Potential Games LLC - Island Forge BTC Discussion

[Nyhm]

Greetings, I'm the sole developer at Potential Games LLC. I have a background in cryptography and distributed protocols, and I'm totally enthralled with Bitcoin. Thus, we've launched the: Potential Games Bitcoin Initiative!

That's just an overblown way of saying that I'm really interested exploring the potential of Bitcoin for independent game development (for fun and profit). I know that's a bit vague, but I'm hoping to have a few discussions on games and Bitcoin to see what direction to take. I know many have already created some neat Bitcoin-related games, and I'm eager to hear your thoughts.

Basically, I'm enthusiastic about Bitcoin, have a few ideas brewing, and want to participate in the community. Thanks for your interest!

UPDATE: Jump ahead for a more concrete proposal to integrate Bitcoin into our Island Forge MMORPG.

EDIT: Moved & updated to better reflect what I'm here for (thanks formit).

EDIT: Changed title because this is now more of a discussion than an announcement.

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[fornit]

maybe you want to repost this to the general forum or have it moved by a moderator. you will get more attention there and since you are not really offering a bitcoin related service its the better place anyway.

i like the idea for your game. but just browsing the website its a little hard to judge the project.
i dont know how a single person with a half-finished game and a few players bring can bitcoin and the indie gaming community together. bitcoin is certainly great for indie games with its flexibility, low fees, no risk of chargebacks, no point of failure etc.
but do you have any influence on to make that happen on a greater scale (meaning a "we" thats > 1 person)?

[Nyhm]

Thanks for having a look and providing your feedback, fornit! If this topic would be better served elsewhere, I'd gladly have it moved.

I can't influence the gaming/bitcoin world much today (but maybe tomorrow). Your critique is well-taken, though, and the description is overstated. I'll revisit the wording and bring it down to earth.

The purpose of this post is to see how many folks in the bitcoin community would respond to the potential for a small game company to provide bitcoin-related services. Consider it a market survey.

I certainly don't expect hundreds of customers to swarm me, waving their bitcoins in the air, demanding gameplay, but I was hoping for some positive response. Despite my personal enthusiasm for bitcoin, I'm not getting the impression that anyone in the bitcoin community cares for indie games. I've seen a few neat ideas, but they don't seem to attract much interest, either. That's OK, maybe the bitcoin community just isn't into games.

Regarding Island Forge - it's fully playable (and in the later stages of open beta). We're only taking PayPal for subscriptions at this time. Integrating bitcoin subscriptions would be exciting, but probably not feasible in the short term.

Instead, to get into bitcoin-related services, I'd probably focus on providing smaller experimental games, which use bitcoin in interesting ways (specifically that do not simply degenerate into gambling). I know that's still vague, but I'm keeping some of my cards to myself for now. I understand that this isn't really inspiring to anyone but myself, but that was kind-of the point. If you find my enthusiasm for bitcoin promising, let me know (just by saying so, you don't have to donate anything, I'm just starting to get a feel for the bitcoin landscape).

Thanks for your interest!

[fornit]

The purpose of this post is to see how many folks in the bitcoin community would respond to the potential for a small game company to provide bitcoin-related services. Consider it a market survey.

i think there a quite a few people here playing games. question is what exactly bitcoin related services are in this case.

I certainly don't expect hundreds of customers to swarm me, waving their bitcoins in the air, demanding gameplay, but I was hoping for some positive response. Despite my personal enthusiasm for bitcoin, I'm not getting the impression that anyone in the bitcoin community cares for indie games. I've seen a few neat ideas, but they don't seem to attract much interest, either. That's OK, maybe the bitcoin community just isn't into games.

many indie games dont involve money much. they are usually very straightforward (platformer, puzzle, shoot em up), so theres not much opportunity to involve money meaningfully. (like item trade, subcriptions, unlocking bonus content)

Regarding Island Forge - it's fully playable (and in the later stages of open beta). We're only taking PayPal for subscriptions at this time. Integrating bitcoin subscriptions would be exciting, but probably not feasible in the short term.

probably easy if you use bit-pay or a similar service. also you could encourage people to donate to level, item and quest designers or give prizes for "best quest of the month" or something like that.

Instead, to get into bitcoin-related services, I'd probably focus on providing smaller experimental games, which use bitcoin in interesting ways (specifically that do not simply degenerate into gambling). I know that's still vague, but I'm keeping some of my cards to myself for now. I understand that this isn't really inspiring to anyone but myself, but that was kind-of the point. If you find my enthusiasm for bitcoin promising, let me know (just by saying so, you don't have to donate anything, I'm just starting to get a feel for the bitcoin landscape).

cant really think of  anything promising there, but that doesnt mean it isnt there 

[Nyhm]

Thanks a lot for considering my points. Your insights are appreciated. I think you're right, that a lot of folks are playing games; I just don't know that it involves bitcoin much beyond a basic donation system, which is a fine start.

Part of my interest is just how/where to integrate bitcoin. The beautiful simplicity of bitcoin is just throwing up an address for donation (obvious, of course, to everyone here). If you need more game logic integration (knowing when some payment has been made), bit-pay is a good suggestion. I'm also looking into other software libraries for in-game integration.

Donations to boost your character is a good suggestion, as well. I don't think I'd put it into Island Forge at this time, but it fits a freemium business model very well. These are the sort of discussions I was hoping to engage in with the bitcoin community, so thanks again for getting the ball rolling. (And, I realize others have already blazed many of these trails, but I believe I can eventually bring something unique to the table.)

[RaggedMonk]

Looks interesting.  Will be watching.

[HostFat]

I think that it can be a good idea to open a bounty for competition like the Ludum Dare

( this is just an example )
Competition Rules and Eligibility
1) You must work alone (solo).
2) All game code and content must be created within the 48 hours.
3) Games must support Bitcoin currency
4) All publicly available libraries and middleware are allowed.
5) All content creation, and development tools are allowed. (3dsmax, Photoshop, Flash, etc)
6) Source code must be included.

