Fortnite is probably the most popular game ever. It’s exploded into the mainstream the way Pokemon Go did, only it looks set to have a lot more staying power. And unlike Pokemon Go, it entered a gaming space that was already well prepared for it. It’s a MMORG.
I’m going to cover MMORPGs and the basic mechanics of Fortnite now, so obviously skip all that if you already know it.
What’s a MMORPG? Quick overview and history
MMORPGs are Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games. The one you’ve probably heard of is World of Warcraft, a Dungeons and Dragons-like immersive world where players form alliances, develop careers, and (sometimes) forget to eat. MMORPGs run the gamut from abstract to futuristic to medieval to fantasy. But the core of the experience is that a huge number of people play, and you play as an avatar.
Fortnite works like that, except that unlike the open-ended worlds of some early MMORPGs, it has a clear plot and some time urgency factors built into it.
Fortnite: a (very) quick overview
Fortnite is a survival game that takes place in a constantly shrinking map. Unlike the majority of MMORPGs where either alliances are voluntary or it’s every player for herself, Fortnite has two versions: the original version is cooperative, and there’s also a more recent Battle Royale mode which is paid via in-game microtransactions and pass purchases.
In the cooperative version, players work together to acquire resources, build and defend forts against the monsters that roam the map. The Battle Royale version sees up to 100 players per map, singly or in groups, seek to defeat each other as the map shrinks.
Fortnite’s in-game economy
Unlike the in-game economies of larger MMORPGs, Fortnite’s is fairly streamlined. It’s still worth talking about, because its success means it’s likely to serve as a model for future games.
Fortnite uses microtransactions in the form of Battle Passes and VinderBucks or V-Bucks, the internal currency of both the main Fortnite game and the Fortnite Battle Royale game.
In the main game, V-Bucks can be earned by completing missions or daily quests. In the Battle Royale version, V-Bucks are purchased.
Battle Passes are also bought in-game for fiat currency or V-Bucks, and allow players to access tiers (sections) of the game as well as to buy new cosmetic adaptations for their avatars, their tools and equipment.
If this all sounds a bit like I don’t really play Fortnite, well, that’s because I don’t.
What I’m interested in is how the game is put together economically, and what that says for the future of the gaming industry and its nascent relationship with blockchain technology.
What Fortnite tells us about gaming and the blockchain
In Fortnite, V-Bucks persist across the game’s two versions, linked to a player’s account. There are already two, linked but separate, virtual environments in which V-Bucks are tender.
With the rise of platforms like Steam, that’s going to be an ever-increasing trend. And there are already a ton of people looking for ways to transfer various payment options around inside Steam to make purchases within games.
Fortnite’s security isn’t what it could be. Its Android client in particular has come under fire from users, while Google and Epic slug it out over who’s at fault.
Both parties are at fault.
Google’s high marketplace fees pushed Epic into distributing the client through its own website instead of through the Play Store. Possibly in response, Google analyzed Epic’s software — even though it didn’t appear on the Google Play Store. And they found significant ‘man-in-the-disk’ threats that Epic either didn’t know about, or hadn’t disclosed.
This isn’t an attack on Fortnite. I’m using them to make a broader point: the market makes this happen, and it will happen again.
Google Play is far and away the most secure place to launch a new app or game. But it’s also killingly expensive: 30% markup is too big for a smaller business to swallow and survive, and besides, those business owners know that Google isn’t actually doing much for that money. They have the pre-eminent platform, and they charge high prices because they can. The platform requires upkeep, but adding users doesn’t require that level of financial contribution and developers are aware of that.
At the same time, Google relies on its app store for profits: Epic’s decision is expected to blow a $50m hole in Google’s revenue, which the ad and search giant would hardly notice — unless it becomes a precedent.
So you can’t blame Epic for making the decision they did.
Except that users’ data was put at risk, even if the risk was only theoretical.
The risks of centralized data stores for games
One of the types of user data that’s most popular with data thieves is payment data. Credit card details, addresses and other information that attaches to those details, is all worth a fortune. It becomes spear phishing ammunition, or is used in identity crimes, but it’s sometimes used to make simple thefts from the bank accounts of the affected user.
In blockchain, we’ve been here before. The blockchain is secure, but the centralized exchange isn’t, and its contents are way more valuable than a single user account because of its centralized nature. So that’s what thieves target.
Evolving a solution, the decentralized exchange, was a necessary step in building a blockchain that could attract a large user base.
And games are going to have to do something similar, which is why I’m betting that they’ll use a technology that’s already achieved this to make the transition.
All MMORPGs face similar problems
It’s not just Fortnite: it’s all MMORPGs. They’re all crying out for something that only blockchain can provide: not just a secure place to receive payments, but a secure place to put each user’s whole identity that can be proved, audited and kept totally secure.
Let’s say I’m a Fortnite player. Being a pretty good one, I actually earn more than I spend when I buy a Battle Pass.
