Please describe your proposed solution.
Contextual Background
The world of gaming is focused on providing experiences to a global fanbase that takes them through adventures, puzzles, strategy, combat, friendship, and storytelling. Some of these experiences bake in valuable reward to entice players. This has been seen in games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) with various cosmetics that are traded for hundreds to thousands - sometimes even in Bitcoin. It has also been seen in World of Warcraft (WOW), where the in-game currency has an exchange rate to fiat.
These games introduce these rewards, in part, through in-game action at the end of matches and quests. Sounds similar to play-to-earn right? Well, the model works and even after 10 years CS:GO is still the most played game on Steam.
The issue is this model of rewarding players invites bad actors. Cheaters, bots, and smurfs (experienced players making new accounts to face lower level players) join the games in hordes to obtain in-game assets and sell them for a profit. Standard players have trouble enjoying these games when they are competing against cheaters leveraging a hacked client for enhanced performance. Game studios respond to these bad actors with anti-cheat mechanisms such as VAC, Vanguard, Ricochet, and Easy Anti-Cheat. When these mechanisms work they detect irregular in-game actions, such as auto-aiming, and then ban the associated account. The issue is these bad actors can easily create new accounts and get back into the game, especially when the game is free, such as CS:GO. Additionally anti-cheat mechanisms can’t determine if a player is a smurf or not. Game studios use terms of service to prevent this, but it does little to stop players looking for easier rewards.
This has all been experienced in traditional games, where there is no blockchain backing that brings the trustworthiness and utility of smart contracts. Imagine how these bad actors will react when they can play-to-earn an NFT that they can be staked or used to provide collateral on a loan. The issue of cheaters, bots, and smurfs should be expected when building blockchain gaming applications and infrastructure. But how can we stop it?
The Solution
The best way to stop these bad actors is to apply blockchain based game theory. Use tokenization to make it more rewarding to play a game as a trusted entity, as opposed to an ever churning list of cheating accounts. This is accomplished through a DID based reputation system, where the player builds trust based off of their gaming and wallet metrics. Things like total hours played, number of games owned, number of reports on account, and number of epochs staked can paint a picture of the player without requiring overly personal information. These metrics can be obtained from users who have completed an Oauth process like Epic Online Services, Steam, and the web 3.0 equivalent in combination with an API like Overwolf.
Based upon the reported gaming and wallet metrics we can develop a trust score for each user. More metrics that show positive engagement = higher trust score. Game studios and developers can then use this trust score to impact the rate, quantity, and quality of rewards that a player is obtaining. This tool will be aimed at supporting Cardano based games to start, with the goal of utilizing their own Oauth and API systems to strengthen the validity of the DID and possible sources of metrics.
Kicking Things Off
To initiate the usage of the DID as well as provide a set of gameplay metrics, PlayerMint will be the first project to integrate the DID. PlayerMint is a play-to-earn layer that integrates with existing video games like Fortnite to reward gameplay performance. PlayerMint is worried that gamers will ‘smurf’ in order to play against lower skilled foes and obtain more tokens. This has led them to pioneer the Gamer DID with ProofSpace.
The planned impact is to apply subtle, yet meaningful multipliers to the amount of tokens a gamer earns through PlayerMint based on their trust score. The goal is to make it more rewarding to build up a single trustworthy account as opposed to many ‘smurf’ accounts.
Planned Trust Metrics
The following is a list of metrics that we plan to integrate into the first iteration of the DID.
- Number of hours played on Epic Games account - Epic Online Services
- Number of games owned - Epic Online Services
- Amount of PMX earned - PlayerMint
- Stake history (duration not quantity) - wallet connection
As time goes on ProofSpace and PlayerMint will update the list of metrics so the trust score is as accurate as possible. The goal is to bring in other gaming based projects so they can benefit from the trust score and add to the list of metrics.
