IOU.io industry focus 1 of 4: Gaming

By Edward W. Mandel

Let’s change things up a little.

Since starting this Medium blog, I’ve tended to address broader topics in ecommerce. Whether it was how a disruptor such as Amazon is vulnerable to being disrupted itself or how the digital marketplace enabled emerging markets to catch up to the developed world, these subjects are much more interesting than “Buy our tokens!” (We’re really excited about our IOUX sale, so ask me anything about that, but that’s not why you read this blog and not why I write it.)

Today, though, we’re going to do something new. In this first of four articles in a series, we’ll examine the state of play of the gaming industry. We’ll follow that up in this space with posts on travel, fashion and on-demand services.

But onto the case at hand. What can the gaming industry teach us about how to reinvent ecommerce?

It’s all fun and games at first

You might recall that, last week, I told you about an IOU colleague who saw firsthand how smartphones helped South Africans surpass Americans as technology adopters. This same fellow — a humble sort who’d prefer not to be named — was at New York’s Ascent Conference earlier this month. There, he participated in a roundtable discussion on “What Will Be the First Blockchain-based ‘Killer App’ Beyond Speculation?”

He went in with the preconceived notion of enabling people to swap their own IOUs as a form of personal currency (obviously). Others were focused on microlending or cross-border payments — all of which are well-established use cases for blockchain technology.

But they were all wrong.

The winning argument was put forth by Cindy Mallory, a strategist at digital studio JAKT and erstwhile PS4 game designer. It was so compelling, apparently, that my colleague failed to take notes, but I might be able to backward-engineer her case here.

“Gaming and early adoption tend to go hand in hand,” according to a think piece on JAKT’s website. “Armed with top-of-the-line computer hardware specs, blockchain gamers lead the march to build, tokenize, and raise awareness (and concurrent users) of blockchain based games, games marketplaces, and “grey-market” transactions of in-game assets, characters, and custom skins.”

The piece — which is unsigned so we can’t confirm that Mallory wrote it — goes on to make a few other really good points.

The first is that gamification is one likely path for driving adoption by the wider public. JAKT points to a multiplayer online roleplaying game called Lordmancer II in which players learn how to engage with the blockchain environment. This has happened before, of course. As Mental Floss reports, the Minesweeper game that came preloaded on any computer you bought since 1992 was originally placed on the stack to get you comfortable with right-click, left-click and other basics of navigating Windows 3.1. Another game, Cryptozombies, is far more educational than the title implies. It actually teaches players how to write smart contracts.

In-game currency is, of course, nothing new. Virtual economies go back to at least the release of Avalon in 1989, if not earlier. (I mean, it’s the whole point of Monopoly, right?) If you play more than one of these gamified dApps, though, you’ll soon discover that you can exchange the in-game currency of one for that of another — a rehearsal for actual cryptocurrency trading.

From play to pay

JAKT isn’t the only company that saw gamification of the blockchain early, just as IOU isn’t the only one getting on board now.

Smart Insights did some homework for us and, rather than pass it off as our own work, we’ll give credit where it’s due. The digital marketing company drew the line from gamer incentives to consumer incentives.

Essentially, Smart Insights blogger Patrick Kelly cites a Facebook study that reveals gamers are willing to pay for:

1. New missions or levels,

2. A sense of achievement and

3. Daily rewards.

In ecommerce, this translates into:

1. New or exclusive products or content,

2. Earned freebies such as a a free night’s stay after 10 nights of purchased hotel accommodations and

3. Discounts for customers who visit the site every day.

Also, no less stodgy a source as Forbes published an article last year that noted a number of strategies that online retailers are using that deploy games as marketing tools. According to a post written by Fifth Tribe CEO Khuram Zaman, ecommerce sites are utilizing games to create an engaging user experience, develop a sense of community among their consumers and many other purposes.

Scalefast points out that gamers are by nature extremely loyal customers so, if online retailers can use the game as a point of sale, then they have a dedicated core of repeat buyers baked in.

And if you need more convincing that ecommerce, gaming and blockchain are reaching some kind of confluence, then you should visit BlockchainGamer.biz, a site dedicated to that exact premise.

The future is now, and has been for years

Have you seen that Spielberg movie, Ready Player One, the one that takes place mostly in an immersive, virtual reality game a quarter century in the future? That’s the kind of world that blockchain has the opportunity to build.

The movie was based on a novel by Ernest Cline. When he wrote it in 2011, there was no such thing as cryptocurrency trading. There was only one digital coin, bitcoin, and you could only exchange it for fiat currency — and it was only worth a dollar and change.

Sometimes fiction runs far in front of fact. Sometimes life imitates art. Here at IOU, we have reason to believe that this is happening now. The OASIS platform from Ready Player One is on its way, and we’re here to help.

As we go, we’ll carefully checking our work so that we don’t end up with Skynet from The Terminator instead.

Edward W. Mandel is a strategic advisor for IOU.io , he is an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist, Blockchain Enthusiast and visionary behind many successful organizations. An avid entrepreneur, Edward has a knack for designing distinctive business models complemented with superior technology to deliver unparalleled service and profitability. Edward also has been advising and consulting for various successful Blockchain technology and ICO projects and recently launched his own BQT.io P2P Hedge Exchange helping traders connect with each other to leverage their crypto assets.

IOU is a blockchain-based peer-to-peer platform designed to unify ecommerce transaction and customer retention processes, incorporating trade-able IOUs. It is currently raising capital through ICO. The platform can be found online at IOU.io and its community on Telegram at https://t.me/IOUCommunity.