Today I’m chatting with Matthew Skinner, who leads a team that’s recently integrated the Enjin Blockchain Gaming Solution into their project – Arena Match. Being an esports platform, I’m pretty excited about this one, who doesn’t like a good sporting platform! Having read their whitepaper ( I recommend it!) I think it explains it really well.

Quoting it, the project reads:

ArenaMatch.com (“Arena Match”) is an upcoming esports gaming app that will allow individuals to bet and compete in Skill Challenges (player vs. house), daily high score leaderboards, head to head (1v1 duels), team vs team and Battle Royale FFA (free for all) matches for popular online games, such as PUBG (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds), Fornite, Apex, and CS:GO (Counter­-Strike: Global Offensive).

Reads well eh, and it uses Enjin, let’s find out why!

But first….the giveaway 🙂 Again we will be giving away 10 Meltelbrot/eGamers tokens to the first 10 who retweet this article and add their ENJ/ETH Collectible Address as a reply on Meltelbrot twitter. Also Arena Match is generously offering a Founders Badge (RRP US$300) to a randomly selected address who retweets the article too. Good luck all, and now time to learn 🙂

MELTELBROT TWITTER

ARENA MATCH TWITTER

Hi Matthew, thanks for taking the time out to reply to my q’s! First thing I like to ask is – what’s your background in gaming and/or gaming development?

Absolutely, thank you for the opportunity to chat with you. To answer your question – Over the past 2-3 years we started getting heavy into game research and development with a focus on esports. We are also all avid video and board game players.

After reading your whitepaper, I noticed your team has a lot of relevant experience? Can you give us all a little more insight into their backgrounds?

The core team and I each have about 10+ years’ experience in software and web development. We’ve also worked together on various projects over the last 4-5 years – we work very well together. Not so much when we play board games. Haha

Great to hear the team has all worked together effectively previously, I feel it’s important a team knows each other well. Board games / board rooms same same ha! Now to elaborate on what I quoted from your whitepaper, could you expand on that in your own words? What’s on offer that’s new?

The online esports and skill betting market is relatively new — not many people are doing it, and no one is doing it well. Without a clear industry leader, there’s been no blueprint, which means each company has been pioneering their own way with mixed results. We’ve had the luxury of seeing their efforts, and believe we can radically improve upon their models by simplifying them and broadening their audience.

From a strategic level, we believe that head-to-head instant matchmaking games and Battle Royale modes will ultimately prove to be the most compelling modes from the audience’s perspective, but we want to make sure that players have things to do when the player base is limited (for instance, during off hours), and modes to try out while they familiarize themselves with the platform. To that end, we want to offer a selection of “solo” experiences, like skill challenges and reoccurring highscore tournaments.

So basically you can play games like fortnite by yourself, or with friends, or random people over the internet, but play to win via your platform. Is that about right?

Yes, we are launching with a Skill Challenge game mode first.

In this mode, players make a wager against Arena Match based on their ability to succeed against a number of specific predefined challenges (like getting first place in their next game of solo Fortnite). Payouts are related to the player’s historic performance and the challenge’s difficulty. This Skill Challenge mode lets users play solo ranked without waiting for someone else which solves day 1 player base liquidity issues most platforms face.

Cool, it will also be an innovative way to keep records too I gather. Will it be a simple experience to use your software whilst playing the games?

PC gamers will be able to install a lightweight application that will onboard them through each step to start playing skill challenges. We will start each new account off with $5 in credits so they can get a feel for the app before making any purchases. If you are a fan of PUBG or Battle Royales – I think the skill challenges will be very straight forward.

There’s a few different skill challenges involved, but one challenge that took my interest is playing against the house, and it got me wondering who’s playing for the house. Does Arena Match have their own esport team or is it AI? How’s that work?

We are really excited to launch Skill Challenges and PUBG as our first game.

We are able to pull data from the users match via multiple ways to ensure fairness and the results.

The first way is with our development partner Overwolf who gives us deeper access to each game through screen scraping and DLLs. The other way we verify information is through the games API to verify and confirm the results a second time.

Innovation plus! Which skill challenge is your favourite?

The easiest one! Haha

Really I think out of the ones we are launching, probably the 1 Kill + Top 5 with a 2x payout is the best.

In the future, we would like to add more interesting challenges like get x number of kills with a vehicles or get x number of melee kills. I think that could add a lot of variety and strategy to the game mode.

As we all know these articles are unashamedly Enjin based ha but that leads me to the next question. The Enjin solution has been previously linked with esports usability like NRG, can you tell us more about your use of Enjin?

AMGold will actually be an ERC-20 token rather than an ERC-1155 but we are announcing a very unique hyper-deflationary model for our tokenomics.

We adopted Enjin’s blockchain SDK to mint game specific skill perk items that will give players certain advantages while playing.

Our Founder’s Badge and Skill Perks will all be ERC-1155 Enjin backed and allow players to reduce the difficulty of a challenge, increase the payout and even give them a second chance if using the First Aid. Each perk slot can only contain one unique item. We are currently exploring multiple Enjin multiverse partnerships.

Out of curiosity – how did you find out about Enjin?

We’ve been following Enjin since they started and met them at GDC event in 2018. They’ve done an amazing job and delivered so much since then! Since we adopted the Enjin SDK we’ve be talking with various team members – they have been wonderful to answer questions quickly and provide feedback.

