Space Summary
The Twitter Space Vendetta Games x NT | AMA hosted by NeoTokyoCode. Explore the depths of crypto gaming and metaverse creation with Vendetta Games x NT AMA, where innovation meets collaboration within The Citadel powered by $BYTES. Witness the fusion of blockchain technology, digital ownership through NFTs, and the transformative power of DeFi in gaming ecosystems. Engage with Builders, Investors, and the Crypto Gaming Illuminati as they shape immersive experiences and redefine virtual worlds. Join the journey towards a sustainable metaverse driven by community initiatives, innovation hubs like The Citadel, and the strategic utility of $BYTES.
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Questions
Q: How do Vendetta Games and NT collaborate to drive innovation in crypto gaming?
A: Their partnership leverages expertise in technology and gaming to push boundaries and create immersive experiences.
Q: Why is blockchain integration crucial for the development of the metaverse?
A: Blockchain ensures security, transparency, and scalability, essential for a seamless virtual world.
Q: What role do Builders and Investors play in shaping the metaverse ecosystem?
A: They contribute capital, resources, and creativity to build a dynamic and sustainable metaverse infrastructure.
Q: What sets The Citadel apart as a central hub for technological advancements?
A: It fosters collaboration, innovation, and community engagement, driving progress within the metaverse.
Q: How does $BYTES contribute to the growth of the metaverse?
A: $BYTES fuels development, transactions, and incentives, supporting the expansion and adoption of the metaverse.
Q: Why is the concept of digital ownership significant in crypto gaming?
A: NFTs and digital assets empower gamers with true ownership, rarity, and value in the virtual realm.
Q: How are community-driven initiatives reshaping the crypto gaming landscape?
A: Communities drive engagement, feedback, and content creation, influencing the direction and growth of crypto gaming.
Q: What potential does decentralized finance (DeFi) offer in gaming and the metaverse?
A: DeFi provides opportunities for decentralized funding, trading, and governance, revolutionizing financial aspects of gaming ecosystems.
Highlights
Time: 10:15:42
Vendetta Games x NT Partnership Insights Delving into the collaborative efforts shaping the future of crypto gaming and the metaverse.
Time: 12:25:18
The Citadel: Innovation Hub in the Metaverse Exploring the role of The Citadel as a center for technological advancements and creative development.
Time: 14:40:35
Exploring $BYTES Utility in the Metaverse Understanding how $BYTES drives transactions, rewards, and growth within the metaverse ecosystem.
Time: 16:55:21
NFTs and Digital Ownership in Gaming Discussing the impact of NFTs on ownership rights, asset value, and unique gaming experiences.
Time: 18:10:47
Community-Driven Innovation in Crypto Gaming Highlighting the influence of communities on game development, engagement, and ecosystem growth.
Key Takeaways
- The synergy between Vendetta Games and NT fuels innovation in crypto gaming.
- Blockchain integration is key to shaping the metaverse and enhancing user experiences.
- Collaboration among Builders and Investors is vital for creating a sustainable metaverse ecosystem.
- The Citadel serves as a central hub for technological advancements and community engagement.
- The power of $BYTES in driving the development and growth of the metaverse.
- Crypto gaming is at the forefront of merging traditional gaming concepts with blockchain technology.
- Innovative codes and interconnected platforms are reshaping the future of gaming and virtual worlds.
- Embracing NFTs and digital assets revolutionizes ownership and value in gaming ecosystems.
- The significance of community-driven initiatives in shaping the direction of crypto gaming.
- Exploring the potential of decentralized finance (DeFi) within the gaming and metaverse landscapes.
Behind the Mic
Introduction and Greetings
Thank you, fractillion. Much appreciated. Vendetta Games. Alex, I see you down there. Going to shoot you an invitation to come up. Good morning, Alex. What's up, brother? Hey, all's good. How are you doing? Good. Hopefully you got a good night's sleep since we last talked. Yeah, it went from Ama to Ama. Straight through. Well, we'll let the audience come on in and we'll get started at just five after. All right, sounds good. I'm stuffing my breakfast down. Yeah, take your time and shout out to the audience for coming in early. Oh, what's up, Matt? Appreciate you tuning in. Firestorm, race for the wind, fractalian. Appreciate you all tuning in. We'll be back in just a few minutes and get this ball rolling.
Starting the Event
Okay, that's five after. Assuming you're in a good pausing point for breakfast, we'll get this ball rolling. Yep, let's do it. Hell yeah. Well, welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the neo Tokyo vendetta games. Ama. We're gonna be taking it to the Wild West Bang here with Alex, chief executive outlaw at Vendetta games. Would love to get a little introduction for you, Alex. And then we'll get the ball rolling on Vendetta, the games. Awesome. Well, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. I think this is the second time we've done this, so it's a pleasure to be back.
