Few industries have witnessed explosive growth like that of the gaming sector. In 2010, the steady and well-established video game market was estimated to be valued at $62.7 billion, before nearly doubling to $120.4 billion in 2017. Driven by the rapid growth of social media and mobile gaming, the market would grow by 78 percent over the next four years, hitting $214.2 billion in 2021.
This growth might not come as a surprise, but what should be shocking is how much of this market has been cornered by social and mobile gaming. While traditional gaming mediums—console and PC—enjoy consistent and sustainable growth, social and mobile gaming has proven to transcend age and gender demographics.
In the late 2010s, Web3 games like Crypto Kitties emerged, but COVID-19 lockdowns propelled several of these titles to notoriety. Amid the financial uncertainty during this time, these games allowed skilled players to profit through earning and selling in-game assets like crypto and non-fungible tokens, introducing the play-to-earn mechanism.
Web3 games were characteristically complex, primitive in graphics and storylines, and often centered around the speculative digital asset markets due to their reliance on play-to-earn mechanics. Additionally, these games were challenging, time-consuming, and most importantly, not fun.
They did, however, onboard many new users to the Web3 ecosystem. While a niche market still exists for these games, the blockchain-based gaming sector has largely ignored the popularity of the casual mobile gaming sector which makes up 61 percent of the overall gaming market, reaching well over $130 billion in 2022.
As crypto and Web3 rebound from a harsh bear market, a project led by ex-Playtika designers aims to integrate casual and skill-based mobile gaming with blockchain. Leia, a Web3 gaming company offering a plethora of skill-based mini-games, is currently undergoing its token launch on the exclusive, community-driven launchpad Gems. Its token launch will empower the gaming project to enhance the Web3 gaming ecosystem with a diverse lineup of skill and casual games powered by crypto.
Leia will leverage Gems’s launchpad to expand its “Pikmi” gaming platform, boost its marketing efforts, and conduct alpha testing for its core titles.
Leia CEO and Co-Founder Avihay Hermon said: “It’s an absolute pleasure for us to have been selected by Gems to launch our token on their exclusive platform. Throughout the launch and pre-launch phases, Gems has been extremely supportive, providing us access to a wide range of investors as well as technical and business development support.”
As a new launchpad organized around a large network of “Leaders,” or community managers, Gems successfully launched its first three projects earlier this year, raising a combined $198 million. As a VIP-style launchpad, Gems is highly selective around onboarding projects, bringing in only those with the most disruptive potential. Its network of 4,000 leaders supports the launchpad’s ecosystem by investing in and supporting the quality ventures that make it through Gems’s hand-picked vetting process.
Gems CEO Isaac Joshua said that Leia is “By far one of the most promising Web3 gaming platforms we’ve come across. Apart from having an amazing team with years of valuable experience in the Web2 gaming sector, what stood out to us about Leia is its vision. Not many projects have recognized the problems with Web3 gaming’s user experience and the payment problems and even fewer have a solution for it.”
Leia’s Pikmi platform facilitates a convenient entry point for all gamers, especially non-Web3 natives, offering a diverse range of skill-based and casual mobile games each with in-game tournaments and community-driven events.
By launching its $LEIA token—to be used across all its games—on Gems, the project introduces a crypto-based ecosystem for casual, skill-based real money tournaments to mobile gaming. The Pikmi platform offers instant-low-fee payouts, overcoming mobile gaming’s traditional payment methods which rely on third-party payment services, in-app purchases, or subscriptions.
Leia provides a built-in custodial crypto wallet where users only need an email login to register, allowing for the seamless onboarding of gamers into the Web3 ecosystem. With time, Leia will enable access to DeFi through its custodial crypto wallet.
Hermon concluded: “We have received a lot of positive feedback from investors and our growing community regarding both our gaming and crypto elements and we look forward to delivering a revolutionary Web3 gaming platform.”