[kjlimo]

If you made a game like Diablo III, Runescape, WoW, Ultima Online, etc. (I listed all that I've personally played) that somehow supported bitcoin, I would definitely play it.

at least until Diablo III is released on May 15 (the day I may quit my job and leave the world as we know it).

We'll see how good Diablo III is, but I've definitely wasted more hours on Runescape than I should be proud of and would promote a game of that nature for at least a couple years of my life until I ultimately move on.

Good luck!

[schnell]

I would happily play any btc related game.

[memvola]

Game applications can be Electrum clients (this is easy to implement), which feels like a very natural way to use Bitcoin as an in-game currency to me. For instance, my RPG characters might have different Bitcoin addresses, which can even be used by the system to identify them. All in-game monetary transactions might be done over the blockchain. Not sure if this is too exhaustive for the chain itself, but could be an interesting way to connect different game worlds, etc. I think the trick is to design a game that would make use of this fundamental structure within the setting itself.

[Nyhm]

Creating an RPG with bitcoin as the in-game currency brings up business/legal questions if players can earn bitcoin in-game. Does anyone here have experience with games in which you can earn something of monetary value (of value outside the context of the game, that is)? Can this be done in a way that is not legally defined as gambling?

[memvola]

Creating an RPG with bitcoin as the in-game currency brings up business/legal questions if players can earn bitcoin in-game. Does anyone here have experience with games in which you can earn something of monetary value (of value outside the context of the game, that is)? Can this be done in a way that is not legally defined as gambling?

Sorry, I don't have much experience with in-game currencies, maybe except Linden dollars, however I'd like to speculate. In the model I described, the game makers don't have to handle the money, process transactions or provide any financial services, it could all flow purely between the players (depending on the design, maybe even without the server even directly knowing). This has never been possible before, so it seems like a gray area. But theoretically it should be legally much safer than deploying your own in-game currency.

As a side note, all virtual currencies have monetary value, game currencies are being exchanged for fiat currencies since their inception, though I don't really know about the legal aspect of it.

[Nyhm]

Creating an RPG with bitcoin as the in-game currency brings up business/legal questions if players can earn bitcoin in-game. Does anyone here have experience with games in which you can earn something of monetary value (of value outside the context of the game, that is)? Can this be done in a way that is not legally defined as gambling?

Sorry, I don't have much experience with in-game currencies, maybe except Linden dollars, however I'd like to speculate. In the model I described, the game makers don't have to handle the money, process transactions or provide any financial services, it could all flow purely between the players (depending on the design, maybe even without the server even directly knowing). This has never been possible before, so it seems like a gray area. But theoretically it should be legally much safer than deploying your own in-game currency.

As a side note, all virtual currencies have monetary value, game currencies are being exchanged for fiat currencies since their inception, though I don't really know about the legal aspect of it.

Even though only speculating, your remarks are very insightful, and you've highlighted exactly why Bitcoin is so exciting. Out-of-band item sales have generally been frowned upon by MMOs, but if Player A walks up to Player B (in-game) and offers a Sword of Magnitude for 2BTC, it's just a matter of sending the payment address as a chat, then handing over the item. ... Now if only I had a character with something to sell.

[fornit]

Even though only speculating, your remarks are very insightful, and you've highlighted exactly why Bitcoin is so exciting. Out-of-band item sales have generally been frowned upon by MMOs, but if Player A walks up to Player B (in-game) and offers a Sword of Magnitude for 2BTC, it's just a matter of sending the payment address as a chat, then handing over the item. ... Now if only I had a character with something to sell.

yeah, thats the very basic method.
now imagine a ultima online-like house shop were the buy-button uses the bitcoin uri scheme to send a signal to the client for a certain amount and address and the user only has to confirm. the game transfers the item immediately when it sees a block with the appropriate transaction. supereasy, no fraud risk and the game never handles any money directly.

[finway]

Hope you could integrate bitcoin into this game, you'll be the first guy.

[Nyhm]

Even though only speculating, your remarks are very insightful, and you've highlighted exactly why Bitcoin is so exciting. Out-of-band item sales have generally been frowned upon by MMOs, but if Player A walks up to Player B (in-game) and offers a Sword of Magnitude for 2BTC, it's just a matter of sending the payment address as a chat, then handing over the item. ... Now if only I had a character with something to sell.

yeah, thats the very basic method.
now imagine a ultima online-like house shop were the buy-button uses the bitcoin uri scheme to send a signal to the client for a certain amount and address and the user only has to confirm. the game transfers the item immediately when it sees a block with the appropriate transaction. supereasy, no fraud risk and the game never handles any money directly.

Very similar to what I was thinking - the game would provide a way to trade items like this: Player A puts item(s) into escrow for Player B pending payment of X BTC to some address ABC. The game server releases the item(s) from escrow when the payment is met.

My concern is that the server is still managing monetary exchange - I know it's a gray area. These are the discussions I'm interested in. Thanks for your thoughts.

Are there no games doing this yet?

[Nyhm]

FYI: Cleaned up the Potential Games Bitcoin-related pages, for better clarity. Also now linked on the home page with a shiny Bitcoin.

Our primary purpose at this point is simply to show our support for Bitcoin (and accept donations), which we hope will encourage others to do the same. Thanks for your interest (and thanks to everyone who promotes Bitcoin)!

[Raoul Duke]

Sent you a small donation to your 1PG address

[Nyhm]

Sent you a small donation to your 1PG address

Hurray - so it actually does work! As stated, I'm extremely excited about Bitcoin, and hope to get more involved. It's definitely inspirational to find a supportive, helpful community. Thanks for appreciating my aspirations, psy!

