Skill and Non- Skill, Real Money Games

New Venture Research - Skill and Non- Skill, Real Money Games

The problem I am trying to address is two faceted, with a solution that eliminates boredom through thrill and entertainment and create money making avenue to skilled game developers and card game lovers. The opportunity identified from the problem would benefit game developers who lack capital and resources to market their games. Bringing these developers closer to those set of people who would pay for their gaming activity is the course of this solution.

The solution is a simple card based online platform where game developers across the world can build mobile card based games. Online gambling on skill based games is legal in 36 states in the United States of America. Any game which has an element of chance or luck is excluded from the scope of skill based games. For instance, the popular card based games like Poker has an element of chance involved. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) bots/ machines, the element of chance is removed in the card based games. Hence technology is expanding the scope of skill based games.

In a real game while two players are playing a card based game, the distribution of cards can have an impact and the player who receives winning set of cards will have an advantage over his opponent. This gaming solution would remove the element of luck by introducing each player to an opponent which is a Bot or machine. The bots will assure high satisfaction to the players because the bots are built using AI system, which use soar cognitive architecture that plays against the user and learns from the experience. The card game’s logic is designed to distribute same set of cards to both the players. The player who wins against the bot tends to be the real winner. Each card game on this platform has its own engine assisted with an exclusive Application Programming Interface (API). Game developers have to build mobile games using the platform’s API. 

Once the game has been launched on the platform, users can download these games onto their mobile phones. The fee generated out of distributing games will be shared equally between the platform and game developers. The fee would be 10% on the frozen bet amount. Through this gaming solution, I aim to target those gaming enthusiasts who amount to 176 million people who play social card games online. This online version is inspired out of a ground reality that reflects that millions of people go to Las Vegas to gamble on card based games.

Betting has emerged from ancient times of basic human civilization. Over the years of societal evolution, there have been legal obligations and societal obligations that have barred gambling as legal activity within a society. However, among some modern economies gambling as an activity is received as a full-fledged business activity. Research in this industry states that 30% of people who visit Vegas have graduate degrees which implies that a large mass of gamblers are well educated and aware of this industry and consequences. This number is growing year on year as it is turning into an accepted form of professional indulgence. Now, mobile platforms are key to Social card based games. My target audience being accumulated and aggregated in the United States of America has an advantage of easy market penetration. 

With data that is already available in the market we can draw estimates about the no. of download, users and revenue per user. With an assumption that we would attempt to make different kinds of poker games during the first year, we could populate the rest of the estimations. Social Games like Zynga Poker attracts about 10 million monthly active users. 

The distinction between Skill based and Non-¬Skill based games. Card based games are usually not considered skilled games because card based games have an element of luck on account of the way cards are distributed. My gaming platform change the style of playing to remove the luck factor; The bot is between players, same set of cards are distributed to players, player capabilities are judged against the bot. This model has a few dependencies which may mature as impediments in commercializing this technology.

According to Super Research Data, around 173 million people play Social Casino Games and close to 50 million gamble online worldwide. During the first week of Skillz.com’s launch, a skill based mobile gaming platform had million users in the first month. Another spend parameter from Netfix.com will help prepare the estimates. Netfix.com which provides Entertainment to users via Movies on average charges around $8 per month. It has around 29 million users from the United States. My idea is very different from Netflix, but our core purpose is the same, to provide Entertainment to end users. With this data, we can estimate $10 spent on betting per month as the average amount spent by each user. This provides 10% fee per user which is $1, to my platform and the developer. With an equal revenue sharing ratio, it would leave each of the parties with 0.5 cents per month. With 300,000 users as an initial target for the first year (multiplying 0.5 cents by 12 months and 300,000 users), the revenue would be $1,800,000. If the average spent by each user is reduced to $5 per month, upon applying the same calculation the platform would earn about $450,000. To conclude, with 6 mobile games attracting 300,000 downloads, the platform would oscillate revenues within the range between $450,000 and $1,800,000.