In summary
- A week-long competition called the “Doom Olympics” with a $15,000 prize pool, organized by Cryptocurrency gaming project RIVES, kicked off on Thursday.
- RIVES has created the “Doom Olympics” with seven challenges that offer new ways to test players’ skills in the iconic shooter.
- Until September 19, players will be able to play Doom in the browser, with every element of gameplay being permanently recorded on the Cartesi network.
Think you’re good at the classic shooter Doom? This Thursday, a week-long, fully on-chain competition called the “Doom Olympics” kicked off with a $15,000 prize pool.
Cryptocurrency gaming project RIVES has previously put “every aspect” of retro games like Tetris on the Cartesi Blockchain—an Ethereum-based scaling network that uses Linux rollups—as well as Base, the Ethereum layer-2 network incubated by Coinbase. In doing so, every move, score, and interaction is recorded and can be verified.
With such a solid track record of in-game action, RIVES—short for RISC-V Verifiable Entertainment System—has created the “Olympics of Doom” with seven challenges that offer intriguing new ways to test players’ skills in the iconic first-person shooter.
By participating in in-game contests like Knuckle Crusher and Treasure Seeker—each of which puts a different spin on the classic experience—as well as social activities like referring friends, players have the chance to win a share of the $15,000 total prize pool.
id Software, the original developer of Doom, is not directly involved in the project, as RIVES opted to use the “Freedoom” version of the game, which overlays open-source assets on top of the Doom engine.
Until September 19, players will be able to play Doom in the browser, with every element of gameplay being permanently recorded on the Cartesi network. Each match will be replayable through a RIVES feature called “tapes” that is similar in approach to classic Doom speedruns. The team explained that this will help ensure fairness and create a new standard of trust.
This attempts to address an issue that the speedrunning community has faced for some time now. When competing remotely, it is possible for players to cheat during matches and fake their supposed feats, casting doubt on the entire premise of speedrunning and negatively impacting those players who are legitimately setting records.
This has happened many times in the past, such as when a player faked the world record for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance’s Blade Wolf DLC during an online charity event. This cheater edited videos to make it look like they had completed the game in record time in a single, fluid run, but they actually didn’t.
By recording every move on-chain, allowing the resulting “tape” to be replayable by anyone, the theory is that players will be unable to cheat.
“This removes the need to rely on third-party intermediaries to validate scores or gameplay, allowing for decentralized verification of speedruns and the use of canonical, persistent leaderboards,” Max Hatesuer, co-founder of RIVES, told Decrypt GG.
“Furthermore, this opens up exciting possibilities for custom rule creation and modifications,” he added. “For example, anyone could design a contest where only hits count, or one where speed is the only criterion, with the assurance that all plays are validated in a decentralized manner.”
Doom has become a running joke as it can be played on just about everything from pregnancy tests to ATMs, not to mention robot lawnmowers and gut bacteria. There have also been versions recorded on the Bitcoin and Dogecoin blockchains, though it’s really just a storage medium; the games themselves didn’t benefit from on-chain functionality.
“We also noticed that while Doom runs on almost every platform, no one has managed to bring it on-chain,” Hatesuer said. “Cartesi’s RISC-V VM and rollup infrastructure made it possible, and we took up the challenge.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward
GG Newsletter
Get the latest web3 gaming news, hear directly from gaming studios and influencers covering the space, and receive power-ups from our partners.
Crypto Keynote USA
For the Latest Crypto News, Follow ©KeynoteUSA on Twitter Or Google News.