| dc.description.abstract | Blockchain is regarded as a new Internet of value, which will produce significant business changes to the world’s currency, industry, and economy. The year of 2017 is regarded as the year of blockchain experimentation. Many industries have begun to understand the advantages and challenges of blockchain. In 2018, IDC forecasted that the spending on blockchain solutions would reach USD 11.7 billion by 2022.
This study explored the business model of the blockchain game industry, specifically the world’s first blockchain game: ‘CryptoKitties.’ Through observation, documentation, and literature collection, the study analyzed the business model and the value propositions of CryptoKitties, as well as the factors that might influence the successful development of blockchain games. This study reveals the business model and the value propositions of CryptoKitties as follows: The community focuses mainly on typical game players and investors in cryptocurrencies; promotes the concepts of blockchain and cryptocurrency; maintains a balance in the rules of the game through blockchain technology and cryptocurrency; creates a new business model with continuous revenue streams; highly emphasizes user experience during product design; let the market determines the value of digital assets and uses the standards for digital asset transfer and transaction realized through the ERC-721 protocol; and achieves complete community management to realize the vision in which players and developers can co-create games.
The results show that blockchain characteristics such as consensus mechanisms, decentralization, non-tampering, security, and traceability can help ensure transparency in the blockchain game mechanism and provide a trustworthy gaming and trading environment for players. Through the ERC-721 non-fungible token protocol, digital assets with non-fungible values can be traded and converted. Further, a more sustainable profit model can be considered to generate profit from blockchain games. If blockchain games overcome the key problems such as game efficiency, cross-blockchain, and cross-currency in the future, then new business models and value propositions can be proposed for creating novel economic models for blockchain games.
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