Overview of Vendetta Games
Yeah. Vendetta Games is creating, let's say, trying to say kind of vendetta or revenge or gritty video games, right? Yeah. So we're have. We have our flagship game, which is Chalk river, which is set in the Wild west. Red Dead esque vibes to it. You've got the open world Metaverse and then side games that go along with it, like your basic shootout on Main street, deathmatch, poker, cowboys versus zombies, horse racing, all trying to keep it gritty and fun. Fun first factor. And then in the pipeline, we've also got two other vendetta themed games, one being three kingdoms, which is based in Asia. It's a great story. Again, for me, they're just asian cowboys.
Connected Genres
I mean, it's such a similar genre if you just switch locations out. So I'm super excited for that. And then we have the pirate theme game, which again, they all kind of fall under that vendetta theme. Yeah, absolutely. I tend to connect the two. And I think actually, in Japan, there's like, as much of a. You'll see in even college kids dorms, they'll have like, a katana in there and I hear it's similar with like revolvers, replica revolvers and cowboy hats. There seems to be sort of a mutual affinity. Yeah, well, I mean, the Three Kingdoms itself, it's. I mean, if you place the timing, it's the same kind of idea. Right? It's a new country.
Three Kingdoms and their Similarities
It's three. Three factions fighting civil war to, you know, create its own country. So similar to the civil war in the US at the time. So, I mean, there's a lot of crossovers and reasons why these eras are so similar. Right. I mean, it's. There's a bit of lawlessness. Lot new law coming in. So, yeah, it's the same. And then you have the heroes and the warriors and the bandits and the outlaws and the, you know, the lawmen. And so with vendetta Games being the western, being the one that's being produced right now, where does that stand currently? What sort of stage of development and what's available to do in this western world?
Development Status
It's still very early stages of development, actually. It's like the third stage of development. So for those of you that have been following us, you may or may not. No, but this is. We have had to scrap the game twice and completely rebuild it the third time, which is now. So if we’re to go to gaming functions wise, this third build, which I think is the final one, we have very strong foundation now, actually has less gaming features than the previous build that we had closed in August last year to actually work on that one. And then as were working on it, we just couldn't scale it up.
Challenges in Development
The foundation wasn't right. And everything's, you know, it was. I mean, one of our coders likes to say spaghetti coating. I mean, you'd fix something else would fall apart. So we had to start completely from scratch again for the third time. But I think we're finally there now. We're at a point where we can scale it. So we've just, in the last month or so, released the multiplayer deathmatch, which is tons of fun. It's, you know, 20 people, 1520 people, every man for himself, trying to rack up the highest score to see who's, you know, the toughest gunslinger.
Upcoming Features
And then coming out in the next month or so, we have poker. And together with the deathmatch instead, we're releasing the five versus five player deathmatch. So now that we have the strong foundation and we have the experience of, you know, what went wrong in the first two builds, it goes very slow in the beginning, and then now we can start scaling it up. I'd love to do a little sidebar on just the process of scrapping and iterating. Obviously, at Neo Tokyo, there's a ton of founders, so I always try and provide value to them. And lessons sort of learned from those sorts of experiences.
Lessons from Iteration
Could you share some of the lessons that came from that iteration process? Yes and no. I mean, it's one of those. I think it's. I think it's inevitable. Inevitably. I don't think you can get, avoid scrapping them, because, you know, you just, you have the big picture. You have everything mapped out, but, you know, and then as things develop, yeah, you start adding things to it. If you really didn't know 100% exactly what you want to do from the beginning, you know, you'll be missing something in the foundation, and, you know, sometimes you can slide another brick in there and it'll be okay.
Challenges of Change
But as you know, as you add more things and slide more bricks and, you know, take one out and put a new one in, this is the foundation, right. And then it just becomes, as our developer said, it becomes, you know, spaghetti code, tying it together at the bottom, and you just can't scale up. So, lessons learned, I think. And this is so funny, because I don't know if you guys know the bornless, but the founder of the born list said this to me also very early on. and I was like, yeah, sure, whatever, you know, I always think over, overestimate my abilities. But he had said, yeah, they had scrapped it.
Anticipating Issues
You know, you get ready for that. And I was thinking the back of mind. Yeah, but, you know, that won't happen to us. But it's true. I think it's. I think everybody who's developed a game probably won't realize that it's inevitable. You're gonna have to scratch it, no matter how good it you think it is at the beginning, as you start scaling up, you find issues. Now, you might not have to scrap it completely and, you know, renew the foundation, but there's definitely, you know, you get the tree up there, and you get branches growing out, and some of those branches, they're just not going to work.
Building and Revamping
You have to hack them off and, you know, graft a new one on there. So I think the lesson learned is just be ready to know. Well, you have to know that at some point, you might have to just pull the plug on something, just keep building on it and, you know, not be willing to say, you know what, let's just wipe it clean and start over. Well, definitely appreciate you sharing that. It's definitely interesting to think sometimes you need that sort of, like, creative destruction clear out and then be able to build back better in the current iteration that you just finished building.
Current Features Available
What sort of features did you end up sticking with? What's available in the game? Well, I mean, the features are there. The features have always been there. It's just a matter of being to scale the features up. So, like, for the first build, it was all about getting the shooting mechanics right. And, you know, much earlier on, we scrapped it, right, because, okay, you got the studio mechanics right, but then, you know, it was good for a single player but not for multiplayer.
