Jacob Rapoport – RumbleMonkey – Real money, no hassle

29 March 2017

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Jacob Rapoport, RumbleMonkey

RumbleMonkey allows you to play head to head at Hearthstone for real money and with the knowledge that that money is being securely stored by a third party. 

The company has plans to add new titles but before that it wants to excel at offering Hearthstone players, and in turn poker players, the best platform they can. This starts with generating community feedback and listening to it. We spoke to Jacob Rapoport, Founder and CEO of RumbleMonkey; here’s what he had to say. 

Esports Insider: How does RumbleMonkey differ from other platforms out there? 

RumbleMonkey: From the beginning, we’ve been hyper focused on enabling head-to-head real money play for players and their favorite games, without the need for a set of manual processes or the often-complex logistics of a lot of tournaments.

For us, that starts with an install-able client. As opposed to other platforms that rely in-whole or in-part on manual entry and honour systems, the RumbleMonkey client runs alongside your game and seamlessly handles all the aspects of your money match.

“The beauty of our platform is that we are handling all aspects of the money match for you”

This approach allows us to provide a fully automated, secure, and most importantly, consistent experience across all the games we support. Our platform that delivers all the excitement and fun of playing in a real-money tournament, without any of the hassle.

Esports Insider: How many poker players are you expecting to be enticed by RumbleMonkley?

RumbleMonkey: While there are no exact numbers, there’s ancillary evidence to suggest that we would expect to see a reasonable amount of crossover between those communities.

Esports Insider: Why did you start with Hearthstone and any hints at what titles we’ll see next?

RumbleMonkey: We did our tech preview at PAX West last year with Hearthstone because it was a game we personally loved and felt that adding real money only served to enhance the game.

“As for future titles, we can’t give any hints just yet!”

Since that preview, the enthusiasm for our platform amongst the Hearthstone community, from both casual and pro players, continues to confirm that it was the right choice for a first title to introduce our platform.

As for future titles, we can’t give any hints just yet!

Esports Insider: What’s the plan for expansion and getting word out, will you be signing up brand ambassadors?

RumbleMonkey: Currently, we’re sponsoring select players who are both good at the game and interested in our platform.

“Ultimately, the best brand ambassadors are the community”

We’ve been focused on building a community of gamers and working with them to create something they’re genuinely interested in using. We’re very accessible across all our social channels so that we can not only get the word out but also listen to input from our users. Ultimately, the best brand ambassadors are the community. It’s much less interesting to pay people to talk about our product than it is to make a product worth talking about.

Esports Insider: What safeguards are in place to prevent players from losing money owed? You say the system is ‘sophisticated enough’ to tell if something is a rage quit… tell us more.

RumbleMonkey: The beauty of our platform is that we are handling all aspects of the money match for you. This includes collecting all the money from the players and holding it securely until the match is complete and winners can be determined and payouts distributed. 

“It’s much less interesting to pay people to talk about our product than it is to make a product worth talking about”

Because our downloadable client is observing your games, we can easily make several determinations that would otherwise be unavailable to us.  For instance, we can monitor aspects of the game in conjunction with the system itself and can detect disconnections.

Esports Insider: What do you think of the potential for esports to disrupt the land based casino industry?

RumbleMonkey: That’s a great question. I think it partly comes down to how quickly, if at all, casinos want to adapt to changing consumer tastes. At this point, a large portion of a casino’s demographic is aging out. Those that are 40 and over have been playing video games for over 30 years and that trend is only accelerating as the demographics skew younger.

For a gamer interested in competitive skill based games against other opponents, the answer is tremendously. On the other hand, for someone interested in gambling, the answer is – not likely.