Blockchain Game Partners is building an infrastructure based on the blockchain called Gala to allow games where players have their own content and the platforms do not bother the developers for the games they create.
It is an original idea of Eric Schiermeyer, founder and CEO of Blockchain Game Partners in Park City, Utah. His team is building the Gala network to allow games to take advantage of cryptocurrency and blockchain functionality, and he is also co-owner of Sandbox Games, which makes titles such as Townstar to take advantage of the Gala network.
As the co-founder of Zynga, Schiermeyer has a reputation for working at the cutting edge of cutting edge social games. Some ideas don’t work, but Schiermeyer’s startups are still interesting. And now he’s creating a blockchain-based gaming network and the games therein in an effort to free the creators from the harsh policies of game platform owners.
The blockchain is a transparent and secure decentralized registry that facilitates the verification of the authenticity of digital objects and their property, mainly by spreading the authentication on different computers on the Internet. If dozens of nodes agree that something is authentic or that a transaction has occurred, this provides sufficient verification of authenticity. Blockchain is the backbone of cryptocurrencies, which are digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Agriculture and mining go hand in hand
Above: Eric Schiermeyer is CEO of Blockchain Game Partners.
Image credit: Dean Takahashi
Like other blockchain game startups, Schiermeyer believes blockchain can be used to allow digital ownership of assets in games, so players can own the things they buy or create, even if the game finally stops. The team has been working on it for about 18 months.
“It will be a revolutionary experience for people,” said Schiermeyer. “Unlike any other similar experience I have ever seen, when you spend money here you actually get something, something you can keep, and maybe even give or give to someone else. “other. You can’t do that in traditional free games right now. And people accept that. I think once people realize that you don’t have to accept this, and that you can actually own your own items, so people won’t play these other games anymore. “
Schiermeyer teamed up with Mike McCarthy, who was previously the creative director of FarmVille 2, one of Zynga’s popular games. McCarthy’s first game on Sandbox Games is Townstar, which is in private beta. I could see the game in action, and this illustrates how blockchain games can work. In the game, you cultivate a plot of land and try to make your farm a full city.
Most blockchain games have been criticized for failing to capture the imagination of players. They are more like vehicles for cryptocurrency sales or gambling, rather than fun forms of entertainment.
“It reminds me of the beginnings of Facebook, where most of the ‘games’ on the network were actually just social sharing apps,” he said. “We have really strengthened our game development.”
Schiermeyer thinks that Immutable’s Gods Unchained is a high-quality game that also uses blockchain, while many others are just a means of dressing up blockchain technology and becoming too technically demanding for users.
“That’s why we work with a creative visionary like Mike McCarthy,” said Schiermeyer. “We want to be the first with a real mass game which is a game first and the blockchain a second away.”
Focus on gameplay
Above: Townstar allows you to take land anywhere in the world.
Image credit: Blockchain Game Partners / Sandbox Games
With Townstar, players can own the items they buy or create. Transactions are secure. Players can trade with each other directly via a marketplace without worrying about fraud, a huge concern in existing secondary markets. And the elements of the game have their own rarity, based on their identifiable uniqueness (based on non-fungible tokens).
Players can sell the items for real money. It’s basically gameplay similar to FarmVille, which has been criticized for not having enough gameplay by hardcore players. You grow, harvest, mix with other ingredients, sell them and use the profits to improve your farm and buildings. Ultimately, you will lead a prosperous city.
You can be the most productive player if you build more buildings. Each week, there is a contest between players to see who makes the most progress, the winner getting rare items in the game. You can use the game currency to buy buildings. And the developers will add evolving hero characters who will be on the blockchain, available for purchase. And lower level players will be able to build consumables that they can sell to higher level players.
“Like network games and social games, I believe blockchain games are the next evolution of the game,” said Schiermeyer. “Soon, no one will play a game that is a black hole of time and money, if there are good alternatives that allow the player to retain ownership of his time and money.”
Schiermeyer opted for a web platform (using WebGL) and a simple farming game in order to create a game for the general public. He hopes to use gaming as a springboard to have the largest cryptocurrency wallet, the largest market for gaming products, and the most used blockchain.