Reflections on Previous Builds
So we scrapped the first edition. The second build, we know, you know, we had the shooting mechanics. We knew how to do it. The animations were pretty much there so we could kind of recycle those. And then were just so dead set focused on having, being able to have multiplayer, you know, live real time that we probably went a little bit overboard on that. And then once we got that right and started developing the other side games to it or even like the metaverse itself and the vastness of it and the graphics of it and being able to render it on time and then start adding in, you know, let's say horses and bears and other wild animals, you'd have to, we didn't focus, I guess, on that build on animations enough.
Continuing with the Current Build
So as we started changing the animations of people when they were hunting or riding their horse, you know, you'd change the arm movement and then something else would go out of wax. You'd kind of string that together and then, you know, the spaghetti would start falling apart. So we had to scrap that and the new one. Now we've got. We knew those lessons. So we've got, the animations are down. We know that, okay, we got to be able to, we have to be able to almost cookie cutter these animations to be able to scale them up and add new ones as quick as possible.
Conclusion of Features Discussion
Or when we put a new character in, we can kind of cookie cut that animation for them. So we kept, I mean, we didn't lose any features. We just made sure that we can scale up the features that we have. Oh, yeah. So that makes sense. Could you sort of paint, like, a picture for the audience on some of the features like that they'll be using, like, how they play? What's their experience like just sort of paint a word picture of what the game's like right now.
Gameplay Experience
Yeah. The current version that we've released or portion of it is Deathmatch, which is. I mean, it's quite simple. I mean, you log in, 20 people log in at a time maximum at this point. There's a drop in, there's a countdown and it's free for all. Everybody tries to rack up as many kills as they can. So it's, you know, just like a regular, any kind of first person shooter game, but with a wild west backdrop to it.
Ongoing Community Engagement
And. Yeah, so that's. We're doing those now with different communities. We do it twice and twice a week in our own community. We have these game nights and then we're going to other communities. We've been doing almost every night for the last two or three weeks now doing game nights in their discord and bringing people in for these community dance matches. We call them the Chalk River Rumble. And these are really just a warm up to the Chalk river multiplayer, or, sorry, team tournament.
Game Night Planning
So the idea is we go into the. The discord, we do a game night.
Game Issues and Community Engagement
It is pre alpha, so there are issues, but we, you know, we can talk with people, tell them what the issues are. People get used to it, get into it, and then they kind of have a ticket now to enter a team of five people into the tournament that we're having at the end of October, early November, which will be the same thing, deathmatch, but this time it'll be teams, two teams of five going at it.
Tournament Announcement and Prize Pool
And has anything been announced yet or any alpha you want to spill around the prize pool for that tournament? We haven't officially announced it, but it's going to be. I mean, we're throwing everything we can at it. This is going to be our biggest. I mean, we're ready to unveil. Right. And it's been delayed. I mean, were supposed to. We should have unveiled, you know, in June, August already or July even. But because of the refactoring and the rebuilding, it was pushed out.
Marketing and Game Engagement Strategy
So now that we're ready and we're comfortable with the game that we have to show, this is the biggest push we've had marketing wise since go to market. So we're going to throw everything we can at it. We're going to be throwing. We're going to be giving away thousands of dollars worth of VDT, Genesis NFTs, various new NFTs, probably horse NFTs, and then the winning team will also get or maybe even the winning two teams, like it might be 1st, 2nd, 3rd.
In-Game Branded NFTs for Winning Teams
We haven't really decided on this one yet, but for sure, at least the winning team will have in-game branded NFTs. So, for example, if there was a guild or even a neo Tokyo team that entered and they win, then they will get, you know, a cowboy hat or an outfit or skin within the game that's branded with their team. So this is, I think, yeah, this is going to be a fun one. And so far it's been going great.
Community Involvement in the Game
We have over 60 communities that we've played with already, so it's going to be, I think, a pretty massive campaign. And you mentioned the NFTs being a part of the prize pool. Could you give an overview of what the genesis NFTs are and how they factor into y'all's ecosystem? Yeah, the genesis NFTs are, I mean, the crème de la crème of our ecosystem. They were created very early on their characters in the game, and they also are connected to, I mean, our, really our biggest, almost only VDT pool.
Genesis NFTs and VDT Connection
So right now it's, I think it's 2 million VDT in this season that they're connected to. So each genesis NFT, it works out to getting about one and a half VDT per day just for holding it. And you'll be able to use these in the game not only to do the storyline quests in the open world Metaverse, which are character specific, but also be able to allocate them as NPC's to help protect your farmlands or your business, which is a part of the gamified staking that we have and also our scholarship program.
Gamified Staking Mechanics and Economic Structure
So assuming that the metaverse and I gaming comes back to where it was, which I think it will in the last cycle, you know, exit guilds and just, you know, regular folks will be able to let people play on their, or use their NFTs in the game to build their posse or protect their farmlands, things like this. And at what stage is the gamified staking? I know we've talked about that a couple times in the past and I've always found that one of the most, like, interesting. It's. Yeah, I, yeah, I mean, the gamified staking, for me is the really the fun part of the Metaverse itself.
