What are Game Channels?
Game channels are technologies that focus on providing better and faster infrastructure for decentralized games.
They do so using state channels, a scaling solution that connects users off-chain. This enables the creation of fast and secure blockchain-based games.
The concept was derived from another popular blockchain solution – payment channels. Similar to game channels, payment channels perform transactions off-chain while recording the opening and final settlements on the blockchain.
Benefits of Game Channels
Regarding blockchain gaming, game channels offer three crucial benefits that have allowed the industry to become what it is today. Let’s review each one of them:
- Costs: Game channels take many transactions off-chain, so players don’t have to pay extensive fees for every move. This way, players can enjoy extensive gameplay without the financial burden.
- Scalability: Game channels solved a big problem of blockchain gaming: scalability. Now, players can enjoy real-time gaming without congesting the blockchain. This also allows developers to create better and more graphics-oriented games on blockchain.
- Speed: Game channels eliminated the delays associated with confirmation times of on-chain transactions. They take all the chain’s actions and only register the opening and the final transactions on the blockchain.
How do Game Channels Work?
Game channels create a temporary off-chain connection between the players.
This channel allows the transmission of game-related information (e.g., scores, damage, actions, moves) without the need to perform on-chain transactions. The channel and the information transported are secured by the underlying blockchain.
To create a game channel, players must deposit a small amount of cryptocurrency into a smart contract tied to the blockchain. The smart contract holds the funds until the end of the game. The crypto deposited is collateral that ensures both players have a stake in the game.
Once the game is completed, its final state is recorded on the blockchain. Then, the smart contract distributes the funds according to the game’s outcome.
Use Cases of Game Channels
Game channels gave various use cases in the blockchain gaming niche. Let’s review a couple of them:
Tournaments
Before game channels, blockchain gaming didn’t have big tournaments or competitions due to network congestion and limited available space. With game channels, hosting tournaments and competitions where multiple players compete against each other is easy.
Real-time Multiplayer Games
Many gamers turned away from blockchain gaming due to the absence of real-time multiplayer games. With the implementation of game channels, blockchain-based real-time multiplayer games started gaining popularity as they became faster and cheaper.
VR Gaming
Virtual reality (VR) is the next big thing in traditional and blockchain gaming. Developers can create fast and immersive VR gaming environments by implementing game channels. This use case is particularly important for the development of the metaverse.
Conclusion
Game channels are an important technology that gets blockchain gaming to another level of speed and user experience.
Without them, blockchain gaming would’ve never been able to compete with traditional games from Sony, Microsoft, or other big developers.
