Do you ever see the HIVE blockchain improving its speed to allow more robust on chain games?

in Reveriolast year

So there appear to be a lot of trading card style games on Hive. Will the blocks ever be fast enough to allow for an on chain FPS, ARPG, or MMORPG type of game. While the web3 gaming space grows I feel it is these types of games that will dominate the landscape. And what I have heard through the grapevine the block processing isnt currently fast enough to support those type of games. This of a Diablo or Fortnite type game on Hive and how it would blow up the user base on this blockchain. I do love hive and all its current utility I am just looking to the future and this was one of my questions.

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I think that game developers just need to moderate how much their game writes to the blockchain. HIVE excels at storing JSON data, but since the storage and data replication is decentralized, you wouldn't want to write a game that records every step that a player makes to the blockchain; that wouldn't scale well. I think a performant FPS or RPG could do well on HIVE, as long as most of the processing is done on the client's computer or centralized servers, and it is judicious in writing only necessary data periodically to the blockchain.

So maybe it only writes weapon drops or gear to the blockchain?

Yeah and maybe save points for players. I’m not a game developer, but I am a software engineer, and that seems like the way!

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I'm not a coder, so this answer is just the opinion of a lay-person !

My understanding is that a blockchain's speed is limited by it's initial design plus the current transaction load it is processing. Because most blockchains have a lot of junk in the trunk in terms of carrying around all their historical data (the whole point of an immutable blockchain), the speed is usually okay for normal transactions.

Hive is actually really, really fast with transactions seeming to take a second or two most of the time. This is good compared to (say) Bitcoin or Ethereum, where you can wait for up to 30 minutes for a transaction to complete. 

But live-action games with graphics, sound, in-game chat etc take an insane amount of processing power by comparison, and it needs to be perceived as real-time by the players. This is well beyond what any blockchain I've heard of could handle.

However, never fear, I am sure there are solutions ! I think the solution could be in a well designed second layer blockchain, or possibly just having traditional type servers to run the game. The key would be distinguishing in game actions (which don't need to be added to the blockchain) from those that count as transactions (which do) - thus, having a conversation isn't uploaded, but picking up loot drops or swapping kit with another player does. The servers or second layer blockchain could upload these to the main blockchain at a leisurely rate.

The only question then is how the game design and main servers or layer two blockchain are funded. Game design is hugely expensive nowadays - forget the amounts you see on Kickstarter, they are just for initial seed funding, a good game can cost more to develop than a Hollywood blockbuster. With the addition of NFT items, you could talking about the cost of creating a whole metaverse. Expensive, but exciting and with huge potential if it works !