Original article: What is the full-chain game?
Author: AW Research
Recently, the direction of games that everyone is talking about has shifted from traditional chain games to full-chain games. So what is the difference between full-chain games and traditional chain games?
This article provides an in-depth analysis of the differences and essential characteristics between full-chain games and traditional chain games, including the significant differences in design concepts, operating modes, and even user experience between full-chain games and traditional chain games. The second part of the article will explore some key technologies of full-chain games from a detailed and professional perspective, and rely on actual cases to 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 game operations, including game logic, assets, economic models, rules, and interactions, are recorded on the blockchain and executed by the blockchain. In this model, the blockchain acts as the game server and uses smart contracts to ensure strict compliance and verification of game rules.
In the full-chain game, every operation of the player is realized through interaction with the smart contract. This not only enhances transparency, but also improves the security of operations. All data storage, logic execution and narrative of the game are carried out on the blockchain, and governance is achieved in the form of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).
The full-chain game represents a completely decentralized model that does not require any permission to run the game and is highly composable. This game model breaks the traditional game operation model, truly realizes fair interaction between players and developers, and also greatly enhances the durability and scalability of the game.
Traditional blockchain games
In 2021, the rise of the "Play-to-Earn" (P2E) model made blockchain games (GameFi) very popular. However, these enthusiasms faded just as quickly. To a large extent, most GameFi projects are not much different from decentralized finance (DeFi) projects. The success of the P2E model requires enough new users to participate, and a moderate token distribution strategy to maintain limited user benefits to extend the life cycle of the project. However, this does not solve the problem of playability of these games from a long-term perspective.
In fact, many P2E games are not inherently attractive, and they are usually just simple game packaging on top of some financial instruments to try to attract users. What's worse, the process of determining the rewards of these games is usually opaque, making the entire system lack transparency, so players may feel distrustful.
In addition, once this type of game is successful, it may attract the attention of speculators. These speculators invest some money in the hope of making a quick profit. However, this causes value to flow out of the game system, exerting downward pressure on asset prices. Finally, the main logic and interaction of this type of game is still centralized, relying on centralized servers for calculation and processing.
Features of the full-chain game 1/ Player asset ownership
Compared with traditional chain games, full-chain games have brought significant innovations in player asset ownership. In traditional chain games, if the game's operations and development team 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 team's operating status. 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, whether the original development team continues to perform subsequent maintenance or not, the impact on the game is relatively small. This is because the game code 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 that demonstrates the power of the community in full-chain games.
In short, full-chain games change the limitations of traditional chain games, that is, the phenomenon that asset value is overly dependent on team operations, by providing stronger protection for player asset ownership. In full-chain games, open source code and the power of the community can enable the game to 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 blockchain games, and the core is reflected in their permissionless nature. As long as the developer opens the code interface, anyone can use existing assets and give them new definitions and functions in a new game environment. For example, players can freely customize the configuration of game links, combine various elements together, and create games and adventures that fully meet their needs.
This customization and composability gives the full-chain game endless possibilities, allowing players to create and experience unlimited innovations in the game world. This not only enhances the appeal 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 form of game that places all the core logic of the game, including state storage, calculation, and execution, completely on the blockchain smart contract.
In contrast, traditional blockchain games deploy all their core logic, such as state storage, calculation, and execution, entirely on centralized servers.
The two represent two completely different models of game operations: full-chain games tend to emphasize decentralization and openness, while traditional chain games rely on the operation and management of centralized servers.
4/Gameplay Mechanics
The full-chain game is designed based on gameplay, creating a game-like gameplay.
Take "Dark Forest" as an example. It is a strategy game based on the Ethereum blockchain. In this game, players can discover, occupy and defend star systems. All game actions are executed on the Ethereum blockchain, making each player's actions completely transparent and tamper-proof, and also making the assets in the game (such as star systems) have real value.
