Whitepaper

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Executive Summary

Gaming in our modern era has become ubiquitous across communities, geographies, and media; in its myriad forms it has become both an enormous industry and an integral aspect of modern digital life. Yet despite the industry’s growth and success, a set of gatekeeping entities and walled gardens has gradually emerged–as in many aspects of the tech world and larger economy. This consolidation worsens the experiences of gamers, restricts opportunities for developers, and reduces diversity within the industry. Traditional “off-chain” gaming feels bereft of the uninhibited innovation and fun that typified earlier decades–-it feels closed. Web3 has for years presented itself as an alternative to the status quo, one bringing forth the components of a new paradigm for gaming focused around interoperability, greater community input, user-owned and transferable assets, and unique reward structures. The promise was open gaming. But this vision remains unrealized. A series of hurdles has largely prevented studios from diving in, gamers from migrating, and the broader web3 gaming ecosystem from blossoming. Community fragmentation has also been a major struggle for onchain gaming, with audiences isolated in discrete, largely unconnected ecosystems, impacting both discoverability and gameplay, and discouraging further innovation. Finally, and critically, it is tragic that an industry so focused on designing new open incentive systems has tacitly recreated many economic pressures against collaboration. The industry needs a broader vision and solutions to realize it. We propose Open Gaming as a mandate, a suite of technical tools, and an incentive system to level up onchain gaming and usher in a golden era in gaming. This features a sophisticated development engine capable of powering the next generation of onchain games and enabling them to rival if not surpass their web2 predecessors. A core Layer 3 (L3) blockchain that settles on Base, offering fast and cheap transactions, will offer new capacities to game developers. Games can launch their own customized GameChains that settle on the B3 L3 while leveraging best-in-class usability features like account abstraction, intents, and smart wallets. Over time, the Open Gaming ecosystem could include and integrate other chains alongside B3. This gives developers control over the game experience without having to grapple with the fragmentation that can come with traditional appchains. Finally, Open Gaming is taking the challenge of misaligned incentives head on. A shared and open economic system can start to enable developers and infrastructure providers to benefit from each other’s growth and at minimum encourage cooperation in this critical period of attracting new users. A referral system that rewards the ecosystem for sharing users is just the first step. Ultimately, these innovations promise to transform ‘web3 gaming’ into merely ‘gaming.’ To achieve this, Open Gaming, starting with the B3 L3, introduces a venue for the emergence of the most engaging and sophisticated games, for passionate gaming communities to coalesce, and with the larger gaming ecosystem itself becoming the largest beneficiary.

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Gaming: A Crossroads

Games in many digital forms are enjoyed the world over. More than 3 billion global gamers enjoy an abundance of gaming platforms that let them engage virtually anytime and in any setting, from a mobile game on a subway to a console game on a large screen TV. That an estimated 8+ hours is spent weekly by the average gamer is a clear measure of gaming’s place in society. Successive waves of innovation in technology and gameplay have radically expanded the assumed demographics of a ‘gamer.’ Nintendo’s Wii, Farmville on Facebook, Candy Crush Saga on mobile–all have brought more and more people into gaming. Gaming in turn has radically expanded its footprint in popular culture and media. From the dramatic growth and increasing acceptance of Esports, to the success of gaming-based movies and TV shows, the significance of gaming as a cultural force is clear. In many ways, to be digital these days is to have at least brushed up against gaming. Nonetheless, the gaming industry and community today finds itself in a place of tension.

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Offchain Gaming: Symptoms of gatekeeping

Despite the enormous expansion in the number of players and ways they play games, developers and gamers alike face some critical pain points. Like many sectors of the tech ecosystem and the larger world, in recent years the gaming industry has increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small number of publishers and distribution platforms. For developers, this increases the challenge of standing out, leading to higher premiums on marketing and distribution, less emphasis on gameplay, and strong incentives against risk-taking. Pressures to rapidly ship product and to emulate tried-and-true models, both undermining creativity and risk taking, have become realities for game designers. For an industry that has always been a conflux of self-expression, art, and commercial pursuit–more product oriented than independent film yet more artistic than consumer apps–many participants are deeply uncomfortable. Indeed, indie developers and risk-taking studios have long held an outsized role in pushing the gaming industry, culture, and community forward. Tetris, one of the most played games of all time, was developed by a single engineer. The genre of MOBAs (multiplayer online battle arena), responsible for more than a decade of successful esports in Dota 2 and League of Legends, was started from users modding popular Blizzard games. Minecraft was the genius of Markus “Notch” Persson and has gone on to define a generation’s experience of gaming, a golden age of user-generated content both in-game and throughout the Internet, and be a wild commercial success. It has been and remains imperative that risk-taking developers are able to thrive, yet today’s gaming industry is not structured in a way that supports them. Gamers seem to feel the effects of this centralization too. Many complain of extractive business models, whether microtransactions, mobile’s free-to-play / pay-to-win model, endless in-game purchases, or the proliferation of account-gated games. It is the best of times. It is the worst of times. Despite the growing footprint of gaming, the range of tools available to developers, and the relative ease of accessing games, dissatisfaction and discomfort is present throughout the industry. From a broader perspective it is unquestionably one of those periods of tension out of which meaningful transformations often emerge.

