Published on: 29/08/2022
Yumon to launch first-ever ‘player-owned creator fantasy world’
Yumon is set to launch the beta version of its player-owned creator fantasy world in Q4 this year, offering fans innovative ways of interacting with their favorite creators by turning them into collectible heroes. Players can earn money and prizes while supporting their favorite creators who can make their own fully customizable digital products.
Besides creating a fun game for players to enjoy, Yumon is slated to be a revenue stream for content creators who typically rely on advertisements for revenue. The game will also be a medium for creators to interact with both hardcore and casual fans in innovative manners.
Yumon believes that empowering creators is very important to the future of digital entertainment as the current systems are “detrimental to the vast majority of creators and to the durability of content diversification itself”. Many content platforms end up with homogenized content due to the desire to maximize advertisement revenue, negatively affecting smaller, more niche creators.
“We manage to leverage the popularity of big streamers, on maybe less popular streamers. For those who are super productive, the assets can be distributed to them quickly,” said Yumon founder Mathias Salanon, as per VentureBeat. “We like this idea of patronage plus, where you can donate, you can touch on your favorite creator in another way, and receive things that you own in the future.”
Fans can play with and earn digital collectibles in virtual tournaments offered inside of the game. Salanon defined the game’s systems as a way to align creator and fan interests and make digital ownership mainstream simultaneously. The project itself has been selected by the Ubisoft Entrepreneurs Lab, which supports promising startups with mentorship to develop the Web3 ecosystem.
Expanding the Web3 ecosystem
The company believes there is a disparity between creators and the products they promote, and it hopes the game can offer creators a solution on that front — which is why it plans to allow creators to create fully customizable digital products and then integrate their creations into the game.
“I really want creators to find new meaningful revenues which shall not [be] detrimental to the content. We can actually transform the creators into video game characters. We turn it into powerful new entertainment for fans,” said Salanon. “We want to be the next Patreon, with more benefits. You can own part of a creator’s brand through the NFT.”
Since the game targets a casual audience, Yumon aims to make digital ownership accessible without players needing to have prior Web3 experience. The company believes that the barrier to entry into blockchain technology and the Web3 ecosystem is too high due to a large amount of difficult-to-understand terminology. Yumon will instead be using games as a medium to introduce NFTs and digital ownership to a broader market and increase mainstream appeal.
“Technical terms used such as ‘gas’, ‘minting’, ‘floor price’, ‘seed phrase’, ‘private key’, ‘ledger’, etc. need to be removed or abstracted by design to bring more people in. Games are a wonderful way to do so and Yumon is tackling this challenge,” wrote the company.
