Financial Applications Unlocked By Blockchain Offer Many New Reward Features, Says Shrapnel's Francis Brankin

Shrapnel is a cutting-edge AAA first-person shooter game with a unique creator ecosystem that empowers players to shape the game's future. The team behind Shrapnel, made up of BAFTA and Emmy Award-winning game industry veterans, brings extensive experience in transmedia, virtual production and gaming-as-a-service. 

Emerging from HBO Interactive, this acclaimed team has a proven track record with leading game companies, including Xbox, Electronic Arts, HBO, LucasFilm, Irrational and Zombie Ent, contributing to iconic titles like Halo, Call of Duty and Star Wars.

Benzinga recently spoke with Francis Brankin, head of economy at Shrapnel, and discussed blockchain's impact on in-game elements, new gaming monetization and the role of decentralized governance in blockchain gaming. Here's a snippet from the conversation. 

How does blockchain enhance game mechanics and player experiences, and can you cite successful examples?

Game mechanics enhanced by blockchain are mostly centered around ownership and what that affords the player. A great example is ParallelTCG, a trading card game recently popular among top players. Blockchain technology has also often been integrated with collectible Pokemon cards, showcasing a clear connection between the trading card genre and the desire for this particular use case. Within Shrapnel, we're trying to bring this one level deeper and allow the users of our creator tools to do more than own the IP of their creations but also extract the value from their use. This would be through redistributing the value gained on the platform from their content to the creator.

What are the key considerations in creating mutable, interoperable on-chain game elements tied to transparency and a public ledger?

When integrating any of these elements into the game, the key considerations would be educating users about the potential uses and providing adequate information for other games to incorporate the IP. 

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When educating the user, there should be some level setting in understanding the depth of the integration in each unique environment. An example would be in Shrapnel, wherein each game session, users can lose no cosmetic items. It would be distressing to lose an asset in a game of that nature mistakenly. Conversely, this would mean looking at the information given to the games integrating assets/elements, from asset names to stats and cosmetic appearance.

How does blockchain introduce new monetization and reward structures in gaming, including DeFi mechanisms?

The financial applications unlocked by blockchain offer many new reward features, especially around value creation within games. Typically, value creation lies within curating (discovery) and content creation (YouTube, Twitch, in-game content). If the game appropriately tracks user interactions, there can be a clear path between users and how they create value on the platform. As mentioned previously, transparency of the public ledger allows the game to track this and the user — helping maintain a fair relationship between the two.

Could you share examples of games benefiting from blockchain-based monetization and rewards?

An initially controversial example would be Axie Infinity, where the game maintained 2.7 million daily active users for months of its new mechanics. Although this ecosystem and reward system proved unsustainable, it did showcase a potentially unforeseen effect around reducing user acquisition costs and increasing retention for player rates. A significant caveat is that these systems weren't implemented sustainably in this particular example; however, it provides excellent context to the potential benefits observed through these integrations.

What role does decentralized governance play in blockchain-powered gaming, and can you provide real-world examples?

Decentralized governance can provide a significant link between the game studio and the content that the users see. An example of this can be found in web2 using Old School Runescape, allowing users to suggest and vote on content updates. This game's popularity has increased since its launch; in their case, this is voluntary, but for web3, it would be more of a mandatory action. Looking deeper than studio-to-player relationships, though, if the game has the capacity for users to create content, then in the world of decentralized governance, users would be able to dictate both the type of content displayed to them and the type of content they can create. This is the goal for Shrapnel's creator tools on the platform — making a game for the users to develop alongside us.

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