Ethereum Game Development: The Beginning

Bought my first few Satoshis of Bitcoin back in 2014, but it was only around the middle of 2017 that I really dove into crytpocurrency and understood the impact that they can have in the world. When cryptokitties came out in December, I felt that this was the way for mainstream audiences to accept crypto. I gave 2 kitties and a bit of Ether for my girlfriend to try out and play. I don't know the long term impact but the cutesy nature perked her interest. Right now, except for maybe Steemit, crypto-communities are dominated by dudes.

Few weeks ago I made a comment on my Facebook calling dev friends to do a project, maybe copying Crytokitties but with dogs, which has been done now. So an Ethereum developer friend of mine actually contacted me and we discussed the possibilities. Cloning crypokitties and reskinning it to dogs or any kind of animal was originally talked about but we felt that it was too weak of a concept. We wanted something that people would be able to do stuff, not just breed their cats, or dogs or pigs or whatever. The big problem however is that every action you do in the game would cost you ether gas, and that wouldn't be fun for the players. So our proposed idea originally was to create an off-chain video game. But as we discussed it more we realized that that would take months to produce. So we settled on a solution that would both be off-chain but would not cost as much to produce.

The things we settled on: It has to be cutesy, to appeal to a mainstream audience. Most of the game mechanics has to be off-chain to reduce gas transactions. And lastly it has to be fun, perhaps a party game because our aim which is similar with Cryptokitties is to bring cryptocurrencies to a wider audience. Will be game testing the first version of the offchain game this weekend. Once we have a good grasp of the concept I will be sharing it here.