At the end of July, we hosted key partners involved in the BlockJam online virtual conference in Twitter Spaces. The BlockJam was a new initiative by the Nervos Foundation, through the Build Club that had 2 goals: the creation of new games which implement blockchain technology in some way and the education of game developers in the blockchain field.
This was the first gaming event hosted by Nervos, and it turned out to be a very wonderful success. The team at Nervos Foundation is always trying to bring new and innovative programs to our communities.
BlockJam had its opening on June 17th, and it was a great event, hosted by Eric, the Head of Developer Relations at Nervos, followed by around 20 talks with a multitude of speakers, on the 18th and 19th of June.
There were a lot of talks on different topics, ranging from ”What is blockchain?” to giving workshops on how to publish your own game in Web3, hosted by well-known figures in the crypto world and beyond. After the introductory part, the GameJam session started, where traditional indie game devs started challenges and bounties from Nervos, ChainSafe, Dignitas and Protocol Labs.
There were a total of 12 games submitted. The voting took place on itch.io, where a total of 350 ratings were given to the submitted games.
To start we began the Twitter Spaces with some questions for the panelists…
What do you think is the future of blockchain gaming?
[ Eric – Head of Developer Relations at Nervos Foundation ]:
I have a long history as a developer, but for a big chunk of my career, I have been working as an indie game developer, so naturally, I love indie game developers and game development will always have a place in my heart.
Bringing Web3, blockchain and game development together is for me a dream come true, and I want to thank everyone that is helping us achieve this. I consider that it is an amazing opportunity and a great future awaits us.
A blockchain is a tool and a technology, not a game style. With that in mind, I hope that the technology will expand in many different ways, so the games will integrate this technology in a multitude of ways. If you want to learn more about this simply join us @ the BuildClub Discord (indie gaming Web3 group, where everyone wants to learn more).
Where do you all think Web3 Gaming is going?
[Matthew – Evangelist of Machinations, expert in game economy, progression systems and game logic]:
We are hoping for a future where Web3 gaming is not a separate category. There is a lot of talent, and I consider that in the future there will be just ”games” that work on a blockchain framework. This field will become really exciting when new players will have their own new blockchain wallets each time they create an account and earn NFTs just by playing.
[Ian – SVP at Dignitas eSports team]:
Dignitas is an eSports and gaming organization that started in the traditional sport, being owned by the Philadelphia 76ers, New Jersey Devils, Boston Bruins, Boston Garden, Delaware North, and the Dignitas team also owns parts of the Steelers, Crystal Palace football club, etc. The media company of Dignitas works on many different fields, like gaming, diversity and inclusion etc all wrapped up into digital media, and the representative for this branch is our mascot ”Digi”. Dignitas competed at a professional level in different very known games like CS:GO, League of Legends, Valorance, Super Smash Brothers, Fortnite, PUBG, etc.
In my opinion Web 3 games will be just as easy to play as your average mobile games, because your wallet that will be part of your phone/device will also be used for different applications/games.
[Alessandro – Product Manager at ChainSafe]:
We produce a Web3 Library called web3.unity that is used to connect unity based games to EVM based blockchains, giving you the opportunity to inject blockchain functionality into unity games. We received 1 submission (Drawing Edge) that used our technology, and we are very excited because they attempted to use the newest feature, which is the minting function, but due to last minute changes on the function itself, the compatibility was broken. A new update will roll out in the very near future that will allow developers to do things right out of the box instead of doing everything by themselves.
EIP 721 and 1155 minting will be modified so that people will be able to mint in game once a certain task has been completed, like an instance.
Another big update is the creation of a new injectable in-game NFT marketplace where people can buy/sell/list NFTs right from inside the game directly inside the same game, without redirecting to an external website.
How many games were submitted to the GameJam?
[ Eric – Head of Developer Relations at Nervos Foundation ]:
We have to give special thanks to ChainSafe for providing the SDK which eased the work of devs by a lot. There were about 20 submissions but only 12 were accepted, and from those only a handful were capable of learning the basics of this SDK. A lot of hard work was put into these games, in a very short period of time, and we can see how much effort is needed to master everything there is in such a powerful SDK.
Can we announce the winners of the GameJam?
[Allison – Developer Advocate at Filecoin]:
Congratulations to everyone who participated. I had so much fun playing around with all the games. So there are 2 $5K winner bounties, but we could not decide on the 2nd place, so we chose to split it between 2 teams. The second place goes to Dongo and Nervos.Lands and the 1st place goes to Genetic Koonies. Congratulations!
[Ian – SVP at Dignitas eSports team]:
We judged 4 games during the BlockJam Event: Nervos Land, Genetic Koonies, Melon Husk and FFT. These are some of the best combinations of utilizing blockchain while also having tons of fun. We really enjoyed Melon Husk, which is a funny, beautiful game, with amazing sound. FFT is a simple game, and sometimes simplicity is the way to go, but even though we like Nervos.Land and Genetic Koonies more, we decided to reward all 4 submissions.
Nervos Community voting results
Track 1 winners: First place ($15K): Melon Husk – Mission to Mars
Second place ($5K): Dongo
Track 2 winners: First Place ($15K): Nervos.Land
Second place ($5K): Zom
A big congratulations to all the winners, everybody involved, the developers that worked tirelessly, and to the community that played and voted for their favorite games.
For a full list of all the winners and to check out all the games, visit here.
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