[Serith]

You can setup bitcoin pool and have players generate bitcoins while playing the game , I think I even saw browser based miner somewhere or at least a project of that. Players would have bitcoin balance where generated coins would be stored and a player can withdraw and deposit additional coins at anytime, much like internet based bitcoin wallet, and all in game transaction would happen within your server.

Players would use bitcoins as in game currency to by items from you or other players, but would be able to sell the items only to a player. You would need to carefully calculate average CPU mining power to have reasonable prices for in game items. You can also establish market where players would be able to buy and sell in game items to each other.

You should treat players account balance as their own regardless of how it was earned and get revenue from selling in game items.

[Nyhm]

You can setup bitcoin pool and have players generate bitcoins while playing the game , I think I even saw browser based miner somewhere or at least a project of that. Players would have bitcoin balance where generated coins would be stored and a player can withdraw and deposit additional coins at anytime, much like internet based bitcoin wallet, and all in game transaction would happen within your server.

Players would use bitcoins as in game currency to by items from you or other players, but would be able to sell the items only to a player. You would need to carefully calculate average CPU mining power to have reasonable prices for in game items. You can also establish market where players would be able to buy and sell in game items to each other.

You should treat players account balance as their own regardless of how it was earned and get revenue from selling in game items.

Thanks for your interesting concept, Serith. The whole idea of players earning Bitcoin is legally unclear to me. I'm sure it can be done, but there would need to be some legal work done up front to clarify such things. I've seen games where players can make cash money (prizes), so maybe it would be set up like a contest. Anyone here have legal experience with such a thing?

Many Bitcoin games seem to just boil down to some form of gambling, which is fine if that's your business model, but not really what I'm after.

Further discussion welcome!

[LightRider]

The Island Forge game looks interesting. I'll definitely be checking that out (until D3 comes out).

It does sting a little to see you market Paypal as "free and easy".

[kiba]

Hobbyist game developer here. I have some experience with trying raise BTC for game development. That being said, it does not goes well with the bitcoin community, or rather any community if you don't have a compelling demo.

Failed to reach my 300 dollars worth of bitcoin during March. Ran out of motiviation-fuel for the moment to continue my project and now I need money-fuel. So I am trying to freelance in the bitcoin community when possible, but it does not look good when every lead I follow end up with no project on my desk.

* kiba sighs

That being said, I don't plan to give up on my dream of fundraising money for my game and make it go for it, fulltime.

[HostFat]

You should write a good plan with other game developers and publish it on http://www.kickstarter.com

[istar]

I´m a fan of some independet games and have done some work for big gaming companies.

Some clarifications.

If you get coins by betting, its gambling.
If you get coins by winning because of skill, its skill.
If you get coins for free, its donations.
If you give interest and loans as a business you are a bank.

If you let people buy things, thats ok but if its expensive things they can buy and sell or huge sums you have to
make sure those players cant money laundry.

[markm]

I actually prefer the alt-coins to bitcoin for games, largely because bitcoin is the gateway to/from fiat and thus the one most likely to run into all kinds of legal problems. Others might be much easier to claim to be purely play-money, whereas bitcoin has a lot of folks who are trying to convince people it is a real money. So for play money it just seems safer to stick to the altcoins, and let players convert them to/from bitcoins if they wish as long as bitcoins are not considered money, but always ready to throw out bitcoin as a game-currency the moment is gets legally declared to be real money.

It is unfortunate that DIablo seems to have realised that banning players from buying and selling game stuff is bad, because that was a major thing indies could offer that the big companies did not: freedom to buy and sell game stuff, no rules saying you cannot sell characters, you cannot sell gear and all that crap. Free trade.

Hopefully Diablo will actually turn out though to still not really be as free as some might hope, maybe there will still be some stupid restrictions like you gotta use their shops and pay them a cut or something, that might still leave a huge field for indies.

I have been testing every free open source game codebase I can find, trying to sort the actually working ones from the vast numbers of totally broken ones, setting up as many games as i can with the core shared concept that the whole point is you CAN trade game stuff, and thanks to blockchain based coins you can even move value/wealth from game to game.

It does seem to be true though that despite the occassional suggestions that someone should make games that accept bitcoins, very very few bitcoiners are at all interested. They just want some other shmuck somewhere to play some stupid game so their personal bitcoin hoard will increase in value due to someone somewhere uses coins, they don't actually want to play games, they have no intention of bringing players iDiameter:    9825km (137/138)
Temperature:    about 23°C to 6nto such games, they certainly have no intention of becoming a part of one of the main selling points of multiplayer games, which is a community of players that welcome new players and help them get into the game long term instead of trying to kill them off and discourage them as fast as possible.

Basically this forum has been one of the worst places to find players for games. They are all into making money, not into playing games, and the concept of making in game stock exchanges that will try to avoid EVE Online's problem of all in-game investments turning out to be scams is just alien to them, I doubt they would even invest in a game company if it listed on GLBSE. It is getting that my players don't even like bitcoins because of the people involved with bitcoins. They have more fun playing with devcoiners and groupcoiners and even the sole solitary character who is trying to establish Ixians as a people whose currency is Ixcoins. There just aren't any bitcoiners actively working in game to establish bitcoin as a good useful in game item. You can buy decent stuff in game for devcoins or groupcoins or Ixcoins, probably even Iocoins, but bitcoins? Hmm, people seldom even offer stuff for them because they have learned that bitcoiners aren't players, and even if they were they would be offering anything other than bitcoins to buy stuff with since to them bitcoins are real money not an in game token to play the game with.

Bottom line: bitcoiners aren't there to spend money, the only way they'd bother being there is to suck money out of the other players not to pump money in. They aren't players, they are "the man", out to feed on the players.

