Blockchain technology appears to be marrying itself comfortably across multiple industries with many different applications; though perhaps one of the most popular amongst the crypto-savvy generation is video games.

Blockchain Upgrade

However, so far the video game blockchain revolution has managed to produce interest concepts that utilize the technology in a novel way, though they are lacking in some areas that traditional video games offer.

In video gaming, distributed ledger technology (DLT) offers a myriad of rather wonderful upgrades to an industry that consistently ramps up innovations year to year.

A prominent facet of the industry that blockchain will disrupt is that of microtransactions. Many games these days utilize in-game currencies for micro-transaction purchases which are initially paid for in fiat; this could be anything from a new character costume to a complete power-up for weapons, armour, character stats and much more.

With blockchain technologies added to this model, players have the potential to reap real-world value from in-game items, making them completely tradeable and profitable on scales previously unheard of.

This also introduces the notion of in-game economies that have real-world value. Furthermore, it opens up the prospect of incentivised gameplay, which could offer career-gamers a new way to generate income.

Ether Kingdom

One of the latest additions to this race is Ether Kingdoms - it’s the first Free-to-Play (F2P) cryptocurrency game with proof-of-stake (PoS) mining that beats out the present crypto-game competition with up-to-standard visuals, great gameplay and utilizes its own PoS token called IMP.

Imps are both key characters and tokens within the game. Players can monetize Imps and earn up to 1% as a mining reward by sending a maximum of 10,000 Imps to the mine.

Players can also send their Imps to fight other player’s Imps. To do this, allocate the number of Imps you wish to send into battle and await your opponents challenge acceptance, the battle will rage on automatically though victory odds can be increased by equipping Imps with artifacts.

Fantastically, artifacts are ERC721 tokens that are collectible, exchangeable and can be sold on special platforms such as OpenSea. Artifacts can be traded, bought and utilized to take part in the weekly leaderboards.

Cryptokitties, the already massively popular cryptocurrency game will be integrated with Ether Kingdoms to add an extra layer to gaming and earning potential; players can use Cryptokitties tokens in the game as pets which can provide them with other game bonuses.

Developments

Ether Kingdoms is now out of its beta testing phase and over the rest of 2018, several additions to the game are set to be released:

New PvP fight mode

Clan battles

Special locations for groups of players

Global and local opponent-bosses

New, rechargeable ERC721 tokens

Reduced mining rates (by half!). Only 50 players will receive a unique artifact that guarantees the maximum mining profit of 1%.

A mobile version of the game is on the way during the first quarter of 2019, though this will not support cryptocurrencies due to the policies of various app stores; however, artifacts earned in the mobile version will be usable in the browser version.

Ether Kingdoms is a new standard bearer for blockchain and cryptocurrency video games, to play now head to the official website here.