Gaming is a $140 billion global industry. This massive scale is driven largely by digital economies created through in-game virtual purchases that unlock specific game features, unique abilities and characters and items, among other things. However, creating a balanced economy that benefits both a game’s player community and its creators is complex and challenging.
One of the key innovations of blockchain technology is its ability to unlock new economic and creative opportunities for players and game developers—but for most, the technology is extremely difficult to access, use and deploy. Enter Forte, an organization comprised of industry veterans on a mission to accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology in games.
Forte’s community-focused platform arms developers with the necessary tools and services that make it easy to integrate blockchain technology in game economies, enabling more equitable business models, deeper player engagement and entirely new types of digital interactions.
At our inaugural University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI) Connect conference, Forte Co-founder and Chief Platform Officer, Brett Seyler, shared the impact blockchain technology will have on the way games are created.
“The free-to-play business model dominates the way games are run now. This model has grown the gaming industry more than any other business model in the last ten years,” explained Seyler. However, due to increased sophistication and competition of the free-to-play model, modern game economies are now staggeringly complex and difficult to manage.
Most developers manage this with careful orchestration to create the illusion of flexibility. Yet, the backend technology powering many games adheres to legacy models that lead to a clunky experience for both game developers and players alike.
Blockchain technology is a well-suited solution. “Creating game economies with multi-sided participation, open markets and increased transparency offer a potent solution to the challenge of the complexity plaguing game developers that result in stagnant economy design,” said Seyler.
Blockchain provides an indelible ledger that runs across multiple computers. For gaming, this offers a transparent way to track in-game transactions made between different owners of digital assets in a game. The technology enables players to make transactions directly with each other and be rewarded by other players, a game’s developer or its publisher in a safe and secure experience. In addition, blockchain offers game developers the ability to run game economies with real flexibility.
Forte leverages the Interledger Protocol (ILP), our open source protocol for conducting transactions across different blockchains. In combination with ILP, the company utilizes the digital asset XRP to maximize cross-chain interoperability, security and inter-asset liquidity.
The impact blockchain technology and digital assets can make within the games industry is vast and this is just the beginning of the power that can be harnessed by blockchain technology.
Forte’s platform and mission align with this thinking and we’re thrilled to partner with them to deliver new gaming experiences.
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