I have been saying this for a long time, blockchain tech offers enormous potential to the gaming industry. Both your ideas are great use cases. Another cool concept would be to use block chain to create virtual collectibles, like virtual Pokemon cards or something. Since block chain allows for guaranteed coded scarcity it seems the perfect medium through which to digitize trading card games and the like.
Imagine a Virtual MMORPG in the future where it is on a blockchain and the players themselves are being paid to both play and maintain the blockchain while gaming. I feel like this is the future of gaming, it's going to be amazing and I hope I'll be around to experience it.