Video gaming, as a medium of entertainment, has only been around since the early 1980's, and yet in this short period of time it has reached enormous popularity. According to the 2017 report, there are at least 2.2 billion gamers out there in the world today, 47% of whom routinely spend money on this hobby of theirs. Thus, it is not a surprise to anyone that the gaming industry has generated over 108 billion dollars in revenue last year, and the prognosis for 2018 is even greater, homing in around 130 billion dollars.
Compared to other entertainment industries, like music or movies, gaming has grown much faster, and has already overtaken both those industries combined in market worth. It is no wonder that most tech corporation have tried to dip their toes into the gaming pool.
Currently the main rivals are Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, who have overtaken the market with their hardware. This competition is generally good for the consumer, as it drives developers to one-up each other and deliver a better product. Unfortunately, it also urged companies to isolate their playerbase, limit cross-play and create platform exclusives.
The development team of RAWG has noticed that there is no common place that console, PC and mobile gamers can track their gaming progress, communicate with each other and most importantly – figure out which games are worth their time, regardless of platform. RAWG is an online database and recommendation system that provides all those features and on top of that utilizes blockchain to give gamers an opportunity to receive real life rewards for performing well in-game.
At the moment of writing this article the RAWG database already has close to sixty thousand games and it is growing every day. I tried out the service myself and was very glad to finally synchronize all my gaming in one place. The interface is intuitive and the website runs smoothly. Adding every game I own for Playstation 4, PC, Nintendo 3DS and my smartphone took just a few moments, as the website imports data from separate accounts automatically. Immediately my feed got filled with reviews, articles and recommendations from the RAWG community, based on my library. Needless to say, I was lost for hours, surprised that such a young project already has such a substantial amount of content.
ERC-20 based RAWG token has been created in order to fuel all the transactions on the platform and make them secure and transparent. Based on the users' activity on the platform, time spent in-game and the number and rarity of achievements, the specially devised tokens will be distributed to gamers at the end of every two-week cycle. Later RAWG tokens can be exchanged for fiat, effectively letting players earn real money by playing. Any partner, that chooses to provide their services on the RAWG platform, will also accept these tokens as payment.
RAWG's source of revenue is advertising, which will be that much more effective than usual, thanks to the cross-platform information about the users. You can expect to see ads of gadgets, computer and console accessories, software and hardware related to gaming, etc. Only real views will count, and there is a 30% discount in place, for advertisers who choose to purchase ads with the RAWG token.
There are many planned features that will bring RAWG to an even higher level. Using the unique way of monetization, Q'n'A sessions with game developers and influencers will be held. In general, RAWG is likely to rival many game review and news outlets, and a karma system will ensure that community picks its favorites.
As a gamer myself, I have expected a platform like this to be created for a long time, but it seems that blockchain was needed to make it happen. RAWG finally gives the gaming community an opportunity to speak up, come together and be rewarded for what they love doing.
For more information about the project and their tokensale please check out the links below. RAWG.io website is still in beta, but it is already a very formidable product, be sure to give it a try if you are a gamer.
What platforms do you game on? What community forums do you prefer? Did you have problems with cross-play that RAWG potentially solves?
Tell me in the comments below.
RAWG ICO Official website: https://token.rawg.io/en
RAWG Beta: https://rawg.io
Bounty Campaign: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4147507
Announcement Thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3154912
Whitepaper: https://token.rawg.io/docs/rawg-whitepaper-en.pdf
Twitter: https://twitter.com/rawgtheworld
Facebook: https://facebook.com/rawgtheworld
Telegram: https://t.me/RAWGeng https://t.me/rawgtheworld
YouTube: https://youtube.com/channel/UC-yG-PdRFWdUBSAB4WdvgGA
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/RAWG/
Creator's Bitcointalk: OceanWind33 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1931473)
Creator's ETH Address: 0x636798AF21d84805c4fd3876d0Af967ed569E296