Challenges of Timeframes in Game Development
Right. Because it's really brand new and it really adds another layer to it. I hate putting dates on these things because I'm always so far off on the dates. Like, I stopped this game, for example, were supposed to. This version of it were supposed to release. And April, May, let's say the latest end of May, early June. And I was. And I felt I'd already given about two or three weeks of leeway on that when I announced that date. And it was delayed till basically September.
Understanding Delays in Game Releases
So when things are delayed, they're not delayed a week, they're delayed months. So I really don't want to put a date on it, but I want to say Q one, and that's giving me again time to have the gamified staking. And we'll start small. So the gamified staking will start. There's two types of it, right? There's ranch fi and there's kill to earn ranch five being in some sense very basic staking where you stake, you know, let's say 100 VDT.
Explaining Ranch Fi and Kill to Earn Mechanics
And, you know, your API is going to repy is going to be, you know, 1010 VDT on that 100. So that ten VDT is shown in the game as cattle, as cows. And you're. You need to protect them for the cycle, right, to. To get that interest. And during the cycle, which we'll try to keep them short. So seven to 14 day cycle, people are going to try and come and take, steal your cattle and cash them in.
Protecting Stake Investments
If they do this, you keep your. The money that you staked, you don't lose any of your original funds and you still get your interest, but instead of getting 100%, you're only going to get 70 or 80% of it. So they'll steal 20% of your interest. So I mean, you don't really lose anything. You just don't get as much interest as you thought. So that's the one we're going to start with. So again, that should be Q one.
Community and Guild Involvement
And this is where you're going to want to have your friends, your guild, your NFTs allocated as NPC's to help protect your cattle. And then we have the kill to earn staking, which is a little more. Well, it's very dependent on the game, on the economy itself, because you stake into a business in the game. And if you stake into the gun shop, the stables, the general store, whichever it is, you own that business.
Understanding the Business Mechanics in Game Staking
You run that business for the length of the staking period. So again, it'll be a seven day period. So any revenue that goes through that business in the game, you. It goes to you. So this really also depends on, I mean, it's fun to do, but if you want to make money on it, obviously we want to have a lot of people running around the game and, you know, creating that economy.
Business and Revenue Dynamics
And so you stake it in there for seven days. After the seven days, it's kind of like a lease. So there's a cool down period. And during this cool down period, people are going to come in and try and shoot to kill and take over your business again, if they're successful. You keep your money, you keep the earnings that you had, but you just lose your. Your right or your rights to run that business.
Defending Businesses and Leveling Up
And then again, where it gets exciting is when you, if you successfully defend the business, then you have the option to upgrade it to a level two, level three, level four. And as you upgrade it, not only do you need to stake more VDT, but you also need more people to protect it. So, again, this could be your guild, your teammate, your friends, or your NFTs that you allocate to help defend it.
Incentives and Challenges for Players
The upgrading the business has a few bonuses, right? Not only will you be able to sell better items, so in turn, have more business. Or if it's a stable, for example, you can breed more horses at a time or stable more horses at a time. But also not any lone cowboy can come and attack you, right? If you're level two and you need, you know, two people to defend it and, you know, X amount of EDT, this the person or the posse to come to attack, you also have to be that level.
Advanced Game Mechanics and Community Control
It can't be just one guy trying to make a name for himself. And then where it gets really exciting and this is what the reason behind it and what I hope happens and what I'm trying to design it for is, you know, a group of team, a guild or a community will stake out entire towns, right? And they'll upgrade each business in the town. And as you upgrade each business in the town, you upgrade the town itself, bringing in more businesses like the.
Economy and Town Dynamics
The bank, the hotel. Eventually the train station will run through there. So you have these different towns that are, you know, run by different posses or different communities. And there's a reason why, you know, people are going to want to go to those towns. For example, it'll come back to the ranch fi, where you have to stake your VDT in a bank.
Town Infrastructure and Economic Factors
If the. If their town isn't big enough to have a bank, you can't be part of that town that your home base can't be there. You can't stake your VDT there to do ranch fi. So there'll be reasons not only, you know, for a better economy, but to have these leveled up towns.
Community Engagement and Gamification Strategy
And then on the gamified staking, it seems like you are more passionate about the mechanics around gamified staking. Was there any thought to not having the shooter and just leading with the gamified staking? yes, there was thought to that. but it unfortunately, in this, you know, web three, well, probably in anything.
Investor Expectations and Game Development
I don't, I hate saying this. I guess it's a people want to see results, right. And fair news. We have investors, we have people who bought tokens. we have people who have NFTs. And, you know, you can't be a web three game without a game, which is what were for, you know, too long of a time.
Considering Game Elements in Development
So, I mean, to just do that gamified staking first, it just, actually, that's a good question. I guess we could have gone that route and just did the gamified staking. But it's, it felt like the community wanted to, would prefer to have a game they could play. And then if we go back to the roots of this game, you know, were a guild, and I originally wanted to build this game as a, just to shoot out on Main street, you know, web two game.
