Create a game that accepts Bitcoin for currency

[markm]

The Second Life project sounds interesting, I hope I'll be able to get a client working to see it when it is running.

Meanwhile the MUDgaard.i2p was re-arranged slightly so it is actually now a web destination with a MUD client (the play now link) that can run up to ten clients for you over your web browser.

-MarkM-

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[deus-ex-machina]

Not sure if I should start a new thread or post this here:

I have the basics of the game down. I'll start working on the teaser site when I can. I currently will not disclose the name of either the site or the game. The game because an avatar could steal it and claim they are me. The site because it doesn't exist yet.

I have about 300L$ to my name right now, but that's plenty for now. I'm also a premium user, so I get a stipend every week and have my own land to test my objects. This will help fund my project while giving me space to work.

I'm mainly trying to design it to work without a server, so if I screw up royally, the players don't suffer and can continue playing. I currently would need to sell the Bitcoins myself, but that shouldn't be a problem at first, since there wouldn't be enough players at first to make it a problem.

The game is meant both as an RP game and as a way to get Bitcoins. Both purposes depend on the other.

I am also working on how to make the game able to be updated without a server. I'm thinking everything will be based on items and the skills would be stored in bound items.

Finally, I need to make the ToS sound less like I'm being an ass. Otherwise nobody will agree to it.

I have a brother who will be helping. His avatar is Khalhys Ahren. His job is thinking of the game from the player's perspective so it is actually fun.

[Awalt541]

This would be pretty easy to make it take and payout bitcoins I think: http://www.cevo.com/ although you don't win money on that site the same principle applies. Pay to enter an event/tourny and at the end you get payed out. Not sure if you could make it automated like the cevo client which finds the match and guarantees (to some degree) that you can not cheat. I would definitely like to see something like this take off, if I had the skills to do such a thing I would.

[markm]

It turns out that the CoffeeMUD engine supports having your own unique tailor-made currencies for each "area" of the MUD, so despite the high likelihood that like most other games it will turn out people who use bitcoins have no actual interest in actually playing, every area in MUDgaard.i2p has been set to use millbitcoins as the base currency with bitcents as ten millis each and bitcoins as one thousand millis each.

If as past tests have indicated bitcoin is not actually a good choice for use in games due to the lack of interest on the part of the kinds of people who actually like and use bitcoins, it will be simple to chance over to whatever currency's users are in fact actually into games. Tests so far indicate that might end being devcoin or groupcoin, although britcoin and canadian digital notes are also still contenders.

As I mentioned earlier, MUDgaard.i2p is now a web-type destination, you can visit it directly with your i2p-enabled browser, the play now link provides a web based client that offers up to ten tabs of clients all on the one play now page.

Note that this means the banks, loan sharks, monsters, shops, everything all is denominated in millbitcoins, bitcents and bitcoins. Check out the loot and prices and see if you think we should increase or decrease the scale (such as to use satoshis or nanobits or whole bitcoins or whatever as the base unit).

-MarkM-

[Ente]

http://www.geekwire.com/2012/bitcoin-startup-coinlab-lands-funding-tim-draper-monetize-games/

CoinLab, a Seattle startup working on projects involving the Bitcoin digital currency, has raised $500,000 in seed funding
[..]
The startup [..] is starting with a plan to use the Bitcoin system to help video-game companies make money from people who play free games, without requiring game companies to deal in Bitcoin directly.

Wow, things are starting to move! :-)

Ente

[Nyhm]

http://www.geekwire.com/2012/bitcoin-startup-coinlab-lands-funding-tim-draper-monetize-games/

CoinLab, a Seattle startup working on projects involving the Bitcoin digital currency, has raised $500,000 in seed funding
[..]
The startup [..] is starting with a plan to use the Bitcoin system to help video-game companies make money from people who play free games, without requiring game companies to deal in Bitcoin directly.

Wow, things are starting to move! :-)

Ente

That's an interesting article. Just to clarify, they are not incorporating bitcoin into games (as currency or otherwise). This is, in fact, a cornerstone of why they think their plan will work - neither gamers nor game developers need to actually care about Bitcoin, as such. From my understanding of the article, CoinLab is running a Bitcoin mining operation, and they distribute their own mining software. The clever bit is that gamers run the mining software so they can get game credit/items/etc for certain games.

