Blcochain Games: In game rewards or PAY for PLAY!

My apologies to my fellow gamers out there that it took three articles to get to this part, which some of you may view as the most exciting party of this new concept called Bockchain Games or in this case Bitcoin Games. But as citizens of a blockchain I wanted all who read this to get the little details which underlie this achievement, so that one it can be appreciated, in terms of the work and thought that brought us to this point in video game history.
Pause for effect: I personally believe it is a very historic point. And two I want to explain what's going on in manageable bites of information, so that my ultimate goal, wich is that you understand these concepts well enough to also understand how it can be done here and how it isn't limited to the this project.

So lI will address the topic of in-game cryptocurrency rewards. This game is a collaboration or partnership between Satoshi Game Studios and Blockstream. This partnership is very interesting because Satoshi Game Studio has already built eight games with in-game rewards. It is the mission statement of Satoshi Game Studios to change the economic order of video games by making it possible for gamers profit from the content they earn while playing and to create a new economy based on earning real money and items you can sell for more money. This is dependent on players earning a cryptocurrency reward in the game, which has value both in the game and outside the game. If we pause for a moment we realize this is playing a video game where you get paid a dollar for every opponent you defeat.

I call this Pay for Play!

How many hours a day would you play video games if you could make 25-30 dollars an hour doing so?
This goal of earning a cryptocurrency which has recognized value outside the video game is an important one, which means you can't pay people in game rewards with a cryptocurrency no one has ever heard about or one that is worth 2 cents or worse a fraction of a cent. What you need for this first, ground breaking, history making game is a recognized gold standard of value in the cryptocurrency-blockchain world. The obvious choice is Bitcoin!

After all this choice would dictate partially the success or failure of their mission. Sadly such failure would set back the whole idea of Pay to Play years, as no one wants to pick up a failed concept. No actually this has to succeed big to entice other game producing companies into this new and unfamiliar area. Right video game companies have a tried and tru method of making money. They are not going to change that formula unless someone shows them there is another way that is proven to be more profitable. So this choice of Bitcoin sounds great, after all who would want to play video games to win Bitcoin instead of any other in game currency that has no value outside of the game?

But this choice was not without it's problems. Bitcoin is expensive. BItcoin has miners and of course mining fees otherwise known as transaction fees. And as if the issue of cost and transaction fees were not a big enough problem there are also slow transaction fees. Take a moment to put yourself inside a first person shooter and you run over to loot an enemy soldier and it takes 9 minutes for you to retrieve the gun or special armor while opposing players are shooting at you. There would be a growing pile of dead players as we waited for the Bitcoin transaction to go through.

Satoshi Game Studios knew how to make video games and create the game mechanics to provide Bitcoin rewards, but they also need to make the amounts of Bitcoin small, so players could afford to play. They use the term micro-transactions of 500 Satoshis. Then they needs to solve the problem of transaction fees, because it cost more then 500 satoshi to send Bitcoin, so shootng someone and getting a reward of 500 SATS didn't make sense if you paid more then 500 SATS to collect the reward in-game, so they needed smaller or micro-transaction fees. And finally they needed the players to be able to collect their rewards and or loot fast. Remember from our last article that guns and armor are NFT tokens in this game, so they must be transferred from the wallet of one player to the next, and also the Bitcoin rewards must be transferred from one players Bitcoin wallet to the next players Bitcoin wallet and fast.

Your probably thinking thats to many problems to solve. But luckily for video gamers Bitcoin enthusiast and developers have been working on this problem for sometime and they have come up with a solution. The company Blockstream has a particular expertise in the creation of side chains. A side chain is a completely different blockchain which runs in tandem or parallel with a main chain. They were making the Bitcoin side chain called the Bitcoin Lightning Network. The BItcoin Lightning Network was created to solve the transaction speed issue of Bitcoin, it was also built to reduce the size of transaction fees or mining fees on the Bitcoin blockchain. So this new Bitcoin sidechain, the Bitcoin Lightning Network solved all the problems of micro-transactions, micro-transaction fees and slow transaction times.

The plus to all this is that Blockstream also specializes in non-fungible token creation and creating online in-game exchanges where you can sell the gear you win in game to other players. Finally as literally a gift from the heavens, Blockstream also produces wallets which can be used in game. Thus the game can run on the Bitcoin Lightening Network, players store their cryptocurrency on the in-game wallet while playing, players have a separate wallet for their in-game items like guns and gear. The side chain allows you to play with micro-transaction size, micro-transaction fees and rapid transaction speed. Everything occurs in game on tis side chain, one in game wallets, then all of the BItcoin transactions on the side chain are uploaded and rerecorded on the main Bitcoin blockchain. It is a novel solution to a novel problem.

The BItcoin Lightening Network is according to Blockstream capable of more transactions per second then Visa Credit Card processors, which are known to be the fastest transaction processors on the planet. And this amazing innovation is being used for a video game because..of the money involved.

I will stop here and answer your questions the best I can in the comments section. I hope your enjoyed this post. Please upvote, share and leave a comment.

@shortsegments