Bootstrapping a Web3 Game

Transcript

out um so today I will uh talk about Bo strap your web 3 game um my name isos I'm coming from yard Hub which is a web three Venture studio just a few words about what we do accept uh web three games in order uh in case you're interested so we have uh among our portfolio projects a noncustodial crypto wallet white label solution we have a learn ify project we have nft enabled car rental project which launches this autumn in Dubai so you'll be able to rent Teslas through nfts um and uh we're also co- venturing um an igaming decentralized protocol

with one of the European ey gambling operators which this is now like a stealth mode which will be released like later Autumn this year but today I'm going to talk about um web three games in our portfolio um we have got um two of them um it works very strange let it be this so uh kind of some Dynamics for this I think I know how to fix yeah it would be great thanks um so why Why Try okay okay okay cool thanks so why can't we talk about launching web games and bootstrapping uh web for games we actually launched already two of them um if thing to

compare is that one was launched during the fruitful Autumn of 2021 uh which was a great way great time to launch uh and uh the second one we've launched recently during maybe one of the worst periods to launch anything uh which is like uh spring and summer 2023 and um lucky enough both experiences are quite good uh the first one is being you know like a lot of hype around you actually we didn't have product at the time when we were launching we only had you know like beautiful art uh very beautiful idea um some nfts obviously and uh and and that's it and uh actually we like

invested around 50k U during the process and we l we raised 600k in around 25 seconds if I'm not mistaken so everything uh was sold out and the community was mad because a lot of people were not able to to purchase so the secondary Market was booming uh that was quite a stressful uh yet very interesting experience and yes just to answer possible questions we did use that money to build the product to launch the product the game is currently uh available uh it it it's built on wax blockchain which actually was one of the most suffering blockchains during this crypto winter a lot of users left it a

lot of projects rug pulled so um where we are right now we are developing the support for uh many other blockchains so that users will be able to come from U from polygon from okak from ethereum so the backbone will be still on wax blockchain because it's a good it's a good network uh zero fees uh very fast uh you can build a lot of stuff on chain our game is 100% on chain which might be not the best decision that be talking about that uh later and the second game is uh PAB Bots we're building a casual PVP gaming platform enabled by nfds so users are able

to um play different mini games like every round takes up to 3 minutes they play against each other they can play either for free or use some bets against each other uh the business model for the platform is actually taking commission oops someone's lost all right so is actually taking commission from uh each transaction so uh we don't care who wins or who loses uh we always take a small uh small amount of that as as our commission and uh our big Vision with this platform is that we um later uh later on release it as a white label solution as well and we

will be able to Source it to uh other games to uh gambling providers whatever and they will be able to their nfcs collections on top and let players um compete in PvP instead of competing against the house so the difference uh this game is that it's built on polygon we are uh working on multi-chain support uh you can see that we are we have partner we partnered with polygon we have also partnered with miria which is a gaming blockchain uh with KCC uh okx so we're working with different networks and that's an important part of boost traing game which we going to talk later so oops again something doesn't work

here I'll do this way okay so I think previous no that's it that's it work okay so the first very important thing of course is to plant in advance that's a very important uh thing because it's easy to to do a lot of things that you don't really need at the very beginning and not to do things that you need later on so it's it's very simple it's may be something which is uh which is true for any business for any startup launch but as we talking about games let it be so the road map for at least two years is very handy uh for for the next 6 month

it should be pretty much detail what it gives you uh it gives you the opportunity to share with the community so to attract people who share your big Vision that you describe in your 24 month or more road map and at the same time it allows you to align your current team around the current goal so that they not get distracted by by something you know we built something in two years we don't know what and they should definitely understand what they're doing in the upcoming month um very important to think about the revenue model how will the game generate money because a lot of the web three games that we've seen and we continue seeing they they they don't have the revenue model so they think okay we sell nfts uh maybe we

sell token we raise money and then what sooner or later the money runs out whatever whatever amount you raise and the tendency is that the bigger the higher the amount the the project raises the higher the burn rate and they run out of money pretty quickly uh it's it's really funny how fast money can go if you have land of it and if there is no Revenue model sooner or later everything will go down that's that's the problem that many projects face they don't have sustainable economy sustainable toomics and that really is about toomics so when designing the toomics around the game if there are any token at all because game could be possibly built without is talking that I know uh some

