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Description
Visit the https://archive.devcon.org/ to gain access to the entire library of Devcon talks with the ease of filtering, playlists, personalized suggestions, decentralized access on Swarm, IPFS and more.
https://archive.devcon.org/archive/watch/6/dark-forest-lessons-from-3-years-of-on-chain-gaming/
We'll present an overview of learnings from 3 years of building and running Dark Forest, the first fully decentralized MMORTS, including: why ZK is important for games, what a crypto-native game is and why we should care, designing for emergent player behavior, pushing the limits of Ethereum devex, and social consensus and legitimacy - why is Dark Forest more like chess than League of Legends? We'll also hint at 0xPARC's next crypto-gaming experiments.
Speaker(s): gubsheep
Skill level: Intermediate
Track: UX & Design
Keywords: crypto-native,gaming
Follow us: https://twitter.com/efdevcon, https://twitter.com/ethereum
Learn more about devcon: https://www.devcon.org/
Learn more about ethereum: https://ethereum.org/
Devcon is the Ethereum conference for developers, researchers, thinkers, and makers.
Devcon 6 was held in Bogotá, Colombia on Oct 11 - 14, 2022.
Devcon is organized and presented by the Ethereum Foundation, with the support of our sponsors. To find out more, please visit https://ethereum.foundation/
A
A
So,
to
give
a
little
bit
of
context,
Xerox
Park
is
a
research
focused
organization
that
supports
a
network
of
teams
that
are
all
aiming
to
push
the
envelope
on
what
is
possible
to
build
on
blockchains
or
with
New
cryptographic.
Primitives
and
a
lot
of
these
experiments
started
with
dark
Forest,
which
is
a
part
of
the
Xerox
Park
Community.
A
So
today's
talk
is
nominally
about
Dark
Forest,
but
you
know
the
subject
or
the
question
that
I'd
really
like
to
answer.
Looking
back
on
three
years
of
running
this
game
is
what
can
projects
like
Dark
Forest
teach
us
about
Innovation
and
crypto?
More
broadly,
and
to
answer
that
first,
we
have
to
talk
a
little
bit
about
what
Dark
Forest
actually
is
so
summed
up
in
a
sentence.
Dark
Forest
is
a
decentralized
MMO,
RTS
game
built
with
ZK
snarks
on
ethereum,
now
that's
kind
of
a
mouthful.
A
A
Royale
contest,
where
thousands
of
players,
Bots
AIS
and
even
smart
contracts,
compete
head-to-head
for
Galactic
Supremacy
players
are
dropped
into
the
Universe
on
a
tiny
home
planet
and
they
must
Harvest
resources,
conquer
nearby
planets
and
interact
with
their
neighbors,
either
through
alliances
or
trade
or
negotiation,
or
even
war,
in
order
to
expand
their
Empires.
It's
a
hardcore
free-for-all.
Space,
themed
strategy,
game
and
rounds
can
get
pretty
intense.
A
The
thing,
though,
that
makes
Dark
Forest
different
from
your
typical
strategy
game
is
that
it's
entirely
run
on
an
evm
compatible.
Blockchain
this
means
that
all
of
the
game,
State
and
all
of
the
game
rules
are
actually
stored
in
smart
contracts,
rather
than
a
traditional
backend
server,
and
every
single
move
that
any
player
makes
is,
in
fact
an
on-chain
transaction,
because
the
game
is
so
complex
in
comparison
to
a
lot
of
modern
ethereum
applications
in
production.
A
The
other
key
mechanic
of
Dark
Forest
that
is
shared
with
a
lot
of
other
strategy
games,
is
that
much
of
the
Intrigue
in
the
game
comes
from
the
concept
of
hidden
information
or
information
asymmetry,
the
overall
Dark
Forest
universe
is
practically
infinite
and
it's
teeming
with
thousands
of
adversarial
players,
Bots
scripts,
smart
contract
players,
etc,
etc.
However,
individual
players
upon
joining
the
universe
only
have
access
to
a
very
small
slice
of
the
total
Universe
map,
and
this
is
exactly
what
gives
Dark
Forest
its
characteristic
or
namesake
sort
of
Dark
Forest
feeling
so
at
first.
A
It
might
seem
kind
of
paradoxical
that
we
can
have
this
on-chain
application,
where
there's
so
much
complex,
private
State
being
mutually
moved
around
by
different
parties,
especially
because
blockchains
are
systems
where
all
information
is
public
and
transparent.
