Gaming is becoming a broader and broader term today. Millennials have grown up with original game consoles like the Nintendo or the first PlayStation. They later transitioned to PC gaming, which only got better and better as technology and we, grew up. Today, PC gaming is not in the frontlines as much as it used to be. Mobile gaming is taking over the industry. People are hooked on arcade style games, but there are increasingly more complicated games coming out for mobile as well, like L2 revolucion, a full scale MMORPG on your phone.

Blizzard Entertainment, a popular game development company that is responsible for the likes of World of Warcraft and Overwatch, has recently announced that the next installment of their popular franchise Diablo will be coming out on mobile as well; Diablo inmortal.

World of Warcraft

Overwatch

Diablo Inmortal

The gaming industry in itself is growing year over year. Last year it was worth $132 billion, and that’s not all, it is expected to continue to grow at an increasingly quicker rate. The reason behind is definitely the increase of new users as capable smartphones become affordable to everyone. But even more important is the increased supply and demand for games that drive users to play and spend money on in-game items.

CS: GO, League of Legends, Dota 2, Fortnite, PUBG, WarZ among others, have been the great titles of this decade. All of them have introduced a new show for players of all brands, which led them to the madness of throwing money out of the wallet to try to obtain a valuable asset from the game, which would improve the appearance of a character in some way.

CS: GO

League of Legends

Dota 2

Fortnite

PUBG

WarZ



Most of the time a game introduced a “digital chest” which contained a number of items, varying in rarity and appearance. These 2 factors combined would introduce a scarcity among these items and their value would go up as players began buying and selling them on the Steam Marketplace. Platforms like Steam, which hosted games like CS: GO and Dota 2, would allow users to trade items between themselves, but taking these items outside of the Steam network and trade them for items in a newer game like Fortnite was not at all possible. Users were stuck with the time and money spent in a game.

Game companies like Ubisoft are starting to wake up to the potential of using blockchain in their games. With the recent announcement by the company that “they’re looking into the Ethereum blockchain for a solution to provide their users with more freedom of choice of what they can do with their digital property or achievements.”

That does not mean that Ubisoft is the first to realize the great potential that blockchain has for games. In fact, it is one of the 5 main cases of use of blockchain, and companies like Enjin already realized this 2 years ago.

Using the Ethereum network to record the creation and transferring of game assets, users can bring the game items with them outside of the game they found them in, and perhaps use them somewhere else or trade them with other players.

Enjin, a company that is based on Ethereum, has been developing tools for developers and players to realize this vision. More than 25 games are already being built using Enjin's development tools. Tools like the Unity SDK, a complement to the popular game development engine. Players of all creeds, religions and locations are using the Enjin wallet to hold and exchange their game objects.

So while Ubisoft is a bit late to the party, this is only validation that the use of the Ethereum blockchain solves a big problem for gamers.

With the introduction of Google Stadia, VR headsets, bigger mobile screens, better batteries, faster processors and even the blockchain, the future of gaming is getting better and better. Perhaps gamers could find work just by playing games, as was a dream for most, but only possible for professionals in e-Sports, until now.