We used to hear the mantra fairly often: blockchain gaming will be the next big wave.
Well, it hasn’t been, at least not yet.
Enjin is perhaps the leader in blockchain gaming. The Enjin token platform powers non-fungible and fungible gaming tokens for dozens of games, and new games are added to the platform all the time.
Blockchain Gaming Has A Ways To Go
Still, compared to regular gaming via the likes of the Play Store, Xbox, and PlayStation, things are far from what you might consider blockchain-dominant – if even truly aware.
This is after Samsung itself acknowledged Enjin, and the platform’s token took off in price as a result. Despite this, blockchain isn’t the first thing on the mind of a given S10 user, and it’s far from an overly promoted feature of the phone.
Other blockchain phones have launched, as well.
Even accessible blockchain phones have launched.
Still, the great blockchain gaming revolution we were promised has not yet arrived.
And maybe it never will, or when it does it will come in a way that surprises us.
These things take time, after all.
One of the things Enjin has going for it is that it found its way into the Unity development kit. That means that people working with the massively popular Unity game developing setup can access elements of Enjin – in order to integrate some blockchain in their games.
The question, at this point, is whether or not that is a priority for anyone. Judging by the sparseness of news and reporting about blockchain gaming, it would seem that it’s so far a mostly dead scene.
Not to deprive credit from those to whom it’s due. There are dozens of blockchain games, and many of them are built on Enjin.
There are also dozens of gambling dApps on Tron and EOS, and tons of games on Ethereum’s main chain as well.
A Lack Of Users: Blockchain Gaming’s Real Problem
What there are not, and what there have to be before we can consider the revolution in progress, are users.
Users are the defining element for whether or not something is picking up steam, and whether or not it’s becoming popular.
Thus far, nothing on any blockchain has an overwhelming number of users, or anything really worth writing home about.
Tron has a lot of transactions. A single user can generate thousands of transactions on Tron, too. Same thing with EOS.
The bottom line is that we need more people, not more transactions. In fact, the way that a blockchain is designed is less relevant than how many people have a desire to use it.
Yet, “blockchain gaming” remains largely a ghost town, with knights like Enjin doing their best to clear the way forward.
Like every good technology, blockchain is perhaps one or two events from becoming a part of our everyday lives.
Will it be a game? At this point, that’s as possible as any other type of application.
