Yumerium In-Depth Analysis – A New Way to Purchase Gaming Content
The Booming Gaming Industry
The gaming industry is so popular nowadays, that the tech community reckon it as the industry that is pushing customer computer electronics forward. A lot of gamers consider it a religion. They have dedicated a lot of time playing their favorite games and competing with other players to be the best. Competitive gaming has started to be considered a sport. Some sports channels are including them in line with the other sports. Millions of people are watching the tournaments of the most popular games not only on TV, but online through services like Twitch and YouTube and even in the game’s launcher. Gaming industry is the biggest entertainment business in the world right now and it is growing with rapid speed. Gamers are having fun, they are attached to their favorite games and taking the game like it is the real life, but some of them are taking the game very seriously and want to make it their job. They are doing it by becoming professional players, game streamers and even commentators. They are creating even more value in the industry together with the game developers itself. Gaming is a big and growing industry with a lot of future. But let’s get back to the basics. Where do you get games from?
How Gamers Purchase Gaming Content?
Years after years, gamers around the world are having two main ways of purchasing game content. The first way, well known and used from the beginning of the digital gaming is so called “pay to play”. This is the standard way of purchasing a game – go to the store and buy a physical copy of the game or buy a digital copy from online retailer platforms like Steam, Origin, Uplay, G2A etc. The other way of getting a game is “free to play”. You will say that if it is “free” to play the poor developers do not earn any profit to create the game. They actually do. In 2003 someone developed so called micro transactions. The games are free to play, but some items in the game are purchasable. This is more profitable for the developers then the “pay to play”, because instead of one transaction to get the game, the player is deciding if he wants to pay for more game content. This way, more players are trying the game, and if it is really good, they are willing to pay more than once to the game developers. Most competitive games (eSports) are working on this premise. Some of them are League of Legends, StarCraft, Dota, Hearthstone and others.
The Yumerium Revolution - A New Way to Purchase Gaming Content
Yumerium is bringing new revolution in gaming by developing new way to get games and game content – “earn to play”. It uses crypto token in the entire platform for purchasing games, additional game content and ingame items. But where do these tokens come from? There are several ways for the users to get their hands on tokens. The first and most obvious one is to buy them with another currency. There is nothing new so far. But here it comes the innovative way of earning tokens. Every user can mine, achieve something ingame, win tournaments, and review games and other content for other users in order to earn tokens. That is motivating the gamers even more to be the best and will lead to even more “professional gamers”, sharing their passion with the world and even living by it. Let’s talk a bit about every way to earn.
We can start with explanation of the mining way to earn. Gamers are well known to have pretty powerful computers to play their favorite games in max settings. These systems can’t compare with professional servers, but their quantity is much higher too. Hosting a blockchain based platform is much more reliable when machines are a lot and the mining is well distributed. When gamer doesn’t play, his machine is usually not used at all. That computational power can be used for more useful purposes, and the gamer can earn value by this. He will mine. The gamer will earn Yumerium token for participating.
The other way to earn tokens is by achievements ingame. The tokens for achievement rewards are provided by the game’s producer. Rewards are fairly distributed every time when someone achieves something, let’s say doing something impressive in the game, or they can be distributed when something is done for first time in the game, like unlocking a secret ending for example. The second one will increase the purchases of the game in the first days and even weeks, because a lot of gamers will want to be the first to achieve certain achievement first, not only for the glory, but for the reward too. Gamers can earn outside of the game too. They can do that by making useful reviews of games and items they own. The reviews with more up votes are going to gain more tokens. This is going to make one even better and healthier gaming community.
The Use of Blockchain by Yumerium
I still haven’t mentioned one way to earn tokens – participating in and wining tournaments. Tournaments are important part of the gaming business and community. Especially when eSports are so popular, they even are going to be official sport in 2020 Olympics. Yumerium is revolutionizing the way eSports tournaments are held. These tournaments are having problems too. There are many fake tournaments taking entry fees, but not paying rewards, due to unfair contracts and agreements. There is also the problem for the gamers to prove that they have really won their games. Most used ways nowadays are to screen-capture the win or to play in real time in front of tournament organizers. With Yumerium’s blockchain that is not a problem anymore, because the rewarded funds are sent in the blockchain by the organizers before the tournament even has started to be distributed by set of rules during the tournament. Entry fees (if any) are going to be fairly paid in the blockchain, too. How does the gamer prove he won? Actually very easy, because the games itself are having built-in connection with the blockchain. Everything is recorded on the blockchain and can be checked at any time. This will make revolution in eSports tournaments in a better and securer way. We are having great tournament system and lots of ways to earn currency for games, but what about getting them?
