Hamburg Games Conference

Published in

PhantasticPhantasma

5 min readMar 9, 2020

Sergio and Lee Kai at the entrace of Hamburg Games Conference

Dear Souldiers,

During the end of February, the Phantasma team attended the Hamburg Games Conference. We had a great time in Hamburg, met with a few Souldiers who live nearby Hamburg, but more importantly we had a great time networking with other indie developer teams and media platforms during the conference. Let’s talk about gaming on blockchain and tell other gamers about 22 Racing Series!

In the morning of February 26th we arrived at Hamburg airport where our fellow Souldier Phillip was nice enough to pick us up in an all-exclusive Phantasma racing car, soon to be tokenized. We had lunch together and talked about some of our plans for the short-medium term ahead of us. After lunch we drove around the city and recorded a few shots for Phillip’s Soulmaster rap video. Unfortunately we had to say goodbye during the afternoon, but we are sure we shall meet again in the future. During the evening we met with another fellow Souldier, Shak, and had dinner.

Lee Kai and Sergio with Phillip’s Phantasma car

The day of the Hamburg Games Conference, February 27th, we went to the conference and checked ourselves in. It was a nice big building, with many theater halls, but the conference was fairly small. Three theater halls, a lunch room and a main hall were dedicated to the games conference. Speed dating had started, so Lee Kai joined this area in the lunch room and networked his way through with a few individuals who were attending this activity. The result of the speed dating sessions was multiple gaming media platforms and two indie game developer teams. Over the past week we contacted the majority of the media platforms to get them to promote 22 Racing Series, while we still maintain contact with the indie game developer teams. Both have a working prototype and have no experience with blockchain whatsoever, so it would be a great experience for all of us to collaborate. We showed a few clips of 22 Racing Series, which got people interested in the game and in Phantasma.

After the speed dating sessions we attended a few talks in the theater halls. A lot of interesting talks and discussions were held: future of gaming, how to make money with games, past success of games, building a great company for your employees. Surprisingly (or not) none of them were blockchain related. A lot of the speakers had their own successful company or had worked for large companies such as Nintendo and Sony.

Back in the main hall is where we met with Shak again. We grabbed lunch with Shak at a nearby restaurant and talked about blockchain projects and the conference. Back to the main hall to connect with other individuals and companies.. More media platforms and a few mobile game app distributors, again nobody with any blockchain experience or knowledge. Until we heard about an indie developer team building a game on blockchain who were at the Hamburg Games Conference, which we have contacted again after the conference to see if our visions would match. We also had a nice casual chat with many game companies which have millions of downloads or a lot of revenue, such as Yager Development and RockFish Games, to better understand the gaming market and their opinions about this industry. They shared good intel on how to grow your gaming community and how to build your business on top of the community.

There was one more opportunity to connect with other individuals and companies, which was held in a restaurant in the same building. It was crowded and we managed to talk to many companies. Here is where we met with a representative of Amazon and a few people from the ministry of Germany who were looking to fund games and teams, and yet a few more indie game developer teams. We hope to be able to share more news soon about any collaboration which might evolve from the conference. We did have a great time pitching Phantasma and talking about 22 Racing Series and its ongoing sale. Most people were baffled with the $20,000 raise within the first two weeks. 22 Racing Series is a great example to show people how gaming could integrate blockchain and that is exactly how we showcased it!

All in all we are very happy with how efficient this conference was. Although at times it felt like the Phantasma team were some kind of ambassadors of blockchain. Many people were wary of blockchain and only remembered cryptocurrencies and the scams which were broadcast on news platforms. Talking about the possibilities of the underlying technology definitely opened the eyes of a few people and changed their opinions, but some people still remain skeptical. This means that the sentiment concerning blockchain is improving, but not yet at the position where one would like it to be for global adoption. There is a long way ahead of us before we can achieve global blockchain adoption, but it is happening. As one of the biggest player within the crypto space would say: slowly but surely!

Thank you Fritz-Kola for making good cola and for sponsoring such an amazing event and thank you Hamburg Games Conference for this opportunity to talk with other individuals in the gaming industry! Special thanks to Phillip and Shak for their time to meet with us and for driving us around Hamburg! Last but not least, we would like to thank all fellow Souldiers for supporting us all the way from an idea to the launch of our blockchain and the continuous growth of the Phantasma ecosystem.