Blockchain Cats, Have You Heard Of It?

Unicorn companies often sprout in hidden corners, experience brutal growth in the early stages, survive fierce market competition, and eventually become leaders in a certain segment. At present, the annual consumption in the gaming field has exceeded 150 billion US dollars, and the number of global players is approximately 2.5 billion. In this huge industry, there is a hidden corner - blockchain games. In the future, a Big Mac may appear in this hidden corner.

mystery cat

In November 2017, with the rapid rise of digital currency, a game based on Ethereum called (Chinese name: Xuan Aimao) became popular.

Mystery Cat is a pet raising game, including the birth, collection, purchase and sale of cats. The core gameplay of the game is cultivation and collection. At the beginning of the game, the developer sells 100 creation cats, and a generation 0 cat is born every 15 minutes, which can be bought and sold.

Every cat looks different and genes can be passed on to the next generation. The uniqueness of genes is guaranteed by blockchain technology: if two electronic cats mate, the children born will inherit their own 256 genomes, affecting a total of 4 billion possible changes in appearance, personality, characteristics, etc. Each mysterious cat is Unique and cannot be copied, taken away or destroyed.

I searched for this game, but it was difficult to find it directly on the official website (). Once I finally found it, the game was also very difficult to play. For example, you need to go to the store to download the corresponding wallet before you can play, and there is no way to log in with your account and password.

(Mysterious Cat) is the first phenomenal DApp and the game DApp with the longest life cycle so far. It set a record of 14,000+ daily active addresses in a single day (2017-12-09), which once caused Ethereum transaction congestion. As of April 30, the total transaction volume was 43067.04 ETH, approximately 200 million yuan. In this game, some "virtual" cats even cost more than $200,000. But the current number of daily active users has dropped below 100.

From the perspective of traditional game players, this is not a game in the true sense, but just the novelty brought to people by the "transaction attributes" and "unique private characteristics of assets" of the blockchain.

But it is undeniable that this is the first blockchain game with a high overall "completeness", both in terms of game mechanics and layout design. Other small game DApps in the same period are basically in the prototype or demonstration stage.

The milestone is that it proves to everyone that token issuance is not the only application on Ethereum. There is more room for imagination and scenes to play and create.

From November 2017 to March 2018, blockchain became popular all over the country. Staying awake at three o'clock has become a hot topic. The popularity of Mystery Cat has caused domestic Internet giants to follow suit and launch their own products, such as Baidu launched, 360 launched "", NetEase launched "NetEase Planet", and even Lei Jun's Xiaomi launched the blockchain game "CryptoRabbit" . It can be seen that everyone is enthusiastic and determined to seize the blockchain trend, and they are afraid of missing this trend.

Baidu-Leitz Dog

Baidu Leitz Dog can be said to have completely copied the mechanism of Mysterious Cat. But the difference is that the pricing item used in the entire game is not ETH, but Baidu's customized "calculation". In the early stage of the game, everyone can get 4 Leitz dogs for free. The sale and breeding of Leitz dogs require the use of "calculus" transactions. Initial calculus can be earned by completing tasks.

Search Leitz Dog on Baidu, you can easily find the official website, and you can log in directly with your Baidu account, which is very friendly to novices.

Baidu’s LeGou can be said to be the best-performing work of a large domestic Internet company in the field of blockchain games. To this day, this game still has many users, and there is even a dedicated Baidu Tieba where players discuss Leitz dog-related topics. However, judging from the content of the Tieba, many players complained that the mechanism was not transparent and the rules were changed at will.

Currently, the mobile application has been integrated into Baidu Xiaoman Finance and does not have a dedicated client. The reason why it was integrated into the Du Xiaoman client is because Baidu analyzed the players of this game based on big data and found that the players who play this game are high-quality people, so it was integrated into the Du Xiaoman APP to attract traffic to financial services.

360 yuan cat

On February 14, 2018, 360 launched Blockcat. It is understood that the official claims that "Blockcat" is a virtual cat based on blockchain technology. The first batch is limited to 50,000 pieces. According to the order of breeding, "block cats" are divided into generation 0, generation 1, generation 2, etc., among which generation 1 is the most precious. During the event, users who successfully submit an appointment can adopt a 1st generation cat. If they invite and get the help of 10 friends, they can apply to get a 0th generation cat. From the invitation mechanism, it can be seen that 360 hopes to obtain a large number of block cats through block cats. traffic, but sadly, the Block Cat project has ended.

