ICO Analysis: Majato

In recent years passionate gamers have been exploited by huge game development companies that hold a monopoly over the industry. The recent EA Star Wars Battlefront catastrophe brought a lot of attention to an issue that gamers are all too familiar with.

Gamers have to dig deeper and deeper into their pockets to pay for the expansion packs, DLC, and additional features that are excluded from the main game. And these games aren’t cheap.

It’s increasingly becoming apparent that there are fundamental issues with how the gaming industry works today. Fortunately for gamers, the blockchain is already beginning to form a new paradigm in the way games are funded, developed and purchased.

The Game Machine is an open source platform that seeks to decentralize the gaming industry. It aims to provide sleek software that will empower gamers and game developers alike.

How are they planning on doing this?

The platform has four foundational layers that are stepping stones for this innovative new project. The first layer is the game machine client. It will work as a wallet to store and send Gamefuel tokens and will come with a built in mining interface so that all users can participate in securing the Game Machine’s blockchain.

The second step is to develop their “Rise Machine” that will allow members of the Game Machine community to invest funds into games they see promise in – funds that go directly to the developers so they can create their game independent of the EAs and other oligarchies.

This is perhaps the most powerful innovation suggested by the platform. It gives everyone from the small game studios, with a only a few developers, to the prominent developer, who wants to deviate from the script, the chance to create and sell great games to the community at a fair price when they otherwise could not.

The third layer of the platform is the “Ads Machine” a decentralized advertising market that will live inside the Game Machine client so that game publishers or advertisers can market their products to a gamer specific demographic. Advertisers have been experimenting for years with in-game, native advertising, and it’s a powerful use case for the game machine, just as a stand alone feature. Expect this element of their platform to bring in huge revenue if they can build up their user base.

The last layer of development in their platform is the “Exchange Machine”. This will simplify the process of buying and selling tokens for gamers who use or hold multiple ingame currencies. This way, gamers can sell their Gamefuel and easily move a variety of coins in and out of the game machine.

Token

The Game Machine team is using an Erc20 token called GMIT, which stands for Game Machine Initial Token. Each token is currently valued at 2,500 GMIT per ETH, or $0.32 USD. The token will be tradeable for actual Gamefuel at a ratio where 1 Gamefuel= 0.5 GMIT. Thiswill occur once the platform officially launches in May or June of next year.

The GMIT token is issued by Game Machine OÜ, incorporated in Estonia. A total of 140 million tokens will be created during the various stages of the token sale. The pre-sale has already been conducted and an equivalent of 751 Ethereum were invested, which means roughly 1,870,000 GMIT have already been bought. There are bonuses for early investors during the crowdsale where day 1=+15%, day 2=+10% and day3 =+5%.

There is also another coin that can be mined called GMC or Game Machine Client token, which will be exchangeable for GMIT tokens before the official platform launch at a ratio where 1 GMC = 0.0002 GMIT. The GMC token is given to miners who are being rewarded for securing the network during the Game Machine’s beta testing stage so they can earn Gamefuel. The official Gamefuel token will have its own blockchain that runs on two key components, Limited Proof of Work, and Proof of Authority. Limited proof of work is an energy friendly implementation of the traditional proof of work protocol that bitcoin uses.

Proof of Authority is used to enable faster confirmations of crowdfunding transactions where the authority level of a user confirming transactions is determined through analyzing metrics such as time of use, the amount of purchases and sales of games on the platform made and how positive or negative the feedback of other users were about their contributions to the platform. This can also include how long they have been mining for and how fast. One can imagine this is useful for fending off bad actors that might just try to crowdsource Gamefuel and then commit an exit scam without contributing anything. This blockchain is inspired by the Scorex 2 framework devised by the Scorex foundation, which was also implemented by the Waves decentralized exchange platform.

Team

The three co-founders of Game Machine have over 17 years of combined experience in project development, IT consulting,  video game marketing and development.

The entire team consists of 19 full time employees who are busy working on many different parts of the Game Machine platform. If that’s not impressive enough then look at the history of two of the co-founders Taras Dogval and Alexandr Isaev who were both previous board members of Hakk, which is an interactive agency that has done marketing for huge European companies such as Volvo, Tallink Silja Line and Neste. The other co-founder Maria Suvorina has six years of experience in marketing and promoting games on computers and phones. She’s worked for companies such as Suricate Games, TMA and AminiLab.

