Photo by Daniel Cheung on Unsplash

If you’ve ever met a gamer, then you would know that to most of them it is not just a hobby, it is a passion, a way to disengage and escape from the horrid stress and worries that piles on top of us as we go about our everyday lives, to some it is even a way of life — they eat, breathe and live Gaming!

Gaming as you know has evolved a lot since its mainstream popularity in the 70s. We went from the simple Pong, Pacman, and Mario in the arcades in the 70s and 80s to games like Snake which could be played on Mobiles in the 1990s, and then eventually to consoles and PCs with classics like the Legend of Zelda, and so on (If I have hit you with the nostalgia, don’t forget to clap this article :) ).

Even if you were someone playing in the early 2000s we saw the boom of MMORPGs like Runescape, League of Legends, World of Warcraft, and my personal favorite Club Penguin (where’s my penguin gang at ;) ). With mainstream consoles like Xbox and Playstation taking over the market in the past decade, we started to see a huge arsenal of high-end games and game developers. There are now mainstream Esports competitions and World Championships played with national stakes, and huge communities formed on live-streaming platforms like Twitch which show us how huge this industry has grown!

As of mid-2020, the global gaming sector is set to exceed $150 billion, and it looks like it is just going to keep growing.

Even emerging technologies like AI has tried its hand in video games with big players like Elon Musk’s OpenAI challenging World Champions to DOTA 2 and beating them 2–0!

Similarly, it is inevitable for gaming to cross paths with another emerging technology. Blockchain.

In the past few years, Crypto Gaming has been picking up quite a lot of steam. With the combination of NFTs (a unique token that represents an asset) and some solid gameplay, crypto gaming is turning out to be one of those spaces which will influence the mainstream adoption of Web3.0.

Cryptokitties is one of the first applications of gaming in blockchain. It became so popular that it caused network congestion in Ethereum in 2017. Games like Cryptokitties turned out to be super profitable, with one player even earning almost $700K on trading Cryptokitties.

Now with more games (Gods Unchained, MyCryptoHeroes, Neon District, Decentraland, etc.) being built on the blockchain by game development companies like Outplay Games (huge shoutout to Paul Gadi), Blockade Games, and others, we hope to see much more growth and variety in Blockchain gaming which as mentioned earlier can help in the mainstream adoption of blockchain.

But gaming on the blockchain has its drawbacks, and one of the most major pain points is User Experience. To expect mainstream adoption we must adhere to user expectations about the UX of the game, and this relates to both in-game and off-game experience. Below use cases explain how

EPNS AOE (Area of effect) can enhance User Experience, to encourage adoption of blockchain games, and to ensure retention rates effectively.

1. Trading and Auctions of NFTs in a Marketplace

Auctions and trading are some of the most important features when it comes to crypto gaming. You may be someone who has set up a marketplace and you want to know when something in your market place just got sold, currently, you are either being sent an email when this happens or you just have to log in to your marketplace and check for yourself. Imagine if you didn’t have to do that; imagine if the news comes directly to you from your marketplace as a push notification.

Push Notifications allow marketplace owners to notify frequent customers on Massive Sales and offer campaigns that are being held on the platform, and also allows Marketplace owners to recommend similar products to that bought by their customers to increase retention rate, it’s a whole new paradigm of marketing in Marketplaces that have been missing for so long!

If you think about it, push notifications opens up a whole new dimension of user experience for the customer as well, and not just the marketplace owner. “How?” you ask? Well, aside from getting notified directly on your device when your transaction goes through and is confirmed when you buy a product in the marketplace (a feature still missing in almost all Web3.0 based services), you are also able to actively participate in a marketplace auction!

Currently, in Web3.0 marketplaces like OpenSea, they advise you to pay close attention to the items you bid on throughout the duration of the auction which could span for 3–4 days. In other words, they expect you to keep visiting continuously to make sure you aren’t outbid by someone else! Imagine doing this for 3–4 days, sounds tedious, isn’t it? Luckily with EPNS, you can potentially receive notifications if anyone has outbid you in that auction. This is game-changing and revolutionary in Web3.0! Now you can keep tabs on whatever you bid and be reminded when someone tries to beat you or if the deadline of an auction is near or just to let you know that you won the auction. These are not simply just features a marketplace should have but necessities that one expects from Web3.0 and EPNS provides it.

