The Traditional Gaming Industry & Advent Of Blockchain Gaming

Games go back to the earliest days, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that games started to incorporate advanced engineering and computing. Moreover, with the rise of Nintendo, Playstation, Xbox, and the introduction of desktop PC and AlienWare computer games, the industry is known as a video and PC gaming begin to truly take off.

To give some supporting numbers, in 2015, there were already approximately 1.99 billion active video gamers worldwide, and currently, that number sits at 2.95 billion. So the industry has added nearly 100 million gamers in a little over 5 years. In addition, the revenue generated for these games reached over $160 billion in 2020. So it’s an understatement to say that games are a profitable industry.

But these are just regular video games, how about PC gaming? In 2021, the global online PC gaming market was worth $44.6 billion — and it is projected to reach $46.7 billion by 2026. Hence, you can also see the growth potential that awaits.

And now with the uprise in Web3, blockchain, and cryptocurrencies, will we see the next iteration of gaming. After all, it was only after getting screwed over by World of Warcraft did Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin decide to create Ethereum.

But Ethereum can’t really handle the computational needs of gaming — however, there’s one blockchain tech stack that’s particularly primed to do so — the Internet Computer.

To build off Internet Computer blockchain gaming (or GameFi), the project recently held a Hackathon called Supernova, which featured developers competing across domains such as GameFi, SocialFi, DeFi, Metaverse & NFTs, Public Good, and Blue Sky. And in the GameFi competition, in particular, a project called Cubetopia stood out and received the prize of Grand Champion.

What Is Cubetopia?

Cubetopia is a Web3 game that brings the world of Minecraft to World of Warcraft on the blockchain — and it allows players to build, chat, and adventure with friends all in your browser.

Cubetopia’s main vision is to be an open metaverse space and platform for users to express their creativity, to be engaging, and fun for onboarding new Web3 users, and to be a rewarding Play To Earn (P2E) experience. So it’s got a huge goal to accomplish, which is frankly a sign of a well-intentioned project.

In summary, first, you’ll be able to earn tokens, NFTs, and other rewards by playing — as well as selling your builds and in-game creations. This gives it the marketplace feel. Second, there will be a social space, NFT interoperability, and a place to showcase NFTs and onsets.

This gives it the metaverse economy gallery feel. Lastly, users will be able to transition from Cubetopia to other Internet Computer projects, thus creating a network effect that increases overall adoption of the tech stack.

Cubetopia Gameplay

Cubetopia seeks to be the first fully decentralized multiplayer RPG/sandbox game built on the Internet Computer. An interesting aspect of Cubetopia is that players will be allowed to express their creativity and imagination by having their own unique island on the blockchain.

These islands will be NFTs, and on these islands, players can place and sell NFTs from their wallets. Players can also invite other players to work together, collaborate on art or other designs, and hang out.

At the current stage, Cubetopia is operating a sandbox experience, similar to other games such as Minecraft, The Sandbox, and Decentraland, but moving forward, Cubetopia will transition to a play-to-earn type of RPG.

What this entails is islands will be used to produce resources that equip players for their quests, so here think World of Warcraft + Pokemon. Then the resources and equipment can be used in adventures and quests where players battle monsters in the in-game world and earn rewards for doing so.

Completing these quests and participating in adventures and battling monsters will reward players with unique in-game and on-chain rewards such as cosmetics, NFTs, tokens, and tools.

One inspiration behind Cubetopia is to allow players to be able to build with ease as if they were opening a box of legos.

Currently, Cubetopia can be opened in your browser, which is great for onboarding because it’s different in that you don’t have to go through long sign-in processes to play. You can go in and input your name and start playing. Here’s what it looks like right after signing in.

As with all games though, the evolution from pixelated graphics to immersive high-def 3D and 4D may take some time, if it’s even in the cards — but as the industry consolidates and the company attracts more game developers and graphic designers, the in-game visuals and features will improve rapidly.

Moving forward, Cubetopia will be expanding on island building, the in-game building system, NFT and wallet integration, multiplayer integrations, in-game communications, community building, partnerships, different island features, character customizations, and more items, tokenomics, and resource farming details. So there’s lots more in store.

Cubetopia Tokeneconomy

To keep it simple Cubetopia will have a governance token called Cubecoin and another one similar to Gold which will be an in-game currency as well as be used for rewards.

Cubetopia Interoperability

One of the great features of Cubetopia is that it’s compatible with other Internet Computer projects. For example, if your character wants to import an NFT item such as clothing or a resource from another project, then all you have to do is connect your Plug Wallet and do the importation from there. You’ll be able to directly deck out your Cubetopia player with outside NFT collections and designs.

Lastly, shareability — when you want to share what you’ve created on your island or elsewhere, all you have to do is share a ‘web link’ with your friend. This is better than other blockchain systems that need wallets, keys, app downloads, and token purchases before being able to jump into the game and ecosystem.

But with Cubetopia you can simply share your in-game world with someone else over the Internet and they can go directly into it from their browser, which is an awesome and underrated innovation.

Cubetopia Next Steps

To build off of what they have now, Cubetopia will be introducing NFT minting, additional island sizes, varieties, and types, more building features, character customization, performance and graphics improvement, multiplayer capacity, quest demos, tokenomics, a whitepaper, resource farming, dungeon challenges, an in-game hub world and marketplace, DeFi and commercial integrations, and further customizations and building tools. So there’s a lot to look forward to — stay tuned!