The First Crypto Games Bubble Is Over - What's Next? Blockchain Games 2.0

Wow, to call it a bubble is truly an overstatement. The bubble was basically Crypto Kitties. A game that reached the mainstream and became not only a laughing stock by itself, but really showed us how bad Ethereum was for running games. This single game, a game so sucky and old fashioned in it's interface clogged up the Ethereum network and raised the fees to stupid highs.

 

And now the game is more or less dead.

The idea is great. Digital collectibles. These past weeks we have had our own hype here on Steemit and Steem blockchain with the @steemmonsters. Steemmonsters is not built on top of Steem, but its implemented through the transactions sytem of Steem. A transaction system that is all ready handling millions of transactions per day (more than all other blockchains combined) and is feeless. So no fees! And more importantly no metamask and no difficult steps. You don't have to be a computer scientist to work out how to buy a cat or a monster. And that's the beauty of building on top of Steem - seamless and easy transactions thanks to steemconnect.

In my humble opinion, we are now seeing the 2.0 of Blockchain games. 1.0 was the absolute alpha age of a difficult and not very user friendly way to play games on the blockchain. To be fair though, most of the games have not even been launched yet, and as Ethereum improves and scales and things like Metamask probably improves or changes or gets outcompeted some of these games could very well run on top of Ethereum.

But what we have seen in this first 6 months of crypto gaming is A LOT of scams and abandoned projects following the same recipe as crypto kitties. Personally I've been throwing ETH at as lot of these half-scams in excitement, just to realize that..wow..now I own one sword that looks worse than the graphic in donkey kong. And I can't even access the site to see my sword anymore. I guess it's there somewhere on Etherscan or something.. But one great thing about this is that even if crypto kitties or steem monsters or whatever game decideds to start sucking, someone else can always build another game and you can reuse those digital assets in another game. So digital assets can fly between games if we want them to and be reused.

Now however we are seeing a new generation of games. Some more ambitious than others. @parsec-frontiers is going to be a huge mmorpg 3d universe with blockchain assets built on NEO. This game is what we all is hoping for will happen, and the team is more than legit. If they are able to launch it late 2018 or early 2019 it will definitely be way ahead of it's time in regards of blockchain gaming.

Other games that are 2.0 games is @steemmonsters and @decentraland, as well as Augmentorsgames (@databits) which is being built on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Balrum - a generic rpg. Imagine this being a mmorpg with crypto economics

Why Crypto Kitties Was Important

I'm making a little bit of fun of crypto kitties, but it's important to realize that what it showed us was that you can build anything on top of blockchains. We are seeing gambling sites @steempoker and cryptos such as @funfair. Keep in mind that we are so very very early when it comes to building things on top of blockchains.

If we look at www.dappradar.com you can see that there are (almost) literally no one using Dapps. Why? Because dapps suck? Yes. And because there were no Dapps only 6 months ago. If we compare it to the Internet we're in 1994 when we thought it was amazing to see a bad picture of a woman unfold in front of us..eventually..any time now..

Imagine where we will be in a years time. Especially when things become more streamlined and easy to use. The number one reason we are not seeing adoption is because it's so damn hard for many people.

As we have seen the rise and fall (not quite, some people are still playing crypto kitties) of Crypto Kitties, other games are emerging. Better games built on top of other blockchains that are more suited. Soon you'll be flying through space or hacking up goblins in wast MMORPG's built on top of blockchains with your VR glasses on. You will be able to find unique items that NO ONE in the entire world has which could make you thousands of dollars on the free market just because you explored an abandoned mine. Or perhaps you bought a parscel of land somewhere and opened up a mine, hired some n00bs to do some digging for you and now you are running a profitable gold mine. Just remember to hire some merceneries to protect you - and pay them well, so they don't steal the gold.

 

Blockgames is a blog run by a cryptogaming enthusiast and investor. I will explore games, follow development and I have a tight connection to many of the games I'm writing about. Follow @blockgames for info on games, development and investing opportunities. Disclaimer: This is not investing advice, and for 100% transparency I am personally invested in @steemmonsters, @parsec-frontiers, @decentraland and @databits