The digital collectible card games (CCG) market is expected to generate 1.3 billion U.S dollars worldwide this year. Most of this revenue will go to the publishers, developers and marketing companies behind these games. Hearthstone, a collectible card game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment back in 2014 takes a big chunk of this pie. It has been consistently the top CCG game in the world since its launch 4 years ago.

What if some of this wealth can also go to the players through trading, selling, and true ownership of game items? Are players who spend hundreds, if not thousands of hours playing, evangelizing and supporting these games entitled to some form of compensation too?

A CCG is Also A TCG

According to Wikipedia, a collectible card game is also called a trading card game, but the important element of trading is absent in games like Hearthstone. And when a similar idea is implemented, such as in the case of Diablo III’s Auction House, it eventually fails because of fraud, scams, hacking, or simply being incompatible with the core gameplay itself. Most players are also against the idea despite the demand.

Don’t you wish you can trade, sell, and actually own cards in Hearthstone?

Unfortunately, whether trading is enabled or not, when a game dies, your items also die with it. So, after spending countless hours on the game, you’ll just end up with nothing. As the lowly player, you never really owned anything. Talk about being at the bottom of the food chain.

Some will argue that the player is already compensated through the enjoyment of the experience of playing the game itself. I’ll talk about why this is unfair, disingenuous and a bad business model in a separate essay.

Blockchain to the Rescue

Gaming can be thought of as having different phases like the trends in music and fashion. The 1970s was marked by the popularity of arcades. The 1980s of home consoles. The 1990s of desktop or PC gaming. The 2000s of online and competitive gaming. The 2010s of mobile and social gaming. And now we are approaching the 2020s which I think will be the rise of blockchain and VR gaming.

Blockchain technology has the potential to give control back to the players. Game items can be represented as unique tokens with attributes like rarity, strength and even genetic information by implementing smart contracts. Ownership is secured by cryptography and trading is already an integral part of the system. Gaming could be blockchain’s next killer application after Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

I won’t be discussing any technical details in this essay, I’ll leave the research and further learning to you. There are several great resources available here on Medium and around the web. Keep in mind that a fundamental understanding of how blockchain works is essential in gaining a deeper appreciation of its impact in gaming, finance, and other industries.

Gods Unchained: Next Generation CCG

Gods Unchained is an upcoming collectible card game that takes advantage of blockchain technology to give players and the community true ownership of the cards and the ability to sell or trade them. To quote their FAQ: