A lot of people are dismissing blockchain as a lot of hype. While that hype can be nauseating, some very big companies, including French video game giant Ubisoft, are taking it seriously. Yves Guillemot, CEO of the company that makes blockbusters, such as Assassin’s Creed, said at the ChinaJoy expo this summer that blockchain has potential to revolutionize the video game industry in the future.
Ubisoft held a blockchain hackathon, dubbed Blockchain Heroes, this summer in Paris. Its Strategic Innovation Lab team also created a blockchain game prototype, dubbed Hashcraft. In that game, a player tosses a seed into the sea, and the seed grows an island that the player can explore. Players can create quests on the island for other players to do. In this case, players create value through the act of creation, and the blockchain records that.
It’s worth noting that gamers are among the most prominent adopters for cryptocurrencies and blockchain. At the same time, Ubisoft is focusing on the player experience, and it is careful to distance itself from the cryptocurrency side of blockchain and currency speculation. But Ubisoft has also decided to sponsor the upcoming Blockchain Game Summit in Lyon, France, on September 25 to September 26.
Anne Puck, blockchain initiative associate manager at Ubisoft, is a board member for the Blockchain Game Summit. I talked with her about Ubisoft’s interest in innovation and blockchain.