How the blockchain is disrupting digital gaming
A 2.2 billion strong global community of gamers is expected to generate $108.9 billion in revenue in 2017. This is icing on the cake for a gaming industry that has already emerged as one of the most profitable entertainment sectors globally. And there’s more where that came from.
According to market research firm Newzoo, continued growth will drive gaming revenue to $128.5 billion by 2020. Within the sector, Newzoo expects mobile gaming to account for more than 50% of the global gaming market by 2020. Digital gaming is already generating $94.4 billion annually — largely driven by the purchasing of direct-from-publisher in-game goods.
But there’s an elephant in the room: gamer-earned digital goods.
Serious gamers spend thousands of dollars, and countless hours of gameplay, to earn rare weapons, armors, cosmetic skins and other digital goods. However, when they switch to a new game, their hard-earned digital goods hold no value.
There is a clear lack of liquidity for in-game items. Why? Because within the industry’s existing infrastructure, gamers cannot transact these items safely. Platforms like Reddit, where gamers commonly turn to trade, sell or buy digital goods, do little to protect the seller and thus are replete with fraud. The industry has not been able to figure out a reliable way to derive revenue from the tremendous amount of goods that gamers earn in-game — until now.
The blockchain is opening the door for this tremendous, trillion-dollar opportunity. Here’s how.
The power of blockchain technology
The blockchain was built upon the principles of transparency, safety and global access. At Gameflip, we are embodying these values as we use blockchain technology to tackle the safe buying, selling and trading of gamer-earned goods. Our team recently wrapped the successful pre-ICO for FLIP, our token and decentralized platform for securely selling digital goods across games and game types. Our ICO launches on Dec. 4.
By leveraging the Ethereum blockchain and ERC-20 Token interface, we’ve created a safe, liquid marketplace where gamers can buy, sell and trade gamer-earned digital goods across all games.
FLIP tokens will unlock tremendous value for gamers and game developers and publishers. The enhanced liquidity of the marketplace will encourage gamers to purchase more digital goods and finally give them true ownership of their hard-earned items. Publishers will also benefit by receiving a commission each time one of their game’s players makes a transaction using FLIP’s smart contract.
If that’s not revolutionary, I don’t know what is.
The industry veterans behind FLIP
You may be wondering why Gameflip is the right team to be launching such a game-changing platform. For me, it boils down to experience, trust and proven success in the gaming industry.
Established in 2014 in Silicon Valley and backed by top-tier venture capital firms, Gameflip has already built a marketplace of more than 2 million gamers, with 10 million web views and 2 million mobile app accesses monthly. Gameflip processes millions of dollars of digital goods transactions each month — making us one of the most trusted names in the game. With FLIP and blockchain technology, our company is taking our existing platform to the next level, to achieve true liquidity for digital goods.
The Gameflip management team has decades of combined experience in the gaming industry as game developers and publishers, and now as digital goods marketplace leaders. I, for one, can tell you that during my decade in gaming, I’ve seen the need for a solution like FLIP time and time again — and now, with our platform at 2 million gamers, we have the opportunity to solve the issue of transacting digital goods once and for all.
The pre-ICO sale for FLIP was a major success, reaching 112% of our goal and eliciting interest from global backers who are passionate about shifting the paradigm in the gaming industry. Our ICO launches on Dec. 4. With it, the gaming industry will enter a new era of disruption: one in which blockchain technology will generate new revenue for publishers, and empower gamers from all over the world to make trades, no matter their game of choice.
