Digital Gaming Experience Spotlights Africa’s Growing Gaming Ecosystem
The Digital Gaming Experience event was held in Cape Town on March 26th. The event focused on themes surrounding eSports, blockchain gaming, NFTs and the Metaverse. It saw new innovations in the gaming industry put under the spotlight. Among the speakers was Michael Jordan “MJ the Fellow Actuary” who shared his well-received metaverse philosophy with the audience. MJ is part of Polygon – a decentralised Ethereum scaling platform pushing Web3 technology upstream.
Other guest speakers included Alex Hilton, a former lawyer, now working in the crypto space who gave an attendee-favourite talk around the play and earn gaming ecosystem titled Nifty League: Pioneering the Future of Digital Gaming.
Grey Jabesi of Mamba Gaming addressed the audience in a discussion around the latest developments in the African gaming scene and the potential for growth. Through their scholarship program, the Mamba Gaming guild enables scholars to play-to-earn. They also gifted attendees with Proof of Attendance Protocol POAP – unique NFT badges that are given to attendees in order to prove their attendance at the event.
During the eSports segment of the event schedule, Clint O’Shea of African Cyber Gaming League (ACGL) took to the stage and shared some incredible insights about the future of eSports. In his talk, he touched on some of the issues of interest to the audience as far as whether eSports can compete with traditional sports and what the role of technology is in the eSports gaming industry, in addition to how gamers can benefit from partnerships, build audiences through streaming and monetize their content.
Shafee Abrahams of Limited Run Shop – a space and platform for sneaker enthusiasts and collectors of rare or exclusive sneakers gave a compelling presentation of how the team is planning to introduce non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to complement their existing business model. Their hope is to enhance their current offering, making it more attractive to their consigners, but also more appealing and value-adding to their customers.
The Digital Gaming Experience event was made possible by the support of Playbetr the #1 Licensed cryptocurrency focused casino & sportsbook with social gaming and a Paris Saint-Germain Official Betting Partner in Latin America. In attendance was Alakanani Itireleng of Satoshi Centre – a blockchain startup incubator and Frank Deya – both representing Playbetr. They shared their valuable insights with the audience around the changing nature of sports betting and the future adoption of digital currency payments in sports betting.
Playbetr was also kind enough to also give away some free crypto to attendees – both on and offline. The limited time only offer requires new users to simply sign up on the Playbetr platform and follow Playbetr’s Twitter, Instagram and Facebook as a condition for eligibility. The event was also promoted by Proudly Associated – a peer-to-peer marketing agency alongside Betr Models which is also part of the Playbetr ecosystem.
Ashton Wolfe of Crypto Fight Club gave a compelling talk about the Crypto Fight Club metaverse in which participants are able to mint a fighter in order to participate in high-yield staking and play-to-earn games while taking true ownership of their in-game assets and participating in a new economy where rewards are based on time, effort and skill. Crypto Fight Club demonstrated a live NFT mint which they were generous enough to giveaway to a winning attendee along with 500 FIGHT tokens.
Other participants at the Digital Gaming Experience included Cyber Rhino Squad – an ecosystem aiming to utilize NFTs to create virtual safari experiences with the intention of helping with wildlife conservation.
The event was engaging, interactive and successful at showcasing real world use cases of NFTs/digital collectibles and their role in the burgeoning Web3 internet world where the Metaverse is expected to take centre stage.
“The common vision for all who participated was fostering community building and information sharing with the hope to help facilitate the creation of a thriving gaming and tech ecosystem locally,” said Heath Muchena, Founder of Decentralised News and the event host. “There were plenty of opportunities for attendees to network and create synergies for future collaboration. The audience was well-equipped with the know-how needed to leverage new innovations in the gaming space and the key takeaway was that blockchain-powered innovations are here to stay and will continue to disrupt and reshape traditional business models, making them more equitable and inclusive.”