Gaming’s going to take crypto to the mainstream – Polemos CEO

Polemos, the company behind the blockchain-based GameFi esports platform, is looking to gaming to pull crypto into the mainstream.

Speaking with Stockhead, the CEO and co-founder of Polemos, Sascha Zehe, pointed to the sheer number of gamers, and the number of games being launched with blockchain-enabled technology in 2021, as a legitimising force that will help the legitimacy of crypto across all markets.

“Play-to-earn [P2E] blockchain games are the first real-world use case for crypto for the mainstream. Given that there are an estimated more than 3.2 billion gamers worldwide, and the number of those gamers playing play-to-earn games currently is less than five million, the market potential is massive,” Zehe said in the interview.

“In the years ahead, the number of new P2E games launching will be staggering.”

There are two particular benefits to gamers that those investing in blockchain technology are keen to sell: one is the ability for blockchain-enabled games to generate assets and revenue back to the player.

Zehe, in the interview, points to an example where a company – Asian Logic – actually allows its workforce to play blockchain games on work computers for this reason: “We believe we have a real differentiator through our relationship with Asian Logic, which is one of the largest gaming companies globally with 5,000+ employees,” Zeha said. “This is big – for both Polemos and Illuvium – and that’s because Asian Logic is permitting its workforce to become Polemos guild members and make use of their work computers to play Illuvium.”

The other significant benefit is the idea that a player’s assets can be transferred from one game to another. Currently, if you earn a rare reward or piece of equipment in a game, it is locked to that game. What some developers and publishers are exploring is the idea that the piece of equipment could be placed on the blockchain and therefore transferred from one game to the next.

Polemos is looking to close its round of seed funding in the first quarter of 2022, so its enthusiasm for the future of blockchain gaming is naturally based on the company’s self-interest. Zehe argues that the number of games being released with blockchain features will push mass adoption, and there is certainly evidence to suggest this is the case. In a letter released on New Year’s Day, one of Japan’s biggest game producers, Square Enix, made it clear that it wants to see NFTs become a major trend in games. This follows on from major western publishers, including Ubisoft, EA and Activision, taking steps towards blockchain gaming last year.

However, it’s important to also note that there is significant resistance to these things in mainstream gaming culture currently. Ubisoft received an overwhelmingly negative response to its first foray into NFT-enabled games.

From this, it is clear that blockchain companies have a lot of PR and education work to do yet before those billions of gamers become a viable market for the industry.