Xpring, the developer initiative from Ripple, has teamed with Forte to launch a $100 million fund for blockchain gaming development.

It sometimes seems that blockchain technology is on a march that is destined to conquer everything before it. Many different industries are looking to harness the power of the blockchain, including real estate, shipping, banking, and art. Another great use case for blockchain technology is gaming, and Ripple is looking to increase this union by partnering with Forte to launch a $100 million fund to support game developers.

Power to the Gamer … Developers

This fund is the result of Xpring, the developer initiative from Ripple, working with Forte, a blockchain-based platform technology provider for the gaming industry. The $100 million fund will be administered by Forte and seeks to accelerate the mainstream adoption of blockchain technology in gaming.

This fund should be a tremendous boon to game developers who are eager to take advantage of this innovative technology. One issue facing development studios on a constant basis is funding, so having a massive resource like this fund should do a lot of good.

The benefits of using blockchain in gaming are tremendous. The most obvious boon is the ability for players to actually own the items they use in-game. As of now, players just kind of rent the characters and items they create/acquire in the games they play as the actual game company dictates how they are used and transferred. Blockchain technology can allow a player to acquire a rare item and actually sell it to another player as they will have full ownership of the item in question, not the game company. Characters and items could even be ported from one game to another (if this feature is supported by the game company).

Ripple and Forte Giving Gaming a Helping Hand

The $100 million fund should greatly accelerate gaming devs integrating blockchain technology into their products. Forte already boasts 50,000 daily users, and many of the components in its technology stack were created in close collaboration with Ripple. One such design element is leveraging the open-source Interledger Protocol with XRP serving as a base pair settlement, and then there’s the Codius hosting solution that supports seamless transactions across blockchains.

Brett Seyler, Forte’s Chief Platform Officer, says:

Blockchain technologies’ key innovations unlock vast potential for nearly all forms of digital interaction. Gaming is a $140 billion global industry driven predominantly by digital micro-transaction economies, which we believe will benefit immensely from the integrity and resilience of blockchain technology. The industry needs solutions that can support these economies at scale with cross-chain interoperability.

Ethan Beard, Senior Vice President of Ripple’s Xpring, adds:

We are thrilled to partner with such a world class team of game industry veterans. Both Forte and Ripple have a shared belief that blockchain technology will have a massive impact on games, and that providing tools that are easy-to-use, chain agnostic and interoperable is a necessary step in driving scale consumer adoption.

Overall, it’s fascinating to see how far video games have come. I grew up playing the original Atari console, which was later followed by computer games. Doom ushered in the era of shareware, and we are now able to download games from the comfort of our own home. Gaming has always been a major part of technological innovation, so it makes sense for it to now incorporate blockchain technology. The $100 million development fund should help speed this incorporation along.

What do you think about the launch of this blockchain gaming fund? Let us know in the comments below.

Images courtesy of Chibi Fighters, Pixabay, and YouTube/Atari.