-MarkM-

[LightRider]

You should definitely be talking to the people over at ogrr.com btw, that is your audience/community.

[markm]

You should definitely be talking to the people over at ogrr.com btw, that is your audience/community.

Aren't they mostly into the piracy / Terms-Of-Service-Breaking side of things - encouraging / enabling trade of game stuff the game operators do not want traded? Those people are willing to break the Terms of Service to support (by playing, by being enthusastic about, maybe even by encouraging others to play) games that do NOT support such trade. They are black market opposers of the whole principle of making games that lack such restrctions on trade, they'd rather support the very games that want such trade-restrictions in place. They likely have no interest in supporting the development and deployment of games that lack such restrictions, and in fact those making money at it maybe even have an incentive to keep the restrictions in place, in much the same was a heroin dealers benefit from the illegality of heroin...

-MarkM-

[Serith]

I actually prefer the alt-coins to bitcoin for games, largely because bitcoin is the gateway to/from fiat and thus the one most likely to run into all kinds of legal problems. Others might be much easier to claim to be purely play-money, whereas bitcoin has a lot of folks who are trying to convince people it is a real money. So for play money it just seems safer to stick to the altcoins, and let players convert them to/from bitcoins if they wish as long as bitcoins are not considered money, but always ready to throw out bitcoin as a game-currency the moment is gets legally declared to be real money.

It is unfortunate that DIablo seems to have realised that banning players from buying and selling game stuff is bad, because that was a major thing indies could offer that the big companies did not: freedom to buy and sell game stuff, no rules saying you cannot sell characters, you cannot sell gear and all that crap. Free trade.

Hopefully Diablo will actually turn out though to still not really be as free as some might hope, maybe there will still be some stupid restrictions like you gotta use their shops and pay them a cut or something, that might still leave a huge field for indies.

I have been testing every free open source game codebase I can find, trying to sort the actually working ones from the vast numbers of totally broken ones, setting up as many games as i can with the core shared concept that the whole point is you CAN trade game stuff, and thanks to blockchain based coins you can even move value/wealth from game to game.

It does seem to be true though that despite the occassional suggestions that someone should make games that accept bitcoins, very very few bitcoiners are at all interested. They just want some other shmuck somewhere to play some stupid game so their personal bitcoin hoard will increase in value due to someone somewhere uses coins, they don't actually want to play games, they have no intention of bringing players iDiameter:    9825km (137/138)
Temperature:    about 23°C to 6nto such games, they certainly have no intention of becoming a part of one of the main selling points of multiplayer games, which is a community of players that welcome new players and help them get into the game long term instead of trying to kill them off and discourage them as fast as possible.

Basically this forum has been one of the worst places to find players for games. They are all into making money, not into playing games, and the concept of making in game stock exchanges that will try to avoid EVE Online's problem of all in-game investments turning out to be scams is just alien to them, I doubt they would even invest in a game company if it listed on GLBSE. It is getting that my players don't even like bitcoins because of the people involved with bitcoins. They have more fun playing with devcoiners and groupcoiners and even the sole solitary character who is trying to establish Ixians as a people whose currency is Ixcoins. There just aren't any bitcoiners actively working in game to establish bitcoin as a good useful in game item. You can buy decent stuff in game for devcoins or groupcoins or Ixcoins, probably even Iocoins, but bitcoins? Hmm, people seldom even offer stuff for them because they have learned that bitcoiners aren't players, and even if they were they would be offering anything other than bitcoins to buy stuff with since to them bitcoins are real money not an in game token to play the game with.

Bottom line: bitcoiners aren't there to spend money, the only way they'd bother being there is to suck money out of the other players not to pump money in. They aren't players, they are "the man", out to feed on the players.

-MarkM-

If who you have in mind are teenagers as your target group, then the above is correct. Bitcoin is not a toy and it would be weird to try to combine it with a meaningless game. A game that utilizes bitcoins should be aimed for people of 25+ age, WoW and EVE average player age is 29 and 30 respectively, so it is not a small target group.

[markm]

In games like WoW and EVE, players buy game-money and the automated software money-interfaces in the game for shopping and for what monsters "drop" and so on is in the game-currency not in whatever currency the players used outside the game to initially equip themselves with game-money, right? Even in the upcoming Diablo 3 it is not contemplated that various Earth-currencies be used in normal gameday to gameday stuff like grabbing a beer or bed at an inn or picking a troll's pocket or the like?

So basically what I am suggesting is be prepared to leave actual bitcoins out of the list of port numbers in-game money-routines can choose from in selection among the many cryptocurrencies that all use the identical bitcoin-style RPC call API. Accepting bitcoin as outside currency instead of USD or GBP etc for the normal outside the game things like subscriptions or buying a bunch of boosts or whatever is fine, you could just as well accept USD or GBP or whatever there. But don't put actual bitcoins into the hands of the monsters and barkeeps and so on in the game unless you are equally prepared to have some of them happen to "drop" GBP or USD or whatever. (Maybe trolls use USD, orcs use GBP, whatever, however you choose which currency which monster happens to "drop".)

The point is, bitcoin aims to be like GBP, USD etc: "real money". So you need to expect that some day all the reasons why you don't want your monsters to drop dollars or francs or yen or pounds etc should equally well lead you to not want them to drop bitcoins either.

However, things like for example DeVCoin could be fine for monsters to drop, since DeVCoin's aim is to promote free open source software, and encouraging players to play free open source software based games could be well in line with that purpose.

Thus I consider DeVCoin much better suited to use as "game money" than BiTCoin is.

I expect that if even Diablo chooses to have its monsters start dropping fiat, it will run into legal hassles, don't you?

