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I've touched a lot on both mobile gaming and the concept of 'blockchain gaming' as it exists within the idealised dystopia that is the mind of your everyday crypto bro lunatic, and it only makes sense that I bring them together to ask such an important question about the evolution of our gaming industry. Afterall, the mobile industry has been brought up every now and then by Cryptoheads of a prime example of a gaming platform that started off in pathetic fashion but grew into the most popular in the world, isn't it possible that the same sort of thing could happen with the blockchain? Yes, this is actually something of a common refrain, and one just that tiny bit complicated enough to require an extended rebuttal. So consider this my extended pre-built answer because god knows I can't be compiling all this together on the fly every time someone wants to insult mine and their own intelligence by speaking nonsense.
Mobile gaming, in the days of the flip phone, was indeed only one degree above tiger handheld electronic for being the bottom of the barrel for those who wanted to play. Ugly and rudimentary platformers that typically only stood out for licence agreements made behind the scenes, they were heavily limited by the simplistic tech of the time. the improvement of the phone hardware over the years has been what has allowed mobile gaming to blossom into actually intelligentially designed pieces of complex software. On the absolute flipside, Blockchain gaming started on the computer. The rudimentary design elements are not due to hardware limitations, but with blockchain integration on the most conceptual level. In fact, no Cryptobro seems able to propose a use case for the tech that isn't aggressively, eye wateringly misinformed or easily doable without blockchain technology.
It genuinely hurts my soul to go over these talking points, but I do intend for this article to be a full rebuttal. First off, item ownership and unique unlockable items; they can easily be created and integrated into a game's ecosystem without blockchain integration. Server first rewards have been held in Runescape, sellable weapon skins in CS:GO, cash out opportunities are practically everywhere if you are a purveyor of the 'grey market'. As for cross-game item integration, believing in that requires such a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to game design that it's almost insulting to respond to. Every asset in a video game needs to be created intentionally by the team to have a use case in their game in question. Assets go through processes of conceptualisation, artistic rendering and mechanical compositioning before they even make it into the Alpha build. It's a delicate process of balance and control. Now imagine if a medieval fantasy game like Elden Ring had to do this dance whilst also trying to figure out some way to throw in a hula-dress from a NFT game that released a year ago, a laser rifle from another one, and several items from every single NFT game ever released ever.
That isn't even taking into the account the fact that each of these games would belong to totally separate developers, which means that in this theoretical, FromSoft would be dedicated development manpower for the benefit of a studio they have no affiliation with, just to keep that separate company's NFT ecosystem afloat. From a player's standpoint it only really offers a base precursory glance of value for items that only have innate value in the games they were made for, in a market sense it is absolutely unrealistic for the thousands of games that are made and released every single day, and from a business standpoint it's literally a money waster- which should in itself be a wake-up call to these dreamers because money making is all they care about! And that these are literally the 'strongest' use case arguement these people can come up with, should be all you need to know about the kind of 'forward thinkers' we're working with here!
"But Mobile games are good now!" As the refrain goes. To which my answer can only be a condemnation. No, Mobile Games are not good- they're popular. The vast majority of mobile games are lightly animated waiting simulators wherein the chief most gameplay mechanic is the requirement to wait until meters fill themselves or the autobattle screen rolls by or the 'cooldown' expires. There are good games on the mobile platform, but those are either exceptional islands in a vast sea of mediocrity, which are usually soon ported to PC, or ports of real PC games made playable on the phone. No, Heartstone is not a mobile game. No more so than Grand Theft Auto:San Andreas is. Or Final Fantasy one through six. The mobile market hasn't suddenly grown standards in the past decade, it's just gotten better at money gouging.
Still, just because a game isn't good that doesn't discount the value of it's popularity. On this we do agree, and if Blockchain games can snatch the popularity of the mobile market then they'll became a staying power in the industry no matter what more traditional gamers think. But here's the rub, mobile games became popular because of how accessible they are for gamers, whilst the Blockchain is anything but. Mobile games are easy to find, easy to play, and typically free to start. Blockchain games are difficult to trackdown, a nightmare to get working and require stupidly expensive buy-ins that are typically made months before the game even starts development, because that's how these blockchain games make their money. It's pretty much night and day in that regard, Blockchain has something of an uphill struggle.
Of course, there's also the refrain about all the famous and storied developers who have turned their hand to the blockchain market. People who had a hand changing gaming history now feeling the direction that the market is trending pre-emptively. Except, are they? Where's Kojima's Blockchain game? Todd Howard's? Sid Meyer's? Shigeru Miyamoto's? Oh, we've got Peter Molyneux's crypto game? You mean Peter Molyneux: the guy renowed for promising more out of his games than his team were ever able to deliver, to the point where he verged on straight being a two-bit hustler before his crypto period? People like that are your burning symbol of righteous quality? Heck, you guys can go ahead and keep Molyneux; we don't want him anymore!
For the time being, I think we can pretty definitively say that the Blockchain market doesn't hold much of any sway over the world of gaming, and isn't set to shift that balance anytime within the next 10 or so years. Mobile gaming truly did turn the tables with what it was able to accomplish, but to compare the mobile market with blockchain gaming would be like trying to compare the rise of commercial trains to the ascent of the commercial blimp market. One is now ubiquitous, the other collapsed in a fiery ball that killed 36 people. The Mobile market is soaring, and the blockchain gaming market has crashed over and over again in a fiery explosion that hasn't directly killed anyone yet, but has at least contributed to virtual wage slavery of third world economies. So yeah, can't wait for that Crypto future; how about you?
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