This is a hypothetical: I am no gamer. But many players are in this situation.
I could save that money inside Fortnite, and spend it when new Battle Passes or new skins and mods (cosmetic improvements and alterations to characters and equipment) become available.
But, maddeningly to me, I actually need that money — in another game. My NeverWinter Drow needs new boots, or my EVE ship needs new engines.
Right now, the only way to transfer money from inside one game to inside another is by exchanging it for fiat, and many games won’t will let you do that.
So gamers are pushed towards a black market where they can sell in-game goods for fiat, then buy in-game goods in another game.
While gamers rely on these markets to move in-game currency around, so do professionals who farm game economies to generate in-game currency or complete missions for rare and valuable artefacts, then sell them in semi-illicit online marketplaces.
MMORPGs are an evolving space, but a lot of people who play one play others. Because there’s no proper, regulated method of exchanging goods from one game for goods in another, but there’s a whole bunch of people who want to do it, there’s exactly what that combination always has produced (and always will): a black market.
For gamers, that’s doubly frustrating: they never know when they confront someone with high-level equipment if that player came by it honestly, by playing the game well, or just bought it from a farmer. And the game itself begins to fill with pro and semi-pro players who focus on acquisition, not gameplay.
And there’s no way to trace where in-game merchandise came from. Even things that are normally given as trophies for completing difficult activities in the game are easily bought for cash instead.
Tokenization and the marketplace
So gamers need a system for transferring currency from one game to another easily, without compromising the integrity of each game’s own currency.
This is where smartcoins could come in. As well as price-stable currencies (bitUSD, bitCNY, bitEUR), BitShares supports bitXXX variants of other blockchains’ cryptocurrencies like bitBTC. Always backed by 200% of their value in BTS (so bit$1 is backed by US$2 value in BTS), these coins can be transcribed across platforms, moved from one exchange or one blockchain to another, without either becoming fully free-floating cryptocurrencies, or needing to leave the blockchain.
This means that in a DEX based on BitShares, it’s possible to list currencies from multiple different blockchains like already done by OpenLedger with their 60+ cryptocurrency gateways supporting BTC, ETH, DASH, XRP, EOS, LTC, XMR, TRX, NEO, NEM and many more. Each currency continues to work just as before, then its value is tokenized on the BitShares blockchain for trading.
This could work for in-game currencies, with the result that a single exchange could list in-game currencies from thousands of games, allowing value to be transferred from one game to another seamlessly. No multi-stage reselling, no centralized marketplaces and no risk of exposure.
That would require games to shift their internal currencies onto the blockchain, but there are good reasons for them to do that anyway.
Blockchain-based currencies would allow games to guarantee that players owned their own currency absolutely. Fraud would be made impossible, and the majority of in-game economies are compatible with that because they rely for counter-inflation on destroying money with high-cost in-game purchases that take cash out of the game permanently; that would be unaffected by basing the in-game currency on the blockchain.
Serving multi-game players with DEXs
Similarly, the issue of in-game items being traded on third-party marketplace would be solved by putting the ownership records on a blockchain. Then, sales wouldn’t be recognized without an on-chain transaction, but those on-chain transactions could take place in recognized inter-game marketplaces; platforms like Steam could offer additional value to their customers by establishing such marketplaces.
With a verifiable audit trail attached to each item, the black market in goods would be replaced by a reputable market where trades were guaranteed not to end in losses or hacks. In-game items could still be purchased, but a record of that item’s entire history since its creation would show that it had been bought, not won.
For some types of items, like Fortnite’s Game-Win Gliders, it would be possible to attach the item to the player’s account directly, making it impossible to sell or give away the item. Only people who had won one could have one.
Thus, blockchain could eliminate most of the security vulnerabilities that players encounter in playing games like Fortnite, and deliver a far better playing experience.
Throughout this piece, we’ve been talking about in-game currencies and in-game markets. While those things aren’t high-ticket markets, they are high-volume markets, and getting players to engage with an in-game marketplace is vital to monetize the game.
Providing this improved player experience is an essential component of creating a successful game, and games companies know that.
How soon is this likely to happen?
I usually try to write about what’s happening, not what could happen or might happen; I think there’s more than enough speculation in the blockchain space.
There are partial solutions in the works. For example, TokenFoundry launched their GamerToken ICO September 28th this year, aiming to build ‘a global marketplace for buying and selling unique in-game items on the blockchain.’ It’s based on the ERC-271 standard on Ethereum, which I personally think is an error: businesses defaulting to Ethereum despite its shortcomings.
All the same, TokenFoundry point the way forward.
At some point, the enormously valuable gaming industry will shunt game purchases, in-game purchases and the majority of new in-game economies onto the blockchain, and use some kind of tokenization to make inter- as well as intra-blockchain exchanges possible.
There are already a significant number of games basing their economies on various blockchains; this is merely the next obvious step, and gaming is one the of the fastest-moving industries technologically — as well as one of the most responsive to its users.
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