Gotta HODL ‘Em All – Bitcoin Powers New Pokémon Game

Time to see where are all these Pokemon fans at! I'm releasing Poketoshi! A 'Twitch plays' like game, using @lightning network microtransactions.⚡

Visit - https://t.co/uZ2wUNq9Vl It's also using @OpenNodeCo as underlaying tech to process all the payments ? — João Almeida (@joaodealmeida94) June 16, 2018

A brand-new game developed by João Almedia has hit the headlines today as a result of its clever interaction between Bitcoins lightning network and the ever-popular Pokémon franchise. Named ‘Pokétoshi’ Almedia has created a game which allows users to experience a blockchain based platform through the encouragement of micro-transactions on a format that many gamers are familiar with worldwide.

The actual experience of the game is very interesting. Essentially, users worldwide can access the game which is live streamed via Twitch. Anybody can interact with the game and select the next move; each time a user wishes to make a move they must transfer 10 Satoshi to a wallet address.

At the moment, 10 Satoshi’s is equal to around $0.00067, therefore, players will spend around $6.73 per 100,000 moves they make (that’s a lot of moves). The Satoshi payments are processed via OpenNode on the lightning network and thus, allow players to interact with the game. It’s a novel concept and yes, overall it doesn’t allow for a seamless playing experience, however the innovation behind this is quite astounding.

As you can probably guess, this also have further implications for how gaming and the blockchain industry could converge in the future. Moreover, it provides evidence of another use case for the lightning network. You can play/watch the game for yourself, here- https://poketoshi.com/ This is clearly not designed to be a totally immersive game, or a total blockchain overhaul of the popular Pokémon format, it’s supposed to be a bit of fun but as I have mentioned, going forward this could provide insight for some far bigger blockchain based gaming projects. Moreover, it also seems to highlight a very interesting incentive system for game developers. If more games are made in this way, that encourage players to pay-per-move, developers have access to a new form of income, supported by gamer interaction and not by things like adverts or in-game purchases. Instead, they can rely on organic interactions within the game to make money.

Of course, it’s not going to be an earth shattering source of income, but it at least provides some sort of payment stream, right?

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