Since last year Cryptokitties became an instant hit, gaming becomes one of the hottest directions in blockchain industry. A lot of games are springing up to imitate the mode of Cryptokitties. However, few of them stand out from the mode that is still giving away candy and selling value-added props.
HashWorld is a blockchain game similar to Monopoly. It is a parallel virtual world based on Location Based Service (LBS) system. In this virtual world, users are able to buy and sell lands and mine for treasures. In addition, HashWorld provides bidding for different lands, integrations of online and offline, and DIY virtual lands, etc. It has more than one million users. Currently, HashWorld has completed the three rounds of financing led by Danhua Capital, Will Hunting Capital and other institutions.
Recently, ChainBS (ID：iqklbs) invited Mr Jia Yinghao the founder of HashWorld, for an exclusive interview. He shared some ideas about the blockchain games of too much similarities. He also shared the latest development plan of HashWorld. It is definitely worth reading.
- The key to open the door of blockchain
ChainBS: What are the problems that blockchain games solve over traditional games?
Jia: I think there are three important points that blockchain contributes to gaming. Firstly, the whole process of blockchain is more open and transparent, especially for generating randomization. The open and transparent experiences are extremely attractive to general gamers. Let’s take the example of drawing a rare cards in a card-collecting games. If the game company forecasts that you will spend money in the game, it will purposely make you miss the desired card and force you to buy it instead. This kind of black-box operations are common in centralized games. This phenomenon is also called Big Data Discrimination. While blockchain makes the whole process more open and transparent. The source code on blockchain is open-sourced and even the game creators cannot modify randomly.
Secondly, the previous economy system of game props is incomplete. Over distribution of game props happen at anytime. For example, the game publisher planned to distribute 10 sets of special equips, but actually distributed 100 sets in order to make money. Blockchain can affirm the ownership of equips. Not only each equip can be saved permanently, but also the value can rise due to its scarcity.
Thirdly, blockchain can improve circulation of game props. Imaging a user is bored with one game and wants to play another game. If the two games have some cooperation, then instead of selling his game account, the user can transfer his assets in the old game to the new game. It not only improves the circulation, but also helps product innovations and attract much more excellent developers.
ChainBS: Then why there are few traditional games on blockchain?
Jia: It is because there are conflict of interests between the two parties. For traditional game developers, they can make money with the opaque features. If the game props cannot circulate, then users will buy more props as a result. They are get used to utilise the centralized node to monopolize and to make money. That is why then have no motivation to go on blockchain, and no motivation to start their own revolution.
ChainBS: Blockchain games developers are still in a small amount.
Jia: This is because the underlying technology of blockchain is still at initial stage, which cannot support such high transaction and visit volume. Blockchain is like a young DOS system, no development engine. It requires a high level skills of comprehensive practicing and innovation. Generally, it cost 500k USD annually to hire a skilled blockchain developer and most blockchain game companies have neither human resource nor financial resource to do so.
ChainBS: Currently, what is the team structure of HashWorld?
Jia: Our company has over 60 people now. The core members are from Tsinghua University. I got my PhD. degree in Tsinghua University Industrial Engineering School, major in system design and utilization. I founded Student Blockchain Association of Tsinghua University; and one of our co-founders is Aron, a PhD. of Tsinghua Computer Science and Technology School. He is professional in smart contract. He was a technology director in an Exchange providing cryptocurrency trading between mobile ends. The other co-founder is Eric, graduated from Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management. He founded a AR/VR company and it had been acquired already. Talking about gaming, our product manager was in Sina and developed several successful games, brought more than tens of millions of traffic to Sina Weibo.
ChainBS: A blockchain game based on Monopoly sounds interesting. Can you elaborate more on it?
Jia: We can actually think Hashworld as a parallel virtual world which is based on LBS, and the ways of gameplay is buying/selling lands, and mining for treatures. Users can you Hashcoin to buy the lands in HashWorld which are corresponding to lands in real world. These virtual lands are shown by system in the front page and other users can play on the lands to get bonus such as Bitcoins, Ethereum and various digital assets. In the meantime, the land owners can earn 10% of the total bonus generated on his land. He just needs to lie down and count money.
The way of gameplay is similar to Monopoly. User can know and understand blockchain by playing game and completing missions. They will know what smart contract is and what digital asset is. HashWorld will be junior users’ key to open the door of blockchain technology.
- Enhance interactions between the real world and the virtual world
ChainBS: What are the ways that you promote HashWorld? How do you find junior users?
Jia: We haven’t done large-scale advertising, mainly rely on spontaneous spread and word of mouth. As to motivate users, we now introduce a popular concept of 3 levels mentoring. Every new user can get Hashcoin bonus after registration. Furthermore, user can get extra hashcoin bonus when he successfully invites a mentee, or his mentee get his own mentee.
ChainBS: Since HashWorld has 70k active users per day, how do you make sure the system’s fluency？
Jia: We adopt a hybrid structure of centralized and decentralized systems. Part of the system is on blockchain, and the rest is off blockchain. For example, the process of affirming assets and lands competition are all put on blockchain for openness and transparency. However, the process of image rendering and some gameplays are in traditional database. Thus users can have more fluent game experience, not as laggy as Cryptokitties.
ChainBS: What other new gameplays you will publish?
Jia: Firstly, Users can develop the land they own. The better the land is developed, the faster the land value rises, thus the more the return is generated.
Secondly, we are planning to build up online shopping mall selling digital assets on blockchain, to connect the virtual assets with the real assets. We are recently cooperating with an Australian company on a real estate project, to let the users buy the real lands through the virtual lands in Hashworld. In addition, we are negotiating some digital assets such as the copyright of music and art painting. etc.
In the future, when user group becomes larger, the offline shops have more motivations to do advertising online. For example, they may buy their shops in HashWorld, and launch a series of promotions. The users can get some vouchers by play games at the online shops, and use the vouchers offline, and thus lead more interactions between online and offline.
(Original Resource: ChainBS, 12th June 2018)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HashWorldGlobal/
Telegram: https://t.me/hashworldglobal/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hashworld_hsc/
Hey, great content and well structured!
Thanks for sharing this..
I have upvoted and followed you.
Please do the same! :)