Crypto Incentives for a Board & Card Games Cafe

The idea of a cafe for classic games remains novel and popular in our time. People passionate about board games and card games alike gather in cafes and live out their passions competitively, whether it’s a constantly updating game like Magic: The Gathering, or a timeless classic like checkers. In Poland, there is a well known online games cafe called “Kurnik” where tens of thousands of players are online at any given time playing card and board games like chess and backgammon.

Ultimately, one of the most appealing aspect of blockchain technology for the average non-industry person is crypto. And regardless of how much industry veterans enjoy blockchain for its novel nuances and radical potential in decentralization and governance everywhere, there will always be an significant amount of people who will view technology as a binary mechanism for making money. That’s not necessarily bad, and it might be smart, instead, to lean into that. A games cafe that builds a microtransaction / microstake model into an otherwise classic set of games could be a great point of adoption for blockchain on the flow network.

Ideally, players would microstake to begin games, and spectators would be able to tip players and place bets, where a fraction of the pot would go to the players. Contracts would be created to facilitate the games, keep the scores on chain, leaderboards on chain, and organize tournaments. Friendly games without stakes and no bets should also be available. Because the flow network is a great platform for game design, a decentralized games cafe for competitive play could see success.

These are simply ideas and nothing has been decided, but if you are interested in Team #17, please contact Mieszko at yellow#2936 or Nelson at nel.zen#5824 on discord.

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@Nelson This is a really interesting idea! I’m a big board gamer myself and I love board game cafes, but would love some way to find more competitive avenues to play games. I would definitely participate in this if it was easy enough to use. It might be another revenue stream for cafes, because I know a lot of them have a hard time making money with just selling food/drinks/games.

Or are you saying this would be more of a digital cafe app for playing games online?