Driving Mass Adoption - Gaming

Without mass adoption crypto currency will end up being a feat of engineering never used.

Path to mass adoption is not just about finding “use-cases” it’s about identifying the use-case with the least resistance and widest appeal.

I think these guys are onto something:

Particularly the point they make about “gaming being a very smooth on-ramp for crypto” – I may not own any crypto, but if I play a game that has in-game-assets plus a marketplace to sell them, it’s only a matter of time before I “find” something in the game I can sell for crypto. At which point I own some of the crypto currency used by the game.

I don’t know how Emurgo or CF feel about gaming, obviously IOHK is more about building the underlying network. I hope someone is thinking about and promoting use-cases (even if they don’t agree with me about this particular one), otherwise there is the chance of ending up with a wonderfully engineered white elephant.

I can think of two (kind of) distinct use-cases for crypto in gaming 1) buying/selling in game items 2) gambling (casino style, or player-2-player style; http://corp.skillz.com).

For a game developer to use a crypto currency, it would have to be made very easy for them… I’m thinking you would need a simple wallet that they could integrate into their games. Not a wallet like we think (daedalus, infinito) but a simple plugin for their platform. All it needs to do is receive, spend and remit funds. No passwords. Just one address.

Games can be made for desktop or mobile, I don’t know anything about desktop games; for mobile these are the platforms: unity, corona, unreal, GMS. Each one would need a plugin.

That’s a minimum, ideally you would also have the tournamenting functionality, like skillz or amazon-gameon, there are probably other things - I haven’t really thought about it beyond this.

What do you guys think?

Is gaming the on-ramp for mass adoption in crypto - or are there better use-cases out there?

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SP8DE are building a gambling platform on Cardano.

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Don’t know much about them, but it looks like that’s casino stuff. There is already so much of that out there.

How about - I’ll play you at virtual pool for $5 - that kind of gaming.

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I was under the impression their platform would support that kind of thing but not sure, I’m not personally interested in any kind of gambling. Apart from crypto investment of course! :laughing:

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I’ve bought in-game-items, content (extra levels), and I’d be up for making a small wager directly with someone else on a game of skill. I kind of feel that’s where most people are, but that may simply be my biases. My brother plays poker, he did it for a living for a while, but doesn’t appeal to me at all.

I think they are working on it…

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Thanks, forgot about that…

iPhone app store search “poker”

PokerStars,
Zynga Poker,
WSOP Texas Holdem,
Poker Heat,
Full Tilt Casino,
Govenor,
Texas Holdem offline,
Poker World,
Texas Holdem Poker,
Poker!,
Billionaire Casino,
Big Fish Casino,
Texas Holdem Poker Cards,
Huuuge Casino,
Governor of Poker 3,
Sky Vegas and Slots,
got bored and stopped scrolling.

What does this tell us?

This market is:

A) very saturated
B) very popular
C) A and B
D) None of the above

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C. There are a ton of people and a ton of providers. It’s a mature market. To steal market share from incumbents, a product needs to be significantly better, not just a little better. Maybe it is, I do not know. Typically it is easier to attack a new or emerging market.

I did a brief google search and found a couple of interesting articles but not a lot of actual blockchain based poker Daps currently running. I think side chain and off chain features that Cardano promises will be very helpful and attractive to people who want to deploy these kinds of Daps without bogging down the entire network.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-10/gambling-apps-surpass-cryptokitties-as-blockchain-s-money-maker

I think there could be a pretty big market for trade card games (TCG’s) on the blockchain. Steam is coming out with Artifact, MTG online has shown there is a market and there is already surfacing blockchained based TCGs (for example gods unchained)

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C with the following limitations that existing apps have

  1. These are centralized apps with all the vulnerabilities that come with that
  2. There are no guarantees of fairness absent trustworthy audit reports.

Secure and rule-based decentralized multi-party computation is a significant advantage in games like these.

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Aside from the Dapps, I’m eager to know what exactly the Cardano project’s use-cases are.
targetting the Africa and countries that don’t have easy access to the bank service seems like a great idea but several projects are also providing the similar solution. Just want to know if there are some use-cases that really make Cardano stand out
thanks in advance for replying and the reading

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Me too, because ownership is long term + central part of the “game”, I think the value add is greater. A game of poker is over in 5 minutes, once I’ve cashed out, I’m done.

Dapps are blockchain apps. You can store many things on a blockchain apart from tokens. You could store land registry details for example… Any blockchain project that has a Turing complete VM - i.e. can execute any smart contract - could do same as Cardano. Probably ease of adoption will be a large factor in determining uptake. If you are asking for a USP then perhaps contract security? The project is heavily researched and thought through. As I’m sure you know, smart contracts are often hacked, Cardano’s will have VMs that implement languages that allow formal methods to be used to make sure the contract behaves as expected.

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Personally, i would like to see gambling on e-sports teams. For big tournaments as well as smaller teams who want to have a match…

It could really help both sectors thrive. I remember @Dealy14 is working on a project (that involves gambling) and wants to release it on Cardano.

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Thanks @Bullish for the mention. You can read my responses on this forum on this topic, that is, my desire to work with Cardano/Emurgo and getting crickets in response.

Peer to peer betting is an AWESOME use case for smart contracts.

When Emurgo rejected my offer to partner to build a P2P betting platform, I pivoted and found another partner, Byteball.org. https://medium.com/byteball/i-bet-you-win-online-gaming-and-sports-betting-have-all-the-chances-to-become-the-biggest-use-case-bf521db57b36

If there’s interest in the community, or the winds have changed…let me know. I have an in to the US market, which is massive.

Thanks again @Bullish.

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Your welcome mate, glad you found a partner. Fwiw i really liked your pitch, I think your company has a very promising future and it’s a good use-case honestly. Maybe you can prove emurgo wrong :wink:.

Good luck @Dealy14, keep us updated! :slight_smile:

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Social acceptance of betting on various things depends on individual societies and also on how it is presented.

For example, stock options or shorts and commodity futures aren’t considered as gambling. However, we know well that no matter how much we pretend that there’s some science to it the larger component in it is speculation. In other words it is a bet, however, we don’t call it gambling. And, because we don’t call it gambling it is socially acceptable.

In case of sports betting also, if the betting is on the outcome of some socially glorified sport then the betting contributes to the fanatics of the sport. Again, this is not considered as a social vice.

Lottery, which is actually state sponsored mass betting is perfectly acceptable form of betting in almost all societies.

Casinos, and unorganized betting of similar nature is definitely a “social vice” in many societies - I feel it is because of how it is presented. This is my personal observation from what I have gathered so far, so there may be some inaccurate generalizations.

Perhaps Emurgo’s response to the proposal was in light of how unorganized betting is considered in Japan.

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