This will change blockchain gaming
How ERC 1155 will change web3 gaming
I’m not normally someone to nerd out on new Ethereum standards, but one that was proposed by Enjin and Horizon will innovate the blockchain games landscape.
ERC 1155 is a standard that allows for the easy bundling of multiple NFTs, as for the combination of fungible (like crypto currencies) and non-fungible (NFTs/items) into a single unit.
In addition to making transfers of multiple items very easy and more cost efficient (e.g. not needing to pay gas fees on every single item transfer), my excitement is more around the cool use cases this offers gamers, and the creativity that developers can harness.
A few ideas of where this standard could shake things up:
Player profiling
Without 1155, the idea of a cohesive player profile is a bit abstract. I may have a group of items—characters, weapons, currency—all associated with one game, but in my wallet they’re a loose collection assets under one or more smart contract.
If I wanted to transfer my “player profile” (i.e. my entire gamer identity associated with a given game) from one wallet to another, or even sell it all together, it would normally be a tedious process of transferring every individual item.
With 1155, this call all be batched together in a unified “item” so that I can move it around with low friction and cost.
Character and item attributes:
Similar to the above, a lot of traditional games let us evolve and level up a character or item over time. This can be achieved in #web3 both with dynamically updating NFTs—like my character getting a scar after a battle wound—but also with 1155 in letting us attach items to that character. For example, their weapons, skins, and even the currency or harvested resources like wood and ammo.
Having my character become recognizably more powerful, rich, and cool as one cohesive item that I can transfer or sell gets me jazzed up. And it can be done much more easily than trying to broker the selling of a WoW account on the black market in a low-trust ecosystem.
The same is true for more metaverse-like things. For example, I could sell a piece of land with the dwelling on it and all the furniture and items in the house as a single entity. Move-in-ready tokens!
Easy onboarding:
The metric I’ve coined called Cost to Fun is something that’s key for every game. How much might I need to spend to start having a great time?
With 1155, developers or other players can batch things like starter packs of cards or getting started collections with currency so I can onboard myself more quickly into the funzone.
Loot crates:
A favorite of many F2P games, 1155 lets a developer throw a bunch of items into a single game purchase where I can unlock them in one fell swoop and efficient transaction.
This is the tip of the iceberg, but 1155 represents a major shift in how gamers and developers can interact in more natural and innovative ways with on-chain game items.