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 “I think that we’re just in the final days of a long transition away from the old retail-centric game release model. Good times ahead.” – Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney

It seems that Ripple clicked with the above stated Sweeney’s thinking about the revolution in gaming and that it is time for the “brave and lucky to have a bright future.”

Ripple And Forte Developing The In-Game Items Marketplace

I bet most of you remember childhood days and exchanging or selling baseball cards. Collecting the cards that reflect your favorite game had a special flavor to it and even today, brings back some nice memories. While estimating the value of a card, you would look at the player, the print year, the condition the card is in, how rare it is. The rarest cards would have the highest value. And what makes the card rare? The number of cards in circulation. I was reminded about this while exploring the subject of this text, since Ripple and Forte are planning to put the items from games in circulation on their special marketplace. To think how big a leap the technology has taken in few decades!

To the excitement of XRP fans and gamers, Ripple has recently announced partnership with gaming start-up Forte in development of games that use Ripple technology, XRP token included. Reportedly, Ripple’s Xpring initiative will invest $100 million in XRP in the project itself. The amount is intended for developers only, experienced in gaming, as an incentive to make great games, as well as to build game-related economies. What this actually means is that they have a plan to develop the trading market for in-game digital goods. And not just any goods, but every item would be unique, as the tokens would be pinned to them. Such unique items would be available for buying and trading by using smart contracts. Forte has reportedly issued a statement claiming that the goal of the entire project is to create “the game-based economies that more closely mirror our experience in real economies”.

Setting The Rules & Running on Blockchain

Now, from the player’s perspective, the important thing is that he or she would be in a position to own the in-game assets and to trade with them. The rules applied at this marketplace would be pre-set by developers, who would also be deciding on the premiums. The more time and energy players invest in collecting the items, the game dynamics is increased, and hence the market will spread.  We are all witnessing the tendencies to exclude the so-called “middle man” whenever possible, in every industry known to us. This is a way to cut the costs, and modern technology provides the means to do it, while making all processes transparent and secure more than ever before. In that respect, the mentioned marketplace would cut out third parties, assets would be easily tracked and verified with all owners participating and transactions would be done legally, transparently, while protecting the user’s anonymity.

As gaming is part of the entertainment industry, where companies strive to provide the ultimate gaming experience, the goal of this project is to make this process fun and to secure the gaming experience and trading run smoothly. There would be no complex issues and gamers would not need to worry about the blockchain technology running in the back.

Additionally, the public has also been informed that Xpring and Forte have a plan to include various cryptos and enable flow across various blockchains by developing an easy-to-use wallet which would be able to facilitate cross-chain transactions using Interledger. Sounds awfully complex, right? But it is not. To put it simply: apart from trading with XRP, the marketplace would accept other cryptocurrencies as well, and trading would be possible with users of other platforms as well. Again, this is the technical issue and a good thing to know if you are a developer or more interested in how the systems runs from within. If you are a player, yours is to relax, enjoy the game, collect the items, and trade….

Need we say that all transactions on Forte platform would be settled in XRP? This fact is believed to bring benefits to Ripple, especially if we take into consideration that the gaming industry should earn over $100 billion globally in 2019, according to some predictions. There are reviews that agree on the fact that XRP is the right choice for this project, due to its speed, finality, liquidity and low cost.

There Are Rarely “Pros” Without “Cons”

As with all other things in life, there are voices highlighting the negative aspects of this endeavor. Namely, some believe that Ripple has took on a difficult task to persuade the gaming industry that peer-to-peer economies are not the thing to be afraid of, and that by enabling gamers to buy the in-game items would not lead to decrease of buying the items from video game providers. William Quigley, CEO of OPSkins and WAX called this a “flawed logic” and made a clever comparison with the car industry, claiming that it operates just fine in spite of the fact that you can sell your car after purchasing it from a dealer. However, he feels “it’s still an obstacle encountered in the gaming world, where only a tiny, tiny percentage of video games offer virtual items that players can own and trade with each other.”

As a reminder, Forte is known for its mobile gaming company Kabam, while its cofounder Brett Seyler comes with experience in companies such as GarageGames, Unity, BeyondGames. Among the investors we found name such as Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, Coinbase Ventures, 16z Crypto.