I found the official address and made a reservation using my mobile number. This indicates that the event has ended. And I didn't find any other entrance. In other words, the game is currently unavailable. Strong dissatisfaction from users can also be seen on the 360 ​​official forum.

On the 360 ​​official forum, you can also see the strong dissatisfaction of users: the team disappeared for half a year, no one responded to emails, and the official account stopped updating...

NetEase “Lucky Cat” and “NetEase Planet”

In January 2018, NetEase’s digital pet “NetEase Lucky Cat” was leaked from the promotion page (). It says "Blockchain pet cat, limited collection, opening soon!".

But unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and the game died before it was officially launched. According to people familiar with the matter, the NetEase Lucky Cat project team issued an announcement saying: "The local internal test of NetEase Interactive Entertainment has ended. Please fill in your real information and bank card number before 23:59:59 on January 19, 2018. Follow-up test The funds will be transferred to the bank account. Please make sure that the account number you fill in is your own account. The test funds will be deemed to be returned as soon as they arrive. The real reason behind this is that its recharge method is suspected of violating relevant policies.

However, NetEase has not given up its attempts in blockchain. On February 9 of the same year, "NetEase Planet" was launched. You can also easily find its official website by searching NetEase Planet on Baidu.

The official website introduces NetEase Planet as a value sharing platform based on the blockchain ecosystem. Help users manage digital assets through blockchain encrypted storage technology, and conduct black diamond transactions and settlements at the planet base.

Black Diamond and Force have become direct manifestations of NetEase Planet’s use of blockchain technology. After users obtain black diamonds, they can exchange them for rewards such as physical items.

From the perspective of gameplay, in NetEase Planet, the main ways to obtain the Force are to buy things, read novels, watch videos, and play games. The way to obtain black diamonds is mainly based on personal activities. In addition, you can also win black diamonds through games such as topic PK and league betting.

Compared with Mystery Cat and Wright Dog, the biggest problem with NetEase Planet is that it’s not fun. The Force and Black Diamond do not have complete and interesting game mechanics, but have become by-products of online shopping and gaming. Therefore, from a personal user perspective, NetEase Planet has no unique appeal. As for the blockchain value sharing it advertises, it seems louder than rainy.

NetEase Planet has caught up with the trend of blockchain and combined its games and other businesses, effectively attracting a large wave of traffic, and has used this traffic and its own business to achieve monetization. Today's NetEase planet is declining day by day and completely marginalized.

Xiaomi CryptoRabbit

On March 15, 2018, Xiaomi announced that its blockchain game "CryptoRabbit" has started internal testing and will be open to some players, following Baidu Legou, 360 Blockcat, and NetEase Planet. Search on Baidu, and the first one is the official website.

It is reported that this product was developed by the Milian team. Among them, Crypto Rabbit is a digital pet based on blockchain technology, and the carrot refers to the points in the Crypto Rabbit game. Users can obtain carrots or crypto rabbits through tasks, and can also exchange carrots for crypto rabbits.

This is another game that's a parody of Mystery Cat, except that the cat is replaced by a rabbit. At present, the entrance and functions of the game are normal, and the gameplay is simple. Complete tasks to get carrots and use them to buy rabbits. Rabbits can be bred and competed in races.

However, judging from the WeChat public account, the game is currently almost at a standstill.

Summarize

When Mystery Cat opened the door to game Dapps and when the official blockchain was surging, domestic Internet companies obviously would not miss the opportunity supported by this new technology and launched their own blockchain through imitation and transformation. Games and blockchain products, but unlike Mystery Cat, in order to avoid policy risks, each platform uses its own blockchain points and never mentions the word "coin". Judging from the current situation, CryptoKitties, the originator of blockchain games, is on the verge of death, and these domestic imitation games are also dead and disabled.

The reason is that although "Mysterious Cat" has huge industry significance, from a game perspective, the gameplay is too simple and lacks social attributes, making it impossible for users to retain and be active for a long time. The higher recharge threshold will also restrict many non-players. Blockchain practitioners are blocking the door. Although domestic imitation games use "points" to lower the entry barrier, this also means a reduction in financial value and a shrinking user base. The most expensive one is more than 200,000 US dollars, and the subsequent ones are basically getting worse in price.

