4D Analysis Web3 Social and Game Integration: A New National Carnival?

Games attract users to join by building a new world view. Through games, we experience and feel a completely different experience and life that is even out of reality. In the game, socialization is not a must. There are many excellent consoles and independent games circulating on the market that allow players to immerse themselves in it.

But I have to admit that social networking is naturally adapted to the game scene. The game itself has the ability to break through the limitations of time and space to establish links with others like a social tool. At the same time, life and activities in other worlds have also become Great scene to bond with others.

In traditional online games, we can see too many verified cases, such as World of Warcraft with a grand background and opposing alliances. With the development of the game itself, it has gradually become a social media and carrier. We interact with others in game events. Establish various new relationships such as friends, brothers, mentors and even lovers, and these relationships have led to more interactions in the game, such as team dungeons, PK, gang battles, and more.

In addition, we can also see the younger Fortnite, which not only weakens the attributes of in-game competition and strengthens the attributes of social entertainment, but also enlarges social events, combining with musicians such as Marshmello and TravisScott to bring the reality to life. The carnival feast in the game was launched into the game world. This kind of virtual but real connection and experience is unforgettable for all who have experienced it. Therefore, how to collide and integrate "social" and "game" will be something worth looking forward to in the future.

GameFi is oriented towards the metaverse, and its core lies in interoperability

However, the existence of games as a centralized operation cannot escape issues such as property ownership and data silos, which affect players' gaming experience and social experience at the same time. Therefore, decentralized games have also emerged. They hope to use NFTs and Tokens to solve the above problems and allow players to completely own their assets. Even if the game stops, the player's experience and possessions will not disappear.

But the reality is that for an isolated game, even if the player holds an NFT asset, once the game stops, the value of the asset will be instantly cleared because it has no other use. Therefore, almost the current mainstream GameFI, its ultimate goal is to set out towards the "Metaverse", that is, all the outputs of the game have strong "Interoperability" (Interoperability), whether it is assets or data, They can travel freely among other "universes", because only game assets under such conditions have long-term value.

GameFi+DID = GameID

In order to do this, players need to have a common identity format, that is, the game version of the DID, which records the player's experience, reputation, assets and achievements in various games. At the same time, due to the versatility of decentralized identities , the social relationship associated with this identity can also be freely brought into different games, here we call this DID GameID, which together with other identity data constitutes the user's complete DID image.

If you still can't understand the form of GameID, you can quickly refer to the "Loots" that was very popular in the past. Loots belong to a special GameID, and each Loots represents a set of identities. You can use this identity to be in the Loots ecological universe. Free shuttle between different games and applications, the same identity may have a completely different image, you can experience different experiences. But the special thing is that this is also limited to the Loots ecosystem; GameID is like a more open Loots, running through the entire GameFi ecosystem.

At the same time, with the help of GameID/DID, we can also achieve social interaction outside the game. In traditional games, once players are offline, they can no longer connect with them, so an out-of-game social tool such as Discord was born, allowing players to maintain in-game social interaction even when they are not online or in other games . However, in the context of decentralization, we believe that this demand can be completely replaced by ordinary decentralized social tools. We can simultaneously socially interact with work partners and game friends without switching accounts and platforms.

Products of current collision and fusion and future possibilities

In the previous article, we discussed the various types of decentralized social networking and the game scenarios that are extremely suitable for it. In the current web3 environment, the propositions of "social" and "game" have actually collided with a lot of interesting ideas, here is a brief Listed three ideas, a brief overview of the current author thinks quite representative/interesting projects:

Take the user's identity and behavior as the unit: Gamer Profile

The idea of ​​​​this type of project is as described in the article, hoping to grasp the most critical GameID link.

The mode under this idea is usually to aggregate, process and visualize the game interaction data, in-game assets, and contributions to the game on or off the chain. On the one hand, it can enrich the dimension of DID, on the other hand On the one hand, it also serves as a proof of property rights declaration, value accumulation, reputation and skills in the GameFi ecosystem.

However, although the identity data is generated by the user, the information formed by the profile in the early stage is not very meaningful to the player. Therefore, the first audience of GameID is actually the B-side game project party and the game guild. They can Better filter, analyze, capture and motivate players through GameID.

Therefore, the current GameID project is often presented in the form of a platform, which is a bit like the GameFi version of Project Galaxy. On the one hand, it provides value to users through other content, and on the other hand, it continuously establishes cooperation with more game parties/guilds to obtain more data interface, thus forming a forward loop.

Carv is a GameID platform that cuts in from the achievement system. It is very interesting that it calculates the user's reputation score based on the user's past on-chain data. The presentation of its overall GameID is also presented with this reputation score + the SBT received. The platform will capture the data on the chain to verify the achievements of users. After meeting the conditions, they can receive the corresponding Soul Token (SBT).

The platform provides a social data analysis for List projects, allowing players to quickly discover potential and high-profile games, and at the same time track the latest social dynamics of the games they follow, which is very helpful for players. . At the same time, the platform also has an INO section, which allows the game to launch NFTs for the first time, but this piece of content is more dependent on the BD capabilities of the project party, and there have been only 10 releases so far.

DeQuest is a GameID platform cut from the Quest system. It has done a very interesting gamification design, so that the user's GameID is presented in the form of a virtual image (the image can be used to enter the sandbox in the future), and equipment can be unlocked during the completion of the task. and skills. The overall user experience is designed very smoothly. Quest is more of a novice tutorial type, and its volume is larger than that of Carv’s achievements. The content is made very seriously, which can indeed effectively help players lower the threshold for large-scale games to get started.

