Blockchaingamer
Since the craze of Cryptokitties there have been other various iterations and genres of blockchain games that have been released, where some have built a following of gamers but many have faltered. Issues such as slow tps, high gas fees and little or no gameplay are still the prevalent reasons why these games have failed. However there has been a noticeable progression in blockchain games and unique ways have been developed to overcome these hurdles, one great example is “Coins & Steel.” We got more details about the game and some views of the industry from the CEO, Denis Ermolin.
1) Please tell us about yourself and your team? Do you have a background in game development?
I am software engineer with 8 years of commercial games experience. I’m interested in many other aspects of the game development like concept art, game art, game design, monetization, sound, and level design. We are team of eight (8) developers comprising of artists, animators, game designers and engineers, everyone with over 8 years of experience in game development, and in mostly mobile platforms. We also have other members who help us with marketing and community management.
2) Can you give us a general breakdown of your game and its gameplay?
Coins & Steel is a fantasy MMORPG: you kill monsters, raid dungeons with randomized layouts that are filled with randomized events, participate in regional tournaments with currency payouts, form guilds, own castles, tame pets and so much more. The combat system is a semi-automatic real time battler.
All the loot in the game will have randomly generated attributes, just like our personal favorite action RPG’s: Diablo 2, Path of Exile, Grim Dawn and other equally fantastic games of the like. Part of the idea behind the design is that the game will be driven through skillful use of items instead of in-game purchases with money; but of course there will be a market as well, that will allow players to trade using in-game currency or Ether. Owning a castle for example will require you to be strong enough to capture it, instead of just buying it. Players will therefore be able to beat “whales” by cooperating with each other (and yes, you can capture castles using your whole guild).
Crafting is another major part of the game. You’ll be able to craft items and potions from resources found around the game world, and later in the game you’ll also be able to participate in building giant structures like siege machines and even entire buildings within the city.
Speaking of cities: players must work together and cooperate in order to build up their city from a humble little village to a proud citadel within its unique zone. There are several other zones around the world also containing their own villages as well.
There are many more game features, which will be explained in our whitepaper – so stay tuned!
3) What would you say makes your game stand out from the rest?
- Our game plays using real time systems, while being provably fair and secure through the use of blockchain. In fact players will not notice that this game is entirely on a blockchain.
- We’lll utilize the Loom sidechain to remove Ethereum’s gas requirements and make the whole game run faster. Players will only pay gas (a small transaction fee) if or when they want to transfer assets back-and-forth between the sidechain and the Ethereum mainnet. To make sure that the game’s portal and game client is always accessible we are going to use Shift – decentralized Web 3.0 solution to mirror that data.
- You can earn Ether and other currencies later in the game because everything – resources, money, items, and in the future, probably even characters – is tokenized. An excellent marketplace will be available that is integrated with existing solutions.
- The main game platform uses DPoS consensus for block producing and if you want, you can even become a game network node and thereby earn game currency.
4) Are there any tips or tricks gamers should know before playing your game?
There are no tips or tricks required to pick up and play: most people will not realize the game is fully running on blockchain, since it’s designed to be completely accessible. As for game strategies, we will leave the excitement of discovering them to the players.
5) Have you seen some advancements in blockchain tech with games since you started developing your game? Have you applied or taken advantage of them, such as the integration of state channels?
Yes, as we mentioned above, we are using the Loom sidechain technology and Shift’s cutting edge storage layer technology to take full advantage of the breakthroughs that have occurred in blockchain tech over the past months. PvP will utilize state channels which will bring realtime gameplay and will help to scale even further.
6) What are some key things you would like to point out for new blockchain game devs? What are some of the challenges they will face?
To new blockchain game devs: remember that the most important thing for adoption and realizing the potential of this tech is still making the games fun to play. It’s difficult to do that compared to developing “normal” games because of course with blockchain games, there are limitations and challenges that come from the implementation of the technology, which is still very new in and of itself. We’re proving that it’s possible to work around the limitations to produce something incredibly fun. The rest of the aspects of developing blockchain games, such as in-game economies, balance, etc. are the same but the ability to integrate to existing marketplaces has huge implications for these areas of game design as well.
7) Why did you select an asset presale over doing an ICO? What is your reasoning behind this?
Although we aren’t selling game currency directly, early adopters can still obtain them by purchasing any available item. You will get in game currency based on a fixed ratio. In other words, tokens and items in the game will be gained at the same time. Moreover, as an early adopter you’ll have special founder tokens that will let you purchase exclusive content in the game. The principle thinking behind this is that we don’t want to just sell tokens. We want to reward our investors with something even more gratifying than that, because without them we’d be unable to finish the game.
8) What would bring you the most satisfaction from your game?
If people play Coins & Steel and simply have fun with our game.
9) Could you offer us some of your predictions you might have for the future of blockchain gaming and the industry as a whole?
I think the most important attributes of blockchain for the gaming industry are ownership, direct trading of any asset for any asset (i.e. not only game assets, but literally any assets on blockchain), and the possibility to share data between games seamlessly. These key features could potentially create a whole new world of gaming, wherein players can use items from different games and assets can be reused by developers. This would create a global space filled with a variety of game items, including not only models but actual data and game lore. There are still many problems with Intellectual Property among other things, but I believe the space will evolve in the right direction.
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For other questions here is my email admin@coinsandsteel.com
