Blockchain games and crypto games: What’s the difference?

The existence of crypto and blockchain games
is no longer a mystery. Thousands of developers have been working on various
blockchain systems and platforms to produce these games. Albeit the games
themselves are rather simplistic, or “mobile type” games, but the fact that
they are at our disposal does not make them any less desirable by pretty much
everybody.

However, whenever we read the news, or some kind of announcement or and advertisement about these games, there’s always this one part that never remains the same. The marketing campaigns either refer to the game as a crypto game or a blockchain game.

So, what’s the difference? Isn’t crypto
primarily based on the blockchain? Why have it as a separate name then?

Well, there are so many differences between
these two “classifications” of games. A blockchain game isn’t necessarily a
crypto game, but a crypto game can always be classified as a blockchain game.
It’s not necessarily a paradox, but it’s leaning towards it very closely.

Let’s try and explain all of the differences
and similarities between these two games in this article and make it as
accurate as possible.

What is a crypto game?

A crypto game is something that uses cryptocurrencies as its source of the in-game economy. There are usually two understandings to this, but let’s try and bring an example for each of them.

In-game
cryptocurrencies

Imagine that it’s the early 2000s and you are
playing World of Warcraft. You play your character for a couple of years and
finally decide that you’ve had enough of the game and it’s time that you pay
attention to something else. However, you don’t want to just leave your
character logged out for decades to come without something you can potentially
game from it. Blizzard prohibits the sale of accounts and you don’t necessarily
want to lurk around subreddits or various other websites trying to sell your
account.

Luckily for you, Blizzard had implemented a
new crypto policy (obviously this is imaginary). Which would convert your
in-game currency into cryptocurrency. What this means is that all of the money
you have on your character can potentially be turned into real money.

Depending on how rich you actually are
in-game, it could potentially reflect on your monetary gain in real life.
Naturally, it would be almost impossible to cash out these coins directly, but
it’s possible to do it via Bitcoin. This is usually the path that in-game
cryptocurrencies take. But now let’s look at just “local crypto tokens”.

Local crypto
tokens

A local crypto token is a cryptocurrency that
is not necessarily assigned to the character or the game itself. Meaning that
you can’t really generate this currency on a daily basis unless you devote a
lot of time to it.

For example, in World of Warcraft, you can
“farm” money, meaning you can run around leveling up and generate currency that
way, but with “local crypto tokens” it’s usually not the case.

Imagine something like Counter-Strike. The way
a local crypto token would be used here is the trade of items in-game. For
example, you could trade your weapon skins for local crypto tokens and not have
it classified as a sale. Valve would avoid any regulatory overheads, and you
won’t have to pay tax on it or anything. It’s an on-platform sale and therefore
a legitimate one.

Another great example of “local crypto tokens”
is almost any online gaming platform. Although it’s sort of like the dark sheep
of the gaming family, it’s still a viable entertainment industry.

Many such online platforms use “local crypto tokens” to allow their players to deposit or withdraw funds. However, there are some like Gunsbet bitcoin casino in Australia that allow players to deposit not necessarily with local tokens, but universal ones such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin.

This is the most common use of cryptos one can
find outside of just crypto exchanges and etc. This is where a large volume is
circulating.

What is a blockchain game?

A blockchain game is something that uses the
blockchain technology as its source for a database meaning that
cryptocurrencies are not a direct focus here. The blockchain database gives the
players much more safety in their online gaming sessions and sometimes even
makes it impossible to circumnavigate the guidelines and the rules imposed by the
developers.

Let’s try to imagine an MMO once again. Almost
every MMO developer will have to make a sizable server in order to accomodate
all of the players that will be signing up for their game.

The server would most likely be located in a
centralized area in the developer’s office and would have a singular database
where everything would be stored.

Remember that +100 magic flame sword that you
got yesterday? That’s on this server.

Remember that new mage you made and got a
magic stick yesterday? That’s on this server as well.

What the blockchain system would do in a
sense, is diversity this information on its server and make it almost
impossible to attack or damage it completely. The server would be distributed
among several devices, sometimes even the device of the player themselves.

Any potential hacker would need to attack every single server location one by one, breaking into which would be almost impossible. By the time he or she would access the second node, the first would have been fixed and all of the data recovered.

It’s a much more secure approach to storing
lots and lots of information for an MMO or any other game for that matter.

That’s pretty much all the difference between
these two types of games. Naturally, it’s always possible to combine them
together and have a secure and “profitable” game to play at all times.