CoinLab is effectively supplanting paying USD$ for freemium bonuses with Bitcoin mining. The gamers get premium perks, CoinLab gets the mined Bitcoin, and the game developers who integrate with the whole scheme get some kind of cut (?). If anyone can clarify these details, more specifics are welcome. The CoinLab site is currently asking for beta involvement, but there is little information otherwise.

[markm]

Yet another experiment has shot down the idea of using bitcoins in games. Not ONE, not a single ONE player advocating bitcoins turned up. Even Ixcoin has ONE player promoting their use, but for bitcoins, NONE. It was thought unfair to switch the currency to bitcoins rather than to some other currency that at least one player actually advocated. Point taken, so until we do some kind of formal battle of the coins wherein the players advocatign each coin can fight out among them to establish dominance of a particular blockchain we will just use normal default game-currencies as the actual main in-game currency.

-MarkM-

[Ente]

Not ONE, not a single ONE player advocating bitcoins turned up

What do you think is the reason for this?

1) Bitcoiners not players
2) Bitcoiners not interested in actually supporting bitcoin
3) Bitcoiners not going to work their way through i2p

For me its 3), by the way.

Ente

[markm]

Its not i2p, as most games were web based. I think its more they just want some giant existing game like WoW or EVE to suddenly start accepting bitcoins, they aren't interested in populating some startup game and themselves being the enthusiastic core population of players that convinces all the newcomers that bitcoins are a great idea; and they aren't really interested in games per se, just any existing large population of people.

Basically they want populations of people to convert out of the blue, not to create community etc using the coins convincing others that such use is a good idea.

Also though I think bitcoins are too much like "real money". People holding cryptocoins worth far far less per coin seem more willing to play games with those lower-value coins. Especially coins that basically have no use outside of games except maybe to get some pointlessly small pitance of fiat for them in some minor/obscure exchange that still deals in their obscure coin type.

I would expect though that i2p or Tor would be important for any core site where the initial core group of players/investors work on the core seeds that might eventually end up dealing with large sums of money. It might be okay to have a bunch of throwaway random passers-by games at the fringes that deal in small sums and expect to shut down at any moment, but I think wherever the central banking of the whole collection of games meets should plan to be on some kind of anonymising system otherwise the core wealth that makes all the peripheral outliers attractive (they could lead a player into the big leagues if they do well in them  type idea) could be at risk.

Remember ultimately we want to retain the option of going full blown three-dimensional immersive environment type of interfaces to these universes, that will take big money. The core people who get involved long before all that eye-candy is in place to attract the ignorant masses will likely be dealing in large values of virtual goods / resources / populations / etc by that time. (It has already been quite a few years the core players have been working toward this, already a surprising amount of value has been thrown around just getting it this far.)

-MarkM-

[drknow012]

i can design a website that get's server stats from real games like quake 3, soldier of fortune, counter strike. you could host private servers and hold matches that require a certain amount of coins to enter, and if your part of the winning team like ctf or tdm, the other team would forfeit their coins and the house can take a commission. it would be pretty simple to write, and i would love to put a team together and start working on it. any volunteers?

[SgtSpike]

Yet another experiment has shot down the idea of using bitcoins in games. Not ONE, not a single ONE player advocating bitcoins turned up. Even Ixcoin has ONE player promoting their use, but for bitcoins, NONE. It was thought unfair to switch the currency to bitcoins rather than to some other currency that at least one player actually advocated. Point taken, so until we do some kind of formal battle of the coins wherein the players advocatign each coin can fight out among them to establish dominance of a particular blockchain we will just use normal default game-currencies as the actual main in-game currency.

-MarkM-

I suppose there was a lack of advocacy to get Bitcoiners there in the first place.

You've been mentioning potential solutions all throughout the thread, but you never had a call to action.  You never said, "Hey, now is the time for everyone to join this game (URL)!"  Nothing about promoting Bitcoin's use in a particular game at a particular time/date.

So, try it again, but be more clear with what you want to accomplish.  What game are we supposed to advocate for Bitcoin in?  How do we go about accessing said game?  What's the best way to advocate for Bitcoin within the game?  What date and time should we do this?

