Create a game that accepts Bitcoin for currency

[waltermot321]

I have a game which would be ideal for bitcoin as the currency:

http://2dspacemmo.wildbunny.co.uk/

(you mine asteroids for in-game currency, which you then use to buy upgrades)

Only trouble is, development is currently halted due to lack of funding.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2t2H-aefDQ

This rocks, if you can earn a little free Bitcoin (can be as low as 0.0001) while playing would be really great.

[monsterer]

This rocks, if you can earn a little free Bitcoin (can be as low as 0.0001) while playing would be really great.

Thanks

I did look into that idea a while back, but the reality is that the difficulty level means that its impossible to mine bitcoins on consumer hardware, let alone inside the flash player.

But like I say, development is halted right now anyway, due to lack of funding.

[globalvillage]

Yep, unfortunately this is the most common problem with individual developers...

If our BTC community was less competing and more cooperating, everyone would gain...

[Mushroomized]

Yep, unfortunately this is the most common problem with individual developers...

If our BTC community was less competing and more cooperating, everyone would gain...

the idea of a game that uses bitcoin as a currency is just objectively bad.

[Mitchell]

Yep, unfortunately this is the most common problem with individual developers...

If our BTC community was less competing and more cooperating, everyone would gain...

the idea of a game that uses bitcoin as a currency is just objectively bad.

Why do you think that?

[Mushroomized]

Yep, unfortunately this is the most common problem with individual developers...

If our BTC community was less competing and more cooperating, everyone would gain...

the idea of a game that uses bitcoin as a currency is just objectively bad.

Why do you think that?

it breaks down to the mechanics of the game

In most games you have to do some form of work to get currency in return, so if you just cut out that part you are basically just paying for the reward part. Like buying the best sword in the game so you can beat everything with little work.

There are whole teams of people that work on mmo's to make sure that there isnt a way to exploit the money system to get ingame money without doing any of these things(I worked on an off on a project with a friend of mine, and it the end it wasnt worth it to keep making a game that used btc as currency). So an MMO powered by bitcoins would probably be a TON of work.

I guess I am pretty much against games that use any form of real currency other than to purchase them to begin with. Games like dragons tail, the casino mmo thing dont have this problem since all the games are ABOUT money. its fun to blow all your money in that game, and its pretty community based. I suppose a game like EVE online might be able to make it work, or second life as those games both are completely driven by the community.

Just making a game and throwing in bitcoin isn't going to work that well, and a game would have to be built around all the things that could happen, price changes and all.

not that i want to be discouraging, i just think more effort should be focused on game portals like gog or steam, and developers themselves to accept bitcoin.

a friend of mine did a write up of his games sales, including bitcoin donations on his blog - https://seagaia.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/anodyne-pirate-bay-promo-post-mortem/

[snailbrain]

if you can buy items with real money (inc btc) it's unfair.. that is the basics of it.. appearance items are ok, but not a Sword of a Thousand Truths which one shots people and only rich people can afford.

this is why every MMORPG bans people selling virtual currencies.. (almost all.. some like project entropia use real money)
I believe wow tried it.. but cancelled

if the game is a competition (maybe with different tiers - for rich and poor) then it is probably ok to use real money (but not to buy overpowered items).. e.g. Poker, Deathmatch, or something similar
Items which help you level up faster are probably not so bad

saying all this.. maybe in Chronokings you can buy "health potions" with the in game currency, and maybe the in game currency will be on exchanges..  ... the cost of the potions in "CHR" will go to the miners..

[Mushroomized]

See, chrono kings doesnt suffer from this problem, the entertainment value comes from how unique it is and you know that its going to be using the money beforehand.

[snailbrain]

I have a game which would be ideal for bitcoin as the currency:

http://2dspacemmo.wildbunny.co.uk/

(you mine asteroids for in-game currency, which you then use to buy upgrades)

Only trouble is, development is currently halted due to lack of funding.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2t2H-aefDQ

looks awesome

not sure how you can use bitcoin as a currency though (safely and fairly)

all that anyone needs to do if they want to use bitcoin, is have an exchange or www.ige.com website which trades btc for the in game currency.. but how does anyone know if the devs haven't just created some in game currency out of thin air.. this is the main problem i think

If you mined asteroids for bitcoins, the bitcoins will need to come from players (as the devs aren't going to give free bitcoins).. but then the devs know where they all are and maybe they will steal them without anyone knowing? something like that

if it is a game in which everyone pays 1btc, which then goes into a pot.. and the winner(s) get it.. it might be possible? (not sure how that would work in an mmo though)

[arsenische]

It really looks awesome. Players could buy upgrades to their spaceships with bitcoins. Part of the money would go into asteroids. So free players could mine them and buy stuff too. There could be restrictions on the upgrades that depend on experience gained by players, not on money. And only players with comparable strength should see each other. Thus the only advantage of depositing money is saving a lot of time (and thus getting a slightly better game experience). It seems to be fair since time is money.

[monsterer]

It really looks awesome. Players could buy upgrades to their spaceships with bitcoins. Part of the money would go into asteroids.

That would probably work, actually. As long as at least some people did purchase with their bitcoins and not everybody mines

[Ente]

it breaks down to the mechanics of the game [..]
I guess I am pretty much against games that use any form of real currency [..]