In
other
words,
any
data
that's
stored
inside
of
a
smart
contract
is
something
that
anyone
can
access.
So
how
can
we
put
a
game
where
different
players
know
different
parts
of
the
map
on
the
blockchain?
A
Next
I
want
to
take
a
step
back
and
just
talk
a
little
bit
about
how
our
thinking
about
the
game
has
evolved
over
time.
So
we
started
working
on
Dark
Forest
back
in
2019,
and
it
started
off
as
just
a
pie
in
the
sky
experiment.
You
know,
let's
build
a
ZK
game
where
every
single
wasd
move
is
in
fact
a
blockchain
transaction,
triggering
a
ZK,
snark
proof
verification
on
chain.
A
A
We
did
some
benchmarking
and
we
estimated
that
on
ethereum
mainnet,
a
move
on
Dark
Forest
could
cost
anywhere
from
10
to
100,
US
dollars
and
players
might
need
to
make
up
to
thousands
of
Moves
In
order
to
meaningfully
interact
with
the
game.
So
we
originally
built
a
game
not
because
it
was
necessarily
like
possible
or
feasible,
but
it
was
an
intellectual
experiment
to
learn
more
about
the
tech
and
obviously,
from
a
cynical
or
skeptical
point
of
view,
it
would
have
seemed
like
pretty
much
a
useless
thing
to
do.
A
But
if
you
fast
forward
three
years,
A
lot
has
happened
since
over
10
000
players
from
around
the
world
have
participated
in
dark,
forced
rounds,
running
entirely
on
chain.
They've
collectively
spent
trillions
of
gas
on
robsten,
xdi
and
gnosis
chain,
and
a
rich
developer
ecosystem
has
emerged
for
player,
built
third-party
plug-ins,
alternate
clients,
GPU
miners
player
corporations,
data
marketplaces,
chain,
analysis
tools
and
more
and
we've
seen
some
epic
on-chain
dramas
featuring
deception,
betrayal,
universe-wide
alliances.
A
Summaries
of
this
story
is
this
thread
by
Will
Chang
on
Twitter,
where
he,
basically,
if
you
find
this
thread,
you
can
read
about
the
story
of
bitter
Rivals,
a
dream
of
Glory
betrayal
Redemption.
It's
kind
of
Awesome
and
Beyond
Dark
Forest,
we've
seen
this
entire
ecosystem
of
Next
Generation
application,
Level
r
d
in
the
broader
Xerox
Park
ecosystem
and
Beyond
sort
of
emerge,
oftentimes
taking
some
degree
of
inspiration
from
Dark
Forest
as
key
ideas
from
the
game,
have
clarified
and
been
built.
A
But,
to
be
quite
honest
for
me
personally,
these
ideas
are
pretty
much
the
least
interesting
parts
of
the
possibilities
of
crypto
gaming
I.
Think
that
there's
a
kernel
of
some
interesting
stuff
there,
however
I
think
also
90
of
it,
is
a
lot
of
times
inflated
by
hype
and
speculation
and
instead
I
think
that
crypto
native
games
are
powerful
because
they
have
this
property,
which
you
know
I
sort
of
in
my
own
head
label
as
permissionless
interoperability.
A
A
A
So
this
has
been
fascinating
to
see
over
time,
one
step
further
than
that.
You
have
the
idea
of
third-party
client
implementations
so
again,
Dark
Forest
or
any
crypto
native
game
starts
to
look
more
closely
like
resembling
a
protocol,
or
a
set
of
you
know,
rules
digital
physics,
that
various
people
will
subscribe
to
via
whatever
client
they
want,
and
this
is
an
example
of
a
client
that
Georgios
and
Kobe
Gerkin
built
for
Dark
Forest,
originally
built
in
Rust
now.
A
The
advantage
of
this
is
that
it
allows
you
to
play
Dark
Forest
in
your
terminal
and
it
offers
better
performance,
perhaps
than
the
typical,
the
you
know,
vanilla,
JavaScript
web
client,
in
that
you
can
generate
Stark
proofs
and
explore
the
universe
faster.
However,
this
comes
at
the
cost
of
having
a
nice
visual
UI.
A
Finally,
one
more
thing
on
the
client
side
that
I
want
to
explicitly
point
out
is
the
level
of
complexity
that
we
began
to
see
in
automations
and
Bots
programmed
by
players
to
play
the
game
again.
All
of
that
kind
of
activity
is
fair
game
on
Dark,
Forest,
Dark
forests,
smart
contracts
simply
specify
the
rules
or
almost
the
physics
of
the
universe
and
subject
to
following
those
rules.
