Most people that have used Steemit.com will have come across a game of sorts during their time on the platform; whether it’s guessing the lottery numbers to be drawn, guessing the missing words, guessing the celebrity from a picture, getting votes from @randowhale, steem-pocalypse survival, Dungeon and Steem or Steemitquest.
We have some incredibly smart, creative and talented people in the community that feel strongly about the benefits that simple games on Steemit.com bring to the community.
@Papa-pepper is a huge advocate for community interaction and fun. I believe that contests are a great way for us to be able enjoy our time together, interact, and try to win some STEEM or SBD.
@papa-pepper
The problem is that as people become more imaginative, creative and ambitious we’re hitting a “scalability wall” that is limiting their potential.
There’s a lot of interest in this new breed of story-based, role playing games, but since the people running these are only human it becomes time consuming to track all of the different options for the players, ensure that they are responding in time and tend to the administration of keeping the game going and the story progressing.
This is without even adding the sort of complexity that we have grown used to in computer games such as inventories containing large numbers of items, combining and interacting with items, stores, non-linear stories, non-player characters (NPCs) and moving images.
we’re hitting a “scalability wall” that is limiting their potential
@avarice
Here are some reasons why I think that creating a game as a post in steemit.com has merit.
The community
With users having captive audiences of 100 – 1000+ people following their blogs and 100,000s of active users on steemit.com it’s possible to reach more people than they would easily be able to if they created the same idea on a website or tried to launch is as a mobile app etc.
On the whole, I’ve found the community on steemit.com to be incredibly kind, generous and an encouraging one; I believe that this is in part because of the mechanics of the community – the inbuilt reputation system and the financial incentive to care about your interactions on the platform.
What more could you ask for?
Blockchain technology
Because of the Blockchain technology, Graphene, that steemit.com is based on, there are a number of other qualities that are baked-in to steemit.com that make it a great springboard for ideas:
Decentralised, open database
there’s an opportunity to use code to reduce the burden on the people that want run games through steemit.com
@avarice
The fact that all of the posts, interactions, comments, votes and payments are constantly being recorded in what can be thought of as a database; which has no permissions and anyone can access programmatically means that there’s an opportunity to use code to reduce the burden on the people that want run games through steemit.com.
Imagine a bot responding within seconds of your comment, to tell you that you correctly guessed the identity of the celebrity.
Imagine a bot acting as an NPC or shop in a game; quickly responding to your questions or requests.
This isn’t far off and it doesn’t have to be hard to integrate into your game.
Immutability and proof
Blockchains in their very nature are designed to be immutable – once something has been stored in a blockchain it cannot be deleted; it can only be built upon to be amend it.
This immutability allows us to prove at a later date that the rules have not been changed; that outcomes were predetermined.
Encrypted documents could be stored on the steemit.com blockchain and the secret (key) handed out after the game has finished to prove that game played out exactly as originally intended and that there was no bias or unfairness. This could also be solved by including ‘Fair Hashes’ to the same document - as I have previously used in one of my games
Free and quick transfer of value
It’s great to be able to incentivise people to play your game and to reward those that do; quickly and for free.
By using steeemit.com you get a mechanism to do just this swiftly and easily for free.
As demonstrated by @randowhale, code can automatically be triggered by sending a payment to a user on steemit.com.
Best of all, you get the added benefit that you can prove that the payments were made.
Wouldn’t it be amazing to be able to buy in-game items from a shop and see them in an inventory seconds later?
What about if you could trade those in-game items with other players; peer-to-peer without any middle-man?
This isn’t far off and it doesn’t have to be hard to integrate into your game.
More Interactive gaming
The future of gaming on steemit.com will involve ... moving images
@avarice
It’s possible to update the contents of a post after it has been initially posted to Steemit.com and this opens up the door to some interesting possibilities.
One of these such possibilities, that I am excited about, is updating the image on a post. This opens up the ability to simulate existing turn-based games in a visual way – characters can be moved around a map, items can be placed on or moved around a board etc. It’s like a screen with a refresh rate of around 1 frame per 3 seconds – it’s a step back in time/technology, but it is suited to collaborative, community-based games and this is why I think that the future of gaming on steemit.com will involve, programmatically updated, moving images.
Unique ideas
These are my main two ideas at the moment, but new ones come and go regularly =)
- A “treasure hunt” type game where people try and find the treasure by guessing which square on the map the treasure is buried. This can be extended to include buying items that could help detect a region on the map where some treasure is located or buying clues etc.
- A “Guess Who” type game where characters are flipped down on the page as guesses are made until the correct person is selected. This could be extended to include wagers on whether you can correctly guess the person within a specified number of guesses etc.
Frameworks
Not everyone here is a developer and to lower the barrier to entry we need to create and provide the building blocks for running more sophisticated games on top of steemit.com.
I’m aware that @whatageek is looking to build a gaming community , @swolesome is interested in these sorts of progressive ideas, as is @decimus.
I’m really interested in hearing people’s thoughts on this and working with anyone that is willing to help create a more interactive gaming framework on steemit.com
Recent posts
first image, original source, modified by @avarice : CC0
second image, original source, modified by @avarice : CC0
Some very interesting ideas. I am not sure if steemit.com itself is the best platform for games on Steem, I think that we wild have far more flexibility and potential with a new platform for games, that will still use the Steem blockchain.
I would be happy to help in any way I can!
@thriveordie will be a standalone game, because I can't embed certain HTML or iframes into steemit posts. Plus, the way post disappear so quick, I'm not sure I'd want an "interactive" game in post form.
My game will likely create a token of sorts that can be bought and sold in game. If you earn some tokens in game, you can trade then for Steem! If you want to get a jump-start, you'll be able to buy tokens to trade for items or perks.
Sounds good. I definitely see your concerns about the the limitations of what can be achieved in a post and the discoverablity issues with posts.
Do you need any help with creating your vision for your new game?
I might indeed. I'll be crowdsourcing a large part of it through steemgigs and contests, but I may also be looking for regular contributors or even team members
This is amazing. Please work on this :)
Thanks @cedricdurand - it's something that I'm passionate about; when I find some free time I'll make as much progress as I can =)
A very good post that summarizes Steemit well.
Thank you for this work that will help many new members.
I'm glad to hear that enjoyed the post and found some of it useful @izbing.
Being on the platform for a while, it's easy to take for granted the wealth of knowledge that I've built up about how it works that some newer users might not know about yet. It's good to be reminded of that =)
Good news, thanks for let us informed about Interactive gaming on steemit.
Wish you a great friday
Thanks @lordoftruth. Hope you have a good Friday too
An interesting, in-depth article. I've just started dipping my toes into the gamification that Steemit has to offer. I'm only new and I haven't received my first payout yet, but I'm going to give @randowhale a try for starters.
I've mostly been participating in the photography categories so far, an area that's ripe for gamification. I can see you've already done that with your "Guess The Station" posts. I think there are loads of variations on that, and they don't require much technical know how to accomplish.
Keep up the good work!
I'm glad that you enjoyed the article. Thanks for your kind words.
If you get the time, enter my What3Words contest - 75 SBD giveaway as well; it's a good way to easily get some SBD =)
Love the treasure hunt idea!
Same, it's definitely something that I would play ^_^
I've made a start on a basic version of it, but I haven't had a lot of time to properly focus on it getting out a first version of it yet.
I look forward to playing it:)
Thanks for the post. It was just what I was searching for. I develop html5/javascript games for music education. Being a newbie here I am not sure how much help I could be but want to learn of all the possibilities steemit has to offer for developers. If anyone could point me to documentation, API's and such I would be in your debt.
Cheers,
gw