How do you usually kill your free time?

For my Chinese New Year holiday last week, the answer includes, but is not limited to, family gathering, reading, binging TV shows, watching movies, doing puzzles, LEGO and, last but not least, video games.

Needless to say, the gaming industry has been flourishing in recent years, scattering fertilizer over an even wider land of subculture on which there is an orbicular industry chain running.

As game industry researcher Newzoo’s end-of-2018 report read, the global video game market value as of last year may approach US$135 billion, securing a 10 per cent year-on-year increase. At such a growth rate, if not faster, this industry will be able to generate US$200 billion of revenue by the end of 2022.

In the blockchain world, the game sector is apparently no longer a secret treasure. According to Dappradar, among the total 1847 Dapps tracked, there are 1051 games — including gambling games.

Regardless of the sad reality that only about 200 Dapps are still generating tangible volume over the past seven days, the blockchain enthusiasts’ manifesto for the game market has been heard loud and clear.

However, I believe I am not the only one that has noticed that gambling Dapps dominate the existing blockchain game market, making up approximately 150 projects out of the total 200 active Dapps.

In the current traditional online game arena, conversely, I would be very surprised if gambling game players were to outweigh players interested in role-playing games, action games, adventure games, strategy games, and shooting games.

It is human nature to love gambling, which goes beyond just financial gain. I totally get it. I myself used to experience great excitement for a HK$20 bet that a random horse won for me in Hong Kong’s Happy Valley.

But that kind of ecstasy and slight sense of achievement doesn’t last long.

One of my veteran game-developer friends, who recently switched to crypto game making, told me that his team had half a dozen forthcoming substitutions on standby when the first gambling game was launched, as “gamblers will easily get bored with those simple and crude Dapps”.

For the sake of a sustainable ecosystem, we appeal for serious blockchain games.

Those small gambling games are undisputedly worthwhile experiments in the evolution towards a blockchain game future, but I believe the technology will eventually be applied in almost every node along the whole value chain of the game industry in a much more compound way.

Blockchain’s nature of immutability will better help verify and secure the right of players’ virtual assets acquired in the game, the price of which could sometimes be unbelievably high.

In 2014, Chinese internet firm NetEase’s online game Fantasy Westward Journey saw one virtual weapon being sold for RMB1.2 million (roughly US$177,000). This is not even close to the record-high US$6 million marked by a transaction of a virtual asset called Planet Calypso from the game Entropia.

As for E-sport, I’d like to call it one of the most promising sub-sectors of the gaming industry, as it creates more sub-verticals with great economic potential which I am strongly convinced will be amplified by blockchain tech.

For starters, fan economy. Last November, the S8 League of Legends Worlds 2018 final game, in which Chinese e-sport team IG won to become champions, attracted over 200 million Chinese viewers. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of millions of fans following dozens of other games around the world.

I suppose it is very difficult to think less of such giant fan clubs in terms of purchasing power. Blockchain will help them carry out cross-border deals.

Next, live streaming. Some of you might have heard about HUYA, a NYSE-listed game streaming company, which is now worth US$3.95 billion. Chinese social media and game giant Tencent also made a move in this area by partnering with blockchain-based game streaming platform SLIVER.tv.

Thirdly, community management. This is straightforward as incentives are the key point of the token economy, which is naturally helpful in stimulating community members to actively contribute to the ecosystem via various approaches such as generating his/her own content and helping to organize online/offline events.

Coming back to the technology itself as an infrastructure, we all know that one of the main pain points that game firms face is the high cost of HPS (High Performance Servers) due to the enormous data storage and exceedingly efficient data processing that is required.

What if blockchain could cope with this issue for game companies by leveraging most of the idle computing power across the globe securely and swiftly while, at the same time, paying the computing power providers properly?

So, the game walkthroughs are clear.

Work hard, and play harder.