You
can
do
almost
anything.
You
want
by
2022
some
top
players
had
built
tools
that
allowed
them
to
almost
entirely
abstract
away
the
base
level.
A
Gameplay
mechanics
of
Dark
Forest,
rather
than
making
individual
moves
players
were
instead
operating
these
more
complex
dashboards
of
higher
level
heuristics
and
strategies.
Things
like
press
a
button
to
distribute
silver
to
all
upgraded
planets
in
this
region.
These
scripts
would
then
translate
these
higher
level
strategies
and
to
base
their
moves,
and
at
this
point
players
were
basically
programming
their
own
gameplay
experiences.
A
To
illustrate
exactly
what's
going
on
here.
I
want
to
bring
up
a
hypothetical
example,
say
you're
playing
a
traditional
multiplayer
RPG
game,
and
you
want
to
see
a
new
feature
added
to
the
game,
so
this
might
be
a
game
like
Runescape
or
World
of
Warcraft,
or
you
might
imagine,
like
a
multiplayer
version
of
Pokemon
or
something,
and
let's
say
that
you
have
a
new
feature
that
you'd
like
to
see
implemented
of
the
game
like
player
to
player
trading.
A
Client
implementation,
that's
distributed
to
everybody
and
add
in
a
new
UI
component
like
a
button
or
something
that,
when
clicked
triggers
this
new
or
hits
this
new
API
route,
contrast
that
with
dark
Forest,
where
in
Dark
Forest
any
player
can
develop
an
escrow
or
Marketplace
contract
that
talks
to
the
core
Dark
Forest
contract.
They
can
then
deploy
this
contract
to
the
blockchain,
and
maybe
it
says
something
like
all
right.
A
Afterwards
they
can
write
a
JavaScript
plugin
that
allows
a
web
client
to
interact
with
this
Marketplace
contract
and
distribute
this
to
any
player
who
wants
to
opt
into
this
new
core
gameplay
feature
in
this
way.
Players
can
add
entirely
new
features
to
the
game
without
having
to
go
through
specially
permissioned
Developers.
A
So
the
broadcast
Market,
which
you
can
see
on
screen
right
here,
was
the
first
example
actually
of
a
feature
developed
in
this
way.
It
was
built
by
Blaine,
bubblitz
and
Jacob
Rosenthal,
and
what
it
allows
you
to
do
is
it
allows
you
to
ask
for
someone
to
broadcast
or
share
with
you
a
certain
set
of
map
information
for
a
fee.
A
Now
this
was
extended
earlier
this
year
with
Night
Market
built
by
Xerox
stage
and
prxyz,
which
is
a
trustless
ZK,
enabled
Marketplace
for
you
to
exchange
encrypted
data
with
other
players
on
the
map
again
for
a
fee,
and
we've
also
seen
several
groups
build
out.
Marketplace
contracts
for
in-game
items,
as
well
as
some
interesting
experiments
into
player
corporations
or
other
coordination
constructs.
So
on
the
screen.
Here
you
can
see
a
contract
called
astral
Colossus
built
by
DF
Dow
Dark
Forest
Dow,
so
this
was
really
cool.
A
Essentially,
the
dark
force
contract
does
not
distinguish
between
players
as
eoas
externally
owned
accounts
or
smart
contracts.
So
a
smart
contract
can
play
the
game
just
as
much
as
a
regular
player
can
play
the
game
and
the
astral
Colossus
was
essentially
a
smart
contract
player
that
anyone
could
contribute
to
our
pilot
and
in
just
48
Hours
of
its
operation.
It
reached
you
know
among
the
top
50
places
on
the
leaderboard,
with
contributions
from
dozens
of
players.
So
I
just
want
to
imagine,
like
you
know,
you're
playing
Dark
Forest
and
you
run
into
this
growing
amoeba.
A
That's
this,
like
crazy,
headless
organism,
amalgamation
of
dozens
of
individuals.
It's
super
interesting
to
speculate
on
on
how
these
kinds
of
things
might
evolve
going
forwards
and,
finally,
new
tools,
like
those
being
built
by
teams
like
lattice,
will
make
it
easy
for
players
to
even
add
in
new
rules
or
resource
types
to
the
games.
So
this
is
a
screenshot
from
a
mock-up
of
what
it
might
look
like
for
players
to
introduce
plugins
and
third-pity
contracts
that
add
in
their
own
game
modes,
side,
objectives
or
even
resource
types.