teams that deliberately skip introducing talking for their project is because they don't understand how to sustainably integrate it and they are responsible enough not to do this because they don't understand that so economics should both serve the interests of the of the game so it should fuel the game the in-game economy and at the same time it should be attractive enough for some external people who not into the project because otherwise uh it cannot be you know like sustainable is is is is some trading asset outside the game it doesn't work so I will do it this way so about building game itself again this is a painful experience from our I

we've never built a game before that's uh something I I need to uh to reveal uh but I've always dreamed off so and I think this web free is a great opportunity for many new people to join this join this uh field so what we're doing with the with the game we're building right now from the very beginning we have un boarded a few veterans from classic gaming both classic Video Gaming Classic web 2 Gaming so these people can help you create like you know to create the basic mechanics that keep people engaged that keep players interested that keep players you know like fed fed with dopamine to uh level high enough to come back and play so it's very important to

either hire someone to your team or have someone as an advisor it's much easier right now than it was back in 2021 or 2018 when anyone any veteran from from classic gaming industry would like thr thrown upon any like what blockchain nfts no this is scam I don't like it a lot of people from classic gaming have now actually embraced web3 embraced NFD and if you're are legit if you have an interesting project they will gladly join you as an advisor or or like as a contractor that just consults you so that's very important part very important to also focus on UI and uxix so we um we have this experience with a

fully onchain game for the player it's a pain in the ass really so uh you need to approve any transaction even if this transaction is free you still have that annoying popup that needs you to click once or twice and maybe if you're secured enough you also need to know like to input some kind of fingerprints or whatever so uh do it as this great as simple interface as possible so if you need to eliminate some blockchain part of it it do it you can always implement it later for those people who are ready to to mess up that stuff but the more important thing is to create uxi as simple as possible building

MVP as soon as you can is is a must right now so if if it is possible release anything so depending on the game play so our first game Deep Mind is quite complicated thing we couldn't release anything like an MVP because we have like five game roles they are interconnected so they should sign contracts with each other you cannot just release one role and and and and show how it works so we just were're releasing art and lore and getbook and things like that with the game we're building right now with the platform we're building right now we started with one game so one simple game is like two people facing each other uh you you

choose some some zones to defend and choose a Zone to attack it's super simple but people can't understand so what level of design do you have how you work with the with the user experience um you can actually on board them with with with with all this NFD stuff we have a community Discord people are playing they go for gaming hours so it's it it works and you can you can have feedback immediately you don't need to wait like half a year or a year to develop something to receive feedback and I trade and do the the next saturation better and very important stuff is of course technical outlines and Technical descriptions technical tasks so it's great to build everything on the fly if

you have an in-house team you have you know like 10 people or five people all gathering in one room discussing stuff and and building that maybe that's possible if you have a distributed team uh the only thing to make things work and delivered in time is to have a technical te description technical plan and you know like do all this classic development stuff like Sprints uh you know and all that going to early testing that's the beauty of web threee games compared to classic video games uh or even even worse like you know the board games um you develop something for half a year

for a year for two years and that's the first time when you really can get feedback from people so you release the first version of the game and then we know what happens like usually a lot of backlash a lot of uh negative feedback and then people start you know releasing updates releasing second version in web 3 you can divide a lot of things about that so you can really test everything on the Fly you have the first version of design you release it you ask how they feel you you can share figma with them figma prodcts with them a let them clay you have a working product MVP it could be you know as as immature no higher expectations you just have honest feedback from

people who really care and want you to have a better product and this feedback allows you tweaking the product on the fly so then you can release new versions like every two weeks we do it like Sprint goes for two weeks every two weeks there is a new version with some slight improvements and a little trade here is like okay you do a lot of stuff on the back end usually the stuff that people don't see that makes it work faster smoother but don't forget with every Sprint to include something that people feel okay so it could be that annoying bug on the interface or something like that something that is pretty small but Annoying take this one off as well so at least one should be

