Bitcoin was founded with the belief that the prevailing economic system gives too much power to the institutions that have formed around it. For too long many of our economic and commercial relationships have not given any consideration that the end users, pejoratively termed consumers, are themselves invaluable participants and stakeholders in an ecosystem. Smart contract platforms are a tool to achieve swift and substantial redress. Here capitalism can thrive but those who participate can have a real and immutable stake in the system.
An egregious example of where the commercial relationship is particularly imbalanced is the gaming industry, here the users (gamers) are the principal drivers of profits reaped by developers and publishers. Often the games people play are a major part of their lives, a great source of enjoyment and community interaction and a large expenditure of time. These gamers rarely have anything other than zero stake in the system, can be subject to the arbitrary decisions of the game owner and are rarely able to fully reap the economic benefits of their participation.
Gaming is not a small business, the situation should be different and it will be. Imagine instead of being beholden to developers and publishers that a game and everything in it is decentralized and well governed. Imagine further that the assets you own in game, that you bought or worked for, belong to you and are yours to do what you want with. This is a use case for smart contract technology that we passionately believe in. Not only do we think that enabling a more equitable model for gaming will result in better games but we believe it will result in a much much bigger gaming economy.
When we first spoke to Eric Schiermeyer, the CEO of Gala Games and co-founder of Zynga, we realized that we were talking with someone who shares our thinking. As such we are genuinely delighted to announce that Gala Games are planning to integrate with Flare.
The initial functionality planned by Gala Games is to enable and incentivize the minting of Gala Games’ game-related NFT’s onto Flare. NFT’s are more correctly termed Non Fungible Tokens and in this Gala Games’ usage of them they represent in game assets such as a car or an axe or anything. A particular NFT could even have uses in multiple games. The key here is that the in game assets (the NFT’s) belong to the owner and only to the owner, hence they can be bought and sold, used as collateral for loans or wrapped into any product that one can wish. Instead of just being a car or an axe used in a game they are a real asset with potential for economic uses. We believe that such assets can be a way to earn money from enjoying gaming and could form a major new use case for DeFi.
About Gala Games:
Gala Games was founded with one goal in mind: to give power back to the gamers. Our mission is to enable freedom through play. To this end, we have embarked on one of the most ambitious development projects to date — the creation of the Gala Games Ecosystem. Founded by Eric Schiermeyer (the co-founder of Zynga and gaming legend), Wright Thurston (one of the first major miners in the cryptocurrency space and holder of multiple patents on blockchain technology), and Michael McCarthy (the Creative Director behind viral gaming hits such as Farmville 2), Gala Games is here to fundamentally redefine both the gaming and blockchain spaces.
The first game released by Gala Games, Town Star, is a deceptively simple looking but incredibly deep farming simulation in which the user builds a farm to compete in weekly competitions. At various places, NFTs can be used in the game to provide bonuses but are not required to play, have fun, or compete.
Mirandus, the MMORPG/Adventure Simulator currently under development by Gala Games is working to completely redefine both the game development pipeline, as well as the gameplay model by putting the power in the hands of the players and giving them ultimate control over the in-game economy.
More information about Gala Games is available on their website, www.gala.games, and in their Discord at galagames.chat.
Final thoughts:
As Flare works towards the launch of the network Gala Games will be releasing further information about the integration and some fun and exciting ways for FLR users to interact with Gala including competitions and special rewards. You can follow Gala Games here and their website is https://gala.games. Stay tuned!
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Support from Bitrue
Both Gala and the FLR-IOU underwent initial listings on the Bitrue cryptocurrency exchange, where they were strongly welcomed by the platform’s enthusiast community. Bitrue have expressed delight at seeing the cooperation of these two projects, and eagerly anticipate the future results that their highly sophisticated teams can deliver. They have pledged to continue supporting both of these projects for the future, and will soon create a GALA / XRP trading pair to allow their users to more easily access the Gala ecosystem.
About Bitrue:
Launched in July 2018, Bitrue is a diversified financial services platform with support for trading, loans, and investments. Bitrue aims to utilize blockchain technology to bring financial opportunities to everybody regardless of their location or financial position. They have offices worldwide and continue to develop new features at a rapid speed to fully service the new wave of the digital economy.
More information is available on their official website at www.bitrue.com
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