Putting aside these simple mystery cat imitation games, we can’t help but think, what value can blockchain bring to games?

Ownership and Liquidity of Game Assets

On the blockchain, players can own 100% of in-game assets, and these assets have better liquidity than ever before. In traditional games, we often see a sentence: "The points, props, weapons, and characters in the game belong to the game developer." Therefore, random changes in game props and equipped weapons are common. Trading of gaming equipment is often limited to a single game, which also limits the growth of the gaming ecosystem.

Once game assets are put on the chain, players have absolute ownership, and game developers cannot modify them at will, or even confiscate game props and game assets. In this case, many gameplay methods that were previously difficult to achieve can be derived.

1. Assets can be traded anytime and anywhere: Players can conduct peer-to-peer transactions. What’s even more sci-fi is that if the game assets are completely based on the blockchain, then players of two different games can also trade and exchange props. For example, if I get a rifle in Peace Elite, I can exchange it for a piece of equipment in League of Legends.

2. Game asset reuse: After the assets are uploaded to the chain, because they are hung under each player’s address, developers can easily reuse the assets of other games for secondary transformation or achieve cross-game reuse. There is a game based on mysterious cats called Cat Battle Game. Players log in with their own Ethereum address, and the game will automatically retrieve all CryptoKitties under that address. The characters are from Mystery Cat, and only the combat logic is from Mystery Cat itself. .

"Battle" with the mysterious cat character

3. New user acquisition methods: In traditional games, new games often need to reacquire users, or use old games to attract traffic to new games. Blockchain can break this approach and reduce customer acquisition costs. For example, as mentioned above, all CryptoKitties users are potential gamers who can be converted directly. If direct reuse of assets involves IP issues, developers can also design it this way. As long as users own cats in Mystic Cat, they can directly obtain certain rewards in this game, which can be characters, treasure boxes, props, etc. The verification method only requires logging in with the address to read the data on the chain.

In this way, when a new game is launched, it can completely draw on the users of existing popular games to attract traffic. Isn’t this gameplay the same as giving away candy with forked coins or playing airdrops with new tokens? Use ETH or EOS, the currency with the largest currency holdings, to airdrop your tokens to currency holders at a ratio of 1:1, thereby acquiring users at extremely low costs.

If a new game needs to be promoted, the simplest way is to air-invest assets to the addresses of old game users, which is much more accurate and effective than traditional advertising.

The relationship between game developers and players

Most of the time, players and game developers are on opposite sides. Players hope to find imbalances and even bugs in the game to win reputation and levels in the game and gain a sense of accomplishment. Game developers try to modify game mechanics and adjust game parameters again and again to eliminate imbalances and extract value from users.

Blockchain changes production relations. In games, the relationship between developers and players will undergo fundamental changes. Traditional games run on centralized servers, where developers specify the rules and players try to break them. What if the game runs on multiple nodes, and some nodes are run by players with certain incentives?

Developers and gamers can reach a consensus and form a community. When some nodes are delivered to KOLs in the game, some of the interests of the game manufacturers will be highly consistent with the interests of the game community. Loyal players will spontaneously maintain the balance of the game, help developers acquire users, and extend the life cycle of the game. Build an entire community.

Have any of you readers who like to play games experienced that your favorite game servers have been shut down or stopped operating? I believe many people will. The founder of Ethereum once revealed that in 2010, his favorite "World of Warcraft" character Warlock's "Life Siphon" skill was canceled by Blizzard, which made him sad. I was devastated and contacted Blizzard engineers through multiple emails and official forums, asking them to restore this ability. But the response I received was that they did this for game balance and cannot be restored. This made him angrily delete the game. Perhaps it was because of this experience that he came up with the concept of "decentralization".

If players and developers can be connected through the blockchain, then their relationship will change from opposition to cooperation, and perhaps the life cycle of some games will be better continued.

Various blockchain games (pictures from dapp.)

Currently, there are many types of blockchain games, ranging from pet development games such as Mystery Cat to racing, RPG and other games. Although there has not yet been a hit that has swept the world, it is certain that blockchain provides more imagination space and a broader landing path for games.

标签： #Block #NetEase #Encryption #Planet #Carrot