Focus on Fun and Engaging Game Mechanics
Just something fun that we could do within our guild. And I've actually kind of always been focused on, I still haven't got the what the game I want, which is that, you know, quick draw shootout, Main street. So I've been really focused on that and pushing the staking, gamefight staking until after we have that kind of fun factor. That's a good question, I guess.
Balancing Game Dynamics with Economic Mechanics
I don't know if it would have been fun just do that without the metaverse around it, without the world around it. Like, again, for the kill to earn. If you don't have a fun game, you're not going to have the economy, so that won't work. Right. You're not going to have the businesses, so people aren't going to want to stake in them.
Exploring Game Development Challenges
So I think, yeah, I don't think we could do that. First. I appreciate you thinking through the thought experiment because I'm sort of going back and forth myself. Like the game ified at the Gamefi aspect. I wonder if there's a level where that could be so deep it becomes a game in itself, like a resource management.
Reflections on Game Development and Community
Yeah, I think just get squirrely when they're attached to dollars and cents. And as you said, the game development, the game community, and the web three community is ruthless, and they certainly are together. So I don't know if it would be palatable, but it's certainly interesting to think about. Yeah, it is.
Ideas for Future Development
Well, I mean, there wasn't. We are, were thinking of, I mean, we have so many ideas and, you know, only so much time today and so much development. So we have to be careful not to just keep growing out and growing out. But were thinking of doing a gamified, NFT kind of staking side game, thinking that it might be a low hanging fruit to push something out there as we're developing.
Timeframe Challenges in Game Development
Because, I mean, this thing takes so long, right? I mean, to be honest, I have that. To have the full vision of this game, it's going to take, you know, probably another couple years, right? I mean, of course we're going to have games coming out and, you know, tournaments and season ones and stuff in the middle, but to have the full vision, you know, in reality, it's going to take months and a couple years.
Need for Community Engagement
So were thinking, okay, is there, we've got to keep pushing. And again, you have to keep pushing stuff out in this space, which is fair. I mean, it's fair. I mean, if you're going to raise money and you're going to do a public build like this, then, you know, you need to show stuff for it. It's not like, you know, web two or you can keep it hidden for three or four years.
Development Strategies for Community Engagement
Nobody invests any and then you just drop it out. So in that sense, were thinking, okay, what's some low hanging fruit that we could push out now as we're doing this so we can keep the community engaged. And one of the ideas was an NFT kind of game of fight staking thing.
Project Expansion and Resource Challenges
But none of these are, I mean, they look like low hanging fruit until you start building them and then all of a sudden they become a whole new project on themselves. On itself. So we had to pull back on it. I've gamified. Staking is the same. Right. When you start just a basic staking page on your website, for example, is, I mean, you could go and do an off the shelf, but for us it wouldn't work.
Challenges in Creating Effective Staking Mechanics
So even that would take, you know, three, four months probably to get it exactly right. But in, you know, development estimations, it'll say, you know, this will take us three or four weeks and then reality takes four or five months. Four or five or two or three or four months. And then to add the gaming to it.
Limitations of Development Resources
So, yeah, it's just too, we can only take so many projects on it once. Yeah.
Insight on Development Processes
Development is certainly like icebergs. Like when I first got started in the space, I was like, oh, you could do that. You could whip that up. Why couldn't they do this? Why couldn't they do it quicker?
Development Challenges in Web Three
And then you actually talk to a dev and you're like, oh, yeah, that's why. Because this actually takes hundreds of hours. Yeah. On the simplest things, right? Yeah. But I mean, we are, we are still riding the, trying to keep up with the trends in web three while staying true to ourself and to our core ethos. And within that, we are starting within the trend session. We're building a telegram side game or mini game, but it will be a vendetta minigame. So it's not going to be a tap to earn or, you know, again, x amount of time equal x amount of money. It'll be a good, you know, shooter game on Telegram. That's easy enough to put out there. So that should also be out by the end of this year.
Exploring Telegram Gaming
I'm glad you brought up telegram. I was, I would say, leaning anti telegram gaming. Going into this past weekend, I saw Ben was trying to join. He must be having technical issues, but it was his bachelor party and he took it as the opportunity to, I don't know what you call, what color pill you say if you get, you know, orange pill in the telegram, but whichever it was, he had them in a heavy supply. And I must say, like some of the, like, simple games, the incentivization is like, enough, like the click ones, like, you get over that pretty fast. But some of the, like, just, it doesn't take a lot to make a fun little game. And if you've got that incentivization, I don't know. I ended up logging like a couple hours on Telegram games, so now I'm pretty bullish on them.
Potential of Telegram Games in Web Three
If you can make sort of like a quick, simple, you know, western shooter. Yeah, look, I'm so bullish on the Telegram games, and I know they get a lot of flack, even the tap ones. But I mean, I think Telegram games have done the most that anything's done for web three gaming to date. I mean, they brought in millions of players and millions of just regular web two players or just people who are using this telegram app and they're all of a sudden playing a very seamless game. Now, to be fair, a lot of them aren't really on the blockchain yet. And that's why they're all play to Airdrop, which is fine again, but they're bringing people in through your basic web two mobile experience and then just seamlessly tagging them into crypto and into web three.
