The Interview With The Product Owner Of The Competitive Platform — The Project That Can Increase The Adoption Of MGO Tokens

Competitive platform — is a new project of MobileGo team that will help to increase MobileGo token adoption. It is an esports platform that unites gamers. Favorite custom games are now equipped with prizes in the GShare Gold or MobileGo currencies that you can exchange for free games and even professional gaming gear. On the esports platform game developers can join the tournament grid without any problems, and a transparent award system makes it easy to track your success. After the end of the beta test the team hopes to attract a lot of developers and game titles.

We spoke with Ivana, product owner of the esports platform, about the system of awards, charity and her personal view of the project.

What is the mission and vision of the project?

Mission and vision of our project are to entertain users providing them with casual games that they can play and by playing games and participating in the tournaments gamers can do some good.

Honestly, it is created for users to have a place where they can play their favorite games. Now there are 5 casual ones and we will add other titles in the future. There can be a lot of MGO or GShare Gold, or another stuff for them for free. And also they can use the received winnings or just an activity to support a charity organization, and so on.

What is the actual status of the platform and the version of it? Are there any updates that are coming soon, I mean in a couple of month?

So, currently we have 5 titles of casual games where players can play leaderboard tournaments.

Do you mean a beta-test?

Yes, I do. This is a beta-version. We have leaderboard tournaments. Anyone can join and play for GShare Gold. This is what we have, we started testing it. We plan to improve the entire notifications system, so basically we will update the notifications to make them more understandable. We also plan to hold one-on-one tournament. So, I can challenge you to a duel in one of the games that we support, we can both pay and extra fee for it and the winner gets everything or gets a part and gives the rest to charity. These are some kinds of plans for the future and for now we are planning to continue connecting with other parts of our ecosystem.

Are there some deadlines? Not exactly, just approximately.

Yes, it cannot be set in stone. In fact, we plan to finish the notifications and one-on-one mode by the end of January. In reality, the output may take place in February, but this much depends on testing.

And are there any plans besides notifications?

We will integrate more and more systems to meet the needs of the charity, so that users during the game can do more goods, and donate, and support more diverse charity events.

Is it planned after April?

Yes. And, of course, as we said above, we will integrate with the rest of the system and add more and more game content. Therefore, we are looking for more game titles so that people can play with more stuff.

What is interconnection between your project and GShare Gold?

Currently, you can take part in the GShare tournament only by paying a fee to GShare Gold, so GShareGold is used in our special system for participating in tournaments.

But your prizes are only in GShare Gold or..?

Not only in GShare Gold, also in MobileGo currency. Now we have free introductory tournaments where you can win GShare Gold, you can also earn it, but this is another ecosystem, and you use GShare Gold in our system only to enter GShare tournaments and then you can get GShare Gold or MobileGo currencies as a prize. Now it works like this, but of course in the future we will add more interesting features.

Ok, what is the targeting audience for the platform?

There is no clear answer. We plan to get casual players, so it does not matter if it is a child, an adult or an elderly person. Anyone who is basically a gamer or wants to try his hand at the game, does something in this whole ecosystem. This is basically what we aim to do. So there is no age or other limit.

But it’s not esports because esports has another audience.

Why not? (laughs) Yes, yes, completely. Personally, I prefer core games, but what we expect and want to do is to start with casual games and tournaments, because in this way we can reach a wider audience. In the future I will be glad to add new titles, but for core and hardcore games there is a certain audience, specific people who play it … If we started with such titles, we would not be able to attract as many people as we have now.

It is one part of the audience. The second one is developers. If anyone other than Xsolla wants to add his game to your system, will you add it?

Now there are no developers who want to add their games. We have a publisher account, which is now entirely occupied by Xsolla, but if any other company comes and says, “We want to integrate our game with you,” my team will do everything for integration, if it is possible.

And what is the value of the project for these two audiences?

This is the first time you can play games and do good, without visiting a specific website, making donations and so on. You just do something that entertains you and make a personal contribution to a good cause — and that is valuable.

The question that your audience will ask exactly — where do you get the money that we can give to charity by playing the game?

