Re: Life - Business & Technology

Chapter 13 - War Online

Vince scheduled a meeting with Dollar and Lewis-Jacobs via video conference call to discuss the nearing release of War Online and their proprietary payment processing system as soon as he got home from school.

[It would be nice to have a headquarters, but that would be too expensive an expenditure right now.] he thought. 

The meeting started, and Dollar was the first to speak.

"The new exchange & payment portal has been developed with the help of the networking infrastructure contractors and some of my contacts in the emerging e-commerce market here in Silicon Valley.", Dollar declared.

The new portal is called 'BitCash' and works similarly to traditional online banking. It uses the automated clearing house systems administered by the U.S Federal Reserve and other foreign ACHs to accept traditional debit transfers while facilitating the exchange of crypto and fiat currency.

Users will only have to input their bank details once. 

After that, the portal would automatically exchange their local currency to Bitcoin from whatever program Future Tech implemented the Bitcash Portal. 

There would be fees the users would have to pay but would be kept to a minimum.

[I'm betting on revenue from the sheer number of transactions. All the digital goods from the cash shop can only be bought with Bitcoin but are priced in dollar amounts instead. This setup will make it easier for users to purchase items without worrying about Bitcoin prices all the time.] Vince thought.

War Online would take advantage of using Bitcoin for its' in-game market economy. Players will have access to use a similar service like the Steam community market but solely using Bitcoin.

Bitcash would also be integrated within the in-game market service for ease of use. 

Vince decided not to advertise the game and allowed his new product to grow naturally and gain exposure from social media, saving him millions of potential marketing expenses.

Vince requested access to Bitcoin Market's customer service provider to support War Online in the meantime. 

After the meeting, Future Tech sent the game for review on the App Store and Play Store. The Windows and Linux versions went live earlier due to fewer barriers to entry.

A random avid gamer was scrolling through Reddit and found a new post that wasn't upvoted to the top yet. It was about a new online game from Future Technologies.

The poster described the game as more of a core video game than a simple mobile game, though War Online would be available on most platforms soon. Nevertheless, the avid gamer decided to try the game out instead of reading the entire post.

He found the hyperlink at the bottom of the post and was redirected to a clean and responsive website. The website stated that War Online was a cross-platform game, and users can play on any valid device with the same account.

He chose to download the Windows Installer instead of playing it on the browser, assuming the performance and graphical fidelity would be better.

The game was free for a month and would cost $15/month after that but in BTC instead of dollars. 

He made his character with the game's few character creation options, which would gradually be updated by Future Tech and Epic Games devs.

His character was dropped on a plot of land and could control aspects of his in-game property to work on his base. However, after building his level 1 base for a while, he decided to venture out into the wilderness.

It would take a few minutes for all his basic units to be produced in the base and took the extra time questing.

The map zoomed out, showing a map of the earth and a small icon where his character was.

He could move around the large map and perform quests from random NPC bases around him. A player can build their reputation in neighboring NPC bases to eventually ally with them or plunder them with his units.

These NPC bases were powerful and could only be raided by higher-level players. 

Questing provided rewards to make the player's character stronger or upgrade their base using rare resources.

He observed that all the non-resource items could be traded or auctioned in the integrated marketplace for Bitcoin because they were all unique digital goods with a blockchain ID associated with them similar to NFTs (non-fungible tokens).

He suddenly realized that playing this game could pay out real money when he exchanged the Bitcoin accepted from the market for cash using the portal. 

The original Reddit post mentioned this feature, but he didn't read the entire thing.

After only a few hours, that same post is now the top post on Reddit. The game's mobile versions were released the following day that ballooned the already large player base of Windows desktop users.

The game was an overnight success for opposite reasons compared to Wingin' Chicken.

War Online provided fleshed-out gameplay with plenty of new features such as a persistent game world, cross-platform, and a groundbreaking digital crypto market. 

You can team up with your friends and play together to level up and progress faster, called Alliances.

The combat system used by the produced units was primarily AI-controlled, but the main character had a skill tree that varies its' gameplay. Most users were more enthralled with controlling their main characters than the puny AI units.

Vince started playing the game as he enjoyed playing video games and had some free time. 

[Combat in this game feels so smooth and visceral. The support from Epic Games proved to be the right choice. PC is the most fun method to play this game, but the controller and touchpads won't be too bad. Vince thought. Users played War Online with a top-down view or the isometric view.

Players can control the camera freely within the area, like when raiding a base with their army or moving around their base.

The skill tree wasn't too diverse, and the offensive and defensive skills were based on the weapon type and skill traits unlocked. 

[So there's a lot more potential in this game than I initially thought.] Vince pondered.

The game contained the standard social features like adding friends and talking in chat. Vince wanted users to connect their accounts to any social media platform easily and had some new features like remote viewing.

Friends can watch other people play on their game client if the user approves. 

Remote view mode cloned the display and presented it to the remote viewer's client as a clean video stream.

Players can also stream their gameplay to Twitch, Facebook, or Youtube utilizing the same technology as remote view, assuming they have enough bandwidth to support the feature.

Mobile Wi-Fi is barely able to stream while gaming, so only players will use this feature mainly through computer desktop players on Windows, Linux, and Mac. 

The live player count at the bottom-right of the display currently had more than 100,000 and climbing.

Future Tech delivered advertisement banners to players with free accounts, but players can avail of the 1-month premium access for free courtesy of Future Technologies.

Vince closed the game without worry because the game world was completely persistent and decided to turn in for the night.

[I'll have more time this upcoming month and be able to do things other than development and mentoring my team. I should head to Tom's gym after class to get some workouts in and learn kickboxing.] Vince thought before falling asleep.

EDITED