“We firmly believe that we will help transfer immense wealth – which would otherwise end up in the bank accounts of Apple, Google and Facebook – to real people,” he said. “Right now, the short-term greed of platforms and companies is limiting opportunities in the industry. We believe that by giving players real value, the whole ecosystem will grow enormously. It is a tectonic change that is about to happen. “
Fund raising
Above: Townstar turns into a real city once you’re away.
Image credit: Blockchain Game Partners / Sandbox Games
About 10 people work on the games and another 15 work on the Gala. There are four other ideas in the works.
The company plans to raise some money, and Schiermeyer has funded it so far. This may not be the best time to raise funds, thanks to the coronavirus. On the other hand, exclusively digital products that entertain people without forcing them to physically go to a place might be more fashionable now, he said.
“When we launched Zynga, it was during a terrible, terrible real estate crisis in 2008,” he said. “And we had an incredible race. So I think people will want entertainment. This is what I really hope to happen. I want a kid overseas to earn something in the game just by playing it for free, and turn that thing into something of value to people in the United States and sell it to them. And you can have it so that the child does not have to work in a sweatshop. “
Monetization strategy
The premium currency of the game will be symbolized, where the price does not change. If you earn tokens, you can sell them at a set price. Depending on the popularity of the game, you can buy and sell the chips. The game will also have 1,000 farm robots that can mine a token, like a Bitcoin miner. You can buy a loot box, assemble the pieces to make a farm robot and release them. Or you can just buy a preassembled farm robot at a high price.
Then you can extract the currency and provide it to other players in the game, either by giving it away or by selling it.
“It’s a way to compensate people who really believe in us at first,” said Schiermeyer. “This is how we structure the blockchain. The people who were the first to play it will have more than the people who were the last to play it. So I mean, there is definitely a reason to come.”
Over time, you may be able to transfer your tokens from one game to another, rather than trying to transfer a sword from one game to another, as currency will be easier to turn into a universal shared item .
“If players want to move their items from one game to another, they can sell them in this game and then buy things in another,” said Schiermeyer. “What’s really fun is to make some sort of license agreement. Maybe I take a sword from a game, and that boosts or modifies a card in a deck of collectible cards. It’s like cross promotion. “
Blockchain Game Partners is building an infrastructure based on the blockchain called Gala to allow games where players have their own content and the platforms do not bother the developers for the games they create.
It is an original idea of Eric Schiermeyer, founder and CEO of Blockchain Game Partners in Park City, Utah. His team is building the Gala network to allow games to take advantage of cryptocurrency and blockchain functionality, and he is also co-owner of Sandbox Games, which makes titles such as Townstar to take advantage of the Gala network.
As the co-founder of Zynga, Schiermeyer has a reputation for working at the cutting edge of cutting edge social games. Some ideas don’t work, but Schiermeyer’s startups are still interesting. And now he’s creating a blockchain-based gaming network and the games therein in an effort to free the creators from the harsh policies of game platform owners.
The blockchain is a transparent and secure decentralized registry that facilitates the verification of the authenticity of digital objects and their property, mainly by spreading the authentication on different computers on the Internet. If dozens of nodes agree that something is authentic or that a transaction has occurred, this provides sufficient verification of authenticity. Blockchain is the backbone of cryptocurrencies, which are digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Agriculture and mining go hand in hand
Above: Eric Schiermeyer is CEO of Blockchain Game Partners.
Image credit: Dean Takahashi
Like other blockchain game startups, Schiermeyer believes blockchain can be used to allow digital ownership of assets in games, so players can own the things they buy or create, even if the game finally stops. The team has been working on it for about 18 months.
“It will be a revolutionary experience for people,” said Schiermeyer. “Unlike any other similar experience I have ever seen, when you spend money here you actually get something, something you can keep, and maybe even give or give to someone else. “other. You can’t do that in traditional free games right now. And people accept that. I think once people realize that you don’t have to accept this, and that you can actually own your own items, so people won’t play these other games anymore. “
Schiermeyer teamed up with Mike McCarthy, who was previously the creative director of FarmVille 2, one of Zynga’s popular games. McCarthy’s first game on Sandbox Games is Townstar, which is in private beta. I could see the game in action, and this illustrates how blockchain games can work. In the game, you cultivate a plot of land and try to make your farm a full city.
