Gods Unchained: A Card Game based on Etherium Wants to Take On eSports?

A freemium card game takes aim at the Ethereum gaming scene.

There is a growing segment of the internet that play video games that use blockchain and cryptocurrency exchanges as their primary monetisation model, and Sidney-based game developer Fuel Games wants in on that action.

Blockchain, for those of you who don't know, is a publicly available record-keeping ledger that accurately records things like contracts, and exchanges of things like the digitally generated money known as cryptocurrency. What makes blockchain different from a normal ledger is the fact that it is decentralized; meaning it doesn't exist in any one place at the same time. it does, however exist all over the place, similar to a peer-to-peer service. If a person wants a reliable record of a transaction and one record is tampered with, there are thousands of those same records all over the planet.

Most games already on the blockchain come at a price, and forking over real money is the standard barrier of entry for games on the blockchain. Fuel games wants to change that with their newest game Gods Unchained - a free-to-play PVP card game similar to Heartstone or Magic: The Gathering.

In an interview with ETH News, Fuel Games COO, Rob Furguson, explained it this way:

You're matchmade with another play[er] based on an Elo ranking system in a fast-paced game, generally between 7-12 minutes long. The gameplay is roughly similar to Hearthstone/Magic the Gathering, (and) Elder Scrolls Online, but we have some big twists in the game design. At the start of each match, for instance, you have the option to choose between multiple God Powers after you know your opponent's choice of God.

Furguson shares details of the game that sounds an awful lot like Magic: The Gathering, with Gods in place of Plainswalkers. The game has mana to play and spend in game, (exactly like MTG,) though Furguson says the game designers have "put a lot of effort into making it intuitive to play at first use."

Image courtesy of unhashed.com

The buffs for the gods in Gods Unchained are similar to the way talents work in Paladins: A hero shooter that employs a card-based system to modify a hero's abilities.

So here's where things get interesting... the game is largely based on the "freemium" free-to-play model that seems to be the de-facto standard of the mobile gaming market. Though it is free to play, you have the option of buying specific cards, booster packs, or even entire decks with Ethereum, or traditional fiat money, adjusted for whatever the exchange rate might be.

Now, Gods Unchained has an interesting way of controlling the rate of availability for the cards one can buy. Rather than having an unlimited number of cards for an unlimited number of buyers, there is a set number of any card's availability after a certain cut-off date, meaning that no matter how much money one pumps into the in-game store, it will never cause inflation. Like rare metals in the real world, the value of every card in the game is determined by its scarcity. Players can also buy and sell cards with the Ethereum they earn in-game, similar to how the physical trading card market works in real life.

Every card is an encrypted set of info on the Blockchain; meaning that even the cards themselves are just as secure as the Ethereum used to buy them. Its a lot like owning a real trading card, in that they cannot be refunded or duplicated; only exchanged, or even destroyed.

According to ETH News, the game is set to be released as a beta later this year, and Fuel Games expects to release the game in 2018. If you go to the Gods Unchained website, you can sign up for the newsletter and be alerted as to when the game is available.