What is blockchain, and how can it be used in video game development today?

[Firenibbler]

Hey all, check out this article I just uploaded to my website titled "What is blockchain, and how can it be used in video game development today?" Figured I would come to all of you first to see what I could improve before telling the larger world about it. Feel free to be as savage as possible, so long as its true. Thanks for your time!

 http://blog.firenibbler.com/2017/11/03/what-is-blockchain-and-how-can-it-be-used-in-video-game-development-today/

[Milton]

Blockchains allow different parties that do not trust each other to share information without requiring a central administrator.

That's the only advantage it has over just using a database. There are definitely no performance or cost reasons.
Maybe you should explain with more detail how blockchain works, especially what mining is.

[Firenibbler]

29 minutes ago, Milton said:

Blockchains allow different parties that do not trust each other to share information without requiring a central administrator.

That's the only advantage it has over just using a database. There are definitely no performance or cost reasons.
Maybe you should explain with more detail how blockchain works, especially what mining is.

Thanks for the feedback, I will look into it.

[mattstyles]

Quote

Another possible use is to simply incorporate a cryptocurrency miner to use extra CPU/GPU power in the player’s system this would fund development, provide an additional revenue stream, and has little to no effect on your players when compared to conventional advertising or in-game purchases.

This is an incredibly dangerous thing to promote, its also untrue, whilst there is no 'intrusive' ui common to advertising there most certainly is an effect on the hardware of the device running the software, what would you rather: dismiss an annoying advert or replace your expensive phone/computer because the GPU is fried from all these apps molesting it? At the very least you should clarify that there ARE effects on your game players, probably better to remove mention of the whole thing (unless you do infact endorse this practise, in which case you have far bigger problems).

Not to mention every serious browser is actively trying to combat these sorts of shenanigans.

[Firenibbler]

7 hours ago, mattstyles said:

This is an incredibly dangerous thing to promote, its also untrue, whilst there is no 'intrusive' ui common to advertising there most certainly is an effect on the hardware of the device running the software, what would you rather: dismiss an annoying advert or replace your expensive phone/computer because the GPU is fried from all these apps molesting it? At the very least you should clarify that there ARE effects on your game players, probably better to remove mention of the whole thing (unless you do infact endorse this practise, in which case you have far bigger problems).

Not to mention every serious browser is actively trying to combat these sorts of shenanigans.

While it is a very dangerous thing to promote, and I understand and dislike the downsides, money-making algorithms have been used before to some efficiency, most notably to discover new prime numbers and as an alternative to renting supercomputers. I do not condone the use of this practice without notifying your users, but also feel it is something that should be mentioned at least. However, you do bring up a good point on how its written in my article and I will attempt to rewrite it to represent the pros and cons more accurately. One could possibly give the player a choice between this method and ads for example.