Contents
- Introduction
- Founding Team
- Product Development
- WAX Community and Awareness
- Technical Information
- The Aims and Future of Token Gamer
- Contact
1. Introduction
Token Gamer is a multifaceted organization founded in 2018 on both a passion for — and a belief in — blockchain gaming. After seeing the potential of WAX in 2018, Token Gamer’s founders became ICO investors and have been deeply embedded in the community ever since.
However, in 2021, the founders decided it was time for Token Gamer to contribute to the WAX ecosystem. It is now our express intention to be an indispensable part of the WAX machine by developing the highest quality products and content. We are undoubtedly early on our journey, but have made enormous strides, with many more in the near future.
2. Founding Team
Token Gamer is only possible by collaborative efforts involving many partnerships, but it is founded by two friends of over 20 years.
Robert Baggs
Rob has a First Class honours degree in Philosophy and a First Class Masters by Research in Metaphysics. This passion for informative but entertaining technical writing led him to begin content creation in a number of industries. Rob now receives in excess of 3,000,000 views per year across all platforms and is now focused on blockchain.
The son of a computer programmer, Rob has had a deep-seated interest in gaming for 30 years, but it wasn’t until the advent of blockchain that he knew he had to contribute. WAX’s growth in the space solidified that notion, and so in 2018, he co-founded Token Gamer, aiming to bring the highest level of content to the community.
David Mountford
Dave has a 2:1 in Computer Games Technology which led to a 10-year career in FinTech. Dave has worked for some of the world’s leading banks and hedge funds in Production Engineering, Project Management, and Development.
Outside of the working world, Dave is an ex-professional eSports player, competing on-stage at major tournaments. His affinity for gaming was further ignited by the introduction of blockchain to the sector which led to Dave co-founding Token Gamer with the view of developing products for the WAX ecosystem.
3. Product Development
The development of purpose-built WAX-centric products is foundational to Token Gamer and our roadmap. As you will see, we’re developing an ecosystem where all of our products, tools, and content synergize together. We will be continuously expanding on the products we currently have as well as adding in new products that further our contributions to the space.
Token Gamer Website
Founded in 2018 for the purpose of producing content on all things related to blockchain gaming, we found ourselves gated by the distinct lack of news. However, by early 2021, we could see the industry was expanding quickly and we could follow suit with our efforts.
While our viewership is undoubtedly humble, our growth is not. Month on month, we have seen substantial growth (150-450%). Our articles on WAX-related topics tend to do particularly well and see high impressions on Twitter (10,000 to 40,000).
We are committed to putting out high-quality, journalistic-style content, from news and reviews, to guides and opinion pieces. Here are two of our most successful articles in terms of page views on Twitter impressions:
WAX Is the Most Active Blockchain in the World: Are They a Future Gaming Titan?
The Genius Pivot of Topps To NFTs: The Key To WAX’s Future and Their Role in Blockchain Gaming
Token Gamer App (In Development)
The Token Gamer app is one of our flagship products, aiming to be the app for blockchain gaming. Although still in development, it already has the three fundamental features: a live news feed of our articles (as well as external articles we deem of interest) on blockchain gaming, an integrated WAX NFT viewer so you can easily view your assets, and our gaming drops calendar so players never miss out.
WAXaccount.com
WAXaccount is a site that delivers all WAX account metrics in a single view. This includes the total USD value of your wallet, including NFTs based on estimated value, staked CPU, NET, and RAM, connected tokens like R-PLANET’s Aether, voting power, staking rewards, and so on. We are hosting the API and this will be utilized by the Token Gamer app too.
4. WAX Community and Awareness
Community is one of the principal pillars of crypto and WAX’s is particularly special. Token Gamer strives to contribute to that in as many ways as possible, from active participation in the WAX Telegram channel and Discord, to social media like Twitter. We create educational content for both our own platforms and others in order to persistently raise awareness for WAX.
Podcast: WAX Lyrical
The WAX Lyrical podcast is a collaboration with the founder of Pink.gg’s NFT Insider, John Nichols. WAX Lyrical is focused on all things WAX and every week, Rob and John discuss a topic in-depth. The first episode of this weekly podcast is on blockchain gaming and we have received a great response. We were also pleased to see William Quigley Tweet the episode.
You can listen to WAX Lyrical on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Anchor.
Drops Calendar
The Token Gamer drops calendar is centered around drops that are relevant to gaming. Its purpose is twofold; Firstly, it’s a more focused drop calendar than is found elsewhere and is carefully curated to feature important drops in blockchain gaming. Secondly, by hosting it ourselves on TokenGamer.io, we are able to sync it with the Token Gamer app (shown in the GIF of the app above.).
