Just a few days ago, I wrote a post about identity and within it, I alluded to the fact that the work I do contributes to my sense of "who I am". Despite the fact that raising a family is the most important job I'll ever have, it's not even remotely challenging on an intellectual level. There's also the issue of not wanting to work for somebody else!
In the comments, @o1eh said:
I would try to create my own business based on the Steem blockchain.
I pondered this for much longer than I should have.
I don't know a lot about blockchain technology although I do find it interesting. I learnt about Solidity and building smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain which got me wondering about Steem's actual blockchain. Not the Condenser based steemit.com interface nor the steemit API but how I can publish directly onto the blockchain. Is this possible? Where would I start if I wanted to do this? Comments from people who understand this would be greatly appreciated!
Having parked that idea for now, I thought about games. In my younger days, I wrote a fairly simple yet highly addictive website for Connect 4 (some might know it as 4-in-a-row). It was too popular and crashed my free hosting before I'd figured out how to monetise it so I binned it off. This highlights to me that the idea doesn't need to be particularly sexy to be popular.
I also know how to publish and interact with content from outside of Steemit and have explored some of the possibilities This biggest challenge is that most game ideas (including the aforementioned Connect 4) require some kind of "secrecy" (i.e. one player not knowing what the other player is doing) and without capturing a user's key, I've got no way of validating that the correct person is seeing the correct thing.
I don't really want to start using user's keys, although @stmpak.wit recently shared this post with me which would use the less risky memo key for validation. I don't want to go down this route yet though so stepped away and let my subconscious think for a while.
Text Based Games
Fortunately, my subconscious is much smarter than me and returned to games and books from my childhood - which is where the idea (that I'm not going to share with you yet) came from. In book format, it was extremely immersive and I see little reason for it not to translate well to Steemit.
It also reminded me of a game that I played on an old BBC computer called "Tea Shop"...
I was really young when I played this but can still remember that you can sell a lot more tea on hot days.
I digress. The game concept is quite simple really - the user makes a decision and the game responds to that decision.
Proof of Concept
I've probably given you a few hints as to what I'm thinking...
As with most things that I code, I like to produce a Proof of Concept first so that I know each component will work before piecing it together and adding detail.
I'll need to run some code on my own server which will need to respond to a user input - in my case, a comment posted on Steemit by the "Game Player". I've not proven this part yet but it's next on my to-do list.
I'll need to record the player's "Game State" which I'll also need to retrieve and update. I've been able to do this surprisingly easily and Steemit's a surprisingly good tool for storing, retrieving and updating data, especially when there's nothing of any sensitivity.
Of course, I'll also need to write the game itself so that the user's choices actually do something. I've achieved this too and started to introduce plenty of random factors so that each iteration of the game can end differently.
So good progress already and the bulk of my time will be spent writing the various game scenarios to ensure that it's not too repetitive and not too easy or difficult. I could even add some pictures to liven things up.
I've also thought about how each Steemit user's profile (posts, comments, STEEM Power, etc.) can be integrated into the game.
I've even thought about how to continually increase the complexity of the idea and push what Steemit's API is capable of achieving but I'm far too far ahead of myself here - you might all think that the game's rubbish and I'll never step foot into this world again.
So before I get too deep into this, has anybody written a text based game on Steemit before - one that's interacted with solely through your blog and if so, can you point me to it please?
I've also thought that if somebody completes the game, there should be a reward in the form of a decent upvote (constraints will apply to prevent abuse of this) and (as I'm ye of little power at the moment) I welcome thoughts on how this could be achieved. Although if the game's good enough, this incentive might be little more than an added bonus.