Joined Hoard: August 2018
LinkedIn: Bartlomiej Ochnio
Twitter: @R0argh
“Being creative is not about having an idea. It’s about creating things from this idea. Even simple ideas take a lot of work.”
What he was doing before Hoard
Bartek was studying social policy and law when he got a part-time job at a game studio and fell in love with game design.
He started his career as a tester and providing development support before he began working at Juggler Games as a lead programmer.
What he will be doing at Hoard
Bartek’s role is to show game developers what the possibilities are of using blockchain in games. To do this, he will be prototyping demos to showcase to potential partners, as well as helping existing partners to better answer this question: What interesting things can we do with blockchain in games?
“Blockchain is an expensive technology, so there must be a reason to use it. On the other hand, there are some things that only blockchain can do. My job is to explore that.”
Where do you get your inspiration?
“From everywhere. You can get ideas from anything that interacts with each other. For example, you can observe that people like to deceive each other so there are a lot of board games based on this.”
What sorts of games do you admire?
“I like games with very simple rules or systems that allow players a high degree of freedom and autonomy that they can apply their own ingenuity to. This is one of the holy grails of design that few games manage to achieve.
It’s interesting when gamers ‘crack’ a game and find an exploit. The game then becomes an interaction between the players, developers and the game itself. Game developers set rules in place but they cannot foresee all implications and interactions. Players explore this and find interesting synergies or loopholes. This often results in the creation of ‘meta-rules’ that are not necessarily enforced by the game but that all players abide by. In these situations, game developers should observe and learn as it can give the game an interesting new direction.”
Give us a good example of this…
“The ‘Zergling Rush’ attack in Starcraft I was an early, all-in attack that was very powerful. At the time, RTS (real-time strategy) games were played such that you gather resources, build the base, build the big army and then kill an opponent. However, this attack allowed the ‘Zerg player’ to win quickly at a very early stage of the game. At first glance, this is a broken mechanic as it allowed the player to win most of the time. It even went so far such that the players had to have ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ not to use it and play ‘properly’.
However, the players on whom the ‘Zergling Rush’ attack was being used figured out that they can build production facilities on choke points to create walls. This made their bases impenetrable very quickly. Again, the game’s developers had not intended for these buildings to be defensive structures.
This is a good example of where both groups of players found new ways to use existing rules in a game to develop strategies that made gameplay more exciting and inventive.”
What do you think are the challenges to making blockchain games?
“There are a few challenges. The most interesting games are real-time applications, however, there are issues with the current level of transaction throughput on the blockchain. Even if there is a one second delay, that is a big problem.
Also, the cost of storage is high, so you want to be picky about what gets stored on the blockchain and what doesn’t.
There is always the question: Why would I use the blockchain? How is it better? Those are the main issues right now. We have a ways to go towards answering this question however, I think that we will be able to come up with some good solutions.”
What characteristics of blockchain make for interesting games?
“Right now, I’m thinking about the sorts of games in which you can build a game economy in an interesting way. Most MMOs are building on the ‘emergence effect’ — give players a lot of freedom in their interactions, then you have small decisions that have a long-term effect on the community, like a ripple effect.
Players putting their real money in games is interesting. This is inevitable with blockchain (ie. players buying items), but the key is to create a game where it is pay to play but not pay to win. EVE Online is a good example of such a game. Paying gives players an advantage, however, not at a low level and not massively so. The reason for this is because players need to produce the items in EVE. Say, if you want 7 Titan spaceships, somebody in the game needs to put in thousands of hours of work.
Crossplay between games is also interesting. For example, you could have two games and what happens in one can affect the other, or items or game currency secured in one game can be used in another. However, the downside to this is if that if one game is exploited, so can the other be.”
What are you most excited about this role?
“Creating games! Designing them and working with game designers on coming up with cool ideas.”
Do you think it will be hard to convince game developers to use blockchain in their games?
“My job is to propose ideas and show opportunities, not to tell them what they should or should not do. I believe that we will get developers on board by leading by example.”
What is are some golden rules as a game developer?
- “Finish your game. There is no point if you don’t execute.
- Don’t get too attached to your stuff. You are barely right the first time. You have to be able to take criticism because you’re going to get criticized a lot and if you can’t handle criticism from your co-workers, just see what happens when your game goes live and the community lets you know what they think. 😉”
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