The 5 Major Issues Going On in The Games Industry and How Playgroundz Allows us to Find Solutions
1: Crowdfunding
Problem: Crowdfunding is a system that allows people to contribute funds for future projects based on early concepts. Similarly, game crowdfunding allows gamers to contribute money in advance to developers to help develop new games. This has been proven very successful for small development studios and indie teams on existing platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo. For example: “WASTELAND 2”, which had been halted in development due to lack of funding, was able to continue development by receiving $2.9 million in 35 days through crowdfunding. Gamers showed their support and the developers received 3 times their original goal. The game launched in 2014 to critical success. However, not all stories end successfully.
In 2013 a developer proposed a project to develop the game “Mighty №9”, a spiritual successor to the popular “Mega Man” franchise. During this time, a proper Mega Man game wasn’t released for almost a decade and fans were eager to donate to see the project come to life. The project was successfully backed by over 67,000 participants with a total of $3.8 million within just one month. Although the project was successful in terms of funding, an onslaught of problems followed. The project didn’t reach any of the promised milestones and was delayed numerous times. The development took almost double the time they guaranteed and eventually finished but launched to lackluster reviews. The fans accused the developers of quality issues and undelivered gameplay promises and were upset with the overall experience and end product.
Crowdfunding also presents a huge problem with the trust of the donated funds. The fundraisers for “Project Phoenix” raised funds for their project but then spent a million of those dollars to developer other game projects secretly. Other projects like “The Stomping Land”, where successfully funded and the team just disappeared with the money. The crowdfunding platforms don’t provide the means for investors to monitor and make sure their funds are being vested and used correctly. This current system is flawed because it lacks the proper solutions to stop these funding abuses.
Solution: The Playgroundz Platform provides a new videogame crowdfunding service for gamers with blockchain technology called “Mineral”. Mineral crowdfunding features a vesting system where funds vest according to milestone deliverables. This prevents the recipient party from receiving full funding from the start. The funds will be deposited on blockchain with smart contracts that are supported with multisignature functions. The contributors and the developers agree on milestones, deliverables and terms and the funding amounts are only paid after a certain number of contributors approve them.
If the contributors don’t approve the milestones, they can then decide if the funding is to proceed with new terms or be refunded back. Since the entire funding process is based off of IOG token and smart contract, nobody including the receiving party can stop or modify it. In addition, everyone can also check the development process through Block Explorer without limitations. We believe this will keep the developers on track and honest but more importantly, this will keep the donations safe. Also, by using IOG tokens as the form of donation, gamers and developers across the globe can create and sponsor crowdfunding campaigns regardless of their country and currency.
2: Tips and Q&A
Problem: Gamers often face a lot of challenges and have difficulties progressing through some of their games. Although, they can find help and content on search engines like, the information usually lacks the perfect solutions and oftentimes provide false information. In the current game space, each game community is usually formed according to the gamers gaming platforms like PS4, Xbox One and Switch and not the game itself. This causes the game information to split across different communities instead of unifying it as one. This also causes friction for both the game and gamer because it acts as a barrier that slows down the game and community’s growth.
Gamers often face a lot of challenges and have difficulties progressing through some of their games. Although, they can find help and content on search engines like, the information usually lacks the perfect solutions and oftentimes provide false information.
Solution: The Playgroundz Platform provides a new knowledge sharing service for gamers with blockchain technology called “Navi”. Navi is a game knowledge sharing service done through a question-answering system with incentives. It aims to bring all information about games to one place without any bias or boundaries. Navi uses a compensation system for the collection of good quality information and the determination of false information. In this system, a questioner posts a question and puts IOG token as a reward. Then the questioner adopts an answer that was helpful and the user who has responded to the question obtains the IOG token as a reward. Also, if a user provides the tips or know-how for other gamers, the user can also earn IOG tokens through donations.
As we see in Wikipedia’s case, people have the tendency to share their knowledge with others even when its free. With Navi, we believe we can collect good quality question-answer information for games because not only do we provide a system for gamers to connect and share their knowledge, we also provide a reward system. Also, by using IOG tokens as the form of reward, gamers across the globe can connect and share their information regardless of their country and currency.
