Thanks to the strides that blockchain technology has made in the world today, it is safe to say that it has garnered the attention of the so-called mainstream tech industry.
From Facebook’s controversial cryptocurrency to IBM’s various blockchain projects, the emerging technology has certainly proven itself to be relevant to the tech sector.
It certainly seems as if we are at the start of this growing and the emerging sector as investments are still pouring in, research is still going on, and more companies are starting to establish themselves in the world.
The latest individual associate himself with the technology is Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, whose interest comes in the form of his investment into Horizon Games, a blockchain-based gaming platform.
According to reports, Horizon Games held a funding round worth $3.75 million, which was led by Ohanian’s venture capital fund, Initialized. While the investment isn’t new and the round was originally closed in June 2018, the news was only revealed just now with Horizon Games’ debut of its first blockchain-based game.
What is Horizon and Why Is It Important?
Based out of Toronto, Canada, Horizon Games was founded in 2018. The company was established on the principle of translating conventional gaming processes into emerging blockchain technology. And within a period of a little over a year, it has been able to fulfill that promise to a significant extent.
Along with the revelation regarding Ohanian’s investment, the firm also unveiled its very first blockchain-based game to the world. Dubbed as Skyweaver, Horizon Games’ offering is a digital strategy card game that combines the mechanisms of trading cards and online gaming into one blockchain-based game.
Interestingly enough, this puts Horizon Games and its Skyweaver directly at odds with Hearthstone, a popular strategy card game that just so happens to have a larger user base and a strong fan following as compared to the Horizon Games’ title.
Horizon Games is a new kid on the block, but it seems that it may have a bright future ahead of it.
Horizon isn’t letting its new status get in the way of achieving its goal to introduce blockchain gaming to more and more people.
What is Horizon Trying to Achieve?
Simply put, Horizon has been trying to determine various ways to utilize blockchain technology’s signature functionalities in everyday gaming. For this, the platform has developed its own game in the form of Skyweaver. But that is not the only thing that Horizon has achieved.
The blockchain gaming studio has actually built a gaming engine that would help developers who are interested in creating their titles over blockchain technology itself.
The idea of developing the gaming engine came during the creation of Skyweaver, when the Horizon team kept running into scalability, verifiability and other related issues that kept coming up during the game’s execution and test runs.
As a result, instead of being dependent on other gaming platforms, Horizon went ahead and developed its own solutions that were based on top of Ethereum. That was how it developed Arcadeum, which made it possible for Skyweaver to see the light of day. Along with serving as a gaming engine, Arcadeum also comes with a built-in wallet that could be utilized to support any trading-like features within the games itself.
Why Did Horizon Reveal Ohanian’s Investment Only Now?
With Arcadeum all ready to help other developers and with Skyweaver being built along the lines of functionalities that Horizon wanted from the get-go, the gaming studio found it a ripe time to not only release the game but also make the news of Ohanian’s investment in the platform go public to generate some positive buzz.
This is a good idea, seeing that the very first game being offered by Horizon is challenging a niche yet established title in online gaming.
With that being said, seeing that Hearthstone is built with traditional computing platforms, it doesn’t boast the same quality of immutability and fairness that Horizon’s Skyweaver brings to the table with its blockchain technology. And that is what the gaming studio is banking on while marketing its current as well as its future offerings.
How Does Skyweaver Work?
Horizon’s idea to build an online trading card game that replicates the ways of real-world trading translates very well on a blockchain, which has been known for its issuance of unique assets that may not be replicated.
Taking full advantage of this notion, Horizon designed its Skyweaver game to issue its trading cards as blockchain tokens, which couldn’t be replicated or snatched away by bad players in the game.
Unlike other digital games, this makes certain that not even mods or special patches could find a workaround in replicating original trading cards. To make this possible, Horizon uses Ethereum’s ERC-1155 token standard. This way, the cards remain completely original while also being free of being duplicated in the future.
Since each trading card that is built on the platform has its own unique ID, it remains completely distinctive and free of any forgeries. This actually takes the game a step further than its real-world counterparts where counterfeits are an everyday instance.
Apart from using blockchain technology to support real-world trading card mechanisms in a very effective way, Horizon has taken another subversive route while introducing its card game.
Instead of selling multiple cards at once to help users along their journey, Horizon would be selling original and individual cards separately. This is not to make things difficult for gamers, but to make them more interesting for them from the very start (think of catching unique Pokemons in Pokemon Go with each outing).
By bringing this unique yet interesting perspective to an established model of gaming, Horizon aims to show traditional gamers how blockchain technology could resolve the issues that many gamers face with tradeable assets.
Horizon aims to launch the public beta of Skyweaver in Fall 2019. With it, it would also open doors to its Arcadeum platform to game developers, so that they could create their own virtual experiences to benefit from what blockchain technology has to offer.
The rise of further use cases is of the utmost importance to reputable and world leader crypto companies like the ZB Group. With the launch of their ZB Exchange in 2013, they have continued to grow and act as a force to contend with in this new cryptocurrency sector.
The ZB Group is certainly interested in understanding and furthering how the blockchain and cryptocurrencies will help to transform different sectors of society.
Learn more about ZB Exchange by visiting www.zb.com.
Disclaimer: ZB Group is not associated with any companies mentioned in this article. We do not take responsibility for any services, products, wrongdoings or promises from them. The intent of this article is to inform only. All information is available on other online media.