Again, your posts have all come off as being "potential" ideas.  I don't think anyone understood that you were actually trying to gather Bitcoin players into a particular game.  And if that was the case, your posts are unclear enough that I still don't know which game you wanted to promote Bitcoins in.

[Xenland]

Yet another experiment has shot down the idea of using bitcoins in games. Not ONE, not a single ONE player advocating bitcoins turned up. Even Ixcoin has ONE player promoting their use, but for bitcoins, NONE. It was thought unfair to switch the currency to bitcoins rather than to some other currency that at least one player actually advocated. Point taken, so until we do some kind of formal battle of the coins wherein the players advocatign each coin can fight out among them to establish dominance of a particular blockchain we will just use normal default game-currencies as the actual main in-game currency.

-MarkM-

I suppose there was a lack of advocacy to get Bitcoiners there in the first place.

You've been mentioning potential solutions all throughout the thread, but you never had a call to action.  You never said, "Hey, now is the time for everyone to join this game (URL)!"  Nothing about promoting Bitcoin's use in a particular game at a particular time/date.

So, try it again, but be more clear with what you want to accomplish.  What game are we supposed to advocate for Bitcoin in?  How do we go about accessing said game?  What's the best way to advocate for Bitcoin within the game?  What date and time should we do this?

Again, your posts have all come off as being "potential" ideas.  I don't think anyone understood that you were actually trying to gather Bitcoin players into a particular game.  And if that was the case, your posts are unclear enough that I still don't know which game you wanted to promote Bitcoins in.

I was gonna write something similar to this -- I completely agree. I myself was completely unaware of what was happening to this thread. At one point I actually just assumed that alot of guys are chatting in secret and were going to release something by the 3rd page arising from this thread but then everyone start jumping in with throwing out possible engines to use so I scratched that assumption and now we are here still with no game or even what I half expected would be a storyline or some gameplay features.

I seriously suggest using some solution that is cross-browser & cross-operating system comparability or it will have some issues gaining any popularity in the Bitcoin world( and couldn't hurt you in the non-geeky world)

[markm]

Well don't worry about it a lot, anyone who was really gung-ho made it and there isn't much point flooding people in who aren't into it. Unfortunately it turns out that basically any game is mostly going to have idle people, as no matter what the game if initially trying it is free tons of people are "just looking" and never really "play" the thing. That is awkward for game economies if each new player brings some kind of resource into the world whether that resource is geographic like a village for them to rule or a planetary colony for them to exploit or even just a whole bunch of technology and supplies they get as initial equipment.

Also it turns out that most free-open-source multiplayer online games you can find code for are broken. It has taken a long time and a lot of testing to find just a few codebases that actually work. Actually with MUDs I guess plenty work, but most have ancient license heritage forbidding them from being associated with making money, even donations for bandwidth/server costs.

It is just as well that only the hardcore testing people who helped test all the other games over the years showed up for the i2p MUD since it just blew up its "fake database" simple starter database that it provides to save people from having to set up a real database to try it out. It is being set up again using a real database currently.

I set up another intergalactic mining game just as an initial player-funnel to look for long term players and am throwing traffic at it expecting that most people who sign up will end up idling out, but I cannot really include it in the overall large scale long term economy that is what I really want because each player starts out with a whole mining setup which in the proper larger scale economy plan would be expensive to set up. Financing all those startups simply would not be practical because of the vast "failure rate", the vast number of them that will never actually grow and build and expand. So basically the aim with that one is to have it out in streams of traffic acting as a filter to try to find some players who do stick around. I expect it to end up as galaxies full of long-abandoned mining colonies but have not got any really good storyline yet for why most such colonies fail. Maybe they are a first round of attempts long before the technology was perfected or something.

The first attempt at an intergalactic mining setup used the XNova Redesigned code, and has been closed to new players because of the dropout rate. The mining operations are very lucrative in the long term, but there are still several abandoned operations there for which no suitable repossession corp has been able to get set up for yet so there is no point inviting the creation of more operations that will also end up being abandoned before paying back their startup loans.

