Play-to-Earn vintage-style games complete with Bitcoin payouts may soon start making an appearance at venues near you, according to a Twitter post by Christian Moss, the founder of Zebedee. For now, the new software is being referred to as “Bit-tendo.”
The social media post included a video of an individual playing the Super Mario video game on a small, vintage tube-style television. The television shows a QR code and requests a Bitcoin payment. Once the payment has been sent, the game begins.
While playing the game, a counter is shown that appears to tally the total number of Sats the player has been awarded. Sats, or Satoshi’s, are the smallest divisible unit of Bitcoin, equal to 0.00000001BTC each. The display additionally includes a countdown timer that runs from 90 seconds down to zero. When the timer reaches zero, the game comes to an end and a QR code is shown.
A statement shown at both the top and bottom of the image suggests that the QR code can be used by the player to withdraw the Sats that they’ve earned. In the Twitter post, Moss stated that the new software will ultimately “be a free retro game bitcoin infuser for bars, conferences, meet-ups, etc.”
In a recent interview with Cointelegraph, Christian Moss explained that the software can run on a PC or other types of devices that are able to accept video feeds. The game was produced using an actual Nintendo Entertainment System, but the video has been altered to show the Sats counter and countdown timer.
The software keeps track of movements within the video feed to ascertain whether the player has indeed collected a coin and then updates the counter whenever a coin has been collected. In order to add funds to the payout wallet, Moss stated that the venue owner would need to create a custodial wallet with a company such as Zebedee or LNBits. That wallet would be connected to the Bitcoin Lightning Network, which offers highly affordable transaction fees and quick payment processing.
The Zebedee application is currently available on both the Google Play and Apple stores. Screenshots of the app reveal that it offers “top up” and “cash out” functions that can be used only after the end-user goes through the Know Your Customer identity verification process.
Moss went on to explain how he was able to come up with the concept of “Bit-tendo.” He explained that he had attempted to attract interest in Bitcoin Play-to-Earn games at cryptocurrency conferences but discovered that most preferred playing games they were already familiar with rather than those that are designed in-house. Moss added that he intends to make the software compatible with a wide variety of games, not just Super Mario:
“I want to also let the user be able to train the software to recognize events in any game they may have ultimately making it game agnostic.”
In his Twitter post showing off the new software, Moss revealed that he would be willing to integrate Sonic the Hedgehog: Part 2 if the post received 200 retweets, which it did receive.
Moss has been a pioneer in the area of blockchain gaming since its beginning. In 2014, he developed Sarutobi, a video game that permitted players to earn Bitcoin by controlling the movements of a monkey as it went swinging across a jungle. Because that game predated the launch of EverdreamSoft’s Spells of Genesis by roughly a year, Sarutobi is often viewed as being the very first blockchain game ever invented.