Detailed explanation of full-chain games and their ecology: the future of Web3 games?

Author: AW Research

Recently, the game direction that everyone is talking about has shifted from traditional blockchain games to full-chain games, so what is the difference between full-chain games and traditional blockchain games?

This article deeply analyzes the differences and essential characteristics of full-chain games and traditional chain games, including the significant differences between full-chain games and traditional chain games in terms of design concepts, operation modes, and even user experience. The second part of the article will explore some key technologies of full-chain games from a detailed and professional perspective, and based on actual cases, show how these technologies can be applied in full-chain games and promote their continuous development and innovation.

On-Chain Games

A full-chain game is a game in which all operations of the game, including game logic, assets, economic models, rules, and interactions, are all recorded on the blockchain and executed by the blockchain. In this model, the blockchain acts as a game server, using smart contracts to ensure strict compliance and verification of game rules.

In the full-chain game, every operation of the player is realized through the interaction with the smart contract. In this way, not only the transparency is enhanced, but also the safety of operation is improved. All data storage, logic execution, and narrative of the game are carried out on the blockchain, while governance is realized in the form of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

The full-chain game represents a completely decentralized model, which does not require any permission to run the game and is highly composable. This game mode breaks the traditional game operation mode, truly realizes a fair interaction between players and developers, and also greatly enhances the durability and scalability of the game.

Traditional blockchain games

In 2021, the "Play-to-Earn (P2E)" (Play-to-Earn, P2E) model will emerge, making blockchain games (GameFi) very popular. Yet those heats faded just as quickly. For the most part, most GameFi projects are not that different from decentralized finance (DeFi) projects. The success of the P2E model requires the participation of enough new users and a moderate token distribution strategy to maintain limited user benefits, thus prolonging the life cycle of the project. However, this doesn't solve the long-term playability issues of these games.

In fact, many P2E games are not attractive in nature. They usually just add simple game packaging on top of some financial instruments in an attempt to attract users. To make matters worse, the process of determining the rewards of these games is often opaque, making the entire system lack transparency, so players may develop a feeling of mistrust.

Additionally, this type of game, if successful, could attract the attention of speculators. These speculators put in some money in the hope of making a quick profit. However, this results in an outflow of value from the gaming system, putting downward pressure on asset prices. Finally, the main logic and interaction of such games are still centralized, relying on centralized servers for calculation and processing.

Game features on the whole chain

1/ Ownership of Player Assets

Compared with traditional blockchain games, full-chain games have brought significant innovations in player asset ownership. In traditional chain games, if the operation and development team of the game stop advancing, the value of player assets may be affected, and may even enter the so-called "Gamefi death spiral", because the lifeline of the game depends on the operation status of the team. In this case, once the team ceases operations, the value of the player's assets may decline significantly.

However, full-chain games have little to worry about in this regard. Once the game development team completes the development and deploys it to the chain, it does not matter whether the original development team continues to perform follow-up maintenance. The impact on the game is relatively small. This is because the code of the game is open source, and the community is fully capable of taking over the work of the original development team and even leading the development of the game. Dark Forest is such a vivid example, demonstrating the power of community in full-chain games.

In short, full-chain games have changed the limitations of traditional chain games by providing stronger asset ownership protection for players, that is, the phenomenon that asset values are overly dependent on team operations. In full-chain games, open source code and the power of the community can make the game continue to develop and protect the value of player assets.

2/ Composability

The composability of full-chain games is the biggest feature that distinguishes them from traditional chain games, and the core is reflected in its permission-free nature. As long as developers open the code interface, anyone can take existing assets and give them new definitions and functions in new game environments. For example, players can freely customize the configuration of game sessions and combine various elements to create games and adventures that fully meet their needs.

This kind of customization and composability endows the full-chain game with endless possibilities, allowing players to create and experience unlimited innovations in the game world. This not only enhances the attractiveness of the game, but also opens up a new development path for the game industry.

3/Core logic

To put it simply, a full-chain game is a game form that puts all the core logic of the game, including state storage, calculation, and execution, on top of blockchain smart contracts.

In contrast, traditional blockchain games deploy all their core logic, such as state storage, calculation, and execution, on centralized servers.

These two represent two completely different modes of game operation: full-chain games tend to emphasize decentralization and openness, while traditional chain games rely on the operation and management of centralized servers.

4/ Gameplay Mechanism

The whole chain game is based on the gameplay design, which produces a gameplay with game.

Take "Dark Forest", for example, a strategy game built on the Ethereum blockchain. In this game, players can discover, occupy and defend galaxies. All game behaviors are executed on the Ethereum blockchain, making each player's actions completely transparent and immutable, and at the same time making the assets in the game (such as galaxies) have actual value.

The gameplay of the "Dark Forest" game introduces elements of game theory. The resources in the game are limited (such as galaxies), and players need to optimize their resource acquisition and use through strategy and planning to achieve the best results. In this mode, each player's decisions affect other players' decisions and the state of the game as a whole. This results in an interactive, dynamic game environment, with each player attempting to predict and influence the behavior of the other players for their own benefit.

