“We’re seeking good games which will do so much better in adapting to blockchain technology. We have already made contracts with 20+ games to be listed on our store.” — Damian

Introduction to ITAM Games

ITAM Games from Korea is emerging as a leader in Blockchain Gaming. With over 20 plus gaming titles in their armament and requests for more, ITAM is solidifying itself within the sector. ITAM has large plans for expanse at a steady rate, which will appeal to people within the EOS community. CCO of ITAM is Damian Byon, Ex-block producer for EOS and a past gamer based on DOTA & Starcraft. GenerEOS sits down with him today to talk about ITAM and the perspective or direction ITAM is looking to go. Exciting stuff not just for EOS but for the new age of gaming. GenerEOS is excited to share this interview with the EOS and Gaming Community.

Richie M — GenerEOS

Today, I sit down with CCO of ITAM Games Damian Byon. Hello Damian, it’s a pleasure to have you here to answer our questions today! First of all, our readers are curious in what ITAM actually means, what does ITAM stand for exactly?

Damian — ITAM

Item, Alchemy, Market was the original initial for our company. But now we use ITAM as the standard NFT (Non Fungible Token) for our blockchain game store.

Richie M — GenerEOS

How did ITAM games become what it is today and who’s vision was it?

Damian — ITAM

Our founders foresaw that after the EOS-mainnet launch, blockchain games would be possible. So they have prepared for the project ever since before mainnet launch.

Richie M — GenerEOS

Korea has definitely been a leader in gaming adoption on all devices, whether it be mobile or pc and consoles. Combining gaming with blockchain and the incorporation of NFT’s, where do you see ITAM in 5 years?

Damian — ITAM

The Gaming industry has always been hot here in Korea. But right now the industry needs a new revenue stream. There has been market polarization between small and big game companies. We are grateful that we are one of the pioneers to launch a blockchain games store and give players true ownership of their digital assets. We believe that NFT’s will benefit both players and game companies because it gives true ownership and scarcity to it. But I believe basic principles of games will stay the same. Games have to be fun and fun games will create value to these NFT’’s. We believe that NFT’s are the new revenue stream for the gaming industry and we hope as pioneers of this market, that we become a global blockchain game store.

Richie M — GenerEOS

ITAM’s DADEX is a Digital Asset Decentralized Exchange which will provide services such as transfers, the buy & sell of digital items along with reliability & transparency for users. Gaming has been the first step, what other areas has ITAM Games looked at in regarding to expanding on DADEX? And will it incorporate Scatter connection or will there be something else from ITAM?

Damian — ITAM

No, we will not incorporate with other wallets and identification tools at the moment. Since we are using SDK (Software Development Kits) for our store, most of the wallets cannot support the functions we have created. We provide lots of services that aren’t supported on other wallets. But our ITAM Store wallet will support everything. Also our DADEX can be only used through the ITAM Store wallets. The reason we are making digital assets to be tradeable only through our DADEX is to share the trading fee with game developers. As I said before, game developers are looking for a new stream of revenue and we believe a trading fee is one of them. We need to provide reason for traditional game developers to build there on top of blockchain. If we can’t provide good reasons, that means it will take a long time for good games to migrate to EOS. If we make any exchanges to access the trade on ‘ITAM NFT’ it is hard to provide a trading fee to the game developers. We will be working with major exchanges to access our DADEX.

Richie M — GenerEOS

Damian, what are some of the highlights that you have been involved in at ITAM Games? Also, what Blockchain Gaming Events is ITAM planning on attending?

Damian — ITAM

Eversince the EOS-mainnet launched, I have seen many blockchain institutions getting interested within blockchain gaming. Many of them truly believe gaming will be the first service to bring users to the blockchain industry. We have recently attended Token2049 in HK, but right now as it is closer to our store to be launched, we are not planning on attending anything for this month. But we are going to attend Deconomy in Seoul and 2050 event on Hangzhou.

Richie M — GenerEOS

What are some of the toughest challenges ITAM has faced?

