Try Before You Buy
New Ape City™
New Ape City has everything Stan has been looking for in a game. It is a massive open world with the level of engagement he’s come to expect in the genre. There are missions to run and rewards to cash in on. And just the idea of exploring a massive online city where apes and humans co-mingle just lights his brain on fire. However, with his disc space running low, in order to install this game, he knows he has to delete one of his others. Can he take a chance on an untested game of losing his progress in one of the others, just because the trailer looks so damned good?
What if there was a way for Stan to try New Ape City before he made that commitment? A sample level, the tutorial perhaps, where he gets to run and climb as a big purple gorilla around a city block. Wouldn’t it be great if he were able to try the game, without downloading anything, before he jumped into the purchase and download process? Well, Stan, now you can.
YOM has created the decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) that allows AAA Unreal games to be pixel streamed to any URL without the high costs and latency issues associated with legacy cloud gaming. YOM has created a viable ‘try before you buy’ option.
DePIN Explained
The DePIN that YOM has spent four years developing is moving the needle for the entire gaming industry. The network allows AAA games created in Unreal Engine 5 to be streamed to the end users via a web browser at a massive cost saving over the traditional central server model. And with the shortened proximity of the rendering machine to the end user, the issue of lag is conquered.
Traditional cloud gaming has suffered from two major drawbacks, cost and latency. Leaving off the environmental impacts, consider the financial costs. Because large data centers are expensive to construct and maintain, with air conditioning units, equipment upgrade costs, and manpower to service the facility, they attach a large bill for hosting game instances. With those costs for construction and operation they are only constructed in limited locations. This means for those end users not within their radius, game lag becomes an issue.
The technology solution is just now coming to market to counter the issues of central servers for many aspects of technology. In a DePIN, individual game PC owners rent their unused cycles to the network to act as the GPU for an experience being pixel streamed to the end user. In this way, the technology not only has a drastic reduction on the environmental impact of these large data centers, it also allows for the distribution of economic reward. Instead of the central server owner receiving the funds from developers, the DePIN pays node owners for the use of their unused cycles. The more game hours their machine streams, the higher their rewards.
Widening the Funnel
While gaming remains the highest revenue stream in the entertainment industry, generating more annually than both movies and music combined, the market still remains hampered by access to the proper hardware. To get the best quality experience, the player is forced into the purchase of a high powered gaming machine or an expensive console. A second gate is then in place, the game services such as Steam or the Sony PlayStation store, which require login credentials or registration. Finally, the necessity to download the software to run locally means another delay for the user.
The flow to access for the model that YOM has constructed with the DePIN is much, much simpler and opens up the path between the developer and the end user to a single step. Players need only access the website where the team has embedded the game, and start playing. As a way to entice players to try a new mechanic or be brought into a new story, this immediate entry will prove to be invaluable to the game developers, and to the industry as a whole.
But There’s More
Developers can use the YOM DePIN for things like A/B testing across a much wider base. If there are game mechanics that are in development and require feedback testing, the launch to a URL is kept so simple that they can run those tests via the internet. If they choose to have this be a closed test, to gate with a login, that’s up to the development team.
Similarly, if they wish to move their game to the web3 world and connect their game to a web3 wallet for game inventory and rewards, that path is open to them. The gates created by the game services that prevent web3 connections are removed when hosting on the YOM DePIN.
Game analytics and merchandise funnels are also maintained in the same way that every URL already collects analytics and offers merchandise. Playing the test level of New Ape City on the game’s URL can let the developer know which features are used most, and which are being ignored, to improve subsequent features. And finishing the test level can reveal a link to the download page to promote the purchase of the full game. Or maybe just a link to buy the hoodie.
In the end, the YOM DePIN is moving to enhance the accessibility to games to a much wider audience than is currently available. Removing the need to download the game before playing it, the need to purchase expensive equipment, will only lead to a wider adoption of some of the best gaming experiences built today, and open the door to much more innovation in the future.
New Ape City Redux
New Ape City turns out to be exactly the game Stan had hoped it would be. The test level allowed him to climb the massive central tower, zipline to neighboring roofs, commandeer a horse from a carriage house, and get to the dry cleaners to collect his clothes before they locked up for the night. With his laundry secured, he was encouraged to download the full version at a discounted price, which he was happy to do. After a light snack, Stan will return to the city to see what other adventures await.
The CXO
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