China's annual gaming convention, ChinaJoy, opened on Friday in Shanghai. This year one new topic caught our reporter's eye - the increased presence of blockchain technology in game development. Mi Jiayi's been checking things out.

Despite the typhoon alerts, game lovers swarmed this year's ChinaJoy. Right alongside the game convention are a series of forums, including one on blockchain technology for game developers. You might remember that earlier this year a virtual cat got a lot of attention in a blockchain game called Crpytokitties. Eventually, prices for the kitties went as high as 140,000 US dollars, as players bred and traded them. What made the virtual felines valuable was the uniqueness of each one. So far the game has turned out 900,000 cats, and the details of each individual one is logged and distributed across all the players' databases. It's believed to be one of the first games developed with blockchain technology.

BENNY GIANG, CO-FOUNDER CRYPTOKITTIES "For us we thought that why not use entertainment as a way to introduce this technology. If we look back to the nearest history, Facemash which is a really really big app for Facebook in the early days, it actually drew 50% of the traffic to Facebook and it also attracted moms and international audiences to Facebook. So if you look at that, games are kind of the drivers to new platform shifts."

The success of Cryptokitties has inspired other blockchain game developers, including many in China. They're working with blockchain platforms like Nebulas and Ethereum, and so far China can claim some six to seven thousand games. What's so different about blockchain games?

HAN LEI, HEAD OF INVESTMENT AND LABS NEBULAS "First it will give ppl real incentives with real economic benefit to create games, second block chain technology will make it possible for ppl to use the same game characters across multiple games. You can build the reputation for your game character and use that character across a multitude of games or game networks. Thirdly, block chain tech will reduce hacks for gamers, with block chain enabled gaming, the risk of hacking is very low."

Wu Xiao is one of the earliest Chinese game developers to create blockchain games. He said China is lagging behind other countries in the field, but since the overall market is so new, there are still plenty of opportunities.

WU XIAO, GAME DEVELOPER CELL EVOLUTION "I think in a market that's not yet matured, companies will have bigger chances of success. In the traditional gaming industry, the resources are monopolized by big companies, but with blockchain and gaming, there are just so many opportunities here. It's worth trying out."

MI JIAYI, REPORTER SHANGHAI "While developers of blockchain games are excited about the potential, are China's game lovers ready for it? We've been asking around to see if it's on the radar for the gamers here at ChinaJoy.

"I haven't heard about blockchain games before. I might be interested, if the game characters could be mine forever, I might be able to turn them into real money one day."

"I think most of the blockchain products, websites, game and apps are in the middle of a bubble, so I'm pretty skeptical about it all."

Blockchain games might still have a long way to go before they can take a bigger slice of ChinaJoy. There certainly weren't many blockchain companies with booths at this year's event. But still there will be plenty of fun for game lovers, as this year's ChinaJoy will run through next Monday.