The gameplay of "Dark Forest" introduces elements of game theory. There are limited resources in the game (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 decision affects the decisions of other players and the state of the entire game. This creates an interactive and dynamic game environment, where each player is trying to predict and influence the behavior of other players to achieve their own interests.
The game play brings a new player interaction mode and value creation method to the full-chain game. But at the same time, it should be noted that this game play may cause some problems, such as economic imbalance and the phenomenon of the strong getting stronger. How to make it fair while bringing fun is an important challenge that full-chain game developers need to face.
5/Operational Marketing
Due to the characteristics of full-chain games, even small teams or low-cost developers may be involved in game development. In this case, these small teams may not be able to invest a large budget in marketing activities. However, this does not mean that their games cannot reach the target audience. Full-chain games usually target very professional and specific audiences, 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 that of chain games. Full-chain games focus more on the gameplay itself and the maintenance of technology. Their main operation focus is to ensure the stable operation of the game itself.
In contrast, traditional blockchain games focus more on making profits by leveraging users’ gaming behaviors. In this model, their marketing strategy is mainly to attract and retain players by providing high-quality gaming experiences. In addition, the economic model of the game needs to have financial attributes. With institutional endorsement and platform support, it is possible to build a player community faster and expand its user base.
6/Operation experience
There are some significant differences in the 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, the game's transactions may take longer to be confirmed, which may affect the smoothness and real-time nature of the game.
Cost: Players of full-chain games may need to pay some fees to conduct game transactions, and these fees may vary depending on the busyness of the blockchain network.
Important full-chain gaming technology 1/Zero-knowledge proof
Zero-knowledge Proofs (ZKP) is a cryptographic principle that allows one person to prove to another person that a statement is true without providing any other information other than the proof. In other words, it is possible to prove that one knows a certain information or satisfies a certain condition without revealing any valid information.
In cryptography, zero-knowledge proof involves three important concepts:
Completeness: If a statement is true, then there is always a way to prove it that the verifier accepts it.
Soundness: If a claim is false, then no matter what the prover tries, there is no way to convince the verifier that the proof is false.
Zero-knowledge: If a statement is true, then the prover can convince the verifier that the statement is true, but the proof does not reveal any other information.
In full-chain games, the application of zero-knowledge proof is of great significance. For example, zero-knowledge proof is used in the Dark Forest game. In this game, all game states are stored on the blockchain and theoretically available to everyone. However, players may not want their strategies and resources to be seen by other players, which is where zero-knowledge proof comes 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 blockchain, zero-knowledge proof can also be used to prevent cheating. In traditional centralized games, the game server will perform cheating detection, while in full-chain games, this function can be achieved through zero-knowledge proof. Because all game logic is executed on the blockchain, if someone tries to cheat, he needs to prove that his operation is compliant without leaking any valid information, which is very difficult without sufficient computing resources and knowledge.
In general, zero-knowledge proof provides an effective privacy protection and cheating prevention mechanism for the design and implementation of full-chain games, allowing the game to guarantee player privacy and fairness in the open and transparent environment of the blockchain.
2/Game Engine
Game engines are core software components 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, etc. With a game engine, game developers can focus on the design and gameplay of the game without having to write all the low-level code from scratch. Unity, Unreal Engine, and Godot are all well-known game engines.
Full-chain games, due to their complex blockchain interactive characteristics, require special tools to help developers build and deploy game logic. In this field, some projects have shown considerable maturity and provide developers with a powerful tool set.
MUD, a full-chain game engine based on Solidity developed by Lattice Studio, is such a tool. It enables developers to easily and quickly deploy game logic to smart contracts and synchronize the client with the on-chain status, thus greatly improving development efficiency.
Another project worth noting 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 to smart contracts and realize functions such as synchronization with client status.
By leveraging these full-chain game engines, developers can develop games that run on the blockchain faster and more efficiently, achieving true decentralization and true asset ownership for users, thus giving games more possibilities.
