I hope to see soon more work on the autonomous worlds front.
We seem to have mainly two different types of “autonomous worlds”, the ones where most of the game runs on-chain, which great people like @PaimaStudios are working on. I can already see this you type of worlds starting to flourish.
But there’s a second type of autonomous worlds I haven’t seen much innovation with yet. I’m talking about private servers for multiplayer real-time 3D games. ARK survival is always one of my favorite examples to highlight.
We have centralized versions of these, like AR is, but not many that are decentralized.
I imagine the easiest way to do it is with a DAO, where members of the DAO are the citizens of a private server of an MMO game, and they pay some dues to be considered a citizen of that server, and therefore have rights to build, etc.
Then the DAO would hire a company to run the servers/infrastructure necessary for a 6/12 months period, and get this “contract” renewed or not, based on the wishes of the DAO members.
Another wrinkle is that to be able to say you’re really autonomous, you need control of the game code. Not have the threat of being sued by the company that made the game, or being able to censor your server.
For example I love the ARK model, anyone with a copy of the game can create a private server, join a private server, and even mod it. It’s proven that it works pretty well.
But it’s not decentralized, due to dependence on networking infrastructure, IP, etc. from the company behind ARK the game.
Also, it was never designed to be autonomous, so there’s no easy way to integrate payments or communication with a DAO for example, or other crypto assets.
We see some examples of people trying to kickstart more crypto-friendly models for virtual worlds, but they tend to not be very successful because they don’t have a fun game people actually care about.
I really want to see someone try something like the ARK model, but where the game code is open-source and free, the IP is in the public domain, and has been designed specifically to be managed by a DAO, integrate with crypto assets…
I really think this is something we the Cardano community could innovate on. We have already some companies like @CornucopiasGame innovating in the space. But even them are not all that decentralized/autonomous yet. We’re not going all the way.
I have been working on a “Metaverse”/Universe sandbox IP which I want to release into the public domain for free, at its core it’s a fantasy RPG IP, designed around a hypothetical interoperable Metaverse.
We don’t have that yet, but it could still work in something like the ARK model, or more interesting something like the private domes Cornucopias is working on.
The thing is, I don’t have a game or are going to design an entire game, it’s a framework for building magical worlds, some lore, a magic-system, basically a sandbox for virtual worlds, but with a universal magic-system, and conducive to interoperability in the future.
But pairing something like this with a virtual world that isn’t technically a game but you can do stuff in, such as decentraland, Cornucopias, etc. would already an improvement I think over the current status quo on truly decentralized 3D worlds, with a simple server where you mostly just walk around.
If anyone wants to work on this type of autonomous worlds, or build a game on top of a magic-centric sandbox IP, where the entire IP is in the public domain, please reach out to me and let’s talk. 🙏
Source by Alfonso Spencer