We should expect and plan for bitcoin to end up being, for such legal purposes, pretty much just another "real money". If you want your monsters to drop dollars, fine, have some drop bitcoins instead. But consider too, how will you convince the monster to even admit it has a "brainwallet" let alone tell you the passphrase? Surely any bitcoins owned by monsters will be harder to get them to "drop" than any dollar bills or silver quarters etc? Intelligent monsters would, I would expect, use cryptocoins for the greater security they provide over carrying cash. Unintelligent monsters likely would not have much use for cryptocoins, though I suppose you could find in a dog's tag a message saying "here is a bitcoin address, I offer you its contents as an inducement to return my pet unharmed, more awaits you when that is accomplished" or some such...

-MarkM-

[fornit]

much simpler reason not to use bitcoin ingame: the ingame money is part of the balance, therefore its properties (creation and destruction for example) must fit the game. bitcoin has its own rules and using it in a game directly would require the whole game to be tailored to fit bitcoin.

[Nyhm]

Wonderful discussion - thanks all.

Thanks for the gambling clarifications, istar. I've looked at kickstarter, so thanks for the recommendation HostFat.

I agree with fornit that putting Bitcoin into a game would have to make sense to the game. In-game currency seems to be the go-to concept, but ultimately I don't think this is a wise business decision in the first place. Surely it would create buzz, but the legal aspects are daunting. I agree with markm's insights that if you wouldn't have your monsters/shops using USD, then there is no reason you'd want to integrate Bitcoin.

Thanks for your deapthful insights, markm. You have a keen sense of the community.

The WoW & EVE demographics mentioned by Serith are interesting. Maybe that age bracket would be much more inclined to "play with" Bitcoin, rather than younger demographics. However, as markm pointed out, there are already a number of "play money" gaming tokens out there. The smarter business model may be to integrate with one of those, rather than Bitcoin directly. If players have Bitcoin (which sounds like a rare thing), someday they can buy those tokens with their Bitcoin (again, it's just another currency).

kiba, thanks for providing us with your experience trying to get into the Bitcoin-related game biz. Sounds disheartening, but I hope you find what you're after. Best wishes (sorry I can't offer anything - I'm really just getting started myself).

I'm still infatuated with Bitcoin, and I appreciate everyone's discussions. I'm forming a better picture of the whole Bitcoin scene. I'm starting to formulate a more solid idea of what I'd like to do with Bitcoin+games, but it'll be a while before I can really devote any time to it. Having these community discussions is certainly inspiring!

[markm]

In the Galactic Milieu, we introduce players to the general concept of bitcoin, the technology, by having a number of nations that use blockchains for their national currencies, and we mention actual bitcoins in particular by attributing them to the legendary/mythical "Hacker" nation.

Thus we take a soft-sell approach. The fact that a Hacker known as Satoshi actually visited the mythical planet "Earth" and introduced the "Hacker" currency, Bitcoins, there early in the 21st century is just a bit of historical trivia, players can have fun with various other blockchain-based currencies, hopefully ones they can actually realistically mine some of for themselves, before worrying about the actual real live bitcoins that, it turns out, someone known as Satoshi actually *did* introduce here on Earth in the early 21st century.

The thing is, the "Hacker" nation is so insanely advanced that their currency is ridiculously valuable, even more valaube than those of the very powerful and advanced Brits, Canucks and Martians. Plus, the Hacker nation is approximately as mythical as the planet known as Earth, so it is far more likely that players will find themselves dealing with one of the "big three" national currencies - United Kingdom Britcoin (UKB), Canadian Digital Notes (CDN) and Martian BotCoins (MBC) - or the currencies of the largest intergalactic megacorporations General Mining Corp (GMC) and General Retirement Funds (GRF), or even the relatively new United Nations Scrip (UNS) than actual Bitcoins; and probably often simply using bitNicKeLs, which all of the preceding use as the small-change denomination for day to day stuff smaller than, say, battlestars or space-stations or leases of entire planets or suchlike. Even bitNicKeLs are actually pretty hefty really for small game stuff like buying a beer, so individual-adventurer scale players will thus tend mostly to use DeVCoins or, if relatively well-healed, GRouPcoins.

It is probably not necessary to build into the games software for directly dealing with blockchains at all. It should suffice that tokens be used, or even that the various coins are simply assigned a relatively stable value in copperpieces, silverpieces, goldpieces, platinum pieces etc and use these normal familiar tokens in game, only bothering to actually directly use blockchains when sending funds to other players for use in possibly some other game (aka, some other sub-game of the meta-game, since actually hacking the code of all the subgames to make them smoothly transfer stuff between them is probably lower priority than simply getting them all working and working out what exactly they do each have to offer to the others in terms of export and import opportunities.)

The big thing that blockchain based coins have to offer for gaming is precisely this ability of the players to move them from game to game. They are rather like "real money" in that way, except that in most games you usually find in practice that you cannot in fact move "real money" out of a game. Most games explicitly forbid you from moving "real money" out of the game, you can only put it in, not take it out.

Basically it is simpler and more generic/homogenous to move cryptocoins from game to game than it is to move, for example, specific types of starship, or specific species of played character having specific skills and experiences and vital-statistics. Games tend to represent the latter types of things in such different ways that each thing to be shipped between games can involve a huge amount of theoretical work just to formulate the conversion algorithms before even getting to actually implementing them. But fungible "money" is an item many games represent quite similarly, that is, as a numeric value having various uses/effects in the game. So money seems the simplest place to start in weaving together many games into a larger metagame/economy... Your rich uncle who runs a village on a "Devana" based planet might not be able to come kill rats in the sewers with you in the Crossfire RPG or CoffeeMUD MUD based city you live in, but he can send you pocket-money or buy shares in the XNova-Redesigned or 2Moons based intergalactic mining venture you intend to finance with the loot you find in those sewers...