A
So,
to
sum
it
all
up,
what
is
permissionless
interoperability
mean
permissionless.
Interoperability
means
that
players
can
build
the
game
experience,
not
just
the
core
developers
and
this
unlocks
a
massive
range
of
new
kinds
of
affordances
in
Games,
built
in
this
fashion.
Okay,
so
I
think,
that's
mostly
my
answer
to
question
one.
Why
build
games
on
the
blockchain?
In
other
words,
what
can
blockchain
do
for
games?
The
second
question
that
I
think
is
also
very
instructive.
A
To
ask
is
why
build
games
on
the
blockchain,
in
other
words,
of
all
the
things
that
you
could
build
on
the
blockchain?
Why
bother
with
a
use
case?
Why
bother
with
an
application
that
doesn't
have
any
obvious
practical
use
case,
and
you
know
the
text
and
the
purple
sort
of
my
like
broader
interpretation
of
what
I
want
to
answer.
This
question
for
and
I
think
it's
a
big
question
to
ask
any
r
d
facing
org,
which
is
working
on
things
that
don't
have
a
concrete
practical
use
case.
A
A
A
A
So
we've
seen
a
few
examples
of
this.
A
few
early
examples
in
crypto
gaming.
Thanks
to
the
Community
Management
efforts
of
folks
like
Jordan
Spence,
classic
Jay
and
Ivan
we've
seen
various
crypto
native
player,
cooperatives
emerge
using
new
crypto,
enabled
mechanisms
for
governance,
voting
and
value
distribution.
A
The
crypto
space
currently
is
dominated
I
would
say
by
technologists
and
financiers
and
a
thriving
indie
game.
Community
can
potentially
help
to
bridge
the
gap
between
crypto
and
more
creatively,
leaning
folks,
such
as
artists,
writers,
thinkers
Etc,
introducing
critical
dimensions
of
intellectual
diversity.
That
crypto
doesn't
currently
have
and
I
think
that
this
kind
of
diversity
is
crucial
for
any
intellectual
movement
or
counterculture.
A
Historically,
many
creatives
have
been
extremely
turned
off
or
outright
hostile
to
crypto,
due
to
the
hyper
financialization
of
things
like
nfts,
but
by
really
showing
what
the
technology
makes
possible
and
what
permissionless
interoperability
makes
possible.
We've
been
finally
getting
some
indie
game
devs
to
come
around.
So,
for
example,
the
loudest
team
out
at
the
autonomous
world's
residency
has
been
pulling
together,
a
community
of
artists
and
creatives
in
London
to
introduce
proper
game
devs
and
creators
to
blockchain
technology.
A
A
So,
to
give
a
historical
example
that
I
think
sums
up
this
principle
very
nicely.
I
want
to
take
us
back
to
the
1970s
so
up
until
the
1970s
computers
themselves
were
commonly
conceived
of
as
these
like
monolithic
room-sized
beasts,
only
accessible
to
a
select
few
organizations
like
government
agencies
and
University
Labs,
simply
because
they
were
so
expensive.
A
The
idea
of
the
personal
computer
as
a
tool
for
personal
expression
and
Liberation
was
something
that
was
not
on
the
map
at
all,
until
researchers
at
Xerox,
Park,
basically
put
together
these
Xerox
Alto,
which
was
the
first
personal
computer,
somewhat
resembling
what
we
think
of
as
a
PC.
Today,
at
the
time
the
altar
seemed
like
a
colossal
waste
of
resources
and
money.
A
A
Also.
It
costs
like
twenty
thousand
dollars
per
unit
in
nineteen
seventy
dollars,
which
is
pretty
terrible,
but
Xerox
Park.
What
they
were
doing
was
they
were
looking
at
Moore's
Law
at
the
time,
and
they
correctly
predicted
that
all
of
these
resources
would
become
more
accessible
over
time
and
they
decided
to
skate
to
where
the
puck
was
going
and
in
doing
so,
they
quite
likely
either
altered
or
accelerated
the
trajectory
of
computing
technology
by
potentially
even
decades.
A
Steve
Jobs
and
Bill
Gates
in
later
decades
cited
Xerox
Park
as
the
inspiration
for
so
much
of
their
own
commercial
Visions
for
personal
Computing
technology.
Now
on
a
much
smaller
scale.
