Skrmiish App Goal to Democratise eSports: Draws on Internet Poker Model
Scott Peter Smith of Gamers Live says it does everything from "influencing a fresh global innovative sport, building new technology, embedding a strong revenue model, tapping into the human desire to compete and wrap it up with good timing and an enabling app".
He's referring to Skrmiish, a Capetown, South Africa company, which has built a proprietary technology for streamers, online gamers, teams and brands in an effort to collaborate, compete and monetise their gaming experience on the BTC blockchain.
The company proclaims its platform "lets you create your own competitive gaming experiences anytime, anywhere!"
Co-founder and MD of Skrmiish, Chris Heaton, compared his product to the online poker model that democratised its own game arena, whereby “anyone, anywhere in the world at any time could sit down and play a game and play for cash ... with some really smart technology.
“We asked the question: could this be applied to games? Could gamers create their own competitive experiences, play for cash, was it possible, was anyone doing it?”
Founded in 2018 and launched in October, a press release from the company announced: “Skrmiish is the world’s first app that allows any user to compete and monetise their experience on the blockchain. Skrmiish has had over 20,000 downloads (in beta testing), with over a million in in-app currency wagered. Once the crypto-based digital wallet is introduced to the app in November 2021, it will unleash the full global commercial potential of the tech."
That wallet is described as patented and incorporating Layer-2 Bitcoin cryptocurrency while adhering to FCA regulated CoinMode.
“There is no blueprint for what we are doing," Heaton explains. "We needed to tick a few boxes — could we create something special, was there an appetite, and could we convert users into paying players?”
As for democratising eSports, Heaton says "We felt like competitive gaming was an exclusive environment. We wanted to enable gamers of all levels to play for a bit of money.
“We wanted to create the ability to play in a customisable competitive experience.”
Skrmiish community manager and PUBG streamer Chris van Ysendyk, AKA DaDexo said: “Dealing with a community requires a lot of administration and is resource intensive. Skrmiish alleviates all these needs of someone running a community by acting as an automated bridge between you and your community. A plug and play connection.
“People want a place to play and a community to be a part of, and Skrmiish can automate the process of that by making it a repetitive competitive experience of onboarding people to your community. For me, the entire gaming process begins and ends with Skrmiish.”
More than 3 billion people play video games compared to 100 million playing online poker. About 250-billion matches are played every year, but there is a true "lack of inclusive competitive opportunities to stimulate revenue for the casual gamer or streamer," according to Smith.
Skrmiish is available on iOS and Android.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