-MarkM-

[Nyhm]

In the Galactic Milieu, we intriduce players to the general concept of bitcoin, the technology, by having a number of nations that use blockchains for their national currencies, and we mention actual bitcoins in particular by attributing them to the legendary/mythical "Hacker" nation.

Thus we take a soft-sell approach. The fact that a Hacker known as Satoshi actually visited the mythical planet "Earth" and intricured the "Hacker" currency, Bitcoins, there early in the 21st century is jsut a bit of historical trivia, players can have fun with various other blockchain-based currencies, hopefulyl ones they can actuqlly realistically mine some of for themselves, before worrying about the actual real live bitcoins that, it turns out, someone known as Satoshi actually *did* introduce here on Earth in the early 21st century.

The thing is, the "Hacker" nation is so insanely advanced that theri currency is ridiculously valuable, even more valaube than those of the very powerful and advanced Brits, Canucks and Martians. PLus, the Hacker nation is approximately as mythical as the planet known as Earth, so it is far more likely that players will find themselves dealing with one of the "big three" national currencies - United Kingdom Britcoin (UKB), Canadians Digital Notes (CDN) and Martian BotCoins (MBC) - or the currencies of the largest intergalactic megacorporations General Mining Corp (GMC) and General Retirement Funds (GRF), or even the relatively new United Nations Scrip (UNS) than actual Bitcoins; and probably often simply using bitNicKeLs, which all of the preceding use as the small-change denomination for day to day stuff smaller than, say, battlestars or space-stations or leases of entire planets or suchlike. Even bitNicKeLs are actually pretty hefty really for small game stuff like buying a beer, so individual-adventurer scale players will thus tend mostly to use DeVCoins or, if relatively well-healed, GRouPcoins.

It is probably not necessary to build into the games software for directly dealing with blockchains at all. It should suffice that tokens be used, or even that the various coins are simply assigned a relatively stable value in copperpieces, silverpieces, goldpieces, platinum pieces etc and use these normal familiar tokens in game, only bothering to actually directly use blockchains when sending funds to other players for use in possibly some other game (aka, some other sub-game of the meta-game, since actually hacking the code of all the subgames to make them smoothly transfer stuff between them is probably lower priority than simply getting them all working and working out what exactly they do each have to offer to the others in terms if export and import opportunities.)

The big thng that blockchain based coins have to offer for gaming is precisely this ability of the players to move them from game to game. They are rather like "real money" in that way, except that in most games you usually find in practice that you cannot in fact move "real money" out of a game. Most games explicitly forbid you from moving "real money" out of the game, you can only put it in, not take it out.

Basically it is simpler and more generic/homogenous to move cryptocoins from game to game than it is to move, for example, specific types of starship, or specific species of played character having specific skills and experiences and vital-statistics. Games tend to represent the latter types of things in such different ways that each thing to be shipped between games can involve a huge amount of theoretical work jsut to forumulate the conversion algorithms before even getting to actually implementing them. But fungible "money" is an item many games represent quite similarly, that is, as a numeric value having various uses/effects in the game. SO money seems the simplest place to start in weaving together many games into a larger metagame/economy... Your rich uncle who runs a village on a "Devana" based planet might not be able to come kill rats in the sewers with you in the Crossfire RPG or CoffeeMUD MUD based city you live in, but he can send you pocket-money or buy shares in the XNova-Redesigned or 2Moons based intergalatic mining venture you intend to finance with the loot you find in those sewers...

-MarkM-

Nifty

[Nyhm]

Nifty

I was just kidding with my one-word response to your epic prose, markm.

To elaborate, your vision of a meta-commerce between all games is compelling. I can imagine the mindset of players looking for which games offer the optimal earning potential. Some games would be good for farming value, which can be used to support actions in other games. That would change the landscape of in-game economics. More than I would get into, but a great concept.

Actually, this sounds like a sci-fi future-scape foundation for a Neal Stephenson novel.

[Ente]

..watching this thread here as well.
(besides "Create a game that accepts Bitcoin for currency" https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=48088 )

Ente

[markm]

Since the main bottleneck to implementation is funding, it seemed reasonable to look into the economic-game and trading-game aspects first, since it seems possible that the popularity of rampant speculation could really drive some epic development.

I came across Bitcoin and Open Transactions when I went looking for market/trading code. I wanted players to be able to trade and to run trading houses, with the stuff they are trading having a location as well as whatever other attributes it might have so that a transportation/shipping game would naturally arise around it as a form of arbitrage when the locations of the things being traded starts to get in the way of the trading.

Location can also cover things like "this gold is over in the World of Warcraft universe", "these ISK are located in the EVE Online universe", "this suit of magic gear is in the Falling Swords universe" and so on.

However, currencies based on blockchains seem to offer an out from having to worry so much about location. Cryptocoins are easy to ship from place to place even among places where things like swords or grams of gold or local fiat currencies might not be exportable / importable.

Then along came DeVCoin, a coin anyone working on free open source games can easily aquire. The whole design of DeVCoin is based on putting it into the hands of such people. Of course I helped make sure that coin got created, it seemed a perfect fit...

-MarkM-

[cloon]

what about league of legends? it has more players than WoW, an thered there are chars ans skins buyable...
i think bitccoin will have a good chance

[markm]

Unfortunately though it is not open source. Trying to recreate it, or something very like it, from scratch is likely to be quite expensive. SO we should start with less expensive projects first to raise funds for the more-expensive ones.

There is however a purported World of Warcraft server clone on SourceForge. It does not seem to have clients though, it seems to epxect people to use the existing actual World of Warcraft clients. I am not sure if that is really a great idea, but it is something that is actually available so is probably worth looking at.

Basically we need to start with free stuff to raise money for hosting and bandwidth at first, then eventually once hosting and bandwidth is covered we can start adding actual development, and so on. Hopefully DeVCoin will help with some of this, since development is after all what DeVCoin is all about.