Yumerium’s vision is to drastically change the way of getting digital games. Gamers will be able to sell their digital games the same way they are selling real physical games. Every game is having certain number of copies, which are true property of its owner. This is possible due to the blockchain integration, which is keeping the history of each copy of each game license in its ledger. This way, true ownership of the game and gaming content is achieved. The true ownership is allowing the owner to sell the game later to someone who wants it, and this again is made on the Yumerium’s platform. Some games are going to be more wanted than others, which mean that once they are all bought from the developer, their price is going to rise drastically on the second hand market. The limitation of copies is going to make the good games more demanded and expensive. There is the possibility of only richer gamers playing the best games, while the rest have to stick with the not so demanded ones. That is why there is the option of free games with unlimited copies, but the ingame items are still tracked by the blockchain and still real property of its owner. This option is very convenient for e-sports titles.
Speaking of ingame items, the blockchain is providing a solution for a very big problem in some games – item frauds and scams. Usually some gamers are falling victims to frauds made by third parties. Games, ingame items or other digital or physical value are promised to a gamer in exchange for their hard earned ingame items, but when the gamer sends out the items, he does not receive anything in exchange. With the blockchain tracked items, these frauds can be easily stopped and become history.
Another problem for gaming is the piracy. Game developers who have worked thousands of hours to create a game deserve their fair part of profit. With real licenses and with real ownership, pirated games cannot access the public servers of the game, which means that they cannot be played, even if the pirate is having the code of the game. The only way to play a game is to have a license for it. That pretty much means no piracy anymore. That solves one more problem – with no access to the game, hackers can’t target the ingame items, because they are directly linked to the blockchain. They have no chance, except they hack the entire blockchain, which is mathematically impossible. Overall, the platform is super secure and the blockchain technology leaves no gap for frauds and other malicious human intervention, which is very good!
We are having great accounting platform serving the games, but in order to use it we have to develop the games around them. Yumerium is providing open-source Software Development Kit so the programmers can easily and securely implement the Yumerium platform in their games. Currently supported engine is Unity, while support for Unreal engine is coming soon. In future is planned support for other engines too, depending on developers’ demands. The SDK is fully open-source, so everyone with the skills can actually implement it to any engine wanted, helping the game developers community.
There is another benefit for both developers and gamers. Yumerium is giving the marketing in developer’s hands. Developers can now control the distribution of their games if they want to. That is removing the marketing middleman, who is usually taking serious chunk of the content’s price (just ask Gabe). This means more payment for the developer and cheaper content for the gamer simultaneously. Of course, developers who are not feeling like marketers can pay to someone skilled to do that for them. Overall, not only gamers’ experience is better, but developers’ one, too. That will bring more developers to the platform, which will make more competition between them, resolving in better games for the gamers, which is amazing!
Comparison with Game Machine
Although there is other blockchain based gaming platforms, like Game Machine, none of them is having what Yumerium has. But to start, let’s explain a bit how Game Machine works. It is allowing Gamers to mine currency with which they can get game content with, but this currency is not the token itself. The token can be swapped for that currency but not vice versa. And here comes the difference. Yumerium has only one token and it is having its real value compared to other tokens, currencies and even fiat money. That means gamers are earning real value for their achievements. Some of them will be able even to play games as jobs, earning enough not only for game content but for living, too. It is just how YouTube is a job for many video creators. This unique value, is what is differentiating Yumerium from the other gaming-oriented tokens. One platform delivers everything needed. That is why I think this project is having a great future!
Company, Community and Partnerships
Yumerium is a project by Subdream Labs, part of Subdream Studios. Subdream Studios is a pretty new company, specialized in developing virtual reality games. They are working in a unique way, allowing small teams of gamer developers to create games for the virtual reality platforms. Their other subsidiaries are Exa Labs, specialized in blockchain token exchange, and VR Plus, the biggest Korean VR arcade franchise. They are having over 30 locations all over South Korea, and are looking to further expand into Asian market. Exa Labs is subsidiary of Exa Global, a Korean investment company. Subdream Studios have bought partial ownership of Exa Labs to create a partnership with the company, with the idea of developing the blockchain side of Yumerium.
The studio has produced several games, the most successful of which is “Mega Overload”. Their games are with simple but really fun gameplay, very convenient for virtual reality environment. The games are also with really cool design and high quality graphics, while the most of them are looking like made on Unity, making them easy to run even on mobile devices. Cool thing it that there is support for the biggest VR platforms Steam VR (HTC Vive) and Oculus, as well as even Samsung’s mobile Gear VR. That integration with the industry is what will make Yumerium a successful project.
