Crypto Board Game Idea
Here's a very rough outline of an idea I had for a board game which allows people to gently educate themselves and their families and friends about various practical aspects of using cryptocurrencies.
Scenario
Instead of an Amazon gift certificate, this year your wealthy uncle has decided to send you and each of your siblings a CryptoHamper TM Pending ;) for Christmas. The aim of the game is to ride the ups and downs of the crypto markets and come out ahead.
So to start with your game tokens which represent your crypto holdings are all placed in a single exchange entity.
The Game Board
A network diagram which has distinct areas representing the following elements:
- Exchanges (Bittrex, Blocktrades, Coinbase, etc. - to be determined)
- Digital Asset Storage Provider (Electrum, Exodus, Nano Ledger, etc. - to be determined)
- Fiat Currency Banks (to be determined)
The network topology will probably need to be quite fully connected, although Digital Asset Storage Providers will not connect directly to the banks. Below is a rough illustration, except that the entities would be bigger and the connections smaller.
Wallet
A plastic/metal holder which contains your 'tokens' to differentiate them from those belonging to other players who are on the same game element (exchange/digital asset storage provider/bank). Each player may have several wallets. These could be similar to the trivial pursuit 'pie holders', or the 'Game of Life' person holders. The owner of each wallet might be determined by the colour of the holder.
 |  |
Tokens
Plastic/metal tokens represent n popular Cryptocurrencies (to be chosen). These have different physical characteristics (color, shape or both).
The Price Feed
An element (perhaps digital) which updates the prices of all assets every turn. This could be implemented most easily as a website that a player uses on their tablet device or phone. But could also be governed by rolling dice.
Gameplay
Player takes turns to draw an fortune card, which affects either just them, or other all players. Examples might be:
- Bittrex is temporarily down (cannot move assets in or out of exchange)
- Electrum is hacked (the price falls, and you lose 1 token for every 4 you own)
- Steem is listed on a new Korean exchange (the price rises, and you gain 1 token for every 2 you own)
- Ethereum Forks (not sure how, or whether to try to model this)
- US bank suspects large scale money laundering (USD balances are frozen and cannot be moved for the remainder of the game)
- Regulators declare that Bitcoin Cash is a security (the price falls, and you lose 1 token for every 4 you own)
- Bitfinex is hacked and goes out of business (all funds held there are now gone, and this exchange can no longer be used)
- Your computer has been compromised (any tokens held in your PC based digital asset storage devices are now gone)
- Amazon announces SBD will be accepted for purchase (the Steem price rises, you gain 1 token for every 1 held)
Because of how price changes effect discrete tokens, there might need to be some way of dealing with this. Perhaps players might also need to have a stack of tokens off the game board which act as a buffer. When they have more than n of each, they can add them to the board, but I'm quite unsure about this aspect
After the event card has been used, the player can then move up to n tokens one step in any direction on the board.
I'm aware the metaphors I have used are not properly consistent. For example, how do the price feeds fit with the idea that some fortune cards increase the supply of tokens when representing a price increase? These issues need to be ironed out. Also, the design of the game requires that we draw a distinction between Digital Asset Storage Providers and Wallets, whereas in the real world the word wallet is often used interchangeably to mean both a person's wallet, and the wallet provider.
There are a lot of other areas that are not explored, such as transaction fees, which don't seem easy to model with tokens like this, and lots of terminology and ideas that would improve the game. The criteria which ends the game would also need to be developed.
Anyway, hopefully that embryonic idea might inspire further thoughts/discussion along these lines sometime :)
You reminded me an important aspect of cryptocurrencies: exchanges.
They do not work.
Bittrex took a hiatus from accepting new users.
When they will resume registration of new users it will probably be limited to big customers only.
Blocktrades allows registrations and sign ins while not allowing to remain signed in and not allowing to trade.
Bitshares does not function either.
Nor does its community or technical support.
Blocktrades has technical support, it just fails to deliver.
Poloniex I already know enough about to not even try to register to.
I read Bitfinex is bad too.
Coinbase prohibits any privacy and is openly US only.
Bitstamp I heard does not allow to register, or is US only.
Binance should I try?
Lykke may be decentralized but seems not for cryptocurrencies.
Which exchange should I use?
I have a preference for decentralized exchanges, but more importantly it should work.
This comment has received a 25.00 % upvote from @steemdiffuser thanks to: @stimialiti. Steem on my friend!
Above average bids may get additional upvotes from our trail members!
Get Upvotes, Join Our Trail, or Delegate Some SP
You got a 2.74% upvote from @upyou courtesy of @stimialiti!
I would incorporate a single non-cryptocurrency, probably silver, as a base value. Classic memes would be great too. Who gets the Lambo wins?
I think that a Fiat baseline would help the game achieve a broader appeal.
Materials like silver and gold could feature as a solid alternative - and have their own special mechanics to make their strategic use desirable.
Pizza has real world value too! Don't forget pizza.
I like the idea of a game helping to explain some aspects of converting crypto into fiat.
That sounds like it would be a popular objective!
I love this idea. Maybe try to get dash to sponsor it? I bet they would love to be featured and you could call it crypto dash. You could make everyone start with dash and then I stand send into other cryptos. (This could be done with any coin but I think dash might pay you to make the game).
