Augmentors, Africa’s first blockchain-powered augmented reality (AR) mobile game, has soft-launched in South Africa this past week.

A Shark Tank Investment

The game’s two co-founders took part in Shark Tank South Africa in 2016 and secured an investment from Vinny Lingham. Lingham proposed that the blockchain be used as a new solution to the problems the entrepreneurs were trying to solve – generating scarcity and uniqueness in a digital environment.

Michael Deon and his co-founder Kyle Haffenden’s initial idea was that game characters would be summoned by real-world items, metallic “triggers” that would be sold to players in order to generate revenue. But under the new system, the company raised funds by selling ‘databits‘, an in-game cryptocurrency that also makes use of the Counterparty token system, that players will be able to use to buy items and abilities for their characters.

Lingham reportedly offered an R500,000 investment, around 59 bitcoin (BTC) for 20 percent equity in Augmentors. Fellow Shark Tank South Africa investor Gil Oved, co-founder of The Creative Counsel, also invested in Augmentors.

Meet Augmentors

The Augmentors game is a 3D modelled augmented reality fantasy game consisting of 50 rare creatures, known as Augmentors. Each Augmentor is capable of unique attacks, spells, and movements. They also have their own origin, backstory, are trainable, tradable and swappable between players.

It is free to play and while battling other players you can earn rewards and an in-game currency (Emeralds) to spend on upgrades. Rewards are granted in packs called portals which require time to unlock. Portals contain ability cards, and may also contain single-use items called relics. Each Augmentor has two unique abilities – attack and defence. You then select another nine abilities to build a “deck”. Your hand consists of four abilities, randomly drawn from your deck.

If you gain abilities from a portal that you already have, these duplicates may be put towards upgrading your abilities. You can purchase premium treasure portals with real-world money, from R14.99 to R1,499.99 in value.

The in-game currency, Emeralds, is linked to a cryptocurrency called Databits (DTB) – which runs on the Bitcoin blockchain. When the game officially launches, the developers say it will be possible to exchange DTB for Emeralds, and back.

The company plan to hold DTB in a reserve to maintain fixed ratios of 1 DTB to 1,000 Emeralds. The amount of DTB stored in the reserve will continue to grow as it gains popularity because more Emeralds will be in circulation because using DTB directly in the game brought technical, user-face and regulatory issues.

Right now, Emeralds are only to buy gold or immediately open portals and take 3.5 hours to unlock. However, Emeralds will later be the currency used in the auction house and the in-game marketplace where creatures, relics, and skins may be purchased.

A Real-World Rarity

Haffenden and Deon wanted to create a multi-player game that got players together in the real world but blockchain technology could not facilitate this. Still, it is helping to release another dream: a system of real-world rarity and value for digital assets, i.e. digital scarcity.

Although some games have the mechanism for trading in-game currency or value for real-world value, systems that allow a direct exchange of game items or in-game currency for cash is rare. Other games link their in-game currency to the price of a monthly subscription, giving it real-world value. Others let you buy a premium currency with real money, and players can this exchange for assets in the game. Although, these fiat currency to in-game value exchanges are usually one-way. A player is unable to cash out unless through illegal channels.

The creatures are non-fungible tokens, which means that each individual creature is unique. This differs from fungible tokens, such as Bitcoin, where each token is identical.

Augmentors said it will use ERC-721 standards for its non-fungible creature tokens. They benefit from ERC-721 through provable scarcity and inter-game operability.

An alpha version of Augmentors is available for download in South Africa for both Android and iOS.