After 2 years of lockdown, The AR / Web3 innovators behind Izumi World are reviving IRL exploration with the first AR P2E game, inviting the ‘crypto curious’ to ‘get out and earn
After nearly a year of stealth development, Izumi World announces its augmented reality (AR) geolocation ‘Web3 meets real-world’ game set to launch in Q1 2023. Minted as NFTs at the time of capture, the anime style game allows players to catch, collect, train, and battle free-roaming CGI ‘Izumi’ from live-tracked real-world locations around the globe. The AR P2E experience encourages gamers to have fun outdoors and IRL, offering a dynamic and intuitive onramp into the world of crypto gaming for the ‘crypto curious’.
The group recently appointed seasoned web2 gaming veteran Jamie Davies as Chief Marketing Officer. Davies, a former senior executive with Xbox, has led marketing campaigns for numerous top-tier gaming franchises including Halo, Gears of War, and Fable. Davies explains:
Blockchain gaming is still contained within niche audiences, and that’s just not enough. So we’re leveraging the pop culture excitement around AR with a tried-and-tested geolocation gaming format, and added powerful but easy to understand ‘next generation’ P2E mechanics that have the potential to appeal beyond crypto users, and even beyond traditional gamers too.
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Izumi World’s seamless integration of NFTs and AR technology hinges upon real world geo-location and the ability to actively earn tokenized on-chain assets, all while gamers spend time outdoors. The game will be completely free to play and ‘leveling up’ is simply a matter of exploring, discovering, and collecting the untamed Izumi in the wild. And although an eventual governance and gaming token will be part of the Izumi model, the game is built around collecting dynamic creatures that exist as blockchain-bound NFTs, meaning that winning and ‘earning’ will not result in an over-inflated and volatile, market-dependent gaming environment.
Joe Pokrzywa, CEO of Izumi World is bullish on the intersection of AR and P2E. With 10+ years of executive gaming experience, Joe has taken games from startup to blue-chip industry leaders with a $200M+ valuation (NRG Esports), and was most recently COO of one of the largest gaming organizations in the world, OpTic Gaming. Pokrzywa explains,
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“People have spent the last two years indoors, and now, many of us are finding that the world we previously inhabited has totally changed. Prior to the pandemic, AR was one of the most promising gaming innovations, and we want to re-introduce the fun of AR, and couple it with the power of the blockchain. Right now there is a stigma amongst gamers regarding blockchain gaming, which is brought on by the constant influx of poorly executed P2E projects where earning is the focus. Our goal with Izumi World is to bridge the gap for gamers into the world of DeFi by making Izumi totally gameplay focused, with the crypto aspects being secondary.”
Because most play-to-earn games are optimized for the crypto-confident, Izumi World aims to strike a unique balance of high tech game design and familiar experiences more akin to traditional gaming. The game will offer off-chain wallets and a fiat on/off ramp for effortless onboarding and movement of funds. The in-game economic structure will also feature two ERC-20 tokens ($IZUMI and $TRNR) for trading, lending, staking, and governance.
The Izumi World “Trainer Pass” NFT will drop this summer, and, in addition to enabling beta access to the AR game, the pass will unlock unique opportunities like 3D trainer avatars, monthly mystery boxes, and access to an exclusive Trainer Discord channel. Dedicated Izumi Fans lucky enough to mint a Trainer Pass will be well positioned to begin earning and receiving airdrops of the project’s forthcoming $IZUMI and $TRNR tokens.
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