Damian — ITAM

The biggest challenge for ITAM is the number of users on the EOS mainnet. Even though EOS is the most active blockchain for dApps, it only has about 700K accounts. Targeting for that amount of users for traditional gaming industry is suicide. We have found few solutions for that and we will be announcing it later on.

Richie M — GenerEOS

Is there anything around Samsung?

Damian — ITAM

No comment ?

Richie M — GenerEOS

Can you provide a brief overview of the Blockchain culture in Korea?

Damian — ITAM

Like most of the other blockchain communities, people are traders and investors. They are in fact active blockchain service users if we consider exchange as a service. We believe games will make blockchain traders into actual blockchain users.

Richie M — GenerEOS

The BlueDawn RPG is a stunning looking game! How many do you have working on BD? What has been the budget of BD?

Damian — ITAM

BlueDawn is RPG game that focuses on digital asset leveling. We believe in order to give NFT a value there has to be a well architected digital asset model. We have 26 people working on BlueDawn and most of the team members are from big traditional gaming companies. BlueDawn is going to be opened to the public on September. When it launches, it will look like a modern mobile RPG game. Budget for BD development is quite a lot, I could say it’s as much as a traditional mobile game.

Richie M — GenerEOS

Are there any developments in terms of partnerships and if so, can you share any details with us?

Damian — ITAM

We have made collaboration on dGoods, but we have paused on collaborating with dGoods since we are using our own NFT (ITAM NFT). dGoods will be focused on SFT as its focus is not just on games. ITAM NFT will be writing all the information of the digital assets on blockchain (Enhancement history, item attribute, and functions etc). This will cost more to use RAM, but we believe that blockchain data was supposed to be expensive and that’s what gives it true value.

Richie M — GenerEOS

The Onion Knights is not a NFT based blockchain game. Why the choice on staying with a Vanilla model?

Damian — ITAM

As of now The Onion Knight’s wasn’t implemented on NFT yet, but we have achievements and a scoreboard system that is using blockchain technology. Later on, we’ll be doing an event where players can earn NFT by high scores and achievements which can be used in later titles. We will be releasing this in store. Think of it like this, we are preparing for digital assets which players can use in multiple games.

Richie M — GenerEOS

Will there be any gaming titles or licences that ITAM looks to resurrect?

Damian — ITAM

Yes, this is one of our main business models for ITAM Games. We’re seeking good games which will do so much better in adapting to blockchain technology. We have already made contracts with 20+ games to be listed on our store. There is hundreds of games releasing to the mobile game industry every day and there are titles which have failed on the mobile game market due to bad management or centralized services.

Richie M — GenerEOS

Will ITAM Games support free accounts for users?

Damian — ITAM

Creating a EOS account is a big obstacle for users. We have found many solutions which we will adapt for users to play ITAM Store later on. As of now we are only focusing on making our store better as it is still in Beta.

Richie M — GenerEOS

ITAM is playing a steady game itself and not rushing into anything. VR and Augmented Reality have been growing in the last several years. Anything down those roads for ITAM?

Damian — ITAM

We haven’t thought of doing anything on VR but Infiniverse has contacted us and discussed some exciting collaborations we could do together. Nothing is official, but we will share the information when it is ready.

Richie M — GenerEOS

Tell us about yourself Damian. What games did you grow up with? Are you a arcade master on Tekken?

Damian — ITAM

No, I’m not a good Tekken player or of any kind of arcade games. But like most of the Korean people I was a huge Starcraft fan. During my college years, I even played on the first DOTA league in Korea. To be honest I wasn’t really a MMORPG player, but I always understood the values on those weapons and items people collect. After fully understanding blockchain technology, I foresaw that gaming items would be the first thing to adopt to blockchain.

Richie M — GenerEOS

From all of us at GenerEOS we would like to Thank Damian for his time and valuable thoughts about the future of blockchain gaming. We wish ITAM the best and cannot wait to see more from the team!