Editor's note: This article is an excerpt from the book Metaverses: The Road to Infinite Games, published by CITIC Publishing Group in January 2021. In the book, the author Chang Hao takes the "infinite game" proposed by James Cass as the core concept, comprehensively interprets the concept, source, underlying technology, core logic, protocol design, industrial status, and a series of challenges and ultimate development goals facing the future development of the metaverse.
In the game level in the movie "Ready Player One" to find the third key, the villain IOI company sent a large team of people to play this mini-game, but they could not pass the level, one loser fell into the ice cave, and the last player fell into the ice cave even if he passed the level. The protagonist Wade suddenly realized that this was the intention of the game designer Halliday: the real game should have no endgame, the level is not important, the process and experience are the most important. He finally found the old man's Easter egg, and this Easter egg pays tribute to the first small game of human beings to hide easter eggs ,Adventure," but the extremely simple interface makes the childhood Halliday addicted all day long, not for the clearance, just to find the creator's Easter egg, which is the soul exchange between little Halliday and the creator of the game, and also the cross-time communication between Wade and the old Halliday. Wade inherits Halliday's spirit of play and gets a third key, which is the key to unlocking the Infinite Game.
The ideal metaverse seems to be the infinite game predicted by James Cass. Xiao Feng, chairman of Wanxiang Blockchain, believes that the governance structure of the metaverse is distributed, decentralized, and self-organized, and it is not permissible to join the metacosm, immersion in the metacosm is free, the metacosm relies on consensus to formulate rules, and compliance with the rules depends on autonomy. Its economic model is a "stakeholder system", value co-creators are benefit-sharers, there is no shareholder, executives, employees, this is an infinite game of "co-construction, co-creation, co-governance, sharing" of all participants.
Unlimited games vs. limited games
The purpose of finite games is to win, infinite games have no eternal winners, and aim to keep the game going on forever. Finite games have a definite start and end, infinite games have no definite start and end. The Olympic Movement is the most typical limited game, and its purpose is to win. The most typical infinite game is life itself, and the meaning of life lies in continuation.
Finite games are played within boundaries (platforms), unlimited games have no boundaries and are not limited to chains and platforms. The rule of the limited game is to ensure that the game will end, and the rule of the infinite game is to ensure that the game does not end.
Limited games are consumer-driven, users are consumers, and the platform provides users with consumer goods (coins, skins, and items). Unlimited games are driven by creators, and users are consumers, but also creators. Users participate in the formulation of game rules, but also provide materials, works and tools for the game.
Limited games are island-based, and each game has its own worldview, which is independent of each other and unchanging. Infinite games are cosmic, all games follow the same worldview, and the worldview is open and can evolve. Limited games are scripted, can be rehearsed and rehearsed, and players can always copy the route of the level. Infinite games are legendary, unable to rehearse and rehearse, and remain open to the future, avoiding any preset outcomes. In the script, a person plays the role of a hero; in a legend, a person chooses to be a hero.
Limited games are centralized, and the game platform has absolute authority, which can not only formulate the rules of the game but also modify the rules of the game at any time. Users have no right but to consume and issue innocuous complaints. Unlimited games do not have a center, and the rules of the game are coded on top of smart contracts and cannot be modified arbitrarily.
Limited games can be shut down due to poor operation, and unlimited games cannot be shut down or shut down because of blockchain technology. After the smart contract is released, the unlimited game does not need to operate the main body, so there is no possibility of being shut down. Infinite games may be forgotten because the heat dissipates, but this is not a closure, and it may be revived in the future because of some kind of opportunity. Limited games require a save, otherwise the player's gameplay experience may disappear forever due to the leveling, as if it never happened. Unlimited games do not need to be saved, because at least some important records can be saved on the chain, such as transactions, transfers, fertility records, etc., and more importantly, your assets (characters, coins, skins, items) are never lost.
Accounts for limited games are ostensibly owned by users, but essentially belong to platforms. In theory, the platform owns all the information of the user. The account (private key) of the Unlimited Game belongs to the User, who has absolute exclusive rights to the account and assets. Absolute exclusivity has two meanings: one is that the account belongs to the user, and the other is that the account belongs only to the user. The former means that the account cannot be recovered, deleted, or frozen, while the latter means that the account cannot be traded, transferred, leased or borrowed, and the private key is a string of reproducible information that theoretically cannot be transferred, because the transferor can always keep a copy of the private key.
Life and death in a finite game is the state of data, the writing and erasing of data, and the actions of writing and erasing can be infinitely repeated. Life and death in the infinite game means the possession or loss of the private key, and death in the infinite game is not really death, because the private key is a string of characters, it is immortal, but its owner has lost contact with it forever because of forgetting or dying.
The economic system and rules of the limited game are closed, and the means of production (coins, skins and items) and rules of the A game are not available for the B game. The economic system of the infinite game is open to the rules of the game, and the means of production can be freely matched like Lego.
The means of production of limited games are interchangeable because these are only data in the database. All assets in the digital world are replicable, which means that two means of production recorded in the same field in a database are inherently indistinguishable. Two items of the same type in a limited game are exactly the same and interchangeable. The means of production in an infinite game can be designed as an interchangeable, non-homogeneous asset, just like leaves in the real world, there are no two identical leaves under the sky.
There is a very sharp contrast between finite gamers and infinite gamers, like the sun god Apollo and dionysus, the god of wine. The subject in the finite game is classical human, Socratic, focused on reason, life is carried out in an orderly manner according to a large script, with a strong sense of purpose, endgame, causality; the subject in the infinite game is posthuman, Sisyphusian, unpredictable, focusing on the original creativity of life, and fighting against nothingness with the spirit of endless struggle and rebellion.