noticeable and people like okay I feel this got better because you can I don't know like release 150 improvements on the back end and no one will notice that but they will all notice that this Bible the interface is still there so just keep that in mind and engaging with the community from the very beginning is very important so back in 2021 you can actually start your project with the community having nothing else and that would work fine right now we probably won't be able to do that but interacting with the community from the very beginning is very important I don't know what's happening with the all the time trying to go to sleep the next thing that will probably help you Bo St a game is business development if you're a small team and

you don't have a business developer like a like a separate separate unit um founder should probably do that himself that's the best person to do that so reach out to whatever to whoever you you can go to hackathons go to online cont conferences offline conferences write people in LinkedIn on telegram ask for intros reach as many projects blockchain ecosystems VCS gaming gills whatever as possible tell them about the projects you will definitely find someone at the end who's going to be interested maybe

this blockchain was looking for this game in their uh in their ecosystem maybe some VC we looking uh for new portfolio project maybe it's just an angel investor who like oh okay I want to try gami why not this is a good good team good guy legit guy let's give them money um I would not recommend using all those you know like everyone should probably see on LinkedIn okay I have the list of 3,000 VCS that invest actively gamify uh just like this post and uh put your email in the comments and I this do this is just a waste of time I mean if you if you're building the game from the space no one knows you if you're like

first- time Builder first time founder no one knows you I I I I don't know VCS that you know like um react to this cold Outreach from from someone on the email just is waste of time just better focus on on something that can really that can bring results as blockchain like uh I I was uh actually amazed youday to understand how many C projects built on C are here uh I never heard of project build on C before and now I know there are at least five and they have all received grants from C and there is no gaming project on sell yet so it's a good uh maybe a good thing to to go to them and and offer them to to join

just thank you and given the current fair market um MVP is something you should have U if you want to talk with if you want someone to talk to you you should show something back in 2021 no one asked for anything I mean like everyone was ready to give you money to give you feature to give you everything right now you should bring something you should bring a product even if it's just you know an alpha or pre-alpha or whatever you show that you're capable of building things you show that you're capable of delivering things and that's the predisposition for someone even start you know talking to you

cooperation and collaboration is crucial for anyone building the game in web3 I'm a fan of uh you know of uh non-competing right now in web3 because the industry is so small uh it is still U we hope it will grow like 10 FS next few years I know 100 x in the next decade there is no way you want to compete for a small for a piece of a small small cookie that we have right now so it's much more productive from my opinion and from from many other fellow Builders opinion to collaborate on making this couet big pie

so that we can share it all and we're like doing a lot of collaborations with with with our carrent project like times more a dozen times more than we did with the previous one so we're building on polygon polygon gaming system uh gaming ecosystem is very friendly so like everyone is supporting everyone um hosting joint Twitter spaces tournaments so right now we're launching a tournament uh the cross community tournament with 25 different projects you can imagine uh how big it is and it's um supported by polygon and Magic hidden which is a leading Launchpad on an NFD Marketplace on

polygon and also a very important thing is uh you a founder or your founder if you're a part of the team should be very active on social media so the personal brand of a Founder is a very important thing it it really creates that network uh those connections that you need to uh to find money to find Partnerships to find investment to find listing so it it's much easier to partner with someone if they okay I I've seen you founder I've seen your POS Linked In I I oh I have a follower on Twitter that really opens many doors never neglect that one like kind of a tria or tip is

something that a lot of projects do recently as a go-to market strategy is a frit um the market is oversaturated right now I mean every Market on every chain is oversaturated uh by the way this is our Art G art this is our uh BFB the canot um so the market is overs saturated and if you want to try and penetrate it trying to sell something from the very beginning so you don't have a project you don't have user base you don't have any anything actually you very very very early trying to sell something on this Market is probably like n 99% guaranteed failure so what

many projects do on we uh our lates project with no exception uh is the frit so why do you say okay I'm giving some nfds for free there is a limited amount it has some utility so what what what what it does actually creates you the first user base and actually attracts the attention from the ecosystem because how it how it is usually done you give white lists spots to people from other projects for interacting with your socials joining your Discord uh you know like performing some activity in your chats whatever interacting with your content and they win the places in the wi list and if you do everything right