The first impression for every online project is its website. It is very important to make a good impression especially to new customers and investors. Yumerium’s website is pretty good, with its white design it inspires confidence into the newcomers to the platform. Functionally, the website is very conveniently made, with easy to find place for every hyperlink, so the user can easily reach every additional information needed. The website does not give very detailed information about the project, but it is enough to hook up the user to learn more. The additional information is a lot, not only from the whitepaper and documentation, but from the links to their games, YouTube channel and partners.
I mentioned the whitepaper already. I am very impressed by it. This is one very detailed and professionally written whitepaper. One of the coolest things about it is that the whole document except the legal theme is written in very easy to understand language, which is very convenient for people without financial or computer science degree, like gamers, who are the main target group of the project. The whitepaper is having 10 main themes, collected in 40 pages. I like that a big part of the document is dedicated to the technological side of the project as well as company’s background. It is very clear and transparent presentation of the company and this is increasing user’s trust, which is very important. Overall Yumerium’s whitepaper is very well written and easy to understand.
Every good company needs a good leader to lead it. In Yumerium that leader is Jikhan Jung. He is having years of experience with the gaming industry even before the “free to play” revolution and he believes that he can invest that knowledge into driving the new “earn to play” revolution. He looks like one very good and wise leader, dedicated to its cause, which in the case is to lead the company to its best and to make this revolution happen. Of course Mr. Jung is having trusted people around himself. One of them is Francisco Martin, who is Chief Gaming Officer of the project and CTO of Substream Studios. He is young enthusiastic and well educated professional. Even though he is young, and with only two years of experience in the industry, he is having his great successes like Galaga Fever and Prism Break. The rest of the team are also very good professionals. I like that Yumerium is showing their game developers and artists, because they are the real stars of game developing and the people who are responsible for every great entertainment we are having ingame. Overall the team is very good mix of younger enthusiasts and experienced “old dogs” in the industry. The balance is very good, that is why the team is doing great.
Social awareness is very important to attract new users to the platform. Social networks are the most common place to do so. Yumerium is pretty popular in the social networks, but it looks like it is missing some of the most popular one (at least in the western world). Let’s compare some numbers. The platform is having around three thousand followers in Facebook, doubling to six thousand in Twitter and tripling to over twenty thousand in Telegram. They can also be found in Kakaotalk and YouTube. The most of the posts are in both English and Korean. There is information about project updates, events and interesting articles. Something very important for such project are the partnerships, and Yumerium is having pretty good ones. Starting with the companies in the Yumerium network – Subdream Studios, VR plus, 3rDoor Studio, continuing with the marketing partners AmaZix, Influence logic, Renowed & Co, Throne and finally one very big name in technology and gaming industry- HTC. They are mainly smartphone manufacturers, but in the VR community they are known as producers of the most common high-end VR headset- HTC Vive, they are also known to be main partner with Steam, which is the most popular game platform now.
Subdream Studios is launched in the beginning of 2017, releasing its first game three months later and after then one game every several months. The first native game to the platform is expected to be launched in July, with others following soon. In Q4 2018 third party games are going to be launched on the platform, as well. Overall, that roadmap is looking very ambitious, because it everything is happening in very short amount of time. Two years are not looking like enough time to finish such a project, but Subdream Studios are having the help of other companies like Exa Labs for some parts of the project. Overall, the schedule looks good with a lot of time dedicated to the developing of the platform as an ecosystem, which is one of the most important aspects for many new users of the platform.
Summary
Yumerium is creating a new, different and unique platform for all gamers around the world. It will make playing safer. It will protect from third party frauds. It will make tournaments better and easier for both organizers and gamers. It is different and innovative compared to other gaming related tokens. Yumerium are bringing the revolutionary “earn to play” model. Yumerium can improve gaming, not only by helping the existing gamers, but also by bringing even more people in this amazing and fun social activity, showing them that they are owning their games and items and are safe from losing it. The team behind the project is full of enthusiastic professionals, passionate about gaming and participating in that amazing industry. I am waiting to see what will be the future of this project, because I believe this will be a real game changer!
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Website: https://www.yumerium.com/tokensales
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/H5o7EE7ncnHvSXJJYWSLYg
ANN Thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3272290
ETH: 0x20865556CB46044c2D648a9BBBd4956902a2ee2e