WIth that one I know some of the abandoning happened because the XNova code itself was broken, its combat code looks like it could never have worked at all as it mentions database fields different from those that actually exist. It looks like it was only part-way through being ported from some quite different earlier version or something. That has worked out well for the players who were not actually looking forward to combat, and for the homeworlds who prefer not to have such nearby galaxies be full of dangerous combat-capable robotic fleets, but isn't what most players of that genre of games are looking for.

I set up one based on the 2moons code too, and that code seems to work, so the storyline for that will be that they are a farther-away set of galaxies, far enough away that the civilisations that sent robots to the XNova Redesigned galaxies are willing to allow the robotics corp to activate the combat capabilities of the robots sent to the 2moons galaxies. We "know" from the existence of many games of this type out on the net that vast numbers of galaxies are full of very offensive, very dangerous factions so the premise is that this 2moons layer of galaxies will be the outer defenses of the civilised worlds, robots being sent that far away more as a defense initiative than for any resources that might be found out there. However because of the distance premise, startups in this distant, 2moons based set of galaxies will only be possible once jumpgates have been constructed in the XNova Redesigned galaxies.

Thus we have so far one set of 500 galaxies run by XNova Redesigned and thus unable to have combat until someone actually wants combat badly enough to arrange to have that code's combat subsystems fixed to allow it, and a farther set of 500 galaxies that cannot be reached until the operations set up in the XNova Redesigned galaxies have built suitable jump-gates to allow the (very expensive) sending of colony ships to the farther set of galaxies. All of that within a larger setting known as the Galactic Milieu, whose main focus is Freeciv-based civilised worlds inhabited mostly by humans and mostly focussed in one galaxy.

The new 2moons-based setup is at http://twomoons.mygamesonline.org/ and is NOT part of that larger economy because the expected failure (going idle) rate makes it not seem economically reasonable to finance startups there. It thus has no storyline (yet at least) for where the resources came from or come from, and where the technology was developed or is developed that its startups use, how they get their startup gear, where they come from and so on. It is basically a pretty normal 2moons game except for the fact that it too has 500 galaxies and its galaxies are about as far apart as a galaxy is wide. It is having traffic thrown at it so that it is expected to forever acrue random passer-by players who mostly will just go idle leaving abandoned mining colonies scattered across the first few galaxies. It has no backstory of any common set of civilised worlds the mining colonies were sent out by so no pre-existing politics of why any given outfit should or should not be hostile or friendly to any other. Its players start out without any indebtedness to any investors who invested in getting them started and thus expect some return on the investment. It is just the typical game that happens in a vacuum featuring factions that appear out of no-where equipped with resources and technology that appeared out of nowhere.

-MarkM-

P.S. This "out of nowhere" stuff presumably means there should also be no objection to the site administration selling stuff out of nowhere for cryptocurrency. In the proper larger game I am really aiming for, the site admins will not be conjuring stuff out of nowhere to sell, everything will arise in game in the normal in game ways so players will mostly be buying from each other.

[daybyter]

What I don't understand:

- 1. do you want to advertise BTC to some (more or less) computer illiterate people, who have never heard of bitcoins?

- 2. Do you want current BTC users to play your game?

For 2. , I would definitely _not_ recommend any game, that you have to learn for hours and then play for may hours before you get anywhere, because I guess more users would be computer freaks and have better things to do than playing a game for a long time. I would instead recommend some game concept, that you can play during lunch break, or so.

As an example:

http://www.moorhuhn.de/onlinegames/mh_ancient/mh_high_amg_index.php?g_name=mh_high_amg

[hashman]

... anybody here read the latest by Neal Stephenson .... REAMDE

MMORPG game currency and economy is a central theme ... crypto, gold, etc. Lots of ideas in there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reamde

I just finished it.  It sucks.  Don't read it. 

I've read -everything- by Neal Stephenson and been a huge fan.. and I'm having trouble to wrap my mind around how he could have done such a terrible book.  Wow. 

Formulaic stereotype reinforcement drivel with not an ounce of science or history anywhere.

Seriously..   

[markm]

What I don't understand:

- 1. do you want to advertise BTC to some (more or less) computer illiterate people, who have never heard of bitcoins?

Actually I am thinking more of cryptocurrencies in general, basically resources that you can take home from the game or even take with you into other games. A big problem with many games is stuff being worthless because endless amounts of it can be conjured from no-where; if each of the "resources" players use to "build" everything (stone, metal, wood, whatever, a few basic things everything else is built out of) was a blockchain based currency then the total amount of each that exists across all games that choose to use the stuff would maybe help combat "MUDflation".