I agree. Introducing real currencies makes everything different, hell of a lot more complicated, but opens op a whole new world of possibilities too.
Many years ago I read Neal Stephenson's REAMDE, where just this is described, a MMORPG with real currency, and free and easy connection to real-world money. Yes, it's just a novel (a good one), but I think he was up to something there.

Also:

if you can buy items with real money (inc btc) it's unfair.. that is the basics of it.. appearance items are ok, but not a Sword of a Thousand Truths which one shots people and only rich people can afford. [..]

That's a problem. So, lets turn this into an opportunity! Like, you may easily (and expensively) buy the "Sword of a Thousand Truths". It costs the awesome amound of 500 gold. To wield it, you have to have an additional 500 gold with you. When wielding it, a huge red arrow points into your direction. Alternatively a huge dollarsign. Or other players can enable, or buy "gold-goggles" for the same effect.
Now when the sword-wielding guy finally is taken down, he drops his gold to be lootet.
What happens? He will kill many many people. Until gangs form and hunt down high-profile players. Goldmules.
This redistributes gold, makes playing possible with no initial bitcoins, makes the game very attractive for, hell, everyone!
And, by "losing" a few percent of the gold each kill/drop/loot you could even finance the whole game eventually.

Oh, use gold and bitcoins, with a slightly floating exchangerate, maybe slightly inflating. Of course the whole new can of worms with the bitcoin exchangerate opens up here.. So, maybe, gold is pegged to USD, with a slight floating and/or inflating exchangerate. Your bitcoins are "just" a method of getting gold in and out of the game, bitpay-style.

By now, after two years this thread is open, I think it's not about Bitcoin in itself or the killeridea how to put Bitcoin into a game. It will all explode once a game with large esthablished playerbase uses Bitcoin (first).
For a newcomer to go viral, it has to measure itself on the big productions, and have Bitcoin as an additional, new, viral component.

Ente

[monsterer]

To answer the general point about in-game purchases with real money being bad:

I think as long as you don't sell power, you can make it work. Sell time saving and convenience, but never give an unfair advantage.

[globalvillage]

Sell time saving and convenience, but never give an unfair advantage.

love it!

[markm]

Maybe there is a way to bridge the gap between people who like to just play a game for a short span of time on lunchbreaks or whatever and hardcore people who either live in their mom's basement playing games full-time or make full use of their game-client's scripting ability to equip their characters with scripts sophisticated enough to keep them doing productive stuff 24/7 or as close to 24/7 as possible.

So far we have mostly been looking at catering to the people who miss "CPU mining", by setting up something that CPUs should be good at but botnets and GPUs and FPGAs and ASICs not particularly good at.

That is the stuff I wrote about at http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=cpu_mining

However I think maybe players who are not willing to leave characters running 24/7 but instead will log in do something and log out again might actually be able to compete, at least if they are willing to prey upon the 24/7 folk.

The problem of player versus player combat enters in at that point though, since presumably if you want to log in, raid some productive bunch of characters who have been slaving away 24/7 piling up resources, and log out again you will likely prefer that all your potential victims are all forced to be in a mode that allows player versus player combat, so thay you can charge in and slaughter them all for experience as well as loot the stuff they have been working on.

So maybe there will still be a tension here between the preferences of the 24/7 worker/crafter types who probably would prefer players cannot attack other players, and the lunchbreak raid types who, I am guessing here, might really want to be able to attack any and all other players they choose to?

What do you think?

The default mode of CoffeeMUD is that player versus player is optional. Both players have to opt in to it, and both can opt back out at any time.

The configuration system though can be set up to make the player versus player decision irreversible, so that once a character turns it on they can never turn it off.

Also what levels of character are allowed to PvP what other levels can also be configured, the default is four levels up and down.

Most likely we need feedback from people actually interested in using such settings in order to determine which ones would be worth setting up servers for, so I am interested in what kinds of PvP settings people actually want.

Note however though that there remains another way to "prey upon" 24/7 workers, and that is simply to be upper class or ruling class, basically fork out the coins it takes to set yourself up at a large scale where all the puny little labourers' pathetic little piles of produce need to all be put together into huge wagon-trains or starship-loads of goods before your character deigns to notice them, so basically you log in, see if anyone has a million of anything ready to sell, or fifty thousand tons of something so you can put it into a Freeciv-scale "freight" or "caravan" unit to ship off somewhere, do some wheeler-dealing on that kind of scale and log out again...

-MarkM-

[LiteCoinGuy]

This guy is making a Starcraft II tournament system for BTC. Pretty awesome. It's in beta testing now, so if you play that game go support him!

http://sc2btcopen.appspot.com/

ill exspect that to see for alot of games. its a great way for bitcoin!

[leannemckim46]

Would be cool to see games like Diablo 3 have BTCAH instead.

[RapidBalls]

haven't read the whole thread but have you seen this:

http://www.leetcoin.com/

LeetCoin allows you to compete in your favorite first-person shooters for bitcoins.
BTC is transferred from the losers to the winners instantly.

[Elwar]

I have created a Bitcoin Pool for anyone who wants to see something like this developed.

Signing up is easy, you only need 10 mBTC to join the discussion (the 10 mBTC stays in your wallet).

http://www.bitpools.com/?Video%20Game

With enough interest we can get something working. Let's do this.


BitPools is made for gathering funding among people interested in the same project so that someone with a solution is willing to put something together for the group.

Here's an example of how it would work for developing a video game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETCP8NeXasY

[foodies123]

http://www.exhumedrace.com/