If the rise of Cryptokitties taught us anything, it’s that right now gaming is literally one of the biggest mass adoption use-cases for blockchain technology. Despite the slow nature and lack of scalability on the Ethereum network, this single game still managed to be wildly popular. As scalability improves, many more use-cases will become possible, but the precedent has been set for gaming to be one of the biggest applications of this tech for many years to come. Not to mention the continually growing global gaming market, particularly in Asia. So for that reason, I am going to review 3 of the best projects I have found today.

Some key factors in my analysis are

Scalability — It is no good to be stuck on a network that cannot handle a single game

Worldwide Appeal — Companies targeting the growth of gaming in asia, particularly China

Tokenomics — Is the project’s associated token likely to rise in value? What are the mechanisms that will give the token value, and is there a benefit to holding it?

Traditional ICO metrics such as hard cap, supply sold, market positioning etc.

Team — What background experience do the main team bring to the table

Below is a review of each, and a conclusion on which one I’d rather put my money into. I will leave out lots of info for the sake of brevity, or else this article would just be too long. This will be a long one, so bear with me or scroll down for the Pablo Cryptobar Conclusion.

1. Yumerium (YUM)

The Blockchain-Based, Incentivised, Open Gaming Platform.

Sale: 26th September 2018–10th October 2018

Hardcap: $20 Million

Percent of supply sold: 39%

Website, Twitter, Telegram.

Yumerium, developed by Subdream Studios, are trying to target the gaming economy, specifically focusing on the developers and the development of VR gaming, along with the financial and accessibility problems that come with it.

Although they will be including the decentralised developer crowdfunding approach, to minimise such things as fees from traditional crowdfunding sites, they seem to be focusing on the ‘Pay to Play’ aspect of VR to bridge a gap between developers and gamers. They will be initially using the Ethereum virtual machine for their smart contracts, which does present scalability issues, but are looking to be as chain-agnostic as possible in order to port to a faster network if necessary.

• The Yumerium Team

There are 16 members to the Korean based Yumerium team. Included in the team are many years of experience within the VR gaming industry. Their founder Jihan Jung is the CEO of two other VR gaming companies; Subdream Studios, the leading VR company in Korea, and COLOPL NI — a US-based VR focused development study branching from the Japanese giant COLOPL. So it is safe to say, he has great experience in the field of VR gaming.

Alongside Jung, their CTO Francisco Martin (also the CTO of Subdream Studios) again has great experience in the world of VR and game development. Martin is currently a game developer at Virtual World Arcade, a company that is attempting to bring VR to the masses by bringing arcade and mobile VR events all around the world.

• Key Features

Yumerium’s parent company, Subdream Studios, are the owners of VR Plus — the biggest VR franchise in Korea (2nd biggest online gaming market in the world).

They are targeting the VR side of gaming and VR development, which is cool in its own right and gives a unique window for VR devs to have an ease of access element into new game technology and creationism.

This team is betting on the success of the VR market, which is more niche than the whole online/mobile gaming industry, comprising less than 10% of the whopping $138 billion market at around $9.5 billion. This number is expected to only grow to 22.9 billion by the end of 2020.

The ingame token reward bounty is one of the unique concepts specific to Yumerium. Developers can set in game goals or ‘achievements’ into their games and when users play the game and achieve a specific criteria, the bounty automatically unlocks the smart contract prize to be sent to the user. Doing quests or unlocking achievements for tokens is definitely a great idea in my eyes. But it is not yet specified on the amounts, uniqueness and availability of these bounties, or where the tokens themselves come from i.e. the Yumerium foundation, or the devs personal funding.

• Bonus Structure

Yumerium has a strong bonus structure for the earliest and biggest buyers. Unfortunately at this time the best early bird presale bonuses are gone, although volume bonuses are still available it seems (they are separate). This is a favourable method of selling out a project, however it does not bode well for future token price on secondary markets and leaves public buyers at a very large bonus deficit.

The background for this project is solid and has potential to be a strong player in the VR world, especially with support of its parent company. It is likely that buying on exchanges after the sale would be more profitable and a better risk to reward, given the bonus setup and how late it is now.