The FIFA video game series is among the most prolific, popular, and profitable in the history of video games. With 30 main title releases and over 100 games, including spin-offs, World Cup editions, and other related titles associated with the franchise over the course of the past several decades, FIFA games have had a wide-ranging impact on sports and gaming culture.
An unexpected byproduct of this was the way the most popular game mode served to educate and train one person, Maitham Maitham, to learn about virtual economies and ultimately start his own video game company.
FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT) is a popular game mode within the FIFA series that features a dynamic in-game economy where players trade virtual cards utilizing an in-game currency known as FIFA Coins. This system mirrors real-world economic principles in an effort to emulate the global trading markets as closely as possible. In doing so, this market provided a rich environment for learning market dynamics, which is ultimately how Maitham started his own gaming company at just nineteen years old.
Maitham’s favorite game was FUT, but after buying the initial game, his parents didn’t want to spend even more on microtransactions, so he began trading the FUT markets as a way of earning “coins” to purchase in-game items. This experience taught him many fundamental lessons on how markets and semi-open economies within games can work, which in turn was also how they operated outside of the game, as Maitham would soon learn.
As the Co-Founder & CEO of Material10, a next-gen video game publisher and developer, Maitham has put all of that experience into trying to create a different type of game, one that is fully open economy. They are focused on creating engaging multiplayer games with a new business model that pioneers open economies.
His vision is to create video games that have player-driven economies that can scale to the size of countries.
Turning Video Game Expertise Into Real-World Experience
Maitham started thinking about open economy gaming after watching the rise of web3 gaming, with the likes of Axie Infinity becoming huge in 2022, among others. Many of these early iterations weren’t sustainable, but they acted as a good model to show that consumers do want to participate in games where they can create, consume, and trade.
In the professional world, Maitham started off in investment banking and corporate finance in London before transitioning into big tech. After doing some product work with Amazon, he moved into the startup world, dabbling in DeFi and gaming.
During this time, he also advised and consulted for startups, hedge funds, financial institutions, and Fortune 500 companies on digital assets.
Material10 Takes Flight
Maitham’s work has resulted in quick success with Material10. He raised over two million dollars from leading investors, including the Blockchain Founders Fund, Big Brain Holdings, GSR, Trousdale Ventures, and Monoceros, to start Material10. In doing so, he also put together an incredible team, including the former CEO of Trion Worlds and the former Game Director of the Assassin’s Creed series, as well as others who worked on Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, Watch Dogs, GTA, and more.
He has now been featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and Material10 was part of the Shorooq Partners Game Tech Program.
In the world of gaming, Material10 offers two significant innovations that have continued to set them apart from their competitors:
- Fresh gameplay experience – developing Project Fallen, a unique third-person shooter game where players control several squads, rapidly hot-swapping between them whilst also leveraging a drone mode (RTS-lite) to execute tactical moves and strategies.
- New business model – creating a new business model that could fundamentally change Free to Play (F2P) gaming. Material10 advocates selling nothing directly to players, instead giving away all items in the game for free (primary monetization) and making money mainly through taxing player-to-player trade (secondary monetization).
Future Aspirations
Maitham’s journey from a young trader to the Co-Founder and CEO of a next-gen gaming publisher highlights his forward-thinking mindset and leadership, and he has no intention of slowing down. If anything, he hopes to utilize his unique insight and position within the industry to revolutionize it even further.
“I want to push the boundaries of what is possible within games by creating engaging multiplayer experiences and innovative economic models at Material10,” he explains.
Maitham Maitham’s ultimate goal is to turn Material10 into a next-gen publisher developer that can create the most engaging and fun multiplayer games while also pushing the boundaries of what is possible in virtual economies. It’s a moonshot idea, but if anyone can do it, Material10 can.
Spencer Hulse is the Editorial Director at Grit Daily. He is responsible for overseeing other editors and writers, day-to-day operations, and covering breaking news.