Freelance Educational Journalism
In addition to content creation for Token Gamer in its various forms, Rob also is a freelance writer in the blockchain space. As well as writing educational content for a number of outlets, Rob has also been writing and publishing articles commissioned by WAX themselves. For example, a piece on NonFungible.com — one of the largest NFT blogs — explains the WAX EVM. Below are links to that article and other educational pieces already published at the time of writing this.
Why NFTs Are So Important to Artists
We Need to Raise the Bar of What Constitutes a Project Worth Investing In
5. Technical Information
Security, performance, and reliability are paramount at Token Gamer. Our infrastructure is designed to meet these three key requirements, whilst also being able to keep up with the ever-increasing demands of the WAX network.
We have chosen to use all bare metal infrastructure for our initial infrastructure footprint, but we haven’t ruled out more cloud-native models for the future. For now, bare metal gives us complete control of our physical resources. We are able to tune these servers in order to perform optimally and efficiently for their specific allocated roles.
Here’s a selection of our initial equipment:
3 x Block Producers (Prod, Backup, TestNet)
- Intel i9-9900k
- 128GB Memory
- NVME
APIs (Prod/TestNet)
- Intel i9-9900k
- 128GB Memory
- NVME
Peers (Prod/TestNet)
- Intel i9-9900k
- 128GB Memory
- NVME
Atomic, IPFS, and Custom TG APIs
- Intel i9-9900k
- 128GB Memory
- NVME + HDD
State History
- Intel i9-9900k
- 128GB Memory
- NVME + HDD
Hyperion
- Intel 9-9900k
- 128GB Memory
- NVME
As time progresses and the WAX ecosystem continues to gain traction, we plan to scale some of these functions out to provide a more geographically diverse and resilient platform that can continue to meet the ever-changing requirements.
Security
Our platform and its users’ security is always at the forefront of our thoughts. We operate a ‘secured by design’ mantra. All infrastructure changes are peer-reviewed and deployed via automation, and all administrative access is restricted via secured bastions to only those in the team who absolutely need it.
We use hardened operating system configuration by default and consider the security implications of every change we make, regardless of size.
Automation, Change Control, and Monitoring
At Token Gamer, we manage our infrastructure via IAC (Infrastructure as Code) methods wherever possible. All changes are tested, reviewed, and deployed in a repeatable manner. When dealing with servers at scale and providing mission-critical services, there is no other option.
Unfortunately, hardware fails… all the time; It’s just one of those things. The only way to be ready for this, is to prepare for failure and monitor everything. At Token Gamer, we use DataDog for exactly that purpose. Their platform provides us with key metrics at our fingertips, so we can keep on top of our infrastructure anywhere, anytime. DataDog has plenty of customization, integrations with common software stacks, and numerous alerting options, so we can be confident that we can resolve any issues as quickly as possible.
DCs and Expandability
We’ve chosen to host our equipment with Hertzner. There are many reasons for this. Whilst cost is obviously a factor, their great support, quick deployments, and focus on environmental sustainability are of the utmost importance to us. Alongside this, they have heavily customizable hardware (and virtual) platforms we can take advantage of.
Whilst Hertzner is our choice for today, we will continue to evaluate options as we scale and move towards the future.
6. The Aims and Future of Token Gamer
Token Gamer may have been founded in 2018, but it wasn’t until 2021 that the founders began to pour investment of time and money into establishing the organization as a reputable source of information and a part of WAX’s rich ecosystem. The growth and feedback since ramping up have been sufficient in convincing all involved that Token Gamer is taking the right steps.
The future of Token Gamer orbits one vital premise: add value. Through our coherent collection of products, tools, and content, we will establish ourselves as both a valuable asset to the WAX ecosystem and to the blockchain gaming industry. We are also working on some noteworthy partnerships that we hope to announce in the coming months.
Short-Term Goals
- Launch the Token Gamer Members Club, accessible via ownership of either the Members Pass NFT or the VIP NFT on the WAX blockchain. Members and VIPs will receive early access to news, competitions, and products, as well as the opportunity to talk directly to the founders.
- Create regular competitions and giveaways of NFTs and beta access to blockchain games.
Mid-Term Goals
- Continue to develop, improve, and expand our current products to better serve users and the WAX community. We want to evolve our products into a holistic solution to blockchain gaming on WAX.
- Add new products and tools to our own ecosystem wherever we see gaps or need.
Long-Term Goals
- To become as central and indispensible to the WAX ecosystem as the likes of Atomic Hub, as well as being a leading voice in blockchain gaming.
- To invest in, aid in the development of, and publish games on the WAX blockchain.
7. Contact and Socials
Contact
For website, editorial, content, or podcast enquiries, contact Rob: Rob@TokenGamer.io
For tech, Token Gamer app, or WAXaccount enquiries, contact Dave: Dave@TokenGamer.io
For the Systems Administrator, contact Neville: Admin@TokenGamer.io