The gaming method brings a new player interaction mode and value creation method to the whole chain game. But at the same time, it should also be noted that this kind of gameplay may cause some problems, such as economic imbalance, the phenomenon that the strong are stronger, etc. How to make it fair while bringing fun is an important challenge for full-chain game developers to face.

5/Operation Marketing

Due to the characteristics of full-chain games, even small teams or low-cost developers may participate in game development. In this case, these small teams may not be able to devote large budgets to marketing activities. However, that doesn't mean their games can't reach their target audience. Full-chain games usually target very professional and specific audience groups, who will actively look for products they are interested in, and they usually have their own communities through which information is disseminated and shared.

The operation strategy of full-chain games is also different from chain games. Full-chain games focus more on the gameplay itself and technical maintenance. Their main operational focus is to ensure the stable operation of the game itself.

On the contrary, traditional chain games pay more attention to making profits by using users' game behavior. In this model, their marketing strategy is mainly to attract and retain players by providing a high-quality gaming experience. In addition, the economic model of the game needs to have financial attributes. With institutional endorsement and platform support, a player community can be established faster and its user base expanded.

6/Operating experience

There are some significant differences in operating experience between full chain games and traditional chain games.

Player participation: full-chain games usually place more emphasis on player participation and influence. For example, players may be able to influence the rules or development direction of the game through voting or other means.

Performance and scalability: Because all operations of full-chain games are performed on the blockchain, they may be limited by the performance and scalability of the blockchain. For example, if the blockchain network is busy, game transactions may take longer to be confirmed, which may affect the fluency and real-time performance of the game.

Cost: Players of full-chain games may need to pay some fees for game transactions, and these fees may vary due to the busyness of the blockchain network.

Important full chain game technology

1/Zero-knowledge proof

Zero-knowledge Proofs (ZKP) is a cryptographic principle that allows one person to prove to another that a statement is true without providing any other information other than the proof. That is, you can prove that you know a certain information or meet a certain condition without revealing any valid information.

In cryptography, zero-knowledge proof involves three important concepts:

Completeness: If a claim is true, then there is always a way of proving it so that the verifier accepts the proof.

Soundness: If a claim is false, no matter how hard the prover tries, the verifier cannot accept the proof.

Zero-knowledge: If a statement is true, then the prover can make the verifier accept the proof, but the proof process does not reveal any other information.

In the whole chain game, the application of zero-knowledge proof is of great significance. For example, the Dark Forest game uses zero-knowledge proofs. In this game, all game state is stored on the blockchain, which theoretically can be viewed by anyone. However, players may not want their strategies and resources to be seen by other players, and this is where zero-knowledge proofs come into play. Through zero-knowledge proof, players can prove that they have made compliant game operations without revealing their specific strategies and resources.

In addition, due to the decentralized nature of the blockchain, zero-knowledge proofs can also be used to prevent cheating. In traditional centralized games, the game server will perform cheating detection, but in full-chain games, this function can be realized through zero-knowledge proof. Because all game logic is executed on the blockchain, if someone tries to cheat, then he needs to prove that his operation is compliant without revealing any valid information, which is not possible without sufficient computing resources and knowledge Down is very difficult.

In general, zero-knowledge proof provides an effective privacy protection and cheating prevention mechanism for the design and implementation of full-chain games, so that the game can still guarantee the privacy of players and the game in the open and transparent environment of the blockchain. fairness.

2/Game Engine

A game engine is a core software component used to build and develop video games. They provide a range of tools and features for creating games, including graphics rendering, physics simulation, audio processing, animation, artificial intelligence, and more. With a game engine, game developers can focus on the game's design and gameplay without writing all the low-level code from scratch. Unity, Unreal Engine, and Godot are all famous game engines.

Full-chain games, due to their complex blockchain interaction features, require special tools to help developers build and deploy game logic. In this space, there are a few projects that have shown considerable maturity, providing developers with a powerful toolset.

The Solidity-based full-chain game engine MUD developed by Lattice Studio is such a tool. It enables developers to easily and quickly deploy game logic into smart contracts, and realize the synchronization between the client and the state on the chain, thus greatly improving development efficiency.

Another project worthy of attention is Dojo, a full-chain game engine jointly developed by the founders of Realms and Briq, two projects in the StarkNet ecosystem. Dojo is developed based on the Cairo language, which also enables developers to quickly deploy game logic into smart contracts, and realizes functions such as synchronization with client states.

By utilizing these full-chain game engines, developers can develop games running on the blockchain faster and more efficiently, achieving true decentralization and real asset ownership of users, thus giving games more possibilities.

ECS

In traditional blockchain game development, developers create structures and add functions to read data and release events so that clients can synchronize their state. They also use the ERC20, ERC721 and ERC1155 standards to ensure interoperability between games.

In this context, MUD games borrow a software architectural pattern from traditional game development to keep developers productive as the complexity of relationships between game objects increases. That is the architectural pattern of ECS (Entity/Component/System). Very effective when designing and managing large numbers of objects in games.