so what we did is like our white list was over subscribed like 10 times 10 folds so only uh 1,000 uh 1 1.5 th000 people were able to Mint the free Alpha pass like more than 10,000 were ready to do that so that creates uh some hype and it creates some you know like it drives some attention to your project which is which is is crucial at the early stage very important for the for this first step Freeman to choose the right partner so whatever Network you're launching in please choose the leading Marketplace it won't be easy to make them accept you because with a lot of scams a lot of rock pools leading lunch

pads are pretty selective uh if you're not ready to get docks that could be the problem in most cases uh for example on polygon Magic in the leading uh Marketplace we launch a magic iten we are actually in very close Partnerships with them as a venture studio and as a project and when you launch on a legit Marketplace and they advertise you they tweet about you uh they put you on the uh on the main page that helps a lot that drives a lot of attention from the user from the people from the ecosystem it makes you more legit uh in the eyes of other potential Partners so that's a very important thing to to try to uh to achieve and when you decide that you okay you're building

a polygon or any other network and you're launching a magic kden don't be shy and ask them for support they will never come to you and say okay do you want us to tweet about you or how about we create a Twitter space with you or do you want to have an m&a with your uh AMA with your founder they will never do that you should reach to them and ask them um Eugene can tell me you should probably ask like 15 times for them to follow you on Twitter uh but but when they do okay someone comes and sees your Twitter and say okay magic get in and subscribe okay polygon is following okay m is following okay this this project should be legit so you should really

spend effort and time on making them support you and help you with retweets tweets Twitter spaces whatever and they're there eager to do that they they do that if you insist uh a few words about Community I feel like as a founder and and as veg Studio CEO I feel immense responsibility uh for the community because actually in in in this world your community are actually the reason you are able to build anything so they are your investors some sometimes so they of course it's like it's it's utility NFD

for the game but in fact if if they don't buy your nfds if they don't buy your token or whatever you can't build you don't have money for that and actually when you treat them like this like naturally not just pretending to treat them like but when you treat them like that with respect as the investors as the key stakeholders as people you don't owe them but you are responsible for them that's really a good thing and that that that's something that people feel and when your project later on inevitably experiences some problems some delayed release some technical

glitches uh nft price decline because of a shitty Market whatever if you have been honest and respectful with the community most of the people like the key stakeholders the biggest holders will always support you that's what we've experienced since 2020 I mean like okay A lot of people do rant it's but when you when you look at who Rants and who supports it's usually like the guy with 2ft which is still I mean like it's still valuable for the project but they ran the most and the biggest holders if you're honest with them and they see that you really make effort and you try they are super respectful and supportive and they say okay the prices are down I will buy more and and and that works so Community is super

important I would pay a lot of attention to community some Hands-On tips on um building a good Community as I said be very Frank be very transparent be very direct um if you see that there are people who are generally interested in your product they are supportive they ask questions they come every day uh connect with them personally uh if you have time do it yourself if you don't have time get someone know your product manager your community manager whoever contact them in direct messages ask what they need what they want what they like

what they don't like ask for their feedback because this way you actually turn them into your long-term ambassadors they will you know they they will destroy anyone on social media for you if someone you know like says something wrong about you these guys will come and and and and and and that guy is dead TW T spaces is a good thing right now when you start they are very small and no one's coming uh like you do a Twitter spaces for two people and it's five people then it's 10 people then suddenly it's 50 people and then if you are good enough you have like 500 on your Twitter spaces and other projects start inviting you to join their Twitter spaces good projects want to come to your Twitter spaces and that starts working like a snowball and like up to

10% of people who visit Twitter spaces later on join your socials your Twitter your Discord and then some percentage of them turns to your active Gamers if you if you're incorporating the strategy of frint as a go-to market strategy make sure that your core Community or your early Community receive those nfts because many projects have made that mistake when they had you know like the core community of 100 people where there from the very beginning were supporting and they were appearing every day and then suddenly there is hype about projects thousands of people coming and then those early supporters come for the midday and say

oh sorry you didn't uh you didn't perform those 55 tasks that we required so you get white listed so sorry you not you're not getting this frint this is something you want to avoid uh your early supporters should definitely get the the most attention from you that's super important collaboration manager is a must uh these guys should be skillful so what is a collab manager this is a special dedicated person that contacts other projects and asks them for collaboration either you exchange wh list spots or do