3: Marketplace
Problem: Videogame bartering for physical or digital items plays an important role for both the gamers and game industry. The second-hand market for physical games such as console games and PC games is estimated at about $10+ billion/year and the item trading market for digital games is estimated at about $30+ billion/year. This proves that the user-to-user transactions are a growing blue ocean market for the game industry. However, the existing platforms also have their share of problems. The most popular trading platform, eBay, prevents sellers and buyers from connecting directly with each other.
Due to the nature of virtual game items, this becomes a problem for the buyers and sellers as they must often communicate with each other directly to trade their items. Craigslist, another platform with a large North American user base, has been plagued with fraudulent cases simply due to the fact that there are no systems that protect its users. Although there are mediation platforms which provide transactions safely through escrow, the high fees make it hard for cheap goods to be bartered with.
Solution: The Playgroundz Platform provides a secure and easy-to-use marketplace service that utilizes blockchain called “Aki”. The buyer who wants to trade, transfers the item value amount with IOG tokens, which then gets deposited on the blockchain according to the Escrow Smart Contract. Then, when the buyer makes the confirmation for the trade, the IOG token is paid to the seller. Both sellers and buyers can trade securely and the transaction status such as deposits can be confirmed by anyone using blockchain. In addition, users can trade at the lowest commission because they use IOG tokens. Essentially, everyone across the world can use Aki together since there will be no currency exchange problems.
4: Recommendation & Collection
Problem: In recent years, the rapid growth of the game industry has led to the flood of releases. On average over one thousand games get released monthly. Gamers now have too many games to choose and play with and not enough time. With so many choices, the gamers need a good system besides keyword-based search engines to find the perfect game suited for them. For example: If a gamer is searching for a good story game and types “beautiful story game” they will get results like “bakery story”.
Although game platforms like Steam produce better recommendation results than search engines, it’s still limited in scope because it only finds games for their platform. Hundreds of good games, created by the efforts of thousands of developers, just disappear each month because they cannot find the target users efficiently.
Solution: The Playgroundz Platform offers a personalized game recommendation system for gamers. Through the Playgroundz Platform, gamers can value or review the games they have played. The games valued by the gamers are registered into their Playgroundz game list, and the user now has the ability to create their own virtual game collections. The Playgroundz Platform matches gamers who share similar characteristics using machine learning algorithms. These algorithms can help identify and recommend new games catered specifically for each user. As users value more games, the game collection increases and the recommendation algorithm becomes more accurate.
5: Marketing
Problem: This timeline represents past, current and future-forecast worldwide videogame advertising spend from 2010 to 2020. The spending is expected to reach $4.12 billion in 2018 which will be up from 2010’s $2.7 billion.
While the digital ad market continues to grow, the CPI (Cost Per Install) and CPA (Cost Per Action) marketing effect for simple installation is starting to decrease. The marketing costs continue to rise due to the increase in number of downloads required for the top rank visibility, reflecting variables such as user engagement, execution number, and other various changes that occur in the market. Publishers are starting to figure out that CPI and CPA methods are not getting them loyal users. In essence, the publishing dollars are currently being spent on attracting the mass but also acquiring low-quality users that might not have any value or Return on Investment (ROI).
Solution: The Playgroundz Platform offers a variety of services for gamers. By tracking the game habits of gamers using Big Data Analysis and Machine Learning on the Playgroundz Platform, we can anticipate what games the users will like in the future in advance. This allows us to build a personalized, targeted advertising system that is well above the level of the current keyword-based advertising system. Through the valued and enrolled games stored in the Playgroundz Platform, we can calculate what gamers have liked in the past, what they currently like and what future games they could like. With the Navi service, we can help players come back to old games they would love to enjoy again and also recommend the perfect games they haven’t played yet.
Beyond the current one-off marketing advertising platforms, we will be able to make a personalized lifestyle marketing campaign that analyzes the user’s game lifestyle. This will be very important in boosting the lifetime value (LTV) and the return on ad spend (ROAS), which are key factors for the digital marketing industry.
Purchase IOG here on KuCoin — [BTC] & [ETH]
