OPCraft have at least two important advantages:
The ability to access the gaming world through various custom clients without any special permission, similar to DeFi protocols. This means that the OPCraft world can be rendered by Unreal Engine 5, or someone can add anime characters inside it.
Smart contracts are able to interoperate with the autonomous world as regular users. And this also brings massive opportunities for all the parties involved. Developers may introduce new properties and features or build entirely new games on top of OPCraft. Creators will be able to organize competitions between players and add more fun to this autonomous world.
Last Halloween, the OPCraft World was open for public testing. Users were allowed to craft anything for a period of two weeks. After that, the chain has been frozen, but anyone still can access the final version of OPCraft here.
More on-chain games to check
As you can understand, on-chain gaming is an emerging model which needs more solutions for the blockchain limitations mentioned above. However, there are some advanced on-chain projects that are definitely worth mentioning.
Pirate Nation
Pirate Nation is a light and funny on-chain RPG from the FarmVille founders. The game is full of sea adventures, unique characters, and treasures. You have to collect the pirates as NFTs and send them to find treasure and harvest materials for crafting.
The game has recently launched a beta version. Therefore, the main game loop is still under active development. The team wants to hear players’ feedback before rolling out a final product, so please be indulgent with this title.
On top of that, the game looks really astonishing and provides players with lots of different ways to customize the sea dogs. Besides, Pirate Nation doesn’t take a lot of your time: the game is a perfect choice to spend your break or drink your morning coffee.
Shattered EON
Shattered EON is an interesting on-chain strategy you should also keep an eye on. The game is under development and hasn't yet launched a playable prototype.
The developers aim to build a truly immersive space world from pixels with lots of planets, buildings, and opportunities. On top of that, the game has a well-designed lore with several storylines. You can join Shattered EON as a unit of the Imperial Guild trying to colonize an unknown and uninhabited planet, Pytheas, rich in a new precious element, Eonite. Alternatively, you can join the Ai-Lax Pirates for robbing and taxing the colonists.
Players are already able to buy the Shattered EON NFTs on the OpenSea marketplace, and the final release is scheduled for April 2023.
Final thoughts
As we have mentioned before, the majority of games are utilizing Web3 technologies for asset management, purchasing, and storing NFTs. At the same time, the work of many important backend solutions in these games totally depends on conventional server architecture, like AWS or Microsoft Azure. If these games lose connection with servers for any reason, NFTs may potentially lose their functionality.
On-chain games leveraging blockchain for storing in-game data and rulesets may become a solution to this problem. The first completely on-chain titles, like Dark Forest, proved that on-chain games may be entertaining and supported by many gamers. It is also true that a number of blockchain limitations, including block creation time, gas fees, etc., make it completely impossible to create an AAA on-chain title at this point. To further advance, on-chain games require more infrastructure and solutions, like zk-SNARK and OPCraft that can handle back-end and infrastructure problems.
To sum it up, on-chain gaming is a new interesting Web3 technology that obviously needs to be refined and upgraded. However, there are some advanced and playable games utilizing this emerging technology.