Raheel Iqbal has been in the gaming industry for several years now, and in that time, he has seen the industry grow to become the $300 billion juggernauts it is today. But what got us here won’t take us to the future, and as he told CoinGeek Backstage, his company is betting on play-to-earn, and it’s building on the only blockchain network that can scale unbounded—the BSV enterprise blockchain.
Iqbal is the CEO of Game Storm Studios, the largest gaming design, development, and publishing company in Pakistan. He has been the CEO of the firm for over a decade now, and in that time, Game Storm has published over 1,000 games which combined have racked up over a billion downloads.
Speaking to CoinGeek Backstage host Becky Liggero at the sidelines of the AIBC Summit in Dubai, Iqbal revealed that after more than a decade of developing mobile video games, his company is now pivoting from a free-to-play to play-to-earn model.
“That’s where Game Storm and BSV come together,” he said.
Play-to-earn is a gaming model underpinned by blockchain technology that lets users earn an income for their gaming activities, usually in the form of tokens which they can then trade for fiat or Bitcoin. This model has exploded over the past couple of years, with studies showing that gamers are five times as likely to spend time on a P2E game as the traditional games. And with over 3 billion gamers globally as of 2022, this industry is only finding its feet.
On why his company chose to build on BSV, Iqbal told CoinGeek Backstage that BSV “is really cheap if you compare it with other blockchains where gas fees are so high that now, people are thinking of going off-chain rather than on-chain.”
One of the biggest areas that Game Storm is exploring is the use of NFTs in its gaming ecosystem. With minting fees being so tiny that it’s almost basically free, BSV has once again proven that it’s the best platform, even for NFTs.
As Iqbal explains, NFTs have found great significance in the Game Storm Studios universe, with the most ubiquitous application being the identification of the ownership of a gaming item. This item, be it a monster truck in one game or a legendary sword in another, can then be sold off by the owner quickly, with its value rising depending on the heroics of the gamer.
With the AIBC Summit being held in Dubai, Iqbal also delved into the UAE city’s newly-found status as a global blockchain hub. Dubai is now considered a global leader in blockchain, from its use of the technology in its smart city initiative to its support and integration of the technology in its public sector. Over the past year, some of the biggest blockchain events have been held there, most recently the BSV Global Blockchain Convention, where Iqbal was one of the guest speakers.
“They are more enthusiastic about working on new technology, they want to collaborate with private companies, and they want to build something new,” Iqbal said.
Watch: The BSV Global Blockchain Convention presentation, Play2Earn with BSV Blockchain
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