I am far from convinced that bitcoin is the best choice of blockchain based currency for game use simply because so far it has been mostly anyone other than bitcoiners who actually get into the things. BBQcoin might actually turn out to be one of the best choices since it was created expressly for having fun with and it is noticeably neglected by "serious" folk, so maybe gamers can have fun with it without worrying, at least for some time yet, about some "serious" mining operation deciding to come eat up all the coins that are still to be minted.

- 2. Do you want current BTC users to play your game?

For 2. , I would definitely _not_ recommend any game, that you have to learn for hours and then play for may hours before you get anywhere, because I guess more users would be computer freaks and have better things to do than playing a game for a long time. I would instead recommend some game concept, that you can play during lunch break, or so.

I am definitely not looking for fly by night few minutes at a time people. I am in fact nowadays looking into a kind of "CPU mining" concept where we make CPUs be able to work better than special purpose circuits by making actual gameplay be a means of earning, with gameplay that is sufficiently variable that CPUs should be better able to play than ASICs or FPGAs.

The Ixians are a nice example, someone decided that Ixcoins sounded like a good kind of currency for a people known as Ixians to use, so has been creating Ixians in various games, possibly with some idea of relating it potentially to the planet Ix in Frank Herbert's DUNE series. Over the years maybe that faction might grow and end up making Ixcoins a widely recognised currency at least wherever Ixians are found.

-MarkM-

[markm]

If mining performance is poor though you are kind of making the players overpay if you do it that way.

It would actually be more efficient to get money from them by whatever means and invest that money into ASIC mining gear so you can merged mine efficiently instead of wasting player electricity inefficiently, and you could maybe even throw in a new additional merged mined coin in your merged mining mix that is specifically for the game and is the main one the players are after.

-MarkM-

[markm]

What I was actually looking for way back when I first encountered bitcoin was free open source general purpose trading software I could use to implement trading houses that warehouse virtual goods they and other players own, and broker trades. These warehouses were to be associated with a virtual geography so that in addition to the basic wheeler-dealer trading game they would in effect operate as they would also serve as infrastructure for a transport tycoon layer that would emerge once players hit the limits of the wheeler-dealing they could do using goods that do not move from one virtual location to another.

That is, initially players would be able to trade X amount of substance, item or commodity Y located at one "location" for V amount of substance, item or commodity W located at the same "location" or a completely distinct/separate/different "location". Once that was up and running hopefully it would create a market for "transport", that is, the ability to actually change the "location" of substances, items or commodities.

This is actually also why I got into the whole Open Transactions thing: it was the only thing I found that seemed to promise eventual generic markets. However my players actually were not all really interested in the kind of "market" in which "the house" passes on the arbitrage opportunities to its customers; some of them much preferred the idea that if they owned "the house" they would be able to sell stuff at the highest prices they could get for it while buying stuff at the lowest prices they could get it for, which struck them as a much more natural and normal way for a merchant prince to operate than admitting to customers "oh actually that is available cheaper than the price you are willing to pay for it", which is how they perceive the currently standard bitcoin exchanges as operating.

I am still slowly working toward these same basic functionalities, using whatever free open source code I can find. For example CoffeeMUD, due to its built in auction systems and the ability of played characters to learn marketeering skill thus becoming able to act like shopkeepers, is looking interesting / potentially-useful lately (especially so due to it also having routines for "producing" goods as well as selling them).

The initial case, in which trading takes place but not "transport", is similar to what happens when virtual goods are located in games that do not provide means of moving one game's goods to another game. The "transport" case could come into effect in such situations once a means of exporting objects from one game and importing them into another was implemented. Obviously this is not all that likely if the different games are operated by different administrations, but that just serves to motivate investigation and testing of all free open source games to try to find ones that actually work, so that as many different games as possible can be made available for eventual implementation of this "transport" functionality to allow actual shipping of things between games instead of merely "I will trade you X in that game for Y in this game" type trades.

This has proven to be a long and slow-moving quest but it is still ongoing. Unfortunately the testing part has discovered that a lot of free open source multiplayer game code does not really work, so it is also developing backlogs of "things to fix in various codebases if we ever get this going well enough to bother fixing them".

