Eric Schiermeyer noticed that players were investing hundreds of hours and dollars into video games, but at the end of the day users did not own any of their work or payment for their ideas and suggestions. Schiermeyer wanted to change this and founded Gala Games, a decentralised games distributor.
Gala Games has published two games so far, with eight others in development. Unlike a development team that chooses projects depending on industry trends, Gala Games decides its next project through community votes.
This article will show you about what is gala and what is a gala used for.
What is Gala (GALA) ?
Gala Games is on a mission to make blockchain games that players actually want to play. Games that incorporate blockchain technology, whether that is earning cryptocurrencies through playing or trading non-fungible tokens (NFTs), have been exploding in popularity over the past year. But Gala Games has noticed a trend – namely, that much of the time, the gameplay experience is not prioritised.
This is clearly a founding principle for Gala Games, as its website said: “We believe the blockchain should be invisible in our games. We use simple game mechanics that all players can enjoy, whether or not they consider themselves to be blockchain pros.”
Another key principle for the Gala Games team is giving ownership to the players and being one of the first decentralised games developers. There is a major disruption happening in the gaming sphere, where players are taking back ownership. In traditional games, players can spend thousands of hours and hundreds of dollars without actually owning anything. Their progress and investment could be taken away from them with the click of a button.
Setting out to change this, Gala Games launched in 2019. Founder Eric Schiermeyer was also the co-founder of Zynga, a popular mobile games company. Schiermeyer has previously launched popular hits including Mafia Wars and Farmville. But in July 2019 he decided to create a blockchain-based game network that gave players ownership of their games.
From spaceships to farms, Gala Games uses NFTs to give players ownership over what they earn from playing. This puts control and ownership back in the hands of the players. In keeping with its decentralised mission, Gala Games is run on the Ethereum network, which means that the team is unable to take anything away from players.
How does Gala work?
Gala Games is carrying this decentralised goal into its roadmap as well. It wants the community to have a say in the development of its games. This is being done through users running Gala Nodes, which support the network in return for the native cryptocurrency, exclusive NFTs and voting power.
There is a triple-proof node system consisting of three different consensus protocols that support the Gala network.
The Proof-of-Work protocol provides the computer power that runs the system. The hardware systems that run this protocol are called Founder Nodes, as they are the early supporters of the Gala network.
Proof-of-Stake is used for paid nodes that operate specific games, through renting smart contracts.
Proof-of-Storage is used for free nodes that allow games to be hosted on the node system, as it provides storage capabilities. This removes the reliance on centralised storage and hosting solutions.
Node owners will be able to vote on what games should be added to the platform. For example, last month Gala Games proposed a new adventure game called Betwixt and is allowing only Founder Nodes to vote on it.
Although the voting date has not been announced, a blog post revealed the question: “Should Betwixt be funded $1m USD from the Gala Games $100m Game Development Fund and be given an opportunity to be included in the Gala Games Ecosystem?”
What is a GALA used for?
Gala Games wanted to make the process of buying NFTs on the marketplace convenient and secure. This is the goal of the gala (GALA) token: to ensure the transfer of digital goods or in-game items can be paid and settled easily.
The gala (GALA) token runs on Ethereum and the Binance Smart Chain. As well as peer-to-peer transactions, it is rewarded to the nodes that power the Gala ecosystem.
According to Etherscan, there is a max supply of 37 billion GALA, with 6.98 billion GALA currently in circulating supply. Between 21 July 2021 and 20 July 2022, 17.1 million GALA were or will be distributed daily.
However, every year on 21 July the daily distribution of the GALA cryptocurrency will be halved. That means there will be a daily distribution of 8.5 million GALA every day from 21 July 2022 to 20 July 2023.
The GALA coin launched in September 2020 at $0.001, and for the first three months struggled to get past its launch price. On 17 September 2021, GALA coin managed to break past the $0.1 barrier. The GALA cryptocurrency kept gaining and on 26 November it reached its all-time high of $0.83.
The token has been especially bullish over recent months, after announcing new plans for its ecosystem. While it has lost some of these gains, it is currently up 30% in a recent seven-day period and is sitting at $0.08.
The Gala Games ecosystem
Gala Games has recently announced plans to launch its very own blockchain. The main reason behind this is to overcome Ethereum’s obstacles, specifically its slow speed and gas fees.
It has also revealed that it is expanding its ecosystem. The game studio launched its own NFT music site titled Gala Music in February 2022. Its mission is to empower artists and support emerging musicians. Creators are able to mint and distribute their music along with earning profits from NFT sales. Snoop Dogg was one of the latest musicians to announce NFT drops on the site.
As Gala Games grows its offerings, having its own blockchain will allow the platform to have a larger say over its future. It wrote in a recent blog post: “With the recent launch of Gala Music and announcement of our intentions to greatly expand the Gala Ecosystem into the Gala World, the stakes are higher than ever for the development of our proprietary blockchain. We have built something that will power the vast Gala World.”
Gala Games review
After the success of Decentraland and Axie Infinity, there is clearly a market for crypto gaming. But does Gala Games have what it takes to become a leader in the industry?
Investing seems to think so. It said that the blockchain gaming pioneers are yet to be defined, and that “Gala Games shows a lot of promise to become one of them”. It argued that real gameplay will attract a mass audience of gamers.
However, Altcoin Buzz has highlighted a lot of risk factors that accompany Gala Games. It said that Gala Games has only listed eight games, with only two of them available to play right now, as the rest are still in development. The other games might show promise, but there is no way to know how they will perform.
There is also a blurry roadmap about when these new games will be released. Altcoin Buzz said: “Gala doesn’t have a good white paper, so we must depend on its Medium posts and support website for factual information. Furthermore, the developmental roadmap for the ecosystem is also in grey.”
From its website and Medium posts, it is clear that Gala Games is dedicated to its core principles of fun, decentralised gameplay. But investors have been waiting a while for its new games to be released.
The recent referral rewards could influence more players to join its platform. Yet only time will tell if the Gala network is able to juggle its gaming studio along with building its own music platform and blockchain.
Hope this article can help you get a further understanding about what is gala and what is a gala used for.
