For small indie game developers, the advent of Apple’s App Store and Google Play has proven to be both a blessing and a curse.
While one-man bands were able to upstage some of the world’s largest game publishers initially – Flappy Bird, anyone? – established studios have started to catch up, with competition in the marketplace rife and high commission fees eating into already tight profit margins.
However, a decentralized “crypto arcade playground” is hoping to help smaller creators survive and succeed by enabling them to target gamers through blockchain – giving them a chance to market and monetize their games while clamping down on piracy.
PlayGame says developers on its platform keep 100 percent of their revenue, a far cry from so-called “Goliath” platforms that take up to 30 percent of earnings.
Its system will allow any developer to introduce their very own token economy in the games they release – enabling them to reward regular players with coins and introduce pool prizes for tournaments and other multiplayer games.
Taking the platform to the next level
The company says it wants to benefit developers and their fans through two key building blocks. Firstly, it plans to launch PlayGame.com – a direct-to-play HTML5 gaming platform which aims to “simplify marketing and distribution.” Through this website, players will be able to access new games from their PCs or smartphones without needing to download an app.
PlayGame is also going to tap into the growing appetite for crowdfunding through a custom-built platform known as the FunFund Initiative. It’s hoped this will enable developers to reach out to cryptocurrency holders who are looking to support indie developers.
In its white paper, the startup says that it has a team of more than 20 industry experts driving the PlayGame website – all of whom share a vision of enabling entrepreneurs to “convert their game ideas into fully functional games that can be enjoyed by millions of people regardless of their location, origin, game devices or socioeconomic status.”
Developers would be able to receive “fair” payments, while advertisers would benefit from “transparency” as the company claims the metrics used for gauging clicks and impressions through current mainstream platforms are “highly misleading.”
PlayGame says the crypto world’s potential for gaming has already been proven through ventures such as CryptoKitties, where players are able to buy and sell rare collectibles. In particular, the startup is interested in targeting the Japanese market.
The company’s CEO, Anton Soeharyo, founded TouchTen – which PlayGame describes as “one of the most successful mobile companies in Indonesia” after releasing more than 50 titles and amassing in excess of 50 million downloads. It claims one TouchTen product, Infinite Sky, made it into the top 10 downloads chart on Apple’s App Store in 43 territories.
Game on
Between now and the end of the year, PlayGame is planning to further develop its platform – paving the way for its website to undergo a soft launch in the first half of 2019. Illustrating its business model, the company says that gamers would need to use PXG tokens in order to participate in time-limited events, such as a sudoku tournament. While 90 percent of these fees would be returned to players in payouts, the remaining 10 percent would be divided between developers and PlayGame on a ratio of 50/50.
A total of 600 million PXG tokens are going up for sale – and a third of them were reserved for the pre-token sale which began back on Sept 10 and have sold out in 5 days. The full token sale, with the remaining 400 million tokens, began two weeks later on Sept 24. It is scheduled to conclude on Oct 22.
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