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Onchain Gaming: Closed (again)

Web3 gaming represents an obvious direction for a potential gaming renaissance. It is a new digital and network technology. It is global, cross-platform, and prides itself on removing gatekeepers. It can make users direct stakeholders and offer developers new ways to fund themselves. On paper at least, the promise seems to match the moment. Gaming has already played a critical role in the blockchain industry broadly, and it is just warming up. Cryptokitties, launched in 2017, was one of the first mainstream moments in all of crypto. While it is famous for almost halting the Ethereum blockchain, it can also be seen as the moment that drove home the importance of blockchain scaling solutions. In some ways, the larger blockchain industry has Cryptokitties to thank for massively expanding popular views of the potential of dapps—and how seriously people set to solving scaling issues. Onchain gaming managed similar feats over the ensuing years, with Axie Infinity, STEPN, Parallel, and Pixels showing the world what was possible when games and tokenized incentives converged. These successes demonstrated that people would engage with novel gaming mechanics, that digital ownership could enhance rather than detract from gameplay, and that economic incentives could bootstrap vibrant gaming communities. However, despite these early wins, web3 gaming has struggled to achieve mainstream adoption. The user experience barriers remain high, with wallet management, transaction fees, and complex onboarding processes creating friction for traditional gamers. The infrastructure has been fragmented, with games spread across multiple incompatible blockchains. Most critically, many web3 games have prioritized tokenomics over gameplay, resulting in experiences that feel more like work than play.

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The Vision for Open Gaming

Open Gaming represents a fundamental reimagining of what onchain gaming can be. Rather than treating blockchain as an add-on to traditional gaming, Open Gaming positions onchain infrastructure as the foundation for entirely new types of gaming experiences.

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Technical Infrastructure

At the heart of Open Gaming is B3, a Layer 3 blockchain built on Base that provides the technical foundation for the next generation of onchain games. B3 offers: High Performance: Sub-second transaction finality and low fees enable real-time gaming experiences previously impossible on blockchain. Developer Tools: A comprehensive suite of development tools, including game engines, asset management systems, and deployment frameworks specifically designed for onchain gaming. Account Abstraction: Smart wallets and account abstraction remove the complexity of wallet management for players, enabling seamless onboarding and gameplay. Interoperability: Built-in support for cross-game asset transfers and shared state enables unprecedented levels of game interconnectivity.

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GameChains

One of the most innovative aspects of the Open Gaming architecture is the GameChain system. Individual games can deploy their own customized blockchain that settles on B3, giving developers:

• Complete control over their game’s economic and technical parameters
• Dedicated resources ensuring optimal performance for their specific use case
• Seamless integration with the broader Open Gaming ecosystem
• Shared security through B3’s underlying infrastructure

This approach solves the traditional trilemma between customization, interoperability, and security that has plagued blockchain gaming infrastructure.

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Community and Social Layer

Open Gaming recognizes that great games are built by and for communities. The platform includes: Native Social Features: Built-in communication, guild management, and social discovery tools that span across games and GameChains. Creator Economy: Tools and incentives for content creators, streamers, and community builders to monetize their contributions to the ecosystem. Governance Participation: Players and developers can participate in ecosystem governance, helping to shape the future direction of Open Gaming. Cross-Game Identity: Persistent player identities and reputation systems that enhance social experiences across the entire ecosystem.

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Shared Incentives

An unfortunate reality of the fragmented landscape of onchain games today are disincentives for true interoperability. Games and chains don’t want to share users, who are often generators of transaction fees and primary token buyers. Games have weak incentives to integrate the items and mechanisms of other games, who themselves have already reaped the economic benefits from minting them. Even gamers can face poor incentives to grow a game’s userbase and dilute their own airdrop earnings. This is doubly tragic in an industry that prides itself on reinventing the economics of internet applications. Combatting this will take time, but we believe it is a battle worth fighting. The first step is a referral and revenue-sharing mechanism that collects a portion of transaction revenue for reinvestment in the ecosystem. Referring users that generate more transactions can benefit everyone in the ecosystem. In addition, any gamechain that commits a portion of their tokens toward user acquisition (UA) and also brings in a new user can earn B3 tokens. B3 will also bootstrap the initial incentive pool for the purpose of user acquisition (e.g. influencers, creator referral program) by contributing a portion of the B3 token supply.

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Opportunities for Key Stakeholders

B3’s infrastructure can reach many types of actors and stakeholders, with features and benefits for each.

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Game Developers

Web3 is a new frontier for gaming that game developers of all types can embrace. Open Gaming offers a new toolkit to turn users into partners, to engage creatively with a game community, and to fund game creation. It is a deployment platform not dominated by gatekeepers and intentionally established against it. Open Gaming’s unique suite of infrastructure, tools, and platform lowers barriers of onchain game development. This should enable onchain gaming to find broader expression and develop novel structures, better reflecting and even expanding beyond the myriad ways offchain gaming is experienced today. Over the past one and a half decades, the “onchain” industry has been inexhaustible in producing new narratives. It finds ways to defy rumors of its own death. This resiliency speaks to an underlying value of web3 gaming and a desire within the gaming space to see new approaches emerge. We believe that with the advancements of the technology in general, and specifically in regards to the tools and infrastructure it is introducing, onchain gaming is finally ready to play a central role in the evolution of gaming.

