BlockchainReporter sat down with Nicolas Gilot, Co-CEO of Ultra, to discuss blockchain, gaming, and the Blockchain Gaming Alliance.
Q: You have always emphasized Ultra’s desire to remove the monopoly that exists in the gaming world. How does your recent joining of the Blockchain Gaming Alliance fit into that?
A: Well, the goal of the Blockchain Gaming Alliance is to inform the gaming community of the capacity of blockchain and to help them understand how blockchain benefits them and allows them to create better games and addresses the industry as a whole.
A lot of people are scared of blockchain because they don’t understand it and that’s where we come by helping to demystify it.
Q: And how does your team intend to incentivize the gaming community to switch to Ultra?
A: We intend to do this through the use of exclusive content. The same way consumers would buy a Nintendo because of the games that are available only to them.
They also have the ability to earn money on Ultra. Someone in East Asia or some parts of Europe might not have as much purchasing power as someone in other parts of the world. Through our rewards system, they are able to purchase more games.
By interacting with our platform and earning reward tokens, they don’t have to pay full price for games.
Also, we have a complete ecosystem on Ultra. Typically, you’d have to go to one site for e-sports and another for tournaments. On Ultra, the ecosystem is in one place and encompasses e-sports, betting, tournaments and so on.
Q: In what way does blockchain give Ultra an edge over traditional gaming platforms?
A: Blockchain gives a whole world of new capabilities.
First, you have the instant payment benefit. Traditionally, a developer would either have to spend a lot of money on developing the game itself and even more on marketing. So they’d get a publisher who would foot the costs and take a percentage of profits.
However, the developer would have to wait about 60 days before they get paid. With Ultra, the developer gets paid instantly and doesn’t have to wait.
There’s also the benefit of nanopayments. Usually, with traditional fiat payments, there are transaction fees which puts a limit on how much the developer can earn as some amounts will be deemed too small to charge a fee on. With nanopayments, there are no transaction fees and which means payments are precise and instant.
Players do not own games on Ultra through serial numbers but rather through tokens. This lets them sell their tokens or items in the games themselves.
Usually, when a player wants to sell an item from a game, there’s an element of risk in the sense that they can get scammed. However, Ultra’s algorithm uses an escrow of sorts that keeps both the items and the funds and doesn’t release either until the terms are fulfilled.
Q: There seems to be a significant overlap between gamers and cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Do you think this will help push blockchain acceptance in gaming?
A: Gamers are, by nature, people who love innovation and are very open to new technologies.
Also, most of them already understand the concept of digital currencies in form of game currencies and tokens so its nothing new to them.
Cryptocurrency to them is a real thing because they already go through the process of conducting transactions in the gaming world and have no trouble doing so in the real world.
Gamers are probably the best demographic to help push blockchain adoption because they are a very vocal group. If they discover and are passionate about anything tech-related, they are very vocal about it.
Q: What do you feel is the future of blockchain in the gaming industry?
A: You won’t see the blockchain as it will blend seamlessly into the background, being used to increase the speed and quality of the features.
This goes beyond payment processing as cross-game item use will become more prominent. Gamers will be able to take items from one game and use in another and the rewards for games will be even more instant.
One issue that the industry has faced is governments being skeptical about games rewarding players because it comes off as gambling.
However, with blockchain, the system and algorithm behind the games are explained and the players’ winning chances are shown which helps remove the stigma around it.
About Nicolas Gilot
Nicolas Gilot is the Co-CEO of Ultra, a blockchain-based game publishing platform aspiring to put an end to the current PC game market status quo. A serial entrepreneur and strategist, Nicolas led Xiaobawang as CSO, a game console project undertaken in partnership with AMD with a budget of over US$100m. He is responsible for the success of numerous businesses including game studio PixelBeam which was later acquired by Kingsoft (Xiaomi), and multiple game/app projects including Plants VS Zombies, Highnoon and The Economist. As founder and director of consulting agency Gamika, Nicolas has extensive knowledge in monetization strategy, product design, data analysis, and project management.
Ultra
Ultra is building a first-class PC game publishing platform and marketplace that may put an end to the current distribution monopoly. Founded in 2017 by Nicolas Gilot and David Hanson, Ultra’s vision is to provide developers with the flexibility of a custom-built platform while bringing exciting innovations and financial incentives to players, making the development of a new breakthrough game distribution platform possible.
For more information, visit ultra.io