In 2021 IOSG invested in Illuvium — an auto-battler game part of a metaverse created by the Warwick brothers. The NFT based game has a gripping storyline, character development, high quality art and DeFi components like marketplaces, trading, power-ups and betting (read: Leviathan Arena).

NFT collectibles, crypto games and social currencies have been at the forefront of crypto in the last few months. Gaming metaverses are just one of the key directions for crypto and Web3.0 movement to re-define social experiences.

Gaming and e-sports have seen a rise in the last decade and the global gaming industry is expected to grow over $119B in the next 5 years with a 12% CAGR. We expect blockchain games and the features that blockchain provides (ownership and monetization of time & effort) to influence and disrupt the current industry norms. Major gaming studios like Ubisoft already have incubation arms that are focusing on developing and incorporating blockchain in their new games without compromising on the user experience.

While we have seen a major uprise in crypto games by transaction volumes from Crypto Kitties, Axie Infinity and Gods Unchained, they are yet to attract gamers without crypto exposure. We found that the current gap in the market were crypto games with high quality artwork, storylines, seamless gameplay and character development that most attracted the traditional gamers.

Illuvium and its team is aligned with solving all the gaps without removing or compromising on the expectations of those immersed in crypto.

They are currently one of the best teams out there building in this direction. The Warwick duo have attracted some of the top-tier artists and creators who have worked on feature films like Marvel’s Avengers and Spiderman. This is evident from their character leaks if you have been following them!

Two weeks into the public announcement of Illuvium (early January), we saw how passionate their community was and how actively the founders and the Illuvium team had been engaging on their Discord. Illuvium’s discord community grew from a few hundred and stands at 11.7k Discord members today.

In just 2 months, the team has hosted two pre-ILV airdrops, multiple NFT airdrops, engaged with community via meme competitions, launched a governance structure and voted for the very first Illuvinati Council Members that had over 1,000 applicants from the dedicated community.

We’re excited for the Illuvium game to launch in Q3 of 2021 and are waiting impatiently to play the game. $ILV tokens will be available for purchase via Balancer LBP on 30th March 2021.

To read more about the game and/or to join their Discord visit: https://illuvium.medium.com/ or Discord link here.