In Singapore, all pre-university students must take a subject titled Project Work so that they learn how to cooperate with others and come up with innovative ideas to address real-world issues. Now, I don't know if you believe that creativity can be taught, but I was a Project Work teacher for three years. Then, I made use of various tools to help stretch my students' creativity. Having learned about CryptoKitties, I can't help but think that it would be a perfect example for me to use in my classroom.
For the uninitiated, CryptoKitties is arguably one of the leading NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens) that have captured the world by storm in recent years. You may be surprised to learn that the first version was already conceptualized by their developers, Axiom Zen during an Ethereum hackathon held in Waterloo way back in 2017.
Combining Two Things Together
One way of enhancing our creativity is to combine two seemingly unrelated objects in interesting ways so as to generate a unique product. This Axiom Zen developers have done awesomely. The team was already energized by the possibility of creating personalized tokens so that they could represent individual "things" and not currencies. However, the question arose as to what thing they should focus on. The enterprising designers had a brainwave - cat videos often go viral on the Internet, for people can't resist their haughty and individualistic and adorable selves. Why not integrate personalized tokens and cats to create a series of collectible cats?
Making Each CryptoKitty Exclusive
It's easy to capture people's attention with a novel product but how do you sustain their interest for the longer term? Here, I think the Axiom Zen developers have thought through the issue of audience engagement rather well. You see, each CryptoKitty has its unique genome. This means that each of them has their original genes and idiosyncratic attributes. The game involves users nurturing and breeding two CryptoKitties. When two CryptoKitties are breeded, they "give birth" to an offspring that boasts attributes that are inherited from its parents. This process really encourages players to invest themselves emotionally because who wouldn't want to know how the offspring would look like? It's like waiting with bated breath for your furkid - only that this one is in the digital realm. Also, the fact that there is ony one such CryptoKitty in the entire Metaverse: priceless.
Do you agree that CryptoKitties is a stroke of genius? Do you own CryptoKitties yourself?