Most blockchain games have been criticized for failing to capture the imagination of players. They are more like vehicles for cryptocurrency sales or gambling, rather than fun forms of entertainment.
“It reminds me of the beginnings of Facebook, where most of the ‘games’ on the network were actually just social sharing apps,” he said. “We have really strengthened our game development.”
Schiermeyer thinks that Immutable’s Gods Unchained is a high-quality game that also uses blockchain, while many others are just a means of dressing up blockchain technology and becoming too technically demanding for users.
“That’s why we work with a creative visionary like Mike McCarthy,” said Schiermeyer. “We want to be the first with a real mass game which is a game first and the blockchain a second away.”
Focus on gameplay
Above: Townstar allows you to take land anywhere in the world.
Image credit: Blockchain Game Partners / Sandbox Games
With Townstar, players can own the items they buy or create. Transactions are secure. Players can trade with each other directly via a marketplace without worrying about fraud, a huge concern in existing secondary markets. And the elements of the game have their own rarity, based on their identifiable uniqueness (based on non-fungible tokens).
Players can sell the items for real money. It’s basically gameplay similar to FarmVille, which has been criticized for not having enough gameplay by hardcore players. You grow, harvest, mix with other ingredients, sell them and use the profits to improve your farm and buildings. Ultimately, you will lead a prosperous city.
You can be the most productive player if you build more buildings. Each week, there is a contest between players to see who makes the most progress, the winner getting rare items in the game. You can use the game currency to buy buildings. And the developers will add evolving hero characters who will be on the blockchain, available for purchase. And lower level players will be able to build consumables that they can sell to higher level players.
“Like network games and social games, I believe blockchain games are the next evolution of the game,” said Schiermeyer. “Soon, no one will play a game that is a black hole of time and money, if there are good alternatives that allow the player to retain ownership of his time and money.”
Schiermeyer opted for a web platform (using WebGL) and a simple farming game in order to create a game for the general public. He hopes to use gaming as a springboard to have the largest cryptocurrency wallet, the largest market for gaming products, and the most used blockchain.
“We firmly believe that we will help transfer immense wealth – which would otherwise end up in the bank accounts of Apple, Google and Facebook – to real people,” he said. “Right now, the short-term greed of platforms and companies is limiting opportunities in the industry. We believe that by giving players real value, the whole ecosystem will grow enormously. It is a tectonic change that is about to happen. “
Fund raising
Above: Townstar turns into a real city once you’re away.
Image credit: Blockchain Game Partners / Sandbox Games
About 10 people work on the games and another 15 work on the Gala. There are four other ideas in the works.
The company plans to raise some money, and Schiermeyer has funded it so far. This may not be the best time to raise funds, thanks to the coronavirus. On the other hand, exclusively digital products that entertain people without forcing them to physically go to a place might be more fashionable now, he said.
“When we launched Zynga, it was during a terrible, terrible real estate crisis in 2008,” he said. “And we had an incredible race. So I think people will want entertainment. This is what I really hope to happen. I want a kid overseas to earn something in the game just by playing it for free, and turn that thing into something of value to people in the United States and sell it to them. And you can have it so that the child does not have to work in a sweatshop. “
Monetization strategy
The premium currency of the game will be symbolized, where the price does not change. If you earn tokens, you can sell them at a set price. Depending on the popularity of the game, you can buy and sell the chips. The game will also have 1,000 farm robots that can mine a token, like a Bitcoin miner. You can buy a loot box, assemble the pieces to make a farm robot and release them. Or you can just buy a preassembled farm robot at a high price.
Then you can extract the currency and provide it to other players in the game, either by giving it away or by selling it.
“It’s a way to compensate people who really believe in us at first,” said Schiermeyer. “This is how we structure the blockchain. The people who were the first to play it will have more than the people who were the last to play it. So I mean, there is definitely a reason to come.”
Over time, you may be able to transfer your tokens from one game to another, rather than trying to transfer a sword from one game to another, as currency will be easier to turn into a universal shared item .
“If players want to move their items from one game to another, they can sell them in this game and then buy things in another,” said Schiermeyer. “What’s really fun is to make some sort of license agreement. Maybe I take a sword from a game, and that boosts or modifies a card in a deck of collectible cards. It’s like cross promotion. “