Developing the Shooter Game
So I think they're extremely valuable and a really good asset to the whole environment. Have you put any thought into what kind of shooter you guys are thinking for telegram? Cause if you go FPS and then, you know, you're trying to get good graphics, it becomes a big. Yeah, no, I think even a top down shooter could be cool. Top down shooter would have been cool. I should have. Yeah, we should have thought of that. But, no, it's just, I mean, it's gonna be a gallery, you know, one player shooter game. You know, you're shooting targets and moving things, and, but it'll be on your mobile, so be using your fingers, you know, moving it around, aiming and stuff.
Challenges and Opportunities in Game Development
So, I mean, it'll be fun. but again, it's a simple game. A top down shooter is a good idea, which I I've played on web two again, early. Early on, we started developing this game, and I thought, man, this is a lot of things. If I knew then what I knew now, I might not have started with such a huge project because you could pump out a bunch of these little games. Minus is a different model. Right. And that's not really what we're about. But if you were to think business wise, what we're doing is not the business way to do it, right. It'd be the business way to be pump out a bunch of these tiny games.
The Viability of Simple Game Modes
Well, I stand corrected on the top down shooter. I think the gallery mode is probably a better way to go. As far as I think it's in. You just never know with crypto. And this telegram wave can be sort of this hot period where you can get in and people are having a lot of fun and making a lot of money, but you just never know how long that's going to last. So something like that sounds like much more achievable, even a top down shooter. It comes from my dev ignorance. I'm sure that's still quite a lift. I mean, to be fair, I think we're late with the telegram games. I think they're almost dead because they're all played airdrop, and all these airdrops are starting to come out now.
Declining Interest and Quality of Players
And, I mean, everybody here probably knows. I mean, you play and you grind and you get pennies or you basically rugged on that thing. So, I mean, I think a lot of that hype is going to go away pretty quick. As soon as, you know, two or three or four of these projects start dropping the airdrops. But again, if it's, I don't know if we'll get the waves of, you know, you got all these games that have million players or 2 million players on Telegram. I don't know if we'll still be able to get those kind of numbers, but it's good anyway and pushes us to get some mobile game out there, which is what we want to do anyway for our side games to eventually have mobile versions.
Debating User Quality in Telegram Games
Yeah, and honestly, I mean, the telegram numbers are so big, I tend to think 80% of them are bots. I have absolutely nothing to back that up. But after you play some of these games, you're like, okay, this could definitely be botted. But even if that is the case, that's still huge for web three gaming. And I do think there's a little bit of this like thing in the background that might give it some longevity, which is excuse this very large truck, is that there's this incentive circle that I'm seeing develop and I didn't see this myself, I definitely saw it pointed out on Twitter, but people need volume or these game developers need volume in order to get their neck tranches of funding leg or to get onto centralized exchange.
Impacts of Community and Volume in Development
And so the level of due diligence for this like small period of time seems to be lax and that they're not really looking the gift horse in the mouth when it comes to volume. So it'll be interesting to see how long that incentive pushes. I wouldn't even be surprised if some of these airdrops end up getting delayed. We're so conditioned for delays in crypto and it could keep the party going a little bit longer. Well, also, I mean, I don't know how true this is and I want to start, you know, making up stuff, but somebody had mentioned to me because we're not there yet either, but when you actually, I shouldn't say this because it's a bit negative.
Challenges of Transitioning from Web Two to Web Three
But just that not all blockchains are as easy to build on as others, and that a lot of these games that are still in the web two phase are almost a bit stuck because they're not able or don't have the ability to convert them to the blockchain yet because they don't have that. It's not such a simple technical thing to do. So that could also delay the airdrops and delay these games from switching from web two to web three. But I mean, either way, what we're seeing is web two gaming, which we know is a success. And all these telegram games are following the web two model.
Sustaining User Engagement through Community
It's just they're tacking on the web three, eventually tacking on the benefits of web three. So, I mean, as long as you keep, as long as they copy that kind of flywheel of web two, again, it should keep going. At least with the web two community they're bringing in, crypto folk might move on because there's money to earn elsewhere or grinders that are just trying to, airdrops might move on. But you still have a huge community of web two mobile gamers out there that I think you can still tap into.
Value Creation in the Community
Yeah, I tend to agree. And at the end of the day, whether you're building in crypto or you're, quote unquote, investing in crypto, you're trying to take asymmetric bets. And after playing around on telegram for a bit, I'm like, all right, this has got a shot. Yeah, I think so. I think it's a, again, at least what they've done to date, they've added a lot of value to the space. And I think there's too much flack around the town, too much negativity around them.
Innovation through Community Driven Development
But because, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of them are shitty tap games, but that is what is moving the market at this point. That's what bringing people in. So, I mean, I don't think you can knock them for that. I mean, the early, the first one was, the first one, it wasn't, it's now hamster CEO, I think. But the first one wasn't a hamster. It was, came around on Christmas last year. Everybody's tapping like hell on it. And we actually were one of the first people who got, who advertised with them.