OH! dibs on a little part of your idea and a little from the show Parks and Rec... here it is. The game should be called Coins of Dash-shire (Cones of Dun-shire Ripoff)
What an great idea. I come from a board game household (Catan, Pandemic, TIcket to Ride) where we mostly play family games or games that are easy to digest. I do however personally enjoy more complex games. I am by no means a game designer so i don't have any insight as how to make the idea of a crypto board game digestible but if you could or if someone can throw in some more ideas i think the game would be great at helping lay-people understand the basics behind the crypto world.
+1 from me :D
PS the idea of using a website where players go to access the current value of crypto (real or not) would add an awesome mechanic i have yet to see in the board game relm.
I like to see ideas like this pop up. I'm a big fan of board games, so I think something like this would have potential.
Unfortunately, one of the barriers to entry on Steemit or with digital currencies in general is the immense amount of new terms that must be defined and understood. I think people might be more willing to do that for a board game, since typical strategy board games involve many rules and terms that you must get used to over time. If we could accomplish this with digital currencies, your first objective about using the game to teach others about the terminology would be very successful.
As for implementation, it does seem difficult. Gives me more respect for the people who design board games. I hope you have some more ideas for this concept. I'll think about it, too. Thanks for sharing!
It’s a great training gap to bringcrypto to the masses.
Maybe it should be a tablet game so people actually learn what a wallet ot an exchange looks like. That would allow it to deliver the price feeds.
Right. I suppose the price feeds would be an issue. Of course the physical game could come with a companion app that allowed the price feeds to be pulled. Might be difficult to make tokens and have players define the value each time, though.
Plenty of things to consider, so it's a great idea. Thanks for your feedback.
I am starting to think about your lines that gifts gonna change into Crypto-Currency. It may be possible because future is going to be Digital currency.
Have you looked at Blok.Party? (https://www.blok.party/ , AKA PlayTable)
(they will be using the Ethereum blockchain)
I would be happy to assist you with the tabletop game mechanics (which happens to be one of my stronger suits). I am reasonably confident that I'd be able to sway you from making the game part-digital (its not a bad thing - but it does add a component dependency on interfacing with technology).
Incidentally I think your game idea sounds interesting (and has potential). :c)
I think I'd prefer non-digital, but not sure how practical that might be?
You could combine event cards and dice-generated randomization to provide as crazy of a ride as you'd like - without digitsal assistance.
Have some cryptos be less or more volatile than others - perhaps more or less susceptible to those event cards - and have multiple win conditions.
I personally would suggest rethinking the board design unless you have a very clear idea of how the arrows will play into the game. Maybe instead there would be player matts and a central matt representing general affairs.
Incidentally - have you ever heard of The Game Crafter? ^_~
I guess I hadn't considered that not all currencies need to move every turn (which would stop the game flowing), so what you're saying sounds like it should work, yes.
I very much doubt this game idea will be developed unless somebody else likes and wants to use it (or part of it), as I have lots of software development ideas that I'm better able to implement, but I do like board games.
I hadn't seen thegamecrafter.com, it looks useful. The 3D printing of tokens might also be cost effective for a game prototype. I've done some of that in the past, using https://www.tinkercad.com/ for designing things quickly.
As one you recently spent around 12 hours (following a failed digital initiative) churning out a respectable tabletop game using nothing more than paper (& MS word ) & whatever bits I had in my bits case (I'm a little serious - but symbolic standins work at this level), I can tell you that you don't need TGC for the first prototypes. :c)
Tinkercad looks interesting. Thanks for sharing. :c)
I love board games, but I'm disappointed that trading is now generally seen as what cryptocurrencies are all about. I've been thinking about creating a game or simulation to explain how Bitcoin itself works. Must be possible, since it involves game theory and includes a kind of lottery. But it would be a challenge to make it correct and entertaining at the same time.
I think you're right there, and this idea does nothing to help that so far.
I sort of like the idea, but where does bitconnect fit into this? I guess it has to be a game first and educational tool second, but to be educational it has to include a metric of some kind that is related to the viability/utility of the project. I don't like the idea that meme coin and hype coin are going to be on the same level as a project that aims to solve an actual real world problem. In that respect it makes the whole space look like a joke. Maybe you include the gambling aspect in shitcoins where it's known the idea behind them is to ride the hype and get out before it collapses.
With that said, I actually do like meme coins like Doge and Mona because they do exactly what they were designed to do, so I don't consider them total shitcoins. They are realistically probably more viable projects than bitcoin, but if nobody in normal society agrees with me, then they won't work.
So, in my opinion there should definitely be different categories of coins, and there should be a sort of grading system that makes sense. In Monopoly, people understand that Boardwalk is more valuable than Baltic Ave not just because of the price difference but because it just makes sense the boardwalk is more desirable than some place you've never heard of. So, maybe there's a 2 sentence white paper.
The game doesn't have to be dumbed down to kid level because kids can't get fiat into crypto, so there's a lot of leeway for adding info like founders and partners. I think the hard part is going to be finding a balance between due diligence and fun. I mean, the only thing that Monopoly actually shows is monopolies work and winning is arbitrary. I think we can do better.
Good points. I think any dumbing down might have something to do with me being relatively new to this myself ;)
The main educational aspect so far would simply be that the fortune cards give some ideas of possible risks/rewards and their consequences.