RAWG - the IMDB for games and more!

What does RAWG offer?

The video gaming market is growing faster than ever, thanks in part to increasing penetration of smartphones and tablets and more recently also AR/VR technologies. The global market is estimated to be worth $109 BN in 2017, growing at over 6% CAGR. RAWG aims to provide several solutions to this market:

• Provide a cross-platform recommendation service (think IMDB) for gamers
• Reward gamers as they spend time and skills on the platforms
• Enable advertisers to target gamers based on actual interests

Launched in April 2017, RAWG is a blockchain-based ecosystem - an online database of games from all popular platforms combined with a smart recommendation system and social/community features that enable gamers to follow & interact with each other, review games, discuss and monitor activities in a personalized feed.

Revenue will be generated from ad sales and promotions. RAWG will provide advertising platform to companies to enable targeting gamers by socio-demographics, interests and game interaction data (devices owned, games they look forward to, have dropped or completed, etc.).

What makes it interesting?

• Current Status: Already up and running in beta on rawg.io - development launched in Nov 2016. Since April 2017, the platform supports a unified player profile that automatically compiles all games from multiple platforms

• Database: 52,000+ games already in its database from platforms such as Steam, Playstation, Xbox, App Store, Google Play, Nintendo and others with plans to expand the database to 200,000 within the year. Cross-platform showcase of calendar of releases, charts, user reviews and must-play games available since August 2017

• User Interface: Exciting, intuitive UI

• Token Utility: Until April 2021, RAWG will only accept RAWG tokens for ad services - post that, the tokens will give fast track access to purchase advertising without waiting in line

• Team: Includes media and entertainment professionals with prior experience in developing projects like Kanobu, Roem.ru, Svyaznoy based in Russia / Eastern Europe - the team launched it initially with funding from its founders and then raised USD 2 MN from Altair Capital, Wargaming, Game Insight founder and others. Advisors include Igor Matsanyuk (a serial entrepreneur and investor), John Hanke, CEO of Niantic (responsible for Pokemon GO) and several others with interesting backgrounds

• Competition: While there are several competitors in this space that reward gamers such as SwagBucks, PlayAndWin, Exodus 300, zVAULT, etc. - they tend to be rather limiting and funds / rewards cannot usually be withdrawn either. RAWG is the only cross-platform recommendation and rewards service. The largest game data sites such as IGN and Kotaku, despite having a large number of games, lack personal recommendations and are less organically community-based.

• Rating: Rated 4.4 on ICOBench

What is the roadmap?

• Oct 2018 - 100K games in the database, community-editable database
• Nov 2018 - Tokenized Q&A, receive answers from game developers
• Dec 2018 - Advertiser self-service profiles

Use of Funds:

• 40% of the funds will be invested in marketing to attract the audience to the platform. RAWG registration already imports data about gamers and their records on the platforms. As per the whitepaper, the first 2500 users imported more than 470K games from their profiles to RAWG
• 40% is allocated to product development including employee salaries, expanding team of developers, marketers and specialists
• 10% will be allocated to information security and another 10% to back office and other expenses

How can you invest?

• 1 RAWG = 0.03 USD
• Soft cap of 66.66 MN RAWG
• Hard cap of 333.33 MN RAWG

Token sale will start on May 15, 2018

Links:

https://rawg.io
https://token.rawg.io

Final thoughts

RAWG solves an important problem for gamers by putting together an extensive cross-platform database and a smart recommendation / rating system and community features in addition to incentivizing them to play more.

I certainly think there is a large market for such a platform. RAWG already has raised seed investments and has a live product - the potential to use tokens beyond games extending it to merchandize and also easy liquidity will be very attractive to users. No doubt, a big chunk (40%) is allocated to marketing and product development (40%) as it will be important to drive awareness and user adoption.

Happy investing!