Tokenization of the casual gaming world through crypto and blockchain

INTERVIEW: Jillian Godsil meets Piotr Blazewicz, CEO of CoinClash Games…

The difference between gambling and gambling can be unclear, but it is important to be able to draw a clear line between the two when it comes to gambling regulation, taxation and staying on the right side of the law. This is something that comes naturally to CEO and co-founder of CoinClash Games, Piotr Blazewicz, with his background in both industries in the highly regulated territory of Gibraltar.

“My background is in media and marketing where I have worked since 1996, but in 2005 I moved to Gibraltar to work on the pre IPO project for a company called PartyGaming (owner of PartyPoker – the biggest poker site in the world at the time) . This was a very intensive experience and gave me good insight into the marketing, legalities and rules surrounding gambling – and the customers.”

When that project ended around 2011, Blazewicz was looking for another challenge, but chose to move from gambling to gaming, a similar area in terms of customers but without the huge regulatory costs. Around the same time, he met his co-founder Matt Kotnik who Blazewicz describes as a brilliant technical developer and scientific mastermind.

“We wanted to entertain people and make them feel good about themselves, so gambling automatically came to mind. Based in Gibraltar, we knew we had to meet the very strict gaming rules, but we were happy to do it .”

CoinClash Games evolved into a social skill-based platform using hyper casual mobile games.

“The skill base is very important, everyone starts from the same level and cannot jump up by buying shields or extra weapons for example. We start with two simple games – Bubble Clash 4 Cash and Solitaire.

“And as the first name says, we have introduced a money aspect for players to play for money.”

Casual games

Both titles are highly polished games that can be played in under five minutes. There will be another five casual games in the first tranche, including a quiz, a football match, a word game, Candy Crush-style games and a golf simulation game.

The concept behind CoinClash Games is to create engaging games where people can play for fun or to challenge each other to play for money. Free players will be able to enjoy just as many features as paying players, but if they like the games they can consider pitching a dollar to add excitement. We have added many unique features like inviting and playing against your friends.

“That’s where the name comes from – people put one coin against another – and the winner takes the change. In addition, to maintain the platform, a fee of 10 cents is charged per game. So if you were to challenge another player for a bet on $1, it would cost you $1.10 to engage.”

The 10 øre for each game is divided into four parts. The majority (50%) goes to pay for developers who are currently in-house, but will in the future also include third-party developers. 25% of the fee goes to the platform, 15% to the staking pool for people who have the CoinClash coin and 10% to buy back coins and burn them.

Blockchain and crypto

And this is where Blazewicz suddenly starts talking about the blockchain and crypto component of the platform. He’s only talking about it now because people playing on the platform never need to know any of these details to enjoy the games. It becomes relevant when they want to explore who they played with and what was the result of all games. That’s where the Blockchain explorer will give them insight into the game’s transparency.

“We decided to build the platform on the blockchain for two important reasons. The first was to provide transparency for all games, winners and cash. Often when money is involved in skill-based games, the public cannot know for sure whether they are playing a real person or a bot.By building a blockchain we can host all the data on it with each and every game acting as a smart contract.This will build trust in our games.

Another important difference from similar games is that players can invite their own friends or family into a circle and ensure that they only play with known people.

“The second part has not been done before and is a world first. People who hold the CoinClash token and stake them on the platform will earn in dollars a revenue share of the revenue.

“People are used to putting coins, but the rewards are denominated in tokens, often native. But on our platform, when people stake our tokens, they earn in fiat.”

Blazewicz believes this is a real use case in the games industry. He is also planning a buyback scheme for the tokens to act as a deflationary measure.

Selling the tokens initially is a way for CoinClash Games to fund the platform, but over time it will also act as a regular payout for stakers. Only 2.1 billion tokens will ever be minted with the first shelf of 500,000,000 available.

“Currently we have sold between 15 and 20% of available tokens which equates to almost $1 million. However, we are fully regulated in Gibraltar, which also requires participants to do a full KYC.

Blazewicz believes the platform will be attractive to other third-party developers of skill-based games in that it gives them a way to monetize their games seamlessly. Currently, the existing games are available on the Google Game Store and Apple IOS, but there are plans to expand access to browsers and even consoles.

Immediate access to winnings

As part of the development of the platform, emphasis has also been placed on customer service. Players can immediately access their winnings, when they are more than $10.

Blazewicz and his partner spent most of 2022 building, and this year they’re looking to publish the games.

– The market here is large. People like the short games – it’s like a coffee break and fits naturally into a day. It is the opposite of gamers spending hours and hours in front of their screen.

“People might play five or six times a day, but it’s only about half an hour in total, so it doesn’t distract them from family or work. Over time, we want to expand the challenges to tournaments to truly optimize the player experience.

“We mean delivering fun, engaging experiences for our customers – to take a break or plan a fun session with friends – all too small transactions to add to the excitement of familiar style games.”