Game Developer Experience
Here is how a game developer would engage with the Gamer DID:
- Susan is developing a multiplayer adventure game that utilizes NFTs. Susan is worried that hackers and smurfs will ruin other players' experience despite her use of Easy Anti-Cheat and terms of service
- Susan discovers the Gamer DID and accesses it through ProofSpace/PlayerMint
- Susan bases the frequency that players earn NFTs on their trust score
- Susan launches her game confident in her ability to properly reward players based on their trustworthiness
- Susan contributes to the Gamer DID by providing a number of quests completed metric that can be authenticated through associated stake key
Gamer Experience
Here is how the gamer would interact with the Gamer DID:
- Rupert discovers Susan’s adventure game and begins to play it
- Rupert learns that he can increase his NFT rewards by building trust with the Gamer DID
- Rupert downloads the ProofSpace app and connects his associated gaming accounts and wallet
- Rupert completes the necessary steps to provide accurate metrics to the Gamer DID
- Rupert goes back to enjoying an adventure game experience with heightened rewards and real players
<u>PlayerMint Specific Experience</u>
- User signs up / in to PlayerMint (PM) and gives consent for PM to pull game play and account name stats from Overwolf API and Epic Game Oauth.
- PM runs stats through its Trust Score algorithm (which you plan to invent).
- PM gives user an option to "Claim Your Trust Score" in PM online.
- User clicks "Claim Your Trust Score" and is prompted to download ProofSpace App (ProofSpace App)
- User downloads ProofSpace App and scans QR code (visible in PM online) to on-board to PM.
- User is issued a Trust Score to ProofSpace App.
- Next time user games using that account, they claim PM Points for gaming with an active trust score and some passive advantages accrue to that score.
Why We’re Building This
Giving gamers a decentralized identity around which they can build a reputation and earn rewards will:
- Incentivize players to game with the same account and earn this way, rather than earning via cheating with fraudulent accounts.
- Enable gaming platforms to reward players based upon their trust score
- Allow gaming platforms to set their own tolerance levels on different metrics within the gamer’s identity, e.g. number of hours played, age of credential, etc.
Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.
The Gamer DID fits wonderfully with the Dapps, Products & Integrations challenge (gaming is one of the “types of proposals to include”). The challenge focuses on building products that service the Cardano community in ways better than current centralized providers. As discussed in the “Contextual History” portion of impact, the issue of bad actors in games is nothing new. Centralized clients like anti-cheat mechanisms have done their best to combat the issue but it is still very prevalent. The Gamer DID brings a fresh decentralized take on the issue that can service the developers of blockchain games and their players (the community).
A quality mechanism to build trust within gaming without revealing personal info will help make Cardano the go-to blockchain for game developers and their players.
What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?
The main challenges of this project are based on its capacity to have a truly authentic trust score and community of developers and players that utilize it.
Developing a trust score based upon a set of metrics will not be easy. This will take authentication on the users side with legitimate Oauth systems and then necessitate APIs to grab player metrics from trustworthy databases. The use of developer approved services like the mentioned Epic Online Services and Overwolf will ensure legitimacy and trustworthiness. Working with blockchain game developers on leveraging on-chain data as metrics for trustworthiness will ensure developers with less resources can still contribute to the DID.
In addition to ensuring the metrics are of quality, a formula will be needed to aggregate all the data from the metrics and derive a trust score based off of it. This is a difficult process as the validity and value of each metric will need to be determined. How trustworthy is a stake history of 8 months and 22 hours played vs a stake history of 1 month and 63 hours played? The answer is to source input from a community of gamers with knowledge on the topic. Through many trials and usage of live data in a testnet environment an understanding of a metrics value can be determined. This combined with constant iteration can ensure a community backed DID that proves trustworthiness fairly is built.
The final major challenge of the Gamer DID is to ensure it’s adopted by a community of developers and players. What’s the point of all this tech without anyone using it? This difficult issue will be solved through a representation of usage. As PlayerMint integrates and displays the advantages of the Gamer DID it can grow in usage. This combined with outreach to projects building on Cardano can ensure a level of usage between gamers and developers occurs.