New Trends in Blockchain Game Development: Stake To Play Mechanism and Demonstration Games

Original Author: wasdmedia.eth

Editor: Zen, PANews

Just like ICOs for tokens, liquidity mining for DeFi, and PFPs for NFTs, the recent meteoric rise of Friend Tech once again demonstrates the ability of financial incentives and speculation as catalysts for growth.

And in the world of on-chain games, we are starting to see a trend of using economic incentives purely by gambling, which may be described by a more acceptable buzzword: Stake-To-Play (S2P). As the name suggests, S2P refers to players putting assets at risk in some way or form in order to participate in skill-based PVP games. These funds are then put into a prize pool and distributed to the winners at the end of the game. It seems like a simple concept, but if you look closely, there's more to it.

Advantages and disadvantages of S2P games

The core idea behind Stake-To-Play is not new. Whether it's through Poker, Fantasy Football or "the hottest free MMORPG" RuneScape, people are putting their money into a variety of different types of games.

The reason for this is very simple. Not only do people love the chance of winning money, but increasing the stakes also increases the stakes, enhancing the drama, intrigue and intensity of the game. In the real world, this is mostly handled through sketchy custodians; or, as in the game Fantasy Football League, by using Venmo, a payment service that you believe will never run away, as a third-party custodian.

However, using Venmo is not a scalable solution. Players have been frozen from time to time, and starting in 2022, Fantasy Football gambling bonuses exceeding $600 must be reported to the IRS. We can see that there are many benefits to implementing S2P in on-chain games, which may allow them to scale well beyond what they are today.

Some of these keys are:

• Self-Custody: Player funds are kept on-chain in smart contracts, rather than in centralized, opaque off-chain custodians.
• Access to global liquidity: On-chain games can leverage capital in the crypto economy, allowing anyone, anywhere to participate, which greatly increases the potential size of the prize pool.
• Sustainable financial incentives: Games can leverage the inherent desire of cryptocurrency users to speculate and take risks without having to rely on inflationary token incentives.
• Income for developers: S2P games on the chain can earn income by drawing a portion of the total prize pool to fund their development and growth plans.
• Modding to unlock and move towards full autonomy: S2P can help provide economic incentives and economic activity to maintain a strong mod ecosystem, helping aspiring autonomous worlds become less dependent on their original creators.

Of course, S2P is not suitable for all games on the chain. It also has some potential disadvantages, such as:

• Limited potential user base: Some players may not want to risk losing money every time they play, which may limit the game's potential player pool.
• Loss of fun: The ability to make money is no substitute for gameplay, and some players may feel that the stress of S2P games robs them of fun.
• Balance issue: Players can spend different amounts in S2P games, which can make it a "pay-to-win" game and end up being dominated by whales.
• Policy: Regulators may view S2P as unregulated gambling and try to crack down on games that implement S2P.

Games using S2P mode

After understanding the pros and cons of Stake-To-Play, we can take a look at how it is implemented in practice.

Words3

Words3 is a PvP crossword puzzle built on a MUD by game studio Small Brain Games. Similar to crossword puzzles, in Words3 the player's goal is to form words and earn points for them. However, Words3 is actually more of a financialized version of Scrabble combined with S2P where players have to pay ETH for each letter they place in the game. The price of letters changes throughout the game according to the demand for using them, and its price will be dynamically adjusted according to supply and demand according to the VRGDA algorithm. The selling speed of letters above or below the target speed will trigger the price increase or decrease.

All the ETH a player spends in a round is put into a pool, which is divided based on profitability to "win" the game. The goal of Words3 is to maximize profitability, or earn more ETH by playing words, and then spend more money to create words. Words3 launched its first mainnet game on Base on August 9. Over four days, a total of 122 players participated and the total accumulated prize money exceeded $22,000.

Overall, Words3's use of S2P greatly increases the risk, novelty, and fun of the game. Letter and word price changes add a new layer of strategy not present in other word building games. Having said that, the use of VRGDA pricing gives too much of an advantage to early players who can collect rent by placing the first word. I also think there is some potential for pay-to-win given that there is no cap on the amount of ETH each player can spend. However, the ability to create custom games with different time limits, pricing features, and spending caps would go a long way toward alleviating these issues.

Rasca

Rhascau is a turn-based racing game developed by Minters and running on Arbitrum Nova. In the game, the player will hop on a boat with an objective to complete a lap around the track. Like an on-chain board game, players do this by rolling virtual dice, and the number of points determines how far the ship can be pushed. During your turn, you can also use abilities to attack and immobilize other ships, as well as move further on the board. Rhascau implements the S2P mechanism in its pay-to-play mode, in which players are required to put a certain amount of ETH into a pool, which will be distributed among the winners. Players in the free mode do not involve any interests in the game.

Rhascau's S2P model allows players to choose whether they are willing to take the risk of losing their hard-earned ETH, which can help Rhascau and other games that want to achieve S2P, while attracting both casual players who want stress-free entertainment and hardcore players who want to increase their stakes. nuclear players.

The Potential of S2P Gaming

Third Party Prize Pool

On-chain games themselves do not necessarily have to implement Stake-To-Play in their underlying contracts. The underlying games can remain free and leave the implementation of S2P prize pools to third-party developers. Take Sky Strife, for example. In its current release, it's a free-to-play PvP real-time strategy (RTS) game that doesn't cost you money to play. However, developers can build an "S2P layer" on top of Sky Strife, and players can participate in the game by paying ETH. We could also see it being used by communities, brands and other projects to create and sponsor tournaments without having to handle or keep any funds. Source of income.

On-Chain Gambling Market

Gambling is becoming an important part of society and many people have wagered on sports betting. The data bears this out, with US gaming revenue more than tripling between 2020 and 2022 alone. Therefore, this demand has the potential to translate into on-chain games, where developers build protocols where players can place bets on the outcome of different PVP matches. This could help a game like Words3 increase its prize pool to millions of dollars, or possibly billions given the size of the DeFi and gambling industry, due to the ability to tap into the global liquidity pool of cryptocurrencies. Doing so, however, can have significant regulatory risks and crackdowns on manipulation are needed to prevent players from abandoning the game.

Stake-to-Play is a design trend for on-chain games. We've seen early iterations of S2P implemented in games like Words3, Rhascau, which, while needing improvement, show the power of the mechanism. When combined with the open, composable, permissionless nature of on-chain gaming, S2P may facilitate growth and unlock a range of new applications.