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Gamers

Lowering the barrier to entry for gamers will help them find the experiences they are looking for and hopefully ones they like but did not know existed. They can experiment with new forms of gameplay without crossing the UX chasm being onchain has required until now. They can also be co-funders, co-builders, and co-advocates for game developers bringing their own visions into the world.

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Base and the Base Ecosystem

Base may be the platform for the next billion onchain users. It is an open and neutral L2, without a native token and incentives to maximize the value of one and with a track record of contributing to the base Ethereum ecosystem. It celebrates builders and will continue to do so. It is adjacent to millions of offchain crypto users who might be curious about the technology but intimidated by the UX prospects of being onchain. We can continue the tradition of celebrating builders and giving back to its base ecosystem. More transactions. Amplifying community. Bridgeless usability. Onchain fun.

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The Gaming Industry

Games have also long functioned as a powerful vehicle for popularizing new technology. In some ways, technology benefits from gaming exploring and advancing its own limits as much as gaming benefits from new technologies. From this perspective, an argument that blockchain technologies—that by any measure have a far wider range of use cases than gaming—may nevertheless find gaming to be a powerful force both in advancing the technology and in introducing users to the technology as it engages new audiences, is a compelling vision. Open Gaming, with innovative tech improving game design as well as gameplay, and a social and community layer poised to make it a genuine web3 gaming hub and discovery layer, can play a critical role in making onchain gaming accessible and exciting.

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B3 Token Overview

The B3 token will play a variety of roles in the Open Gaming ecosystem, with applications for developers, gamers, and governance. For developers, the token can help spur activity on B3 and throughout the Open Gaming ecosystem, reward great games, and serve as an anti-sybil measure. A variety of grant and patronage opportunities can enable developers to bring their creations to life on B3. At the same time, developers can use the token for fees and visibility. For gamers, the token will be used to facilitate cross-game commerce or special perks. This could include questing, playtesting, feedback, purchasing unique items and powerups, and other forms of engagement that historically have made gaming such a unique human activity. For anyone interested in governance, the token will help direct the DAO that sets policies, supports protocol upgrades, and oversees the treasury.

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Token Allocation and Supply

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Governance

The Open Gaming ecosystem will need a variety of governance rules. The vision for onchain gaming is big and bold. The toolkit the B3 L3 and other supporting technologies provides is powerful and expressive. The winning strategy for the gaming ecosystem as a whole is still taking shape. It will take a dedicated community and a flexible governance system to navigate us all to the next stages. More on the specific governance structure will be forthcoming, but we generally anticipate three modes of engagement.

• Proposals: a proposal system allows for ideas to emerge from the community that delegates may not think of or have the capacity to develop on their own. It also gives the entire community a direct voice.
• Voting: token holders can be active participants in shaping the future of the B3 and Open Gaming ecosystems, embodying an important step towards the decentralization this industry stands for.
• Councils: specialized councils are an effective way to align expertise, particularly technical, with relevant decision making.

All of these have precedent in robust governance systems–and notably, are absent from the gaming production industry that has generated so much gamer discontent. Open Gaming is for gamers and governance will reflect that.

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Conclusion

In an earlier era, going online ultimately meant many things for both games and players. It wasn’t just chatting in-game or playing with strangers. Entire new genres, like MMOs and server-grade worlds, became possible. User-generated content, on small scales and for entire games, became more commonplace. People talked about games online, volunteered their time to create tutorials for other players, and spawned a streaming industry. All of this was built upon novel in-game mechanisms and experiences that provided a foundation for and inspired these activities. Just like one could not have predicted the range of developments in the early days of online gaming where games like Tetris and Minesweeper represented the cutting edge of innovation, one cannot forecast exactly what innovations web3 and onchain gaming may bring. The innovations discussed in this paper contain both challenges and opportunities; together they represent an agenda for addressing issues in gaming and looking to the future of the industry. They shape Open Gaming’s ability to foster a web3 gaming ecosystem where it is easier to build and access new games, and above all more engaging to play. This ecosystem enriches the experience of existing onchain gamers, has resources for a community to emerge, flourish, and shape the future of the platform and gaming in general, and welcomes and supports the transition of web2 gamers moving onchain. In the context of a gaming universe where Apple’s App Store had nearly 300,000 titles available in 2023, and where only 1,000 web3 games have been released in total, the opportunity space before web3 is clear. Innovative platforms like B3’s L3 and the Open Gaming ecosystem that deliberately address key hurdles that have limited the experience of web3 until now—from infrastructural, community, and user experience and onboarding perspectives—are critical in ushering in and unleashing the potential of a new era that promises to become not merely the next phase of web3 gaming or the global gaming space, but of the online and onchain experiences themselves.

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