I noticed you touched on the tokenomics of AMGold, how is its model a benefit for players within your platform?

So we have strict limit of 100,000,000 AMGold, never to be increased. We are introducing a very interesting hyper-deflationary token model that will burn a % on each transaction, more details about that will be available soon.

Overall, we see AMGold’s value as a utility token creating a decentralized, community-driven virtual economy that will grow overtime.

One of the main concepts I like about this platform is that it’s – totally skill based. I know that’s important due to the many global online gambling laws ruling out any game that uses currency and chance for a betting system. You guys obviously know this too, so can you give us some insights from your research in this area? You’re all good yeah?;)

Skill-based gaming has a well-established legal, social and commercial history. From classic board games to major sports tournaments, games of skill have long offered participants a chance to compete based on one’s ability.

Arena Match can legally operate in roughly 80% of the world and 41 US states. We have a blog post dedicated to this topic called “Esports Competition is Not Gambling”. https://medium.com/arenamatch/esports-competition-is-not-gambling-348bb460f487

Not to FUD, but with the U.S. being the U.S. when it comes to regulatory powers and punishing those that don’t adhere, what’s your take on charges being laid against the likes of EtherDelta and their marketplace for ERC-20?

We’ve been following this closely and working with our legal folks to make sure we fall into the utility token category. We have a legal opinion and passed the howey test successfully.

Good to know you’re looking at the big picture and getting proper advice! (Something to note is that Enjin Coin has been advised as passing the Howey test too). Back to your project though, another major point I took from your whitepaper, was the working relationship your team has with Overwolf. Can you tell us more about how you’re working with them, and what such a relationship means for your project?

Early this year we received a developer grant from Overwolf / Intel to kickstart app development on the skill challenge idea. They have been tremendous partners and give us a way to access AAA games – that we wouldn’t be able to do easily without them.

This all sounds really positive, how far away will it be until peeps can start playing on your platform?

We have been working non-stop with Overwolf to get the MVP Beta launched to the public. With software development and especially something as complex as skill-betting and video games – there are always unexpected delays that come up. We are shooting for early next week!

Very soon then!! Now I’ll have to fess up here. Personally, I came across your project due to your MFT, I see that word and I’m like…wait..stop. Is it NFT too lol those who know me know I like to collect! But either way, such tokens are a good way to promote a project. And after reading your whitepaper I had to buy one and support you! It came with a price of $200USD, which is high for MFT’s of late, but I think it’s worth it. For others, what can we expect from hodling your MFT? And where are they for sale?

Well, first of all thank you for your support! The Enjin community has been amazing – it feels like a family. We actually reduced the total supply of our MFT Founder’s Badge to only 100 total and each legendary skill perk will only have 10 total supply. We are just about sold out on everything plus the giveaway accounts for 2 sets. So if anyone is interested please check out the shop!

What other Enjin backed items can we get? And what’s your favourite?

Each Skill Perk offers a different strategy – I think it really depends on how you want to play the game.

For example the First-Aid lets you get really aggressive in the first 2 minutes of the early game if you are trying to rack-up kills.

But my favourite is probably the helmet perk that reduces the kill requirement by 1. For example, if a skill challenge requires 5 kills to win – this item would change that requirement to 4. I think this perk is crucial for our 10x payout skill challenge.

These token sales are obviously used as ways to raise capital to help develop a project to the point of release. Is this the case for your project?

I think most Enjin projects have used the pre-sale of items to really kickstart development and provide runway for the team. A lot of projects would just be getting started but thankfully we are almost into beta and we also have a developer grant from Overwolf our partner that we are unlocking milestones for.

You guys seem like a perfect candidate for the Enjin Spark program. Innovative, professional and exciting. How’s that all going?

So technically, since we are software and not an actual game, we do not qualify for the spark program. But Enjin has been very supportive and helpful through our SDK adoption process. I believe we may be participating in a upcoming event this summer with them but that’s all TBD right now.

Oooh I love to hear about collabs!! Any thoughts on streamer integration? Allowing the app to link to streaming services and allowing viewers to make challenges for the streamer potentially paying out AMGold?

Currently we have been creating private partnerships with a number of Twitch streamers who will promote and use our platform whilst streaming to raise awareness within their own audience base. But we don’t have a public program YET that would support this idea, but I think its something we would like to explore once we get established.

Can you give advice to any other budding developers out there with a great idea and team?

Yes, don’t get stuck in endless iterations and adding features before users have a chance to use your product / game. Ship what you have early and often!

Great advice and I have a feeling you guys are going to do well 🙂 Is there anything else you’d like to share with the readership?

Thank you for this interview – you asked some great questions and kept me on my toes! If readers have any questions or want to sign-up for early access to the esports app, they should visit our website and join our telegram news channel to stay in the loop on news. https://t.me/ArenaMatchGold

It’s been a pleasure Matthew! And thanks heaps for taking the time to reply and answering all questions, no matter the issue 🙂 I think this could be a really exciting development for all gamers, and current Enjin games like 9LA. Perfect fit I reckon! Best of luck and I’ll be definitely watching this space. Should others want to keep up with the progress on Arena Match please follow the links below.

Website: https://arenamatch.com/

Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/GV6RqWb

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArenaMatchGold

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arenamatchgold/

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/arenamatchgold

Medium: https://medium.com/arenamatch

Telegram: https://t.me/ArenaMatch

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