Skillgaming - a breath of fresh air at TGS!
We are delighted to announce that Skillgaming.com (formerly Betverse) attended the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) 2019 at Makuhari Messe in Tokyo’s neighbouring Chiba Prefecture from 12–15 September.
Developed by Hatchworks and powered by the DALP multi-million dollar liquidity pool, Skillgaming (SG) is a unique skills-based (regulated) gaming website where users can park real money on themselves in a range of popular mini, indie and big league games and earn as they play, level by level.
Additionally, SG is unique in that users can also challenge their friends with customisable peer-to-peer (P2P) and team matches, or they take on the CPU and earn on reaching certain milestones and levels. It is the world’s first online gaming community where the better you are, the more you earn; users can add friends, review games, gain achievements and much more.
SG was represented at TGS by Karen Yap, Head of Business Development. Accompanying Karen was a journalist, Christiana Thanou from www.gamesworld.gr, who was sponsored to cover the event.
TGS is an annual trade show for the games industry where the newest products, innovations and technologies are launched and exhibited. With over 260,000 visitors from 40 different countries, TGS 2019 cemented the event’s reputation as one of the largest and most important gaming events in the world. It is an annual event where developers get the chance to come together and showcase their games; in essence it’s the Japanese equivalent of conventions like E3 in the US and Gamescom in Germany (which SG also attended).
Additionally, as Asia’s largest game show, it offers gaming companies the chance to meet potential business partners in Asia, and to gain a better understanding of the gaming industry in Asia and how to enter it.
On behalf of Skillgaming, Karen interviewed several indie game developers at TGS. The recurrent concerns these developers had seemed generally to relate to their struggles with exposure and monetisation of their games. Often becoming obsolete shortly after release, their games literally suffer a silent death in the long run. That’s how dramatically they put it.
Karen said: “Skillgaming opens up significant new revenue opportunities for developers which traditional ad-based channels do not. We want to change their ‘silent death’ to an ‘eternal monetisation’ and at the same time allow gamers to have fun whilst earning money”. By having their games hosted on SG, developers will earn commission on every real money transaction placed on their games, whether users win or lose.
Skillgaming hosts free-to-play games, some created in-house and some by third-party developers. Gamers can wager up to $25 USD and make up to 1000% returns depending on the difficulty of the game. There will eventually be almost any type of game in the “Realm of Skillgaming”. To start with, games comprise Platform games, Shoot ’Em Ups, Combat Racing, Puzzle and Casual games. It currently does not include Sports, Strategy, Action, Adventures, Fighting or MMOs, but these will follow soon.
In Challenge mode users play against other users. They challenge them inside their chosen game, select the dollar amount and aim for the highest score. They can also set a custom challenge by specifying certain parameters, like, for example, reaching the highest score in a given time period. Players can either accept or reject the challenge, and interact by adding each other as friends. Thus, SG is not only a gaming network but a social network as well!
Another thing gamers and game developers struggle with is publicity. An example of this can be seen with the case of the Malaysian underdog trio IamChuan, Kenny Tail and KOF Master who won the Street Fighter V Asia Invitational 2019 at the Tokyo Game Show 2019 but gained almost no media coverage at all. Many in Malaysia’s gaming community feel they are not getting the recognition and exposure they deserve in their country and can only wish that their government and other relevant parties would do more to support the esports and gaming industries. Skillgaming.com is a platform created by passionate gamers for gamers everywhere, and as such want to help winners like these get some international exposure, a voice and the winning celebration that they deserve.
SG’s Karen is now regarded by the Malaysian gamers community as a super patriotic Malaysian who gave them their first interview to get their story heard. She said, “I genuinely hope that this will encourage more gamers to keep on fighting, believe in themselves and improve their skills; and I really encourage the right people in the industry to step up and work together to further help, empower and bring the gaming industry to another level”.
Game developers can submit their games to SG for free via API and earn up to 40% revshare from every wager placed on their games. In addition, should they choose to also join the SG affiliate program, their potential earnings could increase to 66%. SG is currently in closed beta, but will be opened to the masses in the next couple of months.
More information: info@skillgaming.com