Again,
we
mentioned
how
three
years
ago,
Dark
Forest
and
various
other
experiments
started
as
pie
in
the
pie
in
the
sky,
experiments
and
we've
seen
firsthand
how
around
and
then
finding
out
has
been
so
valuable
to
us
in
enabling
us
to
uncover
new
research
directions
or
New
Dimensions
for
crypto
applications
to
really
take
the
stage
in
the
coming
years.
A
Another
interesting
that
I've,
taken
away
from
watching
Dark
Forest
evolve
is
a
mental
model
which
I
think
of
in
my
head
as
a
dichotomy
between
systems
and
tools.
So,
to
give
an
example
of
what
I
mean
or
to
explain
what
I
mean
by
systems
versus
tools
and
the
particular
usage
here,
I'll
give
a
few
examples.
A
So
this
is
a
screenshot
from
battle.net,
which
is
Blizzard's
launcher
for
a
number
of
very
popular
AAA
games
such
as
Warcraft
or
sorry
World
of
Warcraft
Starcraft
Etc.
Each
of
these
games
has
a
clearly
defined
canonical
game
mode
set
of
rules
ranking
system.
You
know,
methods
of
interacting
with
the
game.
It's
a
pretty
prescriptive
thing
that
tells
you
exactly
how
you
can
and
can't
interact
with
Battle.net
and
it's
a
very
well
engineered,
very
large
monolithic
system.
A
Similarly,
this
is
a
screenshot
from
the
Facebook
homepage.
Facebook
itself
is
also
a
monolithic
system
and
they've
specifically
engineered
ways
that
you
are
permitted
to
interact
with
other
participants
and
components
of
the
system.
How
you
can
log
in
and
authenticate
how
you
can
message
other
people
and
even
what
API
routes
you're
permitted
to
access
and
how
frequently
you're
permitted
to
access
them.
In
both
of
these
examples,
Battle.net
and
Facebook,
we
see
monolithic
systems
that
are
disproportionately
engineered
to
serve
the
goals
and
visions
of
a
particular
group.
A
On
the
other
hand,
dark
force
has
found
many
of
its
coolest
and
most
unexpected
outcomes
as
a
result
of
building
tools
for
users.
Tools,
as
opposed
to
systems,
are
small,
modular
and
accessible
things
that
aren't
overtly
prescriptive
in
their
use.
A
tool
invites
a
user
to
uncover
their
own
visions
and
use
cases
and,
in
our
case,
the
dark
force,
plugins
tool
chain
and
many
of
the
other
developer
tools
that
we
built
enabled
people
to
do
all
sorts
of
those
creative,
crazy,
creative
experiments
that
we
saw
earlier
in
this
presentation.
A
Don't
think
systems
at
least
as
I'm
referring
to
them
are
necessarily
better
or
worse
than
tools,
they're
quite
necessary
for
the
world
to
function,
but
there's
a
time
and
a
place
where
you
either
want
to
be
Building,
Systems
or
building
tools
and
early
on
in
a
Technology's
life
cycle.
Before
you
can
predict
all
of
this
serendipitous,
Innovations
or
second
order
effects
of
the
technology.
I
think
it's
important
to
focus
on
tools
because
tools,
Empower
people,
future
generators
of
innovators
to
express
their
own
visions
that
are
unpredictable
to
us
today,
with
crypto
native
gaming.
I.
A
So
the
final
note
that
I
want
to
end
on
is
the
importance
of
playing
what
some
people
call
the
infinite
game.
So
this
is
a
term
coined
by
James
P
carce,
a
religious
scholar
in
his
book,
finite
and
infinite
games,
which
I
highly
recommend
to
anyone.
Who's
never
heard
of
it.
In
this
book,
cars
basically
puts
forward
the
idea
that
there
are
two
kinds
of
games,
finite
games
and
infinite
games.
A
A
finite
game
is
played
for
the
purpose
of
winning
think
of
a
sports
match
or
a
political
election
or
an
Mev
arbitrager.
Conversely,
infinite
games
are
games
that
are
played
for
the
purpose
of
continuing
the
play.
To
me,
this
means
engendering
Innovation
experimenting
with
new
rule
sets
and
ways
of
collaborating
and
developing
new
tools
for
continued
creative
expression.
A
I
think
that
dark
Forest
has
done
a
good
job
of
representing
what
it
might
look
like
to
participate
in
the
infinite
game
that
is
ethereum
and
I'll
wrap
this
up
with
a
quote
from
Tony
Goss
at
DF
Dao,
where
he
outlines.
The
philosophy
of
the
dfl
player
Group,
which
is
to
play
Dark
Forest,
is
to
build,
is
to
build
on
Dark
Forest.