Every gamer that has enjoyed interacting and taking part in virtual worlds with virtual goods and virtual economies will agree that being able to somehow link that virtual economy with “real life” economies is without doubt one of the most common “fantasies” we have had.
The excitement we all feel when hoarding a bunch of gold after completing a mission playing a RPG or when collecting resources after exploiting a farm or a mine on a RTS is certainly real. We all feel good watching our wealth in the game economy increase, even if that wealth can only be used in-game and not in “real” life.
But that is not the case anymore, our world is changing fast and new opportunities are arising at a speed never seen before, this is why I would like to share what could very well be the future of gaming, only possible by leveraging blockchain technology.
Enter Chimaera
Chimaera is a new platform that provides tools for developers to create and host their games in its blockchain, helping more creative minds with the burden of finding ways to publish their creations and make them available to the public, while also allowing them to adopt all sort of different strategies in order to monetize their game, there is simple no limits when it comes to figuring out ways for the developers to receive the proper reward for their work thanks to the versatility of the platform and all the possibilities it provides.
It also offers benefits for the gamers since they can earn the in-game currency or items based on their activities and their results in any of the games that are part of Chimaera’s blockchain. What changes everything is the fact that these in-game currencies can be traded for the CHI tokens that are the ones that fuels every type of operation on this platform, so everyone participating in the blockchain will need to use these tokens one way or another, and because of this its fair to say these tokens have serious value in the “real" world, which allows the player to effectively be rewarded in real life by their activities in their virtual life, this feature is called "Human Mining" which is a term that didn't existed until this team came along.
Chimaera’s impact on the gaming industry
By using blockchain technology the way the game information is handled is vastly different than the traditional centralized way.
Under the Chimaera platform, in order to allow for the amount of transactions to take place without delay and to make it easier for the virtual worlds to scale as they become more popular and more congested, players themselves can be able to be the ones who confirm transactions about every event that is happening while they play on a certain section of the game or on a certain turn, this is only possible thanks to a breakthrough feature called “Game Channel” which consists on constantly creating sidechains maintained privately by the players who are participating, and once the play is finished, it connects back with the public blockchain to register the end results of the different transactions that took place. This also increases the amount of control gamers have in their own game because there isn’t a central entity (being much more likely to suffer attacks given its centralized nature) being responsible of the servers. Thanks to this, there will no scalability issues because the more gamers there are, the more computer resources there will be for confirming transactions and registering the results of any actions taken in the game.
There are similar benefits when it comes to handling the assets of the game, so far there is no way to be able to exchange virtual goods between different games, its simply impossible for example to exchange a Daedric Armor from Skyrim for a Thermonuclear Device from Civilization VI (which are both very difficult to obtain items), there is no mechanism nor network nor trading platform to make these kind of exchanges. But again, this is not the case anymore, with Chimaera’s blockchain there is a trading platform that can be used by any gamer and with any game hosted in the blockchain, this trading platform allows the exchange of virtual goods that are earned while in the game, for other different virtual goods that were earned by any other user from playing any other game that is also hosted in the blockchain. The CHI token is the central part of all these different exchanges, so when trading it for fiat money users can take advantage of these gains and achievements in “real” life.
This can easily end up creating a thriving, growing, and global virtual economy composed by all the different items that can be obtained and traded between all of the gamers. This allows our productivity inside these virtual worlds to finally have a positive impact in our “real” life resources, turning this platform into a paradigm shift because it gives the gamers all around the world the ultimate reason to really put their best efforts and time in order to achieve the best possible performance. Because of this, the competitiveness will be unparalleled with anything we have seen so far.
Infinite possibilities
All of this could lead to the creations of countless virtual worlds, with interconnected economies, in which whatever tasks there is available will hold real life value. Imagine a place in which the skills of your digital character can allow you to earn a living just by playing and taking part of missions in your favorite game. Imagine if killing a dragon like the ones in Skyrim could earn you tokens that you could later exchange in order to pay for your groceries or any other typical purchase. Imagine the excitement gamers would feel when knowing that if they find out a hidden location and discover a hidden item they could later exchange that item freely with no limitations whatsoever. I can certainly see a huge influx of all sort of virtual worlds (medieval, futuristic, inter planetary like the Mass Effect universe) having tons of players competing while also having fun and being rewarded in “real” life.
But let’s go one step further, and add virtual reality to the mix. As must of us already know, VR is a growing trend in the gaming industry because it adds a new level of realism when playing the game by making the player really feel like part of the game itself.
If people can earn while doing activities in a virtual world, the immersion would be as close to The Matrix as we can get with today’s technology. Because not only will gamers feel like they belong to that virtual reality, but since they would be earning tokens that have real life value, it would make every activity much more meaningful and everything would be taken with a higher level of seriousness. This can even end up being a new kind of job (a dream job for us gamers without doubt) in which everyone can participate and receive rewards whether they are famous or not, all based on the performance and the achievements that are obtained in the game.
Conclusion
Having shared all of this, I think we can fairly said this project certainly have the potential of not only changing the gaming industry and how it operates, but also changing the lives of millions of gamers around the world that will finally have an opportunity to be rewarded by their virtual skills, and this simple fact, should increase the amount of people that decide to play video games.
Since developers also get important benefits and useful tools for using Chimaera, the chances of this ending up being a successful project are even bigger.
As a gamer I really wish the best to this team because as my title says it, this would be every gamer's life long dream finally coming true.
If you want to know more about this project, I invite you to visit their website.
If you want to know more about how this blockchain project works, please feel free to check their whitepaper.
For some explanatory videos, please visit their youtube channel.
If you want to read official and informative articles about this project, you can find those here.
And if you want to ask me any question about this project, feel free to leave a comment below.
This is my entry for the contest created by @originalworks that can be found here.
chi2018