Blockchain injects infinity into the metacosm
1. Cannot be forced to close
Limited games are operated by one game company or multiple game companies in a centralized manner, and may face the problem of being shut down at any time due to the bankruptcy or poor management of the company, such as "World of Warcraft" operated by Nine Cities, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms Online" operated by Glory Company, and "Counter-Strike Online 2" jointly produced by NEXON in South Korea and Valve in the United States.
The infinity and non-downtime of blockchain games mainly include two types. One is a pure on-chain game, all game operations are run in the form of on-chain smart contracts, then, it has the same perpetuity and non-stopability as the public chain. No centralized authority, not even the creator of the game, can forcibly close the game, for example, the difficulty of turning off crypto cats is the same as the difficulty of shutting down Ethereum. The other is a half-chain game, which only puts key elements such as means of production (heroes, props), world rules (fertility, casting, chemical reactions) on the chain, and those high-frequency interaction behaviors are still run by the game developer's centralized server, such as attacks, dodges, actions and other actions. The infinity of such games is mainly manifested in the perpetuality and non-stopability of the means of production and world rules, even if the game operator is forced to close down and shut down, the player's virtual goods will not disappear, they can still switch to other games that support these virtual goods. Moreover, because the means of production and the rules of the world run on the chain, they can complete the transaction of the means of production, the transfer of rights, and even the entertainment of forging weapons and equipment in their wallets.
2. Openness and cross-platform
Tencent's qq series of products is a typical closed system: QQ is the only digital identity, QQ show is like the NFT that is now being hyped, QQ space is a social platform, and even the internal system common currency - Q coin, which can be used for the transaction of any product in the Tencent ecosystem, but it cannot be applied to other platforms and games, let alone applied to the real world. The economic system of the infinite game is open to the rules of the game, and the means of production can be freely matched like Lego, such as the gold coins, skins and items of the A game can be applied to the B game.
In the metaverse game Fortnite, you can see Batman and Star Wars, even though they belong to different copyright factions. What's more, the economic system of infinite games may be connected to the real world, as you see in the movie Ready Player One, you can work in the oasis to earn money, and use the resulting property to make purchases in the real world. Vice versa, real-world money can also circulate in the metaverse for the purchase of virtual items and assets.
3. True Ownership
Under the framework of finite games, people can never truly own their own meta-universe assets. Internet giants have been trying to keep users' digital assets firmly in their hands. As meta-universe gives users an increasingly strong sense of ownership, when people begin to bravely defend all the digital assets and digital accounts they have obtained on the Internet, they find that Tencent has banned users from giving, borrowing, renting, transferring, selling and other economic behaviors such as qq numbers, and if there is any violation, tencent will even resort to law. What a funny thing, qq assets that have been operating hard for a long time, and finally being told that this does not belong to you, but to Tencent. This is the case with almost all Internet products and services, where users have purchased a game on Steam with real money, but have been told that they do not have the ownership of the game, only the right to use it, and Steam can take it back at any time. In 2004, NetEase deleted 100,000 player accounts at one time in response to the fraud of its online game "Genie", which caused an uproar in the game industry for a time. The complaint telephones of NetEase Shanghai Branch and Guangzhou Headquarters were exploded, consumer associations, industrial and commercial law enforcement and other relevant departments in the two places were alarmed, and some gamers chose to use legal weapons to defend their rights and interests. This is the commonality of the development of the Internet era, which is the suppression of people's awareness of independent rights and interests by excessive commercialization, but when data rights and digital assets become more and more important and valuable, the people will also have a moment of awakening.
Only in unlimited games can your virtual assets truly belong to you and generate value in the real world. Data and storage are based on decentralized blockchains, ensuring data sovereignty for everyone. No one can arbitrarily delete the contents of your account, except yourself. The metaverse game Decentraland is a virtual world that is truly owned by the user, where all the virtual land and the buildings on the virtual land are held by the owner. With the Little Fox Wallet extension installed, users can use cryptocurrency and NFT features in a standard web browser, as well as buy and sell properties, create art galleries, sell virtual artwork, and build game worlds.
4. Dao-based economic and governance system
The game system of the limited game has a monopoly, the game company has ownership, and the user cannot obtain real-world economic benefits within the economic system of the game without permission. Game companies collect "taxes" by regulating the economic system, which is exactly the platform economy that today's game giants are keen on: the economic system dominated by operators, takeaway, online shopping, house viewing, live broadcasting, job hunting, in which you can do almost anything - in full payment of the "platform tax". The economic system of infinite games is not monopolistic, the domination of products by large companies is replaced by a new organizational form, DAO, shareholders and boards of directors are no longer the ultimate service objects of products, and communities of ecological contributors will truly control the ecology. Tokens replace game coins to give everyone equal rights to assets, operators no longer monopolize the internal economic system, and everyone shares an open economic system. In the movie "Ready Player One", Wade finally deciphers the three keys left by Halliday, obtains the inheritance rights to Oasis, and signs an agreement to take over Oasis to become the new world's richest man, but he refuses, and he chooses to manage Oasis with his friends to achieve decentralized community autonomy.
Plato said, "Only the dead can see the end of war," and it is easy for human society to stagnate in a finite game that ends, or to be imprisoned in a finite game without knowing it. If the development of human society is regarded as a finite game, then great power competition will inevitably lead to the "Thucydides Trap". If we start from the perspective of infinite games, human beings will become a community of destiny and have a broader future.
Metaverse: The Road to Infinite Games
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