Bitcoin Forum

Hails all,

So, now that it's the end of 2013 and near the beginning of 2014, I'm looking for how the technology and community surrounding bitcoin is beginning to intersect video games. From 2013, there have been quite a few mass media stories that I've followed and I'm looking for the input from people here about what you think.

* Bigpoint Games (browser-based MMO publisher) accepts BTC for virtual items;
* PC Game Supply started accepting BTC;
* BitFantasy MMO uses BTC as internal currency;
* Gaming company fined $1 million for using anti-cheating software to mine BTC.

I've also heard of a Minecraft server that pays out BTC for block modification, but I'm looking for anything else that might show where Bitcoin and gaming could intersect either from 2013 or into the future.

I am also looking at Craftcoin.net -- Minecraft again -- even though it's not Bitcoin, it's a cryptocurrency that does provide an interesting proof-of-concept for linking economies across games.

This game is very fun, I played it a lot in Beta.

https://www.bitfantasy.com/

It is an RPG that lets you buy items from the stores using bitcoins. You can also sell things to other players in bitcoins. Or you can just play the game without using bitcoins.

Id like to see it as an official currency. Maybe we could find a few MMO developers and mount a kickstarter.

Seems Bitcoin could be very useful to gaming related companies. As most gamers would be interested in Bitcoin because of the way Bitcoin works. I would expect to see a lot more gaming companies popping up which accept Bitcoin.

game??  I'm GG... :-X

It seems pretty likely to me that it's not a matter of if but a matter of when. Microtransactions is huge business for the gaming industry and bitcoin is great for microtransactions. 

Looking forward to seeing it happen! What great free "marketing" for bitcoin as well.

I've been thinking that Bitcoin would be a great currency for OpenLifeGrid OpenSim.. It might even become the glue that holds disparate worlds together. But I guess I'm tilting at windmills.

I'm curious, what is OpenLifeGrid? (The name reminds me suddenly of AR games similar to Ingress, which I think a Bitcoin-like currency would be brilliant for combining economies.)

I believe that if Bigpoint Games can show a sort of proof-of-concept using BTC for in-game microtransactions (where often virtual items can cost as little as 10c) could prove to be the vanguard for gaming companies who do social MMOs to use BTC. The thing would be, of course, advertising that and getting the Bitcoin+gamer community to pile on and use it.

Do you reckon we could make a game as a community project? A bitcoin based game that is?

Instead of "Proof of Work" (POW) or "Proof of Stake" (POS) you could devise a cryptocurrency which relies on "Proof of Ability to Play Games Really Well" or alternatively Proof of Excellence (POE). POE has been proposed before. See here - www.peercointalk.org/index.php?topic=1655.0 (http://www.peercointalk.org/index.php?topic=1655.0)

So gamers would get monetary rewards for the quality of their play or style of play. This could create competitions/contests where there is no cash reward for the winner of the tournament - there is simply continuous monetary reward during the tournament for the most stylish players.

^ Proof of Skill?

Oops - too many virtual worlds. I meant OpenSim.

OpenSim is a crowdsourced spin of Linden Lab's Second Life. there is some extra glue that allows anyone to run a server with their own region sims. The glue allows one to cross metaverse domains from one disjoint server to another, with not much more notice than crossing a sim boundary in SL. You get to carry your persona and inventory from one world to the next, across what they term the 'Hypergrid', despite each sim being implemented on disjoint federated servers around the physical globe.

OpenLifeGrid is a somewhat less-exciting SL clone.

I keep hoping to see sandbox games like EVE translate their in game currencies to real cryptocurrencies.

Imagine if the ISK was turned into a real coin, tied to the real world. Game economies would become just as real as any other, with real stock trading and the like.

An EVE corp would be a real crypto-business, selling whatever virtual goods or services for real coins to be traded for real world things. So in this world, you could actually be an EVE pirate and make a real world living from it selling your plunder for ISK, and trading ISK for other coins like Bitcoin or other goods and services that accept ISK in payment. Not to say you should do that for your own health and for that of humanity (solve real problems!), but that is a possibility. It could not be more perfect for that and creates a real economy connected to the real world opposed to a fake one typically found in games. Right now there are several pass-through sites in trading BTC for ISK or PLEX, but violates CCPs agreement in doing so.

This would give incentive to play, getting paid to play essentially, that can be converted into more game content and much more.

Selling virtual goods and in-game money has already been around quite a while, but this would take that to an entirely new level. I bet we will see new games like that in the future.

Speaking of Bitcoin and gaming , I thought this article was approiate for this thread.  Coming to iOS and Android soon!

http://www.coindesk.com/coinding-bitcoin-game-poker/

No need to imagine too much, there's a game called Entropia that has in game currency PED pegged to $ at 10:1.  Its probably not as sophisticated a game as EVE, but it shows some of the basic problems, in particular a balancing nightmare.  I do think there is a lot of mileage to the idea in principle, using a crytpocoin in game, solving the problem of duping that limits scope of game economies imo.

I would like to see a blockchain-based MMO.

Moves would be slow but it would be a starting point. Just something very simple. You would make a transaction to move (very small amounts) thus paying a fee which would be reaped by the miners as usual.