More on NFT’s coming soon …(stay tuned)

2. Announce exclusive In-Game Assets

Marketplaces as explored above are not exactly gaming in blockchain but an essential part. Notifications are still missing even in in-game features. Have you noticed that when you play traditional mobile games these days that you get notifications? Maybe there is a new Season, a new campaign, new characters, and weapons, or even new storylines you want players to check out. But this is missing currently in the arena of Blockchain Games.

Maybe your game just dropped a rare item on the map which is up for grabs in a limited time treasure hunt! This would be a great opportunity to bring in as many users in your player base to start playing!

Sending out notifications for these events creates anticipation and excitement, making players want to check out these new features or try their hand in the new challenges that have never been seen before.

3. Personalized Gaming

Nudging players a little with a message like “Oh Chosen one, it has been a while since you have visited us. Come back where you left off and lead our clan to victory” or an “ALERT — You have been attacked by LordMaster6565, we need to take Revenge” will go a long way as game developers are able to ensure that they personalize and add a bit of flare in the gaming experience and push them enough to return to the game.

If this was not enough, sending out notifications to create a sense of competition among friends like, “ Your friend Kobe just reached Level 50! Start playing in order to keep up!” or just applauding some achievements or milestones reached by the player can be celebrated with notifications like “You just won 5 Duels in a row! Continue playing to keep the streak going!” can increase player return rates and enhance the overall experience both in-game and off-game.

4. Waiting time

Some games as you know, have waiting times where your gameplay may not move forward. This waiting time may come as some sort of Energy Refill to play matches again or as Breeding Times. Often these waiting times start off as 5 mins, and then as you level up or the rarer the item, the waiting time increases, and sometimes may take several hours. And as a game developer, these are hours your players are not in your game but are outside it doing their daily activities, and you need them to return to your game as soon as the waiting period ends. This is where notifications can help you as well. For example, “Your Rocket Fuel has been replenished! Log back in and resume defeating galactic baddies from conquering the universe!”

This even holds true for idle games where you grow your own farm or city or metropolis or pet! You may have assigned your Sims to do a task in order to complete a quest, but it sadly takes 2 hours to complete. What now? From the POV of a game developer, I want my player to return to the game as soon as this task is done so that they keep playing on my platform, so what do I do? I send a notification, as simple as that!

5. Multiplayer Invites

Blockchain games fundamentally are Multiplayer games, this means that it is not only you playing the game, hence there arises a high probability that you’ve made friends along the way or you already have friends who play the game with you. One way EPNS can completely change the Crypto Gaming industry is with the functionality of an Invite.

Suppose, you’re playing a game, let’s take for example a really popular game, Ludo King (but is not a Blockchain game. Let’s just assume that it is for the sake of getting the point across.)

So in a game like Ludo King, a player is able to create Private Rooms after which they can invite their friends to join that room. Imagine you just created such a room and you’re swiping through your in-game friends’ list, and you tap the Invite button to invite them to that room, and that friend receives notification immediately with a CTA (Call-to-Action) that redirects them to the game and lets them join the room! All in the tap of a finger!

Imagine in a blockchain game such as Gods Unchained, where you get to have duels, and matches with your friends, what if you could just tap a button and the game sends out a clickable dynamic notification to that person?

This novel aspect provides an untapped potential of notifications that we haven’t seen anywhere in Web3.0 games and will change how games are built from here on out in Blockchain!

Gaming For The Win

Gaming has always been an industry that has had multitudes of people in its community. Gaming can be anything from a pastime to passion for different individuals but it is true that it unites everyone. With Blockchain & Crypto Gaming in the market we are yet to see but hopeful for mainstream adoption, which will only happen if we provide a better user as well as gaming experience in-game and off-game. EPNS believes that one of the ways we can inch towards creating a wholesome gaming experience and achieving mainstream adoption would be the use of Push Notifications by developers in new and creative ways.

The possibilities of Push Notifications are endless because it allows access to one of the most invaluable things that almost all platforms want of yours. Attention.

Push Notifications in gaming has changed the way people game in the traditional gaming world, let’s bring that magic into the Web3.0 world and more.

Cheers & GL HF!!

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