The schema consists of three parts:

Entity: In ECS, each game object is regarded as an entity. An entity is an abstract container that does not contain any data or behavior itself. Instead, an entity defines its properties and behavior by associating a set of components.

Component: A component is a container for storing data. All data is stored in components, not entities. Each component represents a specific property or behavior. For example, a Position component might contain X and Y coordinates, while a Velocity component might contain the magnitude and direction of velocity.

system(): System is the part that handles behavior. They deal with entities with specific components. For example, a "move" system might find all entities that have both "position" and "velocity" components, and then update their positions based on their velocity.

The advantage of ECS mode is that it improves game flexibility and performance. This makes it easier for developers to create and manage game objects with various properties and behaviors.

MUD

MUD is an Ethereum-based application framework whose main advantage is that it greatly simplifies the complexity of building Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) applications through a tightly integrated software stack. It has built multiple game demos in a short period of time, including strategy games, simulation prototypes, 3D voxel games, and more.

In the MUD framework, developers can create an on-chain unowned data namespace called "Worlds". In this namespace, all objects are registered to "World", and these objects are called "Entities", or entities. Each entity has a numeric ID to uniquely identify it. For example, if we were in a simple "World" like an ERC-20 contract, the entity might be the address. And in a different world full of various flowers and birds, each flower and bird will have a unique entity ID.

In order to assign concrete properties and behaviors to these abstract entities, MUD uses a contract called "Component". Anyone can register a new component contract on a "World", as long as the component's ID is unique. These components are small packages of data that have types that can be attached to entities, giving them concrete properties and behavior.

In general, MUD provides developers with a powerful and flexible framework for building and managing complex on-chain applications by creating Worlds (unowned data namespaces), Entities (entities) and Components (components) .

DOJO

Written in Rust and Cairo, Dojo is a framework. Dojo implements the ECS model, which simplifies the creation, management, and permissionless expansion of worlds over time, for Starknet's open-source full-chain game engine. Dojo is still in early development.

Main features:

Cairo 1.0 Entity Component System (ECS)

Sozu Migration Planner

Torii Network and Index Stack

Katana RPC Development Network

Typed SDK

Full chain game case

Dark Forest

Dark Forest is a strategic blockchain game inspired by the "Laws of the Dark Forest" in the science fiction novel "Three-Body Problem". In the game, players will enter a huge cosmic space, need to explore the surrounding galaxies, and try to expand their territory.

The game uses a cryptographic technology called "Zero-Knowledge Proof" (zk-SNARKs), which means that all game states are stored on the blockchain, but specific player actions are only visible to the player, thus Information is hidden on the public blockchain, creating a gaming environment for players.

Let's take a deep dive into how Dark Forest is played

Exploration and discovery: At the beginning of the game, each player has a home planet surrounded by unexplored space. Players can send spaceships to explore around the parent star and discover new planets. Each planet has its unique resources and production capacity, and different types of planets may have different values, which requires players to use strategies in exploration to find the most valuable planets.

Resource management: The explored planets have their own resources and production capacity. Players need to carefully manage their planet to maximize the production and utilization of resources. This may involve deciding how to allocate resources, how to balance the flow of resources between planets, and so on.

War and Conquest: While expanding their territory, players also need to prevent their planet from being attacked and occupied by other players. If the player's planet is under attack, they need to mobilize their army to defend it. Conversely, players can also choose to attack other players' planets to expand their territory. The outcome of the war will be determined by factors such as the number of troops on both sides, distance, and tactical strategies.

Zero-knowledge proof: Dark Forest uses zk-SNARKs cryptography technology. All game states are recorded on the blockchain, but specific player actions are only visible to the player. This means players can conduct covert operations on the public blockchain, such as secretly moving fleets or planning attacks.

Strategy and games: Every action in the game can be considered a game. Players need to constantly weigh various factors, such as resources, troops, planet production capacity, possible actions of other players, etc., in order to formulate the optimal strategy.

The design concept of Dark Forest is to create a player-driven game world through this method of mixing cryptography, strategy games and economic models. In this world, players not only need to explore and occupy new planets, but also constantly adjust strategies in the game with other players in order to survive and develop.

Future Prospects of Full Chain Games

The future development of full-chain games has huge potential and unlimited possibilities.

With the continuous advancement of cutting-edge technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence, the technical foundation of full-chain games is also continuously improving and upgrading. This can not only promote the improvement of game experience, but also lead to the innovation of game forms and modes.

In the whole chain game, some mechanisms will be provided to allow players to participate in the creation and decision-making of the game, such as the modification of game rules and the addition of new content. This kind of participation can not only improve the game experience of players, but also help game developers get more innovative ideas and feedback information.

In general, full-chain games can provide an open, fair, and transparent environment, and encourage players to participate and innovate, so their innovation potential is far greater than traditional chain games. Moreover, in the future full-chain games, more core gameplays will be born.