You do good through getting GShare Gold, so we are providing you the money like you are getting charity from us, you just need to be in GShare, that is it. You do not need to go to the website and donate, it is enough to take part in the tournament and if you win, you can take the prize or give it to charity.

But, if you make a donation, why don’t you just donate money to charity directly, why do you need this competitive platform?

The general idea of GShare is to show people how they can do good in many ways. An ordinary person rarely gives money for charity, but with us he can just come and play games, as usual, while doing a good deed. You don’t even have to donate your money directly, everything you do has its value. Therefore, we are trying to teach people that there are other ways to help someone, you do not need to give money directly

It is a more comfortable way, I think, than just giving money.

Yes, it is.

So it is profit for gamers and what is profit for game developers? Why do they need to join platform?

Basically, an access to a lot of users. And they take part in good deeds by helping charity. And they will have easy integrational system, where they can organize tournaments in their games. In addition, over time, many games eventually bore the players, they have almost nothing to do. Adding the competitive component is a solution. It helps game developers make users more engaged. This is the thing.

Are there any partnerships that make sense for this platform, besides partnership with the Xsolla?

If we talk about Xsolla, they have a lot of games, it is obvious. But what about other brands that have not been mentioned … As for the esports platform, any brands can communicate with us, and we can create tournaments for them. This applies not only to developers. If Microsoft writes us and says: “For making the tournament for 15 thousand people we will pay 15 thousand euros for charity,” we will fully support them. We will help them with the system of tournaments, we will help them create broadcasts and do other marketing things. Basically, this is a marketing channel, that, as far as I see it, can help brands like Coca-Cola who want to organize tournaments and do good things at the same time with our and their target audience.

What changes can this bring to our gaming industry?

If we create all this, a child of 15 years old can spend his day playing tournaments, and when his mother calls him and asks: “What are you doing?”, he can show her his progress: “Mom, I play and I do good. I help buy medicine and beat cancer. ” So, this is a kind of long-term goal for us, to show gamers, the entire gaming industry, that you can do good, you have the power to change the world. This is basically what we need.

How are you going to promote the project for game developers? At the moment you have some kind of audience, so what are the main profits you will present to developers to participate?

We currently have a program that very easy integrates with four or five games. We provide it to developers, and then they can freely integrate their games into our system.

But if you have no audience, what will be the impetus for them to start working with you?

If we do not have an audience, our goal is to show them what they are going to achieve in the future. I can’t answer for sure until we release it for game developers, until we have the right audience. That’s why we first launched the beta version. We will update it, we will add more features, and then we will start work with the promotional stuff, if it is an influential person or someone else. We get a database of users who are on the platform, and then, when we have it, we can talk about a result, do surveys.

I think you need to attract big influencing brands, and then others will come.

I fully agree with this, but I think we should do it gradually, step by step. We need to have a certain number of people on the platform and a specific involvement so that we can proceed to the next step, for game developers, for brands, and so on. If we turn to brands too early, without the audience of the right size, we will be just not paid attention to.

And now a personal question. What keeps you here?

Well, actually, I started playing games when I was maybe seven or five years old, very, very early. I have been doing this for years. I’m really a more core player, but I was very glad to see that gamers are starting to be perceived differently. This is one of the reasons. The second is that the platform is based on charity, and I try my best to help others. I basically want to say — I am a gamer and I want to help to make changes in the perception of the game, I want to be part of something new.

And why did you become the product owner?

I had been working during college years and when I graduated, I started a company that is essentially similar to what we are doing now in GShare, so we had tournaments and we were engaged in charity. I had my own company, which I co-founded, everything was going well and we were doing something interesting. We had a good idea, but then people who invested money came in our business. And when investors come in, the direction of the project changes, now I have nothing to do with it. Then the guys came to me and said: “We are interested, come here and make a similar product for casual games.” I was attracted by the opportunity to do something good as a gamer, and I became the owner of the product.

The creators of the Competitive platforms want gamers to change their attitude to charity with the help of their project. MobileGo will have its own profit, because with the increasing popularity of the platform the adoption of MobileGo tokens will increase too.