I expect too though that we will need a core population of cryptocurrency-oriented players, because in any multi-player game the population of players is a very major aspect of the appeal of the game. We need our games to be heavily populated with friendly players who welcome new players, help them get into the game long term, and get them informed about cryptocurrency. Without this core of players we will either end up with empty worlds or worlds whose players simply have no interest in cryptocurrencies thus just push for normal fiat if they want to get currency involved in the game at all.

Unfortunately as I have mentioned before the population of bitcoiners found here at this forum does not actually seem at all interested in games, so how to establish the initial core population of cryptocoin-oriented players is still an unsolved problem. We need active, friendly players, preferably ones who will get all their friends into it too. After all it is the early population that will presumably have the most wealth to be made selling things to the later arrivals, so getting in early should actually be advantageous provided that eventually outsiders do start to be brought in. There are a number of good "residual" marketing tools the core team can deploy though to help bring in insiders, so maybe it will also be important to have some mechanism for determinine who actually brought in each new player, so they can be rewarded for such recruiting/marketing.

(On the other hand, maybe that will take care of itself, since presumably those players who have accumulated things to sell will probably be mentioning their ability to provide such things as part of their marketing of the game, thus can expect the players they bring in to be contacting them about aquiring such resources.)

-MarkM-

[HostFat]

This is another game that can support BitCoin, and the name is already perfect: BitMMO
http://8bitmmo.net
Someone should go to give some help to the main dev of this game

I have also made a suggestion:
http://8bitmmo.uservoice.com/forums/150844-general/suggestions/2892337-bitcoin-currency
Give your votes!

[Nyhm]

This is highly speculative (i.e., not likely to happen unless folks are really interested), but I've been contemplating integrating Bitcoin into Island Forge in some form or another. I'm the sole developer of Island Forge, which is a player-created content MMORPG (with an old-school style), currently wrapping up open beta.

Minimally, I could add a town shop (maybe called a Bank) where players can send in BTC to get in-game currency (GP) for their character.

I have more ideas, which integrate more deeply with the gameplay, but let's focus on this first step.

Would you (as a player) buy GP for BTC? Please see the site (and try the open beta) to understand what the game is about and how GP is used. Like most things in Island Forge, old-school traditional elements are designed in a new unique way. For instance, even if your character has thousands of GP, you must still earn the resources and materials (from fighting creatures) required to craft weaponry, equipment, potions, spells, etc. GP is used for healing, leveling, and training, as well as crafting.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

(maybe called a Bank)

To keep in the spirit, I suggest anything else besides Bank.

~Bruno~

[Nyhm]

(maybe called a Bank)

To keep in the spirit, I suggest anything else besides Bank.
~Bruno~

Right - of course - how institutional of me! Thanks for catching that, Bruno. A primary tenet of Bitcoin is no banks. I think the term would make sense to players, though. More technically, the in-world shop would represent a one-way Currency Exchange, but that's an awkward name. Any better name suggestions for an in-game shop where you can convert BTC into GP (the in-game currency)?

as i player i would want to use BTC directly for items , instead of buying GP then buying items

Thanks for your input on that, senbonzakura. My initial goal would be to integrate Bitcoin as a way to augment the game, not as a central feature in the world's item economy. A big part of playing Island Forge is earning items through a crafting process (which also requires GP). There would not be a direct BTC item market right away. Thank you for your comment, since this is exactly the kind of input I need from the Bitcoin community.

[fornit]

call it the "royal mint" or something...
or the alchemist. extra credit if you have to pay the alchemist in bitcoin and bring him some lead that he can transform into gold 

[Nyhm]

call it the "royal mint" or something...
or the alchemist. extra credit if you have to pay the alchemist in bitcoin and bring him some lead that he can transform into gold 

Brilliant - Mint is the perfect name for a direct BTC-to-GP shop. I also love the Alchemist concept, because it would require a gameplay integration (earning Lead) to get the GP. Suppose the Alchemist gives a better exchange rate than the Mint, because you had to accomplish in-game tasks to earn the required Lead. If you just want the GP immediately, visit the Mint.

This is so compelling that I've made a task for such a feature in Island Forge. The first step would just be a working Mint. However, I do not know if I will attempt it for 1.0. I'm wrapping up beta, and this would introduce a significant new feature. Nonetheless, let's continue this great discussion:

Next Question: How likely are players to buy GP with BTC, when GP can also be earned by other means in the game? I suppose this is all a matter of balance. To be wildly speculative, how would players feel if I shut off all other means of earning GP, requiring you to spend BTC at the Mint (or Alchemist) to advance in the world? This might be interesting for Bitcoin at large, but would anyone actually play?

Thanks for your suggestions, as well, senbonzakura! I'm excited to here more community input.

[fornit]

free to play games have different ways to deal with this. one is to sell something that gives a advantage you cant earn otherwise, like special objects with convenient abilities you dont necessarily need to enjoy the game, like skins, teleports between save places, extra storage space or small stat boosts. another one is to allow paying customers faster leveling or just buying leveled characters.
you are suggesting a variation of the latter. in my experience, one dollar or euro usually buys you are several hours of advancement. so for games where you can play more than 100 hours, possibly playing multiple characters, you can easily pay the equivalent of multiple month of subscription if you dont like the low-level grinding.
in my opinion, games that still offer a good experience when you are not willing to pay money work best, since they are much more likely to gain the necessary amount of players.
in a big player base, there will always be players that dont like playing the early game.
but conveniece items can work very well too. for example, if you have to walk back to town every 30 minutes for 1 minute or instead buy town portal scrolls for 1-2 cent real money, people will buy them. that wont make you rich but if there are few more useful things to buy its not that hard to spend as much as on a regular subscription. and the low price of each single item makes it very very easy to just spend a few dimes now and then even for players who would never buy a subscription or a pre-leveled character for 10-20$.
its soooo hard to resist, especially if the payment option is so easy that the drug of choice is just a copy&paste away *g*

a negative example: i once tried a game where you had to pay real money for crafting recipes, all but the most basic backpacks and even health potions. it was a total disaster. emptiest game ever. the free to play part was way too hard and and missed a big part of the most addictive mechanics of mmorpgs.