some joint Twitter spaces whatever so the what collab manager tries to do is that some other project features you they talk about you and you uh get some Whit list spots or some perks for your audience from those projects quick tips to get your social to know a few thousand people launch Quest platforms spend like up to 500 bucks you will get 500 600 people some of some of them will stay also zil Quest zil is a platform where you can engage your audience to interact with your content to do some tasks some some interaction social media you you're not paying them

with live money you can either give them some you know experience points which they later can convert to NFS or you can give them your future talking whatever so uh it it also can bring you a few more hundred people to uh to join your community at this stage so some numbers from uh from PAB bots so uh this happened in March as you probably remember March was not the best month uh in crypto this year um one of the worst as I remember since 2016 so uh the project managed to get 40,000 people on Twitter and Discord with zero marketing span incorporating

all the strategies that was talking before in the previous slide so yeah we did Leverage the community from the beginning with our first project so we had Deep Mind Community we said okay guys join this is new project from our ventur Studio this helped but most of the people I say 95% came through the strategies that I described on the previous slides and the most important part here was that business development and collaborations more than 300 collaborations with salana and polygon projects were done in like two months and that's uh what it what what's the results so budget wise because the like out of uh 100K span that I uh described at the beginning the business

development marketing all this stuff it only took I don't know like five grand something like that so you pay the colge manager you pay the community managers and you can do uh these things with uh so you see like 210,000 profile views tweet Impressions is pretty crazy so uh that's pretty much it uh I was trying to be very concise so I know everyone's going to finish wants to finish this day if you have any questions any practical theoretical questions I mean we've been through launching w three game in a good year in a bad year so uh we don't actually care about it any longer so uh we we we know this stuff and quite sure uh we can

thrive in that environment thank you for the attention and uh I'll be happy to answer any questions if you got [Applause] any looks like been pretty good uh with um I have a question regard regarding the rewards because most of people after uh access Infinity wants to play something on on chain to earn rewards um how do you how um first have you created any game that return any rewards to the players and secondly if

yes how how you me managed to not how can I say it to to avoid people to you know um you know break the rules and figure out way to you know cheat the system thanks so um there are two points on this on this uh this question the first one is uh I'm honest I'm a fan of being super clear from the very beginning uh we we always say we're building the game which might bring you some profit if you are you know better than other players and if the market conditions are right but this is this is f f first and foremost this is a game so if you purchase this nft this is because

you want to play this game this because it's interesting and uh yes if there is a kind of token incorporated then maybe you should but uh I mean like if you're telling someone that if you play this game you make money you make profit you make this is I mean like this is not sustainable it's it's impossible in in the current state of the market it is impossible to build I I can tell it for sure it is impossible to build a game with a sustainable economy if there is no external money generated so there should be someone who puts new money into the economy so you can uh share it uh with the players it could be kind of sponsorships it could

be you know like some uh kind of Brands paying for for attention if that's there that's possible if you just you know like create token from nowhere and share it sooner or later this all goes down so it's like it's the game like the last music chair like the musical chair game so who the last one is sorry and um the second part of the question was the how do you pay the rewards like so a lot of reward okay cheating cheating yeah expl right now so your focuses are

different so hey you play the game you invite people to play the game because you like to play not but but I I do have a few words on that as well so the first game we have is like it's on chain and it's about mining token so it's actually digging token getting it so yeah you will have BS there obviously so the right I don't believe in fighting Bots technical so trying to bend them or trying to understand whether it's a live person or it's a bot uh our philosophy in in in that direction is that you should design the game economy the way that you don't care if it's a bot or a or a live person even the b in our case

even the bot actually contributes to the economy so if they do something in game they are creating value for other uh players who who are alive and how you limit them from automation is that for example you introduce kind of stamina or energy or something like that so let's say an average person would probably be able to play eight hours a day so like engag for 5 minutes every hour so you design your staminus system the way that anyone who want wants to do that more often which is more probably a bot they should purchase some you know like energy refills or something like that paying part of what they what they've

extracted so this way you can regulate that and actually efficiently not Banning the Bots not fighting because Bots you know like X Infinity uh and one one of the most successful onchain activity wise game like L worlds tlm token they are 99% qu it everyone knows that but it so works it depends on how you design the economy and for the petot game so we build a platform which is PVP and uh how we work with this problem is that if you play without bets I mean if you play without a player and you're not putting any wager then you don't get

