Mythical, Player-Owned Economies, and Blockchain

This was originally published on June 18, 2020 on Medium by Rudy Koch. You view that original post here.

In providing the player-economy foundation to Blankos Block Party, Mythical has built an economic engine for gaming that allows for digital asset ownership utilizing EOSIO as its ledger. We believe that the use of blockchain technology will bring in new economies to the games industry where mass market players can own and sell digital assets in AAA games.

Our primary goal has always been to drive mass adoption of blockchain technology, and that mission hasn’t changed. But we believe there’s a right way to do it. When it comes to mass market gamers, today many of them don’t know (or frankly care) what EOS mainnet or any mainnet is. To really make this technology become mainstream, we have to win over the mass market gamers.

Here’s our approach and philosophy:

• First, and perhaps most importantly, the mainstream gaming audience wants games that are entertaining and fun. If we want their attention, we have to build a real, engaging game, which is why we are building Blankos Block Party. If the game sucks without blockchain, it will suck with blockchain as well!
• We also believe that today, understanding blockchain technology is still a ways off for the general consumer. We’ve built our engine to hide all the complexity of blockchain for those who just want to play a great game. We envision millions of players being excited about the features that blockchain can provide, but without needing to worry about how it works or even what blockchain really means.
• We believe that the path to mass adoption of blockchain is a multi-step journey, and Blankos Block Party is the first big step for us. This week, for the first time ever, a game using blockchain technology was showcased in some of the biggest media channels in the games industry. Now we need to continue to capture the attention of gamers around the world, and introduce them carefully to all the amazing things blockchain technology can do, in a game world where they want to spend their time.

This is our #1 priority: Create exciting new capabilities with blockchain in the global gaming market.

In order to do all of this, we need to first get Blankos Block Party safely and successfully out to the masses. To do this, we’re using our own private EOSIO chain so that we have the control and flexibility to deal with any unforeseen issues as we go live and scale up to millions of players.

But that’s not where it ends. We share your belief that assets should be truly owned by players. We already CAN write to EOS mainnet; we built dGoods to demonstrate that. Once we bring the game functionality and the introduction of player-owned economies to the market we will begin to roll out the ability for you to hold game assets with your own private keys, transfer existing assets to verified wallets, and sell them via smart contracts!

Trading on EOS mainnet

There are a few core values that have been driving our decisions when it comes to trading assets:

• We believe in true ownership, which means we want players to be able to hold game assets in their wallets using their private keys.
• We believe in an ecosystem where players can buy and sell their assets across a network of marketplaces. Creating frictionless liquidity is the path to a successful digital asset economy.
• For players that want to hold their game assets via their own private keys / wallets, we will initially start with the EOS mainnet. Writing game assets via the dGoods standard on EOS mainnet fits our vision as the first mainnet for sophisticated gamers to sell and trade digital assets.

These values are the driving force behind dGoods. We designed dGoods specifically with open and frictionless liquidity in mind, where any wallet, exchange, or marketplace could ultimately participate in the economy by simply adopting the dGoods standard.

In Summary

Our first step is to launch Blankos Block Party and make sure it’s a huge success. The initial launch will be on a private EOS chain that gives us the flexibility to manage the early growth of the game. From there, we will immediately introduce selling concepts to players, and then we are going to actively work on connecting to the EOS mainnet. The values we’ve outlined in this post will continue to be a driving force in this journey. The Blankos that players purchase, level up, trick out and play within the game will be able to transfer to the EOS mainnet once that connection is made.

We are so excited about what’s to come, and we can’t wait to make it all a reality. But we have one favor to ask: Bear with us. We have a lot of tech to roll out, and with a big exciting game to launch, it’s going to take a bit of time — but it is all coming!