Kin Developer Experience : Unite Seoul 2019
As many of you know, the Kin Developer Experience Squad spent last week in Seoul, South Korea for Unity’s Unite Conference. The mission? Spread the word of Kin throughout the mobile gaming community, speak to developers, gauge their interest and get their feedback on what we have built. What did we learn? We learned that there are A LOT of game developers out there that are excited about what we are doing. Most of them already knew about blockchain, but none had ever imagined that it could be used in this way.
After recently launching the Kin Gaming Challenge we decided it was time to get out there and meet the developers who would potentially be building games using Kin as an in-game currency. We met developers ranging from grade school to grandparents. Unity has created an exceptional platform that has attracted nearly 7 million game developers world wide. Crazy right? I’m not exaggerating when I say that our booth was packed for the full two days of the conference.
The real goal of this event was to get the word out about Kin and see what developers thought about using our Unity SDK to join the Ecosystem of Kin integrated games. We wanted to really speak with them about their curiosity, questions and concerns. The result was an overwhelming interest in a few key elements:
Discoverability
Many of the developers were extremely interested in the fact that their games would have a new way to be discovered within the Ecosystem through the new discoverability module, amongst other ways (i.e. Community Marketing). Indie developers often struggle with user acquisition as many of them are students or self funded. These small developers create killer games, but can’t always find a way to reach their target audience.
Cross Game Spending
One of the things we heard from many of these developers was that they had created multiple games, and having a currency that could be shared within each of these games was a big selling point for them. Imagine creating an amazing featured game where users earn a lot of an in-game currency, but when the game is no longer attractive, all that hard work is lost. You just move on to the next big thing, losing all those valuable coins/tokens/points. But having a currency like Kin that can be shared and spent between games prevents all of that hard work from being lost. All the labor you put into one game can still bear fruits in another. This made them very excited, and it made us very excited to hear it.
Monetization
A large portion of the developers we met with were students, which I personally see as the top potential audience for the future of the Ecosystem. They had all built Unity games in their spare time, and many of them had impressive user bases. But as students, they are always looking for ways to make some extra money. Many of them use ads. But as we explained that Kin would allow them to eventually drop ads altogether, they were intrigued. You could see it in their eyes that they were in love with the idea of being rewarded for simply getting their users to spend Kin in their games. Something they are already doing, but without earning any revenue for it. Full disclosure, everything about the KRE was explained. They know it’s still in it’s infancy, but that didn’t seem to concern them. They saw the value and potential of how this could really benefit them and help fund their game development in the future. This is exciting news to hear. We seek developers that see value in the future. These are the innovators. These are the ones who will help change the world.
While I expected this experience to be very valuable for many reasons, I must admit that I did not expect the full extent of the reaction that we received from interested developers. I believe we are onto something big here. I believe that gaming will play a major role in the future of the Kin Ecosystem. I believe that peer-to-peer marketplaces and multiplayer/social games using Kin will tip the scales in our favor. On top of all the great things that came from the conference, we received 12 Kin Gaming Challenge applications on site. Of course we’ll need to review them all and make sure they’re a good fit before announcing the next batch. I know we’re all anxious and excited, but the word is finally starting to make it’s rounds in the gaming world and we plan to really go after this amazing opportunity.