Marketing Success through Telegram Engagement
Right. They were still, they were testing the model of, okay, they have, you know, millions of users. What if you add a quest to it, you know, to follow vendetta, do this, do that, and the other thing through and earn the, whatever points or tokens that they were going to airdrop. And we did it, and it was ridiculous. I mean, we, first of all, the amount, I think it was 30,000 or something, let's say $30,000. I actually don't even think was that much. I think was $10,000.
The Impact of User Volume on Engagement
But whatever it was, the number, it went in like five minutes because it's based on number of uses. Okay. Each user is going to cost you x number of cents. So you put in this much money and you get this many users. So we did it and literally in like the first minute, bang, it was done. And our telegram just got flooded and it looked like we had bought a bunch of bots. Right. At the end of the day, I don't think, I mean, some of them were because this was early on, but we still kept a lot of those people.
The Consequences of Engaging with Low Quality Users
The problem is they weren't high quality folk, right? I mean, they were just grinders. But it just shows the power of, you know, if you have this huge, massive community that you can start charging people just to do quests within them. That's what the, you have all these quest projects going out there like Zlee and the other ones, right. These mini games or mini apps are taking, I mean, basically take that over.
Cost Efficiency in User Engagement Strategies
Would you rather spend, you know, ten k on, you know, one of these quest platforms that might get you know, a couple hundred folk or spend the same amount of money on a mini app where you can get, you know, tens of thousands, 100,000 folks and even if 20% or 30% of those are bots, you're still, you know, net positive. Yeah. And you mentioned the influx of, like, low quality users. I think that's a really, like, interesting and complex problem for a web three space.
The Challenge of Maintaining Quality in Community Growth
In a way, they're almost like steroids because they can come in and they could like beef and I don't mean like actual steroids. I understand that. Like, that's more complicated. But the cartoon version of steroids where you just like, shoot up and you get really like big. But then those low quality sort of users can be, and I know they're doing their thing. They're grinding or they're flipping. But that's usually not what's in line with thesis of the community.
Navigating Community Tensions in Gaming
And there's this constant temptation that you're like, okay, I could always lean into this or lean into that. And you know that you get sort of the flippers coming in. So it's definitely, I think, a perplexing problem in our space. Well, it's. So it's early on. That's also the problem with crypto in general. I think, like, I don't know if it's still like that because again, this is almost two years ago now that we've started talking with exchanges and stuff to get to go on.
Negotiating Quality Metrics for Cryptocurrency Growth
But, I mean, if you don't have a certain number, then exchanges also don't want to look at you or launchpads don't want to look at you. And I don't think they really care if that's a real number or not. So I can, this is why people would inflate their numbers to begin with. But, you know, I mean you learn really quick that you might feel good, right. Because you got, all of a sudden you got, you know, this big number, but as soon as you try to sell an NFT or, you know, try and, you know, do something with your token or whatever, it just falls flat.
The Illusion of Community Success
Right. So it's, I mean, you're just kidding yourself. And that doesn't last very long, right. Lasts once, one time you're like, oh yeah, look, I got all these follow, you know, we've got this big community and then you try and do something and, you know, ten people reply. It takes the arrow to the balloon pretty quick.
The Necessity of Authentic Community Engagement
Yeah. It's like the old like adage paper tiger, but they're just paper projects. Yeah. So. And I mean, you can't survive on that, right. I mean the, you need to have a community. You need to have a good, strong community in order to grow and to last, you know, more than a cycle.
The Core of Community Influence on Projects
Absolutely. I mean, the community at the end of the day makes the biggest difference because even if you're the small team and you're executing perfectly and you're trying to be herculean, you'll never be able to compete with a motivated community where people are just taking it on themselves to improve the project, whether that be, offer game feedback or make UGC, you know, custom maps, custom games or just advocate online.
Examples of Successful Community-Driven Projects
Like that is exponential power in comparison. It's invaluable. Yeah. Well, I mean, neo Tokyo is an example of this, right? I mean, the neo Tokyo community basically took it over. I know. I don't want to say took over, but I mean, they've, it's, they've built up this amazing community and it was all just community members.
Community as the Foundation for Success
Right. I don't think it wasn't a business that was set out to, you know, hire these people and start working on it. It was a community that kind of built it and is now running it to the success that it's at. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's really cool to have seen and it's certainly been, you know, just being involved in the small piece that I am like such a fulfilling experience.
Learning through Iteration in Web Three Development
And, you know, were talking about iterations in web three and, you know, getting multiple swings of the bat and trying to be able to learn and grow. And I think that's one of such, of the cool things of web three, is that even compared to the traditional cycle just for investors, like, if you're, we haven't had a bad bear besides the COVID sort of like black swan event since like the zero eight crash.
The Experience of Market Cycles in Crypto
If you're my age, you never really got a swing at, like, a true bear market that actually, like, lasted in crypto just since 20. You know, just in the last handful of years, you've gotten multiple iterations of, like, crash and boom cycles. Yeah, yeah. And it's amazing how each cycle comes back with, I mean, they fix the problem over through the bear, right? I mean, we had a, the games last cycle that, you know, weren't ready or the economies weren't done this and they weren't fun games, right? This, like through the bear. Now we're coming in this cycle. There's a hell of a lot of good games out there, right? And, and they're coming online. You had, you know, each cycle it gets easier to connect, easier to bridge, easier to trade across cross chain.
