Hi all,
I've been a Bitcoin advocate for quite some years now and even with the plethora of exciting other coins I still see bitcoin as the leading candidate for value representation on the internet. I'd like to share a glimpse into the project I'm involved in as a few others here may find the project of interest. We are working to build a system to bring Bitcoin payments to the mainstream video game world.
What we are doing differently however is we are not making gambling games and instead making general payments for games and players. This is to allow new monetisation models in games such as advertising sponsors, micro e-sports, server payments and subscriptions with crypto.
I.e. these will be games of skill typical video games and can even be retro fitted to past titles to rejuvenate their viable shelf life.
Basically we want to make it super easy for game developers and game players to use bitcoin.Firstly... THIS IS NOT AN ICO,
this IS BITCOIN based! We are wanting to do this ethically and with Bitcoin so have it fully backed by Bitcoin. Yes an ICO would raise the funds faster and easier but we also know the risks of ICOs that they are incredibly difficult to bootstrap any persistent value of a new chain (especially run by a company) hence focusing on the strongest blockchain to express value transfer instead of recreating the wheel. This means earnings for game developers and game players can be spent globally already using the existing bitcoin infrastructure.
We are still in development and the project itself is using bitcoin testnet only at the moment. We also good connections in the mainstream games industry around the world from a few of us having spent decades working within the games industry at places like Criterion, EA, Codemasters, etc..
We did a small proof of concept HTML based game so you can see the intended flow here. (Basically a user can create a bitcoin wallet with simply typing in a display name and ta-dah, they're in the bitcoin ecosystem with a wallet on their mobile/pc)
https://www.bitballbattle.com You'll need a mate or two to play with (up to 5 can play at the same time), create a round, get some free testnet coins in your account, share the round link with others to play and you can play the game. Yes the game is crap, that's not the point... the point is the integration is made easy.
In a nutshell, yes this is an authentication based payment system rather than direct P2P. I have been torn on this subject as we really want to head towards P2P but our mid-centralised approach means we can ensure games are fairer as we can do chargebacks within our system, handle the vast scalability issue games need addressing, instant payments, simplicity aspects and a few other secret sauce features the industry hasn't seen yet.
Users can always withdraw their funds to a decentralised wallet too if they want to and will encourage this to the players as they exceed earnings... i.e. we are seeing CoinMode as more of a 'hot play wallet' sort of thing to play games in rather than a full wallet... at this stage.
Why am I sharing this before we are live or accepting real bitcoin?
Simply, we are raising funds via the traditional investment approach using CrowdCube.
https://www.crowdcube.com/coinmode(14 days left as of posting this, completes ~26th May I believe depending on where you are in the world)
This means people can actually buy equity in the company. For UK citizens you even get EIS tax relief if you're a high rate tax payer.
Whilst we've raised $480k so far there is still ~$160k remaining to be purchased to close the round.
Our plans are to release at the end of the year if all goes to plan and of course happy for any community help should anyone be interested. (pen testers, authors, game devs, unity tool devs, node/Javascript/docker tool devs all welcome!)
Like I say this is still work in progress, I make no claim this is ready for launch yet but we are getting there. We are selling equity via regular channels to fund the project properly. Equally I also am more than aware of the massive hurdles to overcome to making this (how to handle sybil issues, hot wallet woes, bots, GC/FSA/FCA approvals, merchant bank approval, etc..) We aim to address each of these in a measured way and would love any encouragement/support in making this happen.
Having global payments for global games seems a no-brainer but bitcoin is hard for mainstream gaming adoption, we want to help make it happen.
What is reassuring is we haven't actually gone out pitching to game development teams yet however we already have some brilliant established game developers signed up keen to use it when the technology is released.
Any questions feel free to ask.
For anyone wanting to invest, have a peek at our promo video on the site and investment starts from as little as £10.
https://www.crowdcube.com/coinmode