[Ente]

Nice to see more movement again in the Bitcoin+Gaming department!

I, personally, would not buy in-game items for real-world money. Not because of the money (I payd monthly fees before), but because I want to do that stuff by myself. Including grinding several days for a silly, useless pet dragon. That was many years ago, but still.. ;-)

There seems to be a big market for such semi-useless prestige things. Like special pets and mounts for special-edition buyers, for example. That stuff gets expensive on ebay too!

I suggest that everything is possible without paying (monthly fees not counted here). Even if it is ten times slower to reach the same by "hand". A lot of people would probably not join or quit once they understand paying BTC as inevitable.


So the BTC thing is strictly one-way? You cant dump a bag of GP and receive Bitcoin? If you implemented that, you have a good chance to make it viral instantly. Sure, you will have lots and lots of farmers (if it all works well). But with some clever algo it should work, automatically adjusting the buy and sell price according to the in-game market. Even if the sell price is just a tenth of the buy price, there will be farmers (kiddies and professionals) as well as buyers.
Don't underestimate virability and crowds :-)
(Again, Stephenson's REAMDE comes to mind..)

Ente

[Nyhm]

Preface: This post has become rather long, but I wanted to document my thought process, to give the Bitcoin community a look at what must be considered before embracing Bitcoin in a non-Bitcoin-centric project (that is, not a business that exists solely because of Bitcoin), which is something I think is really lacking in the world of Bitcoin at large.

Wonderful comments, fornit and Ente. I've been devoting a great deal of thought to all manner of subscription vs. freemium. Currently, I'm considering something in the middle. This is still highly speculative, but  I really appreciate community input, so I'll briefly describe it here, and would appreciate any feedback folks can provide:

Tentative Plan: In addition to the in-game currency (GP), integrate a secondary currency called Island Points (IP), which can be used to buy specialty features, which are not directly tied to character development. They'd be conveniences, including items such as fornit suggested, as well as other upgrades (character slots, island slots, maybe specialty tilesets, cosmetic avatar enhancements, etc.). IP can only be gained by spending USD or BTC.

Whether IP can be traded for GP (or vice versa) is a big question. Ente suggested that everything should be attainable via the in-game currency (GP), even if ridiculously expensive (which then becomes a matter of GP-to-IP exchange rate and balance). This is only tangentially related to Bitcoin, but community input is welcome.

More specific to Bitcoin, I've given a good deal of thought to the prospect of cashing out BTC, as Ente mentioned. I have a number of ideas, but wonder about the business concerns of such an approach. As an aside, to emphasize that I am quite serious about Bitcoin+Games, I'd like to mention that I've drafted the design for an MMO game which is all about BTC (spending and earning). However, I must get Island Forge off the ground (with or without BTC) before even considering another game.

I designed Island Forge before Bitcoin existed, yet I see the potential for Bitcoin in this game. As Ente suggests, there could be viral interest just for the sake of having a Bitcoin MMORPG (especially if the game lets you earn it). Although I have the technical capability to do this, I'm at the point in development (wrapping up beta) where I must be very cautious about introducing whole new systems. Nonetheless, I'm extremely eager/tempted to actually start using Bitcoin (beyond general donations and experimentation).

Question: What's the level of interest in Island Forge (or any game) accepting BTC as an alternative to USD, without any gameplay-related integration? Is the Bitcoin community only really interested in projects that exist expressly for the sake of moving Bitcoin around (which seems to be the predominant case)?

I hope the community recognizes my reasons for hesitation and appreciates that I'm giving this serious consideration. Again,  much of this post is to document my business/thought process, and I hope someone finds it instructive. More insights from the Bitcoin+Game community are most welcome, and I thank you for your interest.

[HostFat]

I think that you can try to use the same idea of the next auction house on blizzard games.
You can make some items hard to drop in-game, and people will be able to exchange them in an in-game auction house.
They will chose the price IN GP, and you will take a cut. ( ex: 0.9% )

[Ente]

I want to be able to say create a thief class character and steal BTC from other players or from guild HQ 'bank'

I don't think that is a good idea.. It seems too scary for the targeted audience, which is youngsters with much time but low/no money. Getting 0.1 Bitcoin stolen will be reason enough to quit for some of them.
Remember all the drama caused here in the forum by individuals who probably lost single-digit Bitcoin on one of the scams?
In WoW, for example, you don't even lose gear when you die. You have some penalty, but no experience or gear or gold is lost.

Ente

[Nyhm]

Thanks for the continued input, folks. Island Forge does not have PvP, and I have no plan to add PvP any time soon (that would be a v2.0 thing, if ever). Not that it's a bad idea, just that it doesn't really fit the game. Nonetheless, I like hearing all the different perspectives.

[Ente]

but it makes the game more fun that way, you could have 2 servers , one for young audience , the other for those who want serious PvP

otherwise i wouldn't be interested , there are plenty of other games i would rather play that have PvP

what will be the unique selling point of the game, what would make me interested and play (for me btc currency in the game + PvP)

I am all for PvP! It is indeed more fun and more immersive.
But then, if players calculate through chances and don't take risks because loss of "real stuff" is imminent, the fun surely lessens. I want to be able to annoy other players which are two heads above me, get killed eventually, have some lulz and not lose real world assets or too much time (by losing experience, gold, items).
Thats my, more or less recreational, view.

But then, with nyhm's last post, it is clear now anyway.

Ente