The fact that the blockchain is reliable in my mind removes the age-old problem of not being able to trust the client.

I would be interested in contributing to something like this.

I am trading Craftcoins on cryptsy.com, but they haven't got me any profit, just some small losses. With more companies accepting Bitcoin, it's only a matter of time before the rates go through the roof again  ;)

Steam platform could benefit from BTC. Right now you can only buy there if you have a credit card (which a lot of people don't use, most people I know have only debit which are not accepted there) or paypal.

A game like EVE would make for an interesting experiment using cryptocurrencies. Especially because EVE has a cultural mechanism that extends gameplay through and outside the game (primarily through the "corporate" culture and rampant subterfuge and backstabbing.) The economy being entirely player driven and even exchangeable for play time (via PLEX) ties it to external economies as well and makes it possible to make comments about the $ cost of a ship.

I know we've seen MMOs appear that tied their currency to real world money such as Entropia Universe and even Second Life (to an extent with Lindens.)

I expect, however, that cryptocurrencies will be more likely used as a medium of exchange for microtransaction currencies (or premium currencies) such as ZEN for Perfect World Entertainment games. Many of these MMO gaming companies want to lock money given to them into their own universe and not let it out.

Although I think that alternative auction houses using Bitcoin (or some cryptocurrency) could actually bolster an in game economy for an MMO--hacks and exploits aside. Even with the apparent critical failure of Diablo III's Real Money Auction House.

I am curious to know more about the current adoption of Craftcoin and the number of servers that implement that software.

Does anyone have any numbers or insights? I've spoken with the developers briefly, but it's the weekend and I don't want to hassle them too much until I get better bearings on its use and vision.

I'm a game developer, and we thought at one point of using Bitcoin as the in-game currency of a space-civ type game. The main problem we ran into is security. We can't expect our players to all keep their own wallets and run a Bitcoin node. They could if they wanted to, but for the average player we'd have to generate a wallet for them and keep it on our servers. This means that in addition to a game, we basically also need to make and support an online wallet. Most importantly, keeping it secure, which is way outside our realm of expertise.

We figured we'd be the target for theft and it just doesn't make sense to take on that much responsibility.

So, you wont be taking credit cards or other payments?  Otherwise, this conclusion is kinda scary.  That aside did you consider an alt, either one of the others out there or your own?  And if not, why not?

There is an industry and regulations around credit cards.  The game company has a known exposure and cost model.  They don't have that with bitcoin.  I don't blame them for pushing it off for 'in game' purposes.  They could still use bitcoins to buy game time.   That would be no different than any other CC transaction from their perspective.  They'd only need to maintain a 'company wallet' for the transaction.

Yeah, exactly what Occham said.

It's actually even simpler than that. If we make the in-game currency some arbitrary thing (like gold in other MMOs, we went with Credits for the sci-fi theme), then we can easily have you buy a pack on Steam. We don't ever even see your credit card. No need to ever charge our customers directly.

Our thought was to take it up a notch and use Bitcoin as the actual in-game currency. But that would be akin to associating a credit-card with each account, and having the in-game currency be the balance on that credit card. Then our in-game currency is essentially the USD, Euro, or whatever the player is using. This would be a nightmare. Just the exchange from one fiat to another would be huge. Bitcoin theoretically solves all those problems, which is why we considered it. Plus it's just cool as shit to do something like that.

But securing everyone's wallets is just not something we can handle.

It seems cool, I will install it and I will give it a try. Thanks

Ah, i see, because i was worried you'd be taking CC details form customers and thinking securing them wouldn't be important.   :o :D

I reckon you should still do an in-game crypto coin, just pick one of the others.  Risk of attack can be mitigated by accessing the wallets only in game, shirley?

I've written a money module for this. But I'm not getting a lot of nibbles from grid owners, and when the exchange rate goes up like it has default transaction fees get a bit on the high side.

Right now a lot of grids use OMC, which is quite a nice solution, and you can buy OMC with bitcoins. But it's obviously dangerous having all your money with one vendor, and a small tech company at that. I'm thinking if and when OMC falls over that might be a good time to make a push for bitcoin or some alt-coin as the currency for the metaverse.

Thanks for the word. I was unaware of OMC. While VirWoX is a little coy on the matter, it looks as if they are the 'central bank' behind OMC?

It's a bit too late now. This project is already under way.

But the problem in theory still remains. It's that we'd have to keep their private keys somewhere, and it's then it's our responsibility to secure them. Either we keep the keys on our servers, but then our servers become a target. Or we keep them on the client, but then those files become the target for trojans and whatnot.

Yup. There seems to be some connection with Graz University - it seems like it's formally administered by VirWox, but in practice somebody there is doing the legwork.

I have sold World Of Warcraft accounts and gold for BTC!

Very lucrative connection between gaming world and the BTC world, the correlation between an in game currency within a MMORPG game and the values of the currency compared to Bitcoin are amazing, almost creates me to think that some of the people whom created Bitcoin could have potentially worked for a gaming company and saw that they can actually create a value for a "commodity" such as World Of Warcraft Gold and so forth!  Vires in Numeris!