The Importance of Player-Owned Gaming Assets

It’s time for game creators to put the power back in the player’s hands.

The introduction of assets to the gaming world was a monumental achievement. The first materialization of this concept was ‘cheat codes’, where possessing the code allowed players certain abilities in the game. From then, RPGs were developed, truly introducing personal inventories and valuable items with a hint of rarity. The final form came with the development of the MMORPG, in which these items became competitively valuable. There is no type of video game asset more precious than one that comes with visible bragging rights. This was perfected in games such as World of Warcraft, Runescape, and EVE Online, which would see the most expensive items traded at thousands of dollars. Gaming assets like this are being phased out, and in many of the most popular games of the day, no longer exist.

In the business definition—which makes sense to use when players are spending time and money—assets are defined as property owned by a person or company, regarded as having value and available to meet debts, commitments, or legacies. The issue with game items is that today’s many aren’t available to meet ‘debts’, or even to exchange whatsoever; they are consumables. Triple-A game creators limit players’ ability to trade items with each other and often ‘nerf’ certain items, destroying the inherent value of an item that may have been purchased using real dollars. This perpetuates an absurd system in which high profile game creators charge inordinate amounts of money for untradeable items with no guarantee of future value. So the question becomes, why do players allow this? It’s because up until now they have had no alternative to point to. Only recently have players been able to affect any sort of change on a major game creator with the minimization of microtransactions in the new Star Wars: Battlefront (which took the most down-voted comment in Reddit history to realize). There is no incentive for studios to take the consumer into account because they hold all the cards. So if this trend is to continue, where does that leave us?

“The most exciting thing about owning items in video games is the feeling that they are truly what they seem to be; items of immense value with which you may do as you please. This is the beauty of video games that large studios destroy because they want to churn out profits.”

Rockstar games is a perfect example of what happens when a Triple-A game creator gets ahold of the concept of microtransactions. Despite the fact that Rockstar games sells over $500M in ‘shark cards’ for GTA V a year, there is not even a semblance of digital asset ownership on its platform. GTA V is essentially raking in millions of player dollars in exchange for a temporary boost in game completion that dies when the next game comes out, and this can be said of most big name titles today. It may seem innocuous because, at the end of the day, it’s the player’s decision to participate. The cold truth, however, is that despite the fact that we all know we are being taken for a ride, it’s just too much fun. To hammer home the point, I have a personal example of the mindset of these large game studios.

Recently, a consultant to Rockstar games reached out to me saying that some executives in the company were interested in looking into the possibility of an ICO, which I found quite interesting. Did this mean that Rockstar was considering accepting the sacrifice in profit in order to empower their players? Nope. When I described my vision for a GTA token that would allow GTA assets to be put on the blockchain, I stopped hearing back. Frankly, I don’t blame them; I knew deep down they were simply intoxicated by the amount of money Telegram was trying to raise. Ultimately I helped them realize the huge amount of profit they would lose in allowing players to own their assets. If the studio has a monopoly on in-game value, they can multiply their profits. Trading items with other players means they lose out on potential in-game purchases, as you are buying from the other player instead of the studio. This is why it is so important for players to own their own assets. Players work hard, contribute real money, and ultimately see their effort essentially wiped out when a game loses popularity or they grow bored. This is unacceptable, and while we players have lived with it for a long time there is still a way out.

BitGuild is creating mandates for game developers that they must accept in order to join their platform. Among them, the most significant is that in-game assets must be put on the blockchain. This is meant to be a haven for players that care about their own digital assets, as any game on the platform is guaranteed to have certain minimum standards of digital asset ownership rights. The blockchain imbues game assets with certain properties; they are guaranteed to be tradable, the developers have to compete with other players for microtransactions, the assets cannot be tampered with by the game developer unilaterally, and the assets can be liquidated once a player grows bored of the game. These are all key advances in player empowerment, and BitGuild is not the only one doing it. Asset marketplaces like WAX and blockchain-based games like Parsec Frontiers are also pushing this world forward. The end goal of all of these projects is to create a virtual reality that mirrors the real world, and not some perverse corporate playground. The most exciting thing about owning items in video games is the feeling that they are truly what they seem to be; items of immense value with which you may do as you please. This is the beauty of video games that large studios destroy because they want to churn out profits. Even Vitalik Buterin himself, the founder and head of research at Ethereum, credits his interest in blockchain to a devastating nerf of his favorite spell in World of Warcraft, Siphon Life. One of the top minds in blockchain became interested in it because of how it could revolutionize the gaming world. If that doesn’t convince you of the need for blockchain gaming, I don’t know what will.