The first NEO blockchain game development competition has now entered the judging stage and the total prize purse of 3.5 million RMB will be announced to the final winners soon.
Today, the team we have invited to interview already has established some recognition in the blockchain gaming industry and they have brought their work to participate in this competition. Are they looking to be true pioneers of the NEO game ecology or just venturer’s who are simply hunting for the prize? NEO Game Competition voting channel: http://neogame.v.vote8.cn/m
Tournament Committee: Congratulations! Please introduce yourself to the readers.
Ling: Hello, my name is Ling and I am an independent developer. I received both my bachelor and masters degree from the University of Alberta. I really like to develop games and the first one I ever developed was when I was in elementary school. I think it is a very interesting process to make games and also play games. The current DApp players are very friendly and the gameplay nowadays offer gamers a new experience. After winning one championship in the second week and another on the first month of the Nebulas Incentive Program, I received an investment of 5 million RMB to set up a team dedicated in creating an independent stylized blockchain game.
Tournament Committee: Why did you choose to participate in the Neo Game Competition?
Ling: The reason is kind of complicated. So after I completed the development of ‘Cell Evolution’ and our other game ‘Last Trip’ with my friends, we developed two open source projects. Project Genesis and Voyager, which are designed to help more game developers have access to various chains and to share digital characters. Genesis is the first underlying role consensus contract for NAS, ETH, and EOS. The digital characters on the Genesis platform can be referenced by countless games. For example, a character can be used as a protagonist in one game and can be regarded as an antagonist in another game. I also connected Genesis to the Neo chain in order to make this open source project adaptable to even more games. Next, my game ‘Cell Evolution’ was developed for the NEO chain. Additionally, in allowing ‘Cell Evolution’ to support the Neo chain the BlaCat wallet was also added to improve gameplay. I hope that many Neo players can experience the game ‘Cell Evolution’ and hope that more Neo developers will understand the concept of Genesis and work together to develop better games.
Tournament Committee: I have heard that you are also one of the first group of developers that have developed with Ether. What do you think is the difference between playing games on the Ethereum and NEO blockchains?
Ling: I think that for the game developers who want to create a game on a blockchain, Ethereum is not a suitable platform. Because each game interaction requires a gas fee and these costs are very unsatisfying for the players. I have always hoped to find a public chain that is friendly to users. BlaCat has a better user experience, which is closer to the experience of the non-inductive blockchain we were looking for in the past.
Tournament Committee: In your opinion does ‘Cell Evolution’ reach the standards of a good blockchain game? What do you think about blockchain games in general?
Ling: It is up to standard, although relatively at a junior level but I think it is still a blockchain game. I personally like it very much! I also think that it is an expressive game with many places that can be perfected. I hope that ‘Cell Evolution’ will bring a new experience to blockchain developers and the players. Blockchain games should all have their own unique gameplay and creativity so that others can create better game products.
For example in ‘Cell Evolution’, countless cell populations gather on the blockchain after death and everyone decides to either survive or die. In the actual process we destroyed 145 planets in total. In general, it is difficult for everyone to reach a consensus let alone to create the world together. However, on the 90th planet there was a stable period of almost two weeks. Everyone’s countless choices allowed more than 200 cells to survive on the 90th planet for more than 2 weeks. I was very surprised by this as a developer.
In another example, each player has 99 choices in the game experience. The existing operation is 5^99 times of selection. A highly civilized world requires more than 100 players and a chance to enter a different world through the selection of billions of times. Perhaps the evolution of our humans is also like this; countless accidents, chances, evolutions, mutations, and apoptosis. I think this is where the beauty lies between sci-fi and mathematics.
Tournament Committee: How did you combine game logic with blockchain technology in ‘Cell Evolution’?
Ling: The whole game is divided into two parts. One is the sandbox decryption gameplay designed in front of the chain. At this stage the player is more inclined to use his own strategy and to make his cells survive longer to get better scores. The other is the smart contract on the chain. I implemented socializing gameplay through smart contracts, allowing more players to experience gameplay including consensus, humanity, gaming, and self-selection. I think these designs are created by combining game logic with blockchain thinking.
Tournament Committee: Thank you for doing this interview I hope that you will make the best independent blockchain game.
Ling: Thank you very much for this opportunity, we will work hard to develop and make better games.