ECS
In traditional blockchain game development, developers create structures and add functions to read data and release events to facilitate client synchronization. They also use ERC20, ERC721, and ERC1155 standards to ensure interoperability between games.
In this context, MUD games borrow a software architecture pattern from traditional game development to keep developers productive as the complexity of relationships between game objects increases. That is the ECS (Entity/Component/System) architecture pattern. It is very effective in designing and managing a large number of objects in the game.
The model consists of three parts:
Entity: In ECS, every game object is considered an entity. An entity is an abstract container that does not contain any data or behavior itself. Instead, an entity defines its properties and behaviors by associating a set of components.
Component: A component is a container for storing data. All data is stored in components, not in entities. Each component represents a specific property or behavior. For example, a "position" component may contain X and Y coordinates, while a "velocity" component may contain the magnitude and direction of the velocity.
System: Systems are the parts that handle behavior. They deal with entities that have a specific component. For example, a "move" system might find all entities that have both a "position" and a "velocity" component, and then update their position based on their velocity.
The advantage of the ECS pattern is that it can improve the flexibility and performance of the game. 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, etc.
In the MUD framework, developers can create an on-chain ownerless data namespace called "Worlds". In this namespace, all objects are registered to the "World", and these objects are called "Entities", or entities. Each entity has a digital ID to uniquely identify it. For example, if we are in a simple "World" like an ERC-20 contract, the entity may be an address. In a different world full of various flowers and birds, each flower and bird will have a unique entity ID.
In order to give these abstract entities concrete properties and behaviors, MUD uses a contract called "Component". Anyone can register a new component contract on a "World", as long as the component ID is unique. These components are small data packages that have types that can be attached to entities, giving them specific properties and behaviors.
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, and Components.
DOJO
Written in Rust and Cairo, Dojo is a framework that implements the ECS pattern to simplify the creation, management, and permissionless expansion of worlds over time, an open source full-chain game engine for Starknet. Dojo is still in early development.
Key Features:
Cairo 1.0 Entity Component System (ECS)
Sozu Migration Planner
Torii Network and Indexing Stack
Katana RPC Development Network
Typed SDK
Full-chain game case Dark Forest
Dark Forest is a strategic blockchain game, deeply inspired by the "Dark Forest Law" in the science fiction novel "The Three-Body Problem". In the game, players will enter a vast universe, 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 themselves, thereby hiding information on the public blockchain and creating a gaming environment for players.
Let’s take a deeper look at how Dark Forest works
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 the surroundings of the home planet and discover new planets. Each planet has its own 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: Each planet you explore has its own resources and production capacity. Players need to carefully manage their planets to maximize the production and utilization of resources. This may involve deciding how to allocate resources and how to balance the flow of resources between planets.
War and conquest: While expanding their own territory, players also need to prevent their planets from being attacked and occupied by other players. If a player's planet is attacked, they need to mobilize their troops for defense. 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 armies on both sides, distance, and tactical strategies.
Zero-knowledge proof: Dark Forest uses the cryptographic technology of zk-SNARKs. All game states are recorded on the blockchain, but specific player actions are only visible to the player. This means that players can perform secret actions on the public blockchain, such as secretly moving fleets or planning attacks.
Strategy and Game: Every action in the game can be considered a game. Players need to constantly weigh various factors, such as resources, troops, planetary production capacity, possible actions of other players, etc., to develop the best strategy.
The design concept of Dark Forest is to create a player-driven game world through a mixture of cryptography, strategic games and economic models. In this world, players not only need to explore and occupy new planets, but also constantly adjust their 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 will not only promote the improvement of gaming experience, but also may lead to innovation in game forms and models.
The full-chain game will provide some mechanisms to allow players to participate in the creation and decision-making of the game, such as modifying the game rules, adding new content, etc. This participation can not only enhance the player's gaming experience, but also help game developers obtain 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 that of traditional chain games. In addition, full-chain games in the future will give birth to more core gameplay.