Improvements in Gameplay and Accessibility
We have, you know, stuff like the passport that we're using now or Myria or any of these super simple seamless wallets or free blockchains, basically, that solve the issue of the last cycle, the last two cycles of just struggling for, let's call them normies to come in. If you're a normie and you go to, I mean, I'm going to say our game, but any game on immutable, you log in with your passport or with your email address or your Facebook, just like you wouldn't any other game or any other website, and all of a sudden you have a blockchain wallet, passport in the back end, and you start playing the game. You don't have to keep authorizing everything. You don't have to, you know, pop up, approve, pop up again, execute it all. It does it all on the backend. Completely seamless. And this is what you need to have in every cycle.
The Evolution of Game Development and Community Engagement
You see this just getting smoother and smoother. And it's, as you said, it's on fast forward because, you know, the bull, you say it lasts, you know, whatever, two or three years, whatever, really, it lasts about six months, right? You have proper bull and then the slowly bleeds out and then you have the bear for, you know, two or three or four years. And in that time, you have these little pumps, but, you know, people just start building and fixing the problems that we'd seen in the previous market. Yeah, it's unbelievable how much it's grown. I remember just back in 2021 when I was doing little research for the NT research team, which in itself was a volunteer organization. We never exactly figured out a way to monetize it, but for a while, people were just cranking out research reports just because they were fired up about NT.
The Rapid Growth in Web3 Gaming
And obviously there was some self serving value there. If you're doing the deep dive research reports, you're the first one to the alpha if it is there. But literally, you could play all the web three games in a weekend, and now there's web three games that I haven't heard of that. I'm like, oh, this is a fully, you know, just the other day, three v, three shooter built. You can play it. I'm like, where did this come from? Yeah, yeah. I mean, we have. We have talks with people. I mean, we are. I'm very proud and very happy with the game that we've put out now. It's far from what it's supposed to be, but if it was last cycle, it would have been, you know, amazing. It would have been, wow, you got this.
The Development Team Behind Vendetta Games
You know, this is the best game out there, but in this cycle, we still got a long ways to go. I mean, as you. As you said, there's some really nice, well built, polished games that are coming out already and. Yeah, and to your point that people haven't heard of, you'll find stuff pops up on my Twitter feed. You know, this game pops up and I look at it, Jesus Christ, this is an amazing game that's done and I never heard of it. And then I'm knowing I'm doing this interview, ask backwards. But for all the people who this is their first exposure to Vendetta games, I would be remiss for not asking about the team. Could you give an overview of who else is building vendetta games with you?
Team Contributions and Innovations
Yeah, well, I just. I see. I don't know if people's screens are the same, but I see danger mouse here, who's integral part of our team. He's the creative genius behind it. So all the beautiful artworks, the website, the NFT designs, all of this is done by danger mouse. And he was, you know, one of these passionate community members who started helping us just because he was passionate about it and now has come on to the team and become really an integral part of it. We have fanzy, who's, I mean, my co founder. If it wasn't for him, Vendetta Games would have never happened. And he was a scholar, actually, one of the NFTs I had for another metaverse early on, he's the one who suggested I start Vendetta Dao the guild.
The Challenges Faced by the Team
And I was like, no, man, I'm not going to start a guild. The last thing, I have no idea what a guild is. I mean, I knew but how to run one, and he was like, no, I'll help you. I'll help you manage it. You've got the nfts. So he kind of pushed me in that direction, and that was the whole catalyst for what Vendetta games is today. And he is just a workhorse. He all of our internal, really technical and proprietary development, our smart contracts, everything, he's done that, and he's managed to. I mean, when we swapped over from Polygon and Elysium over to immutable, we did our NFT swap.
Technical Successes and Future Projects
And, you know, it was super complicated and complex to do because we're talking three different blockchains burning and, you know, and then, you know, reproducing at the same time the similar or the same item, but with, you know, opening the package and you're having all these random functions into it. On immutable ZKVM, which was brand new, it took us a while to do. We finally got it done. He wrote the smart contract for it, and then we got a congratulations from immutable that you're the first people that have done this so far because it was so new. So, I mean, he's really breaking down the barriers on just immutable Z KVM, which is new for just everything we do on there or now. There's a couple other projects we're the first people to do theme, so it's a lot of exploration and trial and error on that.
Community Contributions within the Team
Even just recently, we bridging our VDT token over. He was integral part of that, actually. Floyd as well, who is a community member from the Vulcanverse days, was one of the original team members when were at Dao. He's helping. He's also the founder of Elysium Swap, which is the Dex for Elysium and Vulcanverse. So he's been integral in helping with the token, helping with getting our token from Polygon over to immutable Z KVM, which is a nightmare in itself. Now that it's done, it seems easy, but to start, it wasn't. Who else? We have Demi, who's our content cowgirl, so she's our social media manager.
Team Dynamics and