GOD’S OF THE BELLO REALM

With the rise of gaming, gaming-related technology, and blockchain, 2018 is the perfect year to launch Augmentors. It has been almost one year since our token sale in 2017 and we thought it a good time to review where we’ve come from and why 2018 is our year!

Since the token sale in February 2017 we have grown a super talented team, run a pre-Alpha, done a heck of a lot of development, testing, learning and going back to the drawing board, developed the in-game Databits (DTB) token economy, run an early backer Alpha, and are in the best place to deliver on our 2018 roadmap. This is the year of Augmentors!

What happened in 2017?

At the end of February 2017, Augmentors closed off its 30-day token sale, which was a huge success. Not only was it, at the time, the most successful token sale ever concluded by a mobile video game, but the first token sale in South Africa. We sold US$1 million in DTB tokens.

In June, we held our first pre-Alpha event for a small community of players. This was an invaluable experience for us as we received an incredible amount of feedback that forced us to go back to the drawing board. The main problem was the turn based dice mechanic resulting in a change of direction to strategic real time game mechanic.

FIRST PRE-ALPHA

We developed and published the DTB economy design 2.0 whitepaper in November and hosted a live webinar to answer community questions. The primary aim of DTB economy design 2.0 is to align the interest of the backers, the players, the Augmentors business, and all other participants in the network.

In December, we held an early backer Alpha for our token sale participants to be among the first to battle fantastical creatures in real time. Another invaluable experience to test the strategic real time game mechanic. Key feedback centred around matchmaking, Augmented reality, the implementation of tutorials, and user experience. We took all the feedback on board and have incorporated it into our roadmap.

EARLY BACKER ALPHA

With Augmentors, it’s not just about the technology. In fact, we added a plethora of new faces to our ever-growing team. In order to make Augmentors the best it can be, we hired Bernardus, Willem, and Stefan as developers. To bring our fantastical world and creatures to life, Bianca, Kayhos, Jamie, and Frans were recruited for their artistic skills and creativity. To further our reach and presence in the crypto community, Simon was appointed as our Crypto community liaison. Marianna also joined to handle gaming community management growth, and a host of other marketing-related areas — though, she did actually join us this year. And, to lead us into 2018 and beyond, Gert joined Augmentors as its CEO.

It’s not just Augmentors, but the gaming industry as a whole that is showing fantastic growth every year.

FUNGUS VS LEO

Gaming is on the rise

The gaming market is booming. Insights firm Newzoo estimates the market was worth US$116 billion in 2017 and will grow to a staggering US$143.5 billion by 2020. To put this into perspective, global box office revenue was US$38 billion in 2016 and is estimated to grow to US$50-billion by 2020. This means more and more people are spending money on games.

While many gamers have access to custom-built PCs or their favourite consoles, almost everyone has some form of smart device, whether it’s a phone or tablet. The global mobile market is already sitting at US$50.4 billion. At present, mobile gaming makes up 43% of the global gaming market. This growth is being further pushed by the competitive gaming scene, esports could reach a value of US$2.4 billion by 2020.

It’s not just gaming platforms either, but gaming technology that is on the rise. Augmented Reality (AR) gaming is set to reach US$284.93 billion by the end of 2023. The technology boasts great promise as massive companies, such as Microsoft, Apple, and Nintendo are investing heavily in it.

Blockchain is on the rise

Even though blockchain technology started out with the purpose of a public decentralised ledger for Bitcoin in 2008, as our readers know, it has far more potential across industries and, in our view, especially in gaming. Thanks to Bitcoin’s monumental run in 2017, blockchain is on nearly everyone’s lips.

Blockchain already has functional everyday uses, such as smart contracts and offering bids on real estate. Even NASA is considering the technology for future use.

In gaming, blockchain enables accurate scarcity along with the true ownership of creatures and assets. By using a decentralised ledger, games enable gamers to battle, train and trade on a whole new level. There will never be a question of whether or not another play actually owns an asset they are bragging about.

THE FIVE AUGMENTORS STARTER CREATURES

Where to next?

The second month of 2018 is almost over and we have already made significant progress in the way of development.

Augmentors added its first of many female creatures to the line-up, Sha. Agile and swift, you will be able to play with her as one of the five starting creatures.

Speaking of creatures, we have decided to move Creature tokens to the Ethereum blockchain, which will be Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT), while keeping DTB on the Bitcoin blockchain. The NFT space has taken off in recent months and will allow each Augmentor to have their own attributes, history and value. The move also means we will use NFT standards, such as ERC-721 and ERC-821, but we are still deciding on which will be best for Augmentors.

We are currently working on further refining the game and how it works. This includes experience points, skill trees, the history of each Augmentor and so much more.

At the end of Q1 we’ll hold a DTB Token Holder Alpher. In Q2, we will release the Alpha version of Augmentors, which will include tweaks and suggestions from the the Token Holder Alpha. This will be followed by a Beta release in Q3 and an official release in Q4.

As always, we would like to send out a massive thank you to our Augmentors community for all of their support and feedback.

With the growth of gaming, mobile tech, and the Augmentors launch at the end of 2018, this is shaping up to be our best year yet!