Although these companies aren’t that well known, most of their work is out of the public’s eye, and they have actually made contributions to famous games. Aminilab for example has participated in development for games such as Alone in the Dark, FIFA, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Doodle God and Doodle Devil.

Verdict

The Game Machine is an extremely ambitious project that, if successful, will truly revolutionize the industry. The team behind the platform is experienced, has a great track record and is big enough to polish and refine the Game Machine into a fantastic platform for gamers and developers. However, the existing industry players already have huge advantages when it comes to funding, marketing, development and most importantly building a big reputation and brand awareness. It’s difficult to predict if a community driven effort from gamers and developers combined on an open source platform, will be enough to break into the existing market and convince everyday gamers to switch to an entirely new platform.

Risks

• One risk for this project is the quality of its design in terms of how friendly the user interface will be. If the platform is too difficult for technically illiterate people to use then it will not have wheels to get going anywhere. -1
• Another threat to the game machine is the plethora of other competitors that are already working on blockchain innovations in the gaming industry. For example, Enjincoin is an existing game development company founded in 2009 that recently completed its ICO, raising $20 million to kick start a platform that boasts features very similar to the ones offered on Game Machine. -2
• Besides the long list of other game-based ICOs that have been launched this year, there is also stiff competition from massive conventional gaming markets. In addition, newer platforms such as Steam have already attractive hundreds of millions of users. -2.5

Growth potential

• The Game Machine has a lot of potential for quickly stacking up a big user base, and one reason is due to the strong alignment of incentives between gamers and game creators. The traditional game development giants on the other hand are ignoring what their consumers and even some of their own developers have had to say about how games should be created, distributed or sold. Instead of focusing on quality and a fair deal for customers, these development companies have opted to lined their pockets instead. This is why gamers and developers would flock to the Game Machine overnight if the platform works well. +3
• The project’s potential for increasing the value of the underlying gamefuel token is actually quite immense in scope. Just the crowdsourcing and kickstarting mechanism built into the platform would induce a scenario where a large sum of people would continually purchase gamefuel tokens to lock into smart contracts. Once enough gamers are participating in this process the money locked in gamefuel tokens at any given time will only rise, thus reducing the supply of tokens in circulation and consequently increasing gamefuel’s value.+3
• With the plans to integrate a digital advertising market directly into the platform, gamefuel has a secondary source of revenue because advertising slots on the game machine platform can only be purchased with gamefuel.+3
• The “Exchange machine” that’s built into the Game Machine client is a nice approach to sourcing liquidity that will allow many other game based cryptocurrency holders to sell their tokens to purchase gamefuel. Attracting a wide range of gamers who are interested in different blockchain based gaming platforms is a unique approach to marketing that many readers may not have considered as a form of advertising. +2

Disposition

The Game Machine is a solid project overall; the team is large, has experience and will have raised additional funds to expand their efforts once their crowdsale is completed. That being said, stiff competition from new and existing gaming avenues, not to mention luring a dedicated gaming community to an entirely new platform. These risks must be weighed carefully before entering into Game Machine. As such, this ICO has been granted a score of 5.5 out of 10.

Investment Details

Unfortunately, the presale period of the Game Machine ended a few days ago; however, the final crowdsale period will open for everyone to participate from Dec. 14 through Jan. 31, 2018..

There will only ever be 140 million gamefuel tokens created in the ICO, and 70% of them will be available for token sale participants. The rest of the tokens will be divided into portions and used to fund various parts of the project:

• 14.2% token storage for starting in-game items withdrawals.
• 1.4% for bounty program.
• 1.4% for advisors.
• 4.5% for referral program.
• 7.1% for team.

The team’s portion of tokens is utilized to pay for development and split in the following arrangement below.

• 10% Legal maintenance.
• 5% Operating expenses.
• 35% Marketing and PR.
• 50% Development of a product.

You can learn more about their token and ICO here.

Featured image courtesy of Shutterstock. 

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