-MarkM-

[Elwar]

So the first Bitcoin game that uses Bitcoin is finally getting started.

http://www.bitfantasy.com

It is a sort of strategy RPG game played on your browser.

It costs BTC to start playing but from there on it costs nothing. But you can trade in-game objects for bitcoins.

Everything in the game costs gold pieces and the shops in the game only deal in gold but the player to player market is all bitcoin based and it appears that the developers are trying to push more player to player purchases as opposed to buying things from the shops. Though it is currently in Beta so there are only a few people on there testing things out.

I have been Beta testing it and it is pretty fun. It has all of the typical quest type of stuff where you can go around fighting monsters and getting goodies and experience and all of that, but they also have the ability to build farms and homes and your own Inn with the ability to make money from farming the farms and having people pay to use your Inn.

I like that it is almost like a multi-player strategy game, with a bit of hack and slash thrown in. There is a good team at work making it better and I can see it growing very well once they open up for players.

Let me know if you want to get in on helping with the Beta phase before they open it up to the public.

[Ente]

... anybody here read the latest by Neal Stephenson .... REAMDE

MMORPG game currency and economy is a central theme ... crypto, gold, etc. Lots of ideas in there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reamde

Thats what brought me here, Stephenson's REAMDE.
When I read it I was all "hey, Stephenson has to write exactly that book with bitcoin!".
But, of course, the way to go is to program a game with bitcoin as an ingame currency.

I like the idea of an MMORPG. It has deep immersion and high addiction! :-)

I dont believe an alt-chain would make much sense. We don't want to market xycoin, but bitcoin. Players won't do the jump from xycoin to bitcoin, as xycoin is basically worthless and will be seen as a fancy ingame-currency only.

I dont think local mining works at all. Most people will have to use their cpu, only a small part has the right gpu. Those, however, would have too much of an advantage. The average would have a ridiculously low "income". Sure, make 0.0001 BTC one gold. But then there won't be any serious connection to the bitcoin-universe (=economy).. Want to get people buying mining hardware for playing that game? Makes no sense at all. They should and will rather mine regular and play regular independent of each other.

I suggest to only do exchanging between bitcoin and gold period.
Maybe something like this:

- Buy the game, for a relatively small price, online or in a shop.
- Each game has its own bitcoin address, the public one only.
- Each copy has one BTC preloaded.

- Playing costs a regular monthly fee, directly removed from that address.
- Bitcoins are converted to gold, by a changing rate dependent on regular exchange rates.

- Transfer bitcoins to your game's address, voila, more gold.
- Request a payout from your account: cashout
- Any bitcoin transaction may cost you some percent
- Dig/earn gold ingame: get bitcoins on your address


The goals:
- Have farmers farming gold/bitcoin, officially.
- Have people buy gold from the game or farmers, which they pay by real bitcoins.
- Have people do many transactions, like selling/buying gear, earning bitcoins, buying gold, and "tax" all of those transactions
- Have people play a lot, for monthly income

This will be a very wiggly economy. However, the game can influence at the btc-gold exchange rate, basically the real-world connection. As well as adapt the drop-rate and gold-finding rate. Make this clever, and a dynamic yet stable economy should be possible.
With income for the developer and people really using bitcoin as a currency in real-world amounts.

Bonus:

Every game is loaded with 100 gold. At the exchange rate of the week it was printed. Maybe the first games sold have one whole bitcoin loaded on that address, which is a ridiculously high amount of gold two years later. Let the huntdown begin!

Bitcoin really is an advantage here. Farmers around the world will love it. A whole new economy will form around the game and its players. Everyone can participate, where WoW needs a bankaccount or paypal or a gamecard bought in a shop. Which excludes a whole lot of people all around the world.

This would be the first game where you can really earn money, legally, with no risk. This will go so damn viral, oh boy!


tl,dr:
Read Stephenson's REAMDE. Then program WoW with bitcoin-gold. Invite all farmers, underage players, exchanges and businessmen!

Ente

one-and-a-half years later, this puts a big smile on my face:
http://screencast.com/t/Z7SC1twGW

Roger Ver, you brilliant!

Ente