Gods Unchained, TCG on the blockchain.

This article will be part of a series explaining and reviewing Gods Unchained. If this article or the series as a whole are helpful to you, consider using my referral link. It will be a no extra cost to you, but I gain 10% of the purchase to my Ethereum wallet. I am willing to send you back half of that, for an effective 5% refund off your purchase. Just leave me a message with the transaction ID and I'll send it, win/win for both of us.

Card games are very popular right now.  

One of the first card games that become wildly popular was Magic: the Gathering, (the Pokémon trading cards were popular collector items, but were rarely used to actually play). It became common to see people playing MtG, Yu-Gi-Oh, Magination and a variety of other tradeable games at school lunch breaks.

After Blizzard released Hearthstone, trading card games (or in the case of hearthstone, collectible card games, as there is no trade in Hearthstone) became popular as a digital game. Soon seeing several successful competitors like Gwent, Artifact, Shadowverse, Elder Scrolls Legends, MtG become increasingly popular as well. As a successful game in a genre often breeds more games in the same genre or a renewed interested in the genre.

They're some of the most watched games on Twitch, with Hearthstone often being the top 5 watched game on the platform.

Gods Unchained is heavily inspired by Hearthstone (I will make a post comparing the two later this week, so stay tuned). This is no coincidence, as the lead balance designer is actually a famous Hearthstone streamer,  ADWCTA aka grinning goat. Of course, the game is not a straight rip-off of Hearthstone, and there are some significant differences as well, but more about that next week.   

Another card game, so what? And why should blockchain matter anyway?

Well, that's the point. Blockchain card games blur the line between physical trading card games and digital collectible card games, with all the advantages of both platforms, yet not of their downsides. 

Sounds too good to be true? Let's go over the advantages and disadvantages of each.

 Physical Trading Card Games:

Advantages:

• Physical product you can touch and appreciate and truly own. (some people even make them into full art cards)
• You can trade with other people.

Disadvantages:

• Finding players to play or trade with may be difficult, especially if you don't live in a big city or urban area.
• Cards can get lost/stolen/damaged.
• Some mechanics are hard to pull off in real life.  

 Digital Trading Card Games (or Collectible Card Games):

Advantages:

• Enables some fancy mechanics and RNG that would be hard to pull off in physical games
• Enables to include fancy graphics and/or special effects to make the game feel more alive.
• You can easily find players to play against no matter where you are.

Disadvantages:

• You don't actually own your cards, and often can not trade or sell them.

Blockchain Trading Card Games:

Advantages:

• You own the digital asset, and can trade or sell it
• You can easily find players to play against no matter where you are.
• You can easily find collectors, players or traders to trade with or sell to.
• Enables to include fancy graphics and/or special effects to make the game feel more alive.
• Enables some fancy mechanics and RNG that would be hard to pull off in physical games
• Provable rarity (you can see exactly how many other cards of the same type exists, no need to trust anyone).
• Can track owner history of every card, which essentially means whoever owned it before you "signed" the card (for example a famous streamer)

Disadvantages:

• No physical cards (although there may actually even be a way to do a reverse-tokenization)

As you can see, it's the logical next step from physical card games to digital card games to blockchain card games. Gods Unchained is just the logical next step.  

Did you know? One of the reasons Ethereum was created was because of this experience by Vitalik Buterin:

 “I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007–2010, but one day Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock’s Siphon Life spell. I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring.” 

And that is really the problem with centralized systems. The developers of the game have complete control of "your" items, and often the market place. There are many examples, such as Blizzard suddenly deciding to shut down the RMAH in Diablo 3, or releasing powerful new cards, only to have them nerved later, or what about Valve suddenly trade-locking CS:GO skins, instantly wiping out the livelyhood of many players.

Video game asset trading is a multi billion dollar business, and it's only expected to grow, and that is despite the fact that you don't even truly own the assets. Imagine playing a game like star citizen, but truly owning the items and ships on the blockchain, being able to freely trade them or sell them, and once you get bored of Star Citizen, you can trade your items for items in another popular AAA game, all without having to trust anyone.

So in summary, the advantages of blockchain-enabled ownership compared to centralized ownership are these:

• Tradeable for real money, securily and without restrictions
• Cross-platform and cross-game, your tokens can be used anywhere, anytime and/or traded for items in other games even if they're from different developers.
• Assets are immutable, meaning they can't suddenly be altered or nerved.
• Rarity can be proven, the blockchain never lies, you will know exactly how many copies of your item exist, what the stats are, and how many other players own such an item. 
• Trade history can be proven, essentially having a "signed" copy of an item that belonged to someone famous. (The devs have even designed a system to visually show signatures of famous streamers/notable players on cards that have been owned by them, how cool is that?)

So what is the game like?

I will go into more detail in the next posts, but here's the skinny.  

 Gods Unchained is a trading card game that takes some of the best lessons learned from games like Hearthstone, MTG and Fearia, and spins them up with a reimagined meta and new games modes to create a unique and compelling gameplay experience (hint: it’s 2018, there’s a Battle Royale mode).  Built for first-release on desktop but arriving on iOS and Android soon after, you play as one of six Gods, each with a their own playstyle, identity and voice lines 😉. 

The game board will approximately look like this (although this is an older version).

The game has 6 different gods, each with different cards and abilities. 

In the rest of the series I will explore each of them one by one.   

Stay tuned.