The highlight is that the overall UX is very smooth, and the data coverage of GameID is relatively complete, including Web2 (data connected to Steam), on-chain data and In-Game data (Trophies section, which can share the partner's In-game data) -Game Data to issue achievements to players). At present, 122 games have been listed on the DeQuest platform (data in early August, most of which have been hidden recently), 10 of which have systematic Quest tasks.

If the first two projects are typically focused on the user side, Arche will prefer the project side and guild on the B side. Since there is currently no demo available, the final product form still needs to wait for official announcements. However, through the information on the official website, we can know that it has an sdk that can help the game project party to quickly open the mall, similar to the game launch mode of steam, players can purchase and trade the game's assets in the game party's mall. In terms of GameID, it mainly focuses on information aggregation and game asset display on the chain. It can display the user's past rate of return in the GameFi field, which is very useful for finding big players. Another highlight of Arche is that it has united several major game guilds such as YGG, Avacado, and GoodGame to form a game guild alliance. One thing is very exciting.

Soulbound is also a GameID platform that uses the achievement system. There is no Demo yet, but according to the official website, it can be speculated that it has good in-game data access. Players can upgrade their reputation by completing specific in-game achievements. , and get token rewards, and the connection between it and the guild is relatively deep. The more interesting feature is that the official said that anyone can publish Quest on the platform and attach any NFT/Token as a reward. The project received a $3.6 million seed round led by Animoca in June this year.

Lysto is also a GameID protocol that focuses on player data, which can help gamers obtain digital credentials on the chain, and use the credentials to demonstrate their skills to find partners or participate in competitions. The highlight is that, according to the project party, traditional gamers can also verify their credentials through the protocol, which has strong web2 game data aggregation.

The project is currently being tested on Polygon and will expand to almost all blockchains in the future first from Solana, ImmutableX and Flow. The project completed a US$12 million Series A financing invested by Tiger Global in August this year.

summary

GameID is actually a relatively hot field at the moment. Both the project party and the organization are secretly making efforts. At present, mainstream projects usually choose to focus on 1~2 directions of players, project parties or guilds. The aforementioned Carv, DeQuest, Soulbound belongs to the player-oriented side; while P12, which has set off a wave of craze, belongs to the main one-click chain change, focusing on the game side of the project; the guild side has Arche, Tavern and other projects. Although the focus of each project is slightly different, the ultimate goal is basically to effectively and organically integrate web2, on-chain and in-game data, and the overall is similar.

Personally, I am very much looking forward to seeing excellent projects in this mode. Imagine that users can choose to display their Steam game market, the ranking of a chain game, and rare NFT weapons on Twitter, and these achievements can be found in the new Obtaining unique rights in the game, as a game player, is still very much looking forward to.

Social Complementary Components of Games: Cross-Platform Social

Compared with GameID, which focuses on game data and player identities based on data, this type of project is more inclined to identity-based social networking, which is not necessarily limited to game scenarios, but it is indeed a very effective social supplement tool, similar to that in web2. Discord, YY Voice, QQ, WeChat, etc., but have stronger cross-platform functions.

Typical projects include:

a. XMTP

XMTP is a project that started working on a web3 communication protocol earlier. The protocol aims to establish a unified and decentralized receipt system that can be used by all Dapps. It can be simply understood as decentralized xmpp. Users can send and receive encrypted XMTP messages using an application with an embedded XMTP client and authenticate using wallet signatures, a protocol that effectively encrypts messages and prevents spam, but for now The protocol supports only point-to-point messaging.

b. Web3MQ

Web3MQ is an open source decentralized secure communication protocol dedicated to becoming an encryption native communication infrastructure. It extends and improves the form of XMTP, providing an all-in-one communication solution that includes push, chat and community functions.

At the same time, Web3MQ is also compatible with a wide range of social identity and social graph protocols, using communication protocols as a bridge to unleash the potential of each social relationship, and also introducing existing Web3 ecosystems, including web3 storage (such as IPFS) and computing (such as Internet computers) As a complement to the messaging ecosystem, users can achieve higher levels of privacy protection and other personalized features through custom configurations. Compared with the current web3 communication protocol, Web3MQ is a protocol project with relatively mature ideas and functions. Swapchat is an address-based instant messaging application plug-in that implements cross-social platform. As a plug-in, it can support instant chat in Opensea, Twitter, Discord and other scenarios at the same time, that is, when you find a favorite game equipment NFT on the OS, You can directly initiate 1-to-1 or group chat with them through Swapchat, and the conversation can be extended to other web2 social platforms, which is very useful for more fragmented exchanges such as high-frequency game asset transactions and impromptu gameplay strategy discussions. Strong practicality.

Unlike Swapchat, which focuses on cross-platform application functions, Beoble has made social functions into APIs and SDKs, allowing any project to easily and quickly access and improve their own social scenarios. It provides modular functions including personal profile, feed stream, and instant private chat, which will be a very handy tool for gamers/projects who want to build their own social ecology.

Whether it is decentralized social networking or GameFi, a lot of interesting and unique ideas and ideas have emerged now, and at the intersection of the two, many projects with the potential to go out of the circle have collided, starting from capital. The GameID of the game is a virtual relationship that can arouse certain humanistic and philosophical thoughts. This article can only extract a brief part of it and present it in a way that can give more people some inspiration. We believe that the combination of games and social networking will be an important scenario to break through the traffic bottleneck in the current web3 environment. Let us wait and see the day when truly phenomenal applications appear.