Game On: The Epic Rise of GAM3S.GG from Visionary Polkastarter Community Members

Sometimes, all it takes is one DM. And the rest was history…

The GAM3S.GG inception story 🌱

In the fast-paced world of blockchain and web3, few stories capture the essence of community-driven success quite like the evolution of Polkastarter Gaming into GAM3S.GG. Today, we’re here to tell you that story.

Once upon a time, in the bull crypto market of 2021, Polkastarter was making waves,  propelling over 100 projects to success in verticals from DeFi to Gaming. At that time, like today, the Polkastarter community had hundreds of thousands of members engaging on a daily basis.

Amid that frenzy, a community member emerged from the crowd with the vision of creating and scaling the Polkastarter gaming vertical. Omar Ghanem, a hardcore gamer and web3 enthusiast, now GAM3S.GG co-founder, strongly believed gaming would become one of the waves towards blockchain mass adoption and was consequently looking to change the web3 gaming scene. And so he did.

After reaching out to Polkastarter, Omar proposed the creation of a gaming community – designed with a targeted effort to support and amplify the web3 games launched through Polkastarter by bringing together genuine gamers to provide adequate early game testers and the ideal consumers of upcoming web3 gaming projects. Realizing the scale of the opportunity and the lack of maturity in the space, Omar utilized his past professional gaming experience to help build the foundations for Polkastarter Gaming and quickly brought on more gamers from the community such as Sanan and Hubert, as well as past gaming colleagues, including a certain Mostafa Salem, who helped turn the Polkastarter Gaming idea into a reality.

The community evolved relatively quickly, and as the team expanded beyond a gaming Discord server into creating content across Twitter, Twitch and YouTube - community members were struggling to keep up with the ever-changing web3 gaming space across all these different platforms; and that exact frustration became the reason behind the birth of GAM3S.GG (Polkastarter.gg at the time of inception) with a clear goal in mind:

To create a platform that can improve the web3 gaming experience and seamlessly onboard millions of new gamers into the blockchain gaming space.

The idea of creating “the home of web3 gaming” became almost an obsession, and the team hasn’t looked back since.

The journey so far 🗺️

Polkastarter Gaming embarked on a relentless mission. They gathered a dedicated team of gamers and embarked on a mission to help create content to spotlight the top web3 games and help push the space forward. In the process, the team established long-term relationships, most of which remain stronger than ever to this day, with most of the top web3 games, including Big Time, Illuvium, Star Atlas, and Shrapnel, as well as working alongside blockchain ecosystems to help their upcoming studios with distribution through content.

With the support of the Polkastarter tech team, Polkastarter Gaming kept building during the bear market, first launching their product alpha back in the summer of 2022, and has since continued to iterate and build a robust platform that now boasts over 350 games, reviews, guides, news, quests and much more.

The cherry on top? The GAM3 Awards – the biggest annual web3 gaming event is celebrated globally and has grown to become one of the most highly anticipated events in the industry with over 50,000+ live viewers tuning into the 2023 edition across livestreaming channels - almost doubling in terms of growth from the first inaugural event back in 2022.

The rampant success of Polkastarter Gaming quickly turned it into one of the biggest brands in the web3 gaming space – too big to continue on the same journey as Polkastarter. Both brands were growing exponentially – while Polkastarter was focused on a vertical-agnostic approach, the gaming division was solely focused on the growth of the web3 gaming space and the platform showed incredible potential which needed dedicated resources and focus.

That precisely was the moment GAM3S.GG was born. Now leading their own company, the team has since continued their journey raising a $2M seed round back in 2023 from some of the most reputable investors, and establishing their brand as a web3 gaming powerhouse.

With over 300,000 platform users, and a vibrant, ever-buzzing gaming community, GAM3S.GG has built a solid foundation to fulfill its original Day 1 vision of becoming the home of web3 gaming.

The stats speak for themselves:

• 300k+ registered users with a +5mins average session time
• 350+ games, 150+ reviews and 100+ guides published on the platform to date
• 80+ browser games playable directly on the platform
• 1M+ missions completed across 80+ quests with 100K+ unique participants
• 1K+ daily news, interviews and research articles published on the platform to date

To go with an impressive stat sheet, GAM3S.GG has struck various strategic partnerships with the industry’s creme de la creme.

The secret to GAM3S.GG’s success? A community-first, collaborative approach with a dash of co-creation designed for the lifeblood of web3 gaming – the gamers.

The future for GAM3S.GG 🔮

GAM3S.GG never sleeps. Constantly looking for ways to improve the platform and delight gamers, the team is set to ship a number of new features in 2024:Upcoming Features 2024

• BattlepassOne of the upcoming features on the platform that enables GAM3S.GG to further gamify the platform with a familiar concept known to gamers. The Seasonal battlepass will consist of both free and premium tiers that are achieved by accumulating XP through completing various activities around the platform.
• PassportEach user profile on the platform will evolve into a gaming identity that unifies player progression on-chain and through past achievements across traditional gaming platforms for retrospective rewards and a unified login system across partner web3 games.
• TournamentsA platform where gamers can join exciting web3 game tournaments directly from each game page, all while taking advantage of instant rewards distribution through the backend blockchain integration.
• MarketplaceA gaming-centric NFT marketplace that aggregates verified listings from various existing marketplaces and showcases them under each game page to create a more seamless trading process, ensuring collection legitimacy and showcasing all relevant collections under each game.

Next to the highly-anticipated new platform features, GAM3S.GG also recently announced their upcoming $G3 token. 

And the Polkastarter community's story doesn’t end here. As Polkastarter supported GAM3S.GG since day one, $POLS holders will be eligible for a $G3 airdrop to be announced soon.

In wrapping up this epic tale, GAM3S.GG is proof that big dreams from our community members can become imaginable successes. Omar, Mostafa, and their legion of gamers have shown us exactly that. 

SO GAME ON, GAM3S.GG! ✊

About GAM3S.GG
GAM3S.GG is a web3 gaming superapp that curates and creates content to spotlight the top games and showcases reviews, guides, news, quests, annual awards, and more. Its vision is to become the one-stop-shop for web3 gaming to help onboard millions of gamers, allowing them to engage with blockchain-powered games in unprecedented ways, and becoming the ultimate bookmark on every gamer’s device.

Website | Twitter | Twitch | Discord | Youtube

About Polkastarter
Polkastarter is the leading early-stage fundraising protocol enabling web3’s most innovative projects to kick-start their journey and grow their communities. Polkastarter allows its users to make research-based decisions to participate in high-potential public and private sales.

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