experience so there is no uh if if you create 1,000 Bots and they like battle against against each other all day around you you you are not growing your uh your character you're not growing your nft you're not growing your profile but if you wage some some money I know it could be as as uh as little as 10 cents like it's 10 cents it's super little but it makes no sense if you if if if you're botting because we as a platform take a small commission so you can make 1 million transaction with uh 10 cents we will make some money on that so again it's the economy design that makes this make no sense yeah yeah

please uh really cool uh talk like actually resonated a lot with what we're doing so and like some extra stuff so thanks for that um I was wondering like kind of continuing with this conversation I feel that it's like a bit a dilemma of um you know blockchain games attract or could attract a lot of um let's say Farmers or Bots that like pretty much they're not motivated by the game but just like to make money or like to uh Farm an air drop uh but at the same time you actually want to have some people in the game to avoid this how do you call it like the empty world or like empty room problem where like if it's like two people in your metaverse then

it's like boring as right nobody wants to go in there anymore so I wonder like kind of like what's your take on it and maybe like to add a little bit of spice there um maybe you've heard about like this this new uh that ERC 6551 that's getting a bit hyped that's like um account uh what is it token bound accounts no it's like basically an nft can have an account so what the approach of this um is called Future Primitive the guys who developed it uh basically says we want to have NPCs and they call them Network playable characters to like avoid this problem of like the empty room so like even if it's

kind of like a bot because it can have a wallet then you can have like some economic interactions and like have ownership over assets for the bot and stuff like that and that's supposed to solve this problem I still don't see it 100% but like maybe you had some takes like I know it's a little bit of a broad question but like uh no it's uh it's it's is is it's very valid and um I I I can tell about a few approaches that we're you know like uh thinking about and implementing some of them so uh if if it's possible and it doesn't um you know like it doesn't diminish the the the user experience you can introduce Bots like these NPCs it depends on the type of the game so for example in our

in our case where uh you need to wage some money against other players in order to uh level up and to develop a character it's not good for us to introduce Bots because like we we we might know what the next move is and something like that so it's it's the transparency problem which I never mess with so but in some games for example in deep mind when you have for example we have like four roles right now or five five roles right now they need to interact and sometimes you just don't have have enough active players of one role to supply the contracts for other roles in this case I find it absolutely

normal that you create a few characters from the projects that again doing it super transparent so you say okay this is our account it will play act as as this role in the game for some time until there is enough Supply Demand on and it's it's this wallet it will never sell the token that it that'ss it will never do we'll just burn it out right now is just to to keep the things rolling and that's absolutely fine with the community no one says okay oh boss whatever if if that solves the problem of the empty rooms you say I think that's uh that's perfectly fine the only possible problem is when you do that not transparently and then someone finds out

and then they could be you know it's and it's blockchain and it could be found out sooner or later and it could be a problem if you're not super transparent from the very beginning uh I guess and another solution which is uh more expensive I would say it's it it costs money is hiring players so you can hire a player from Philippines for his I know not two bucks per hour something like that $2 per hour so you say you can analyze the hottest gaming hours like when people try to find an opponent and they cannot for example in PvP games so what you do like hire two players for like 5 hours 5 hours per day it will be 20 bucks uh you can invest that probably

for for some time so whenever someone comes he has a live player I said this is a live guy in Philippines sitting and playing a game for two bucks per hour and that's fine so that's that's also a solution there is the other point if someone is trying to watch your game it means there is you know there is demand for because to create a b it takes some money it takes Cod to tostain it takes resources so someone creating one they believe that your token will will have value so I think I think it's a good thing when someone is trying to create something for your game they believe that your game will develop and will sustain yeah so that that's basically like three three three possible approach

to all that yeah I like I think it's really interesting what you say of like having yeah kind of like like Community or like company run Bots that like also earn money and eventually you can actually decentralize these accounts right like say now you have you have control over them like you can decide how so like they decide to get you can create a dow and put all that money like or token into into that Dow you can really play with that yeah I mean like the basic thing here is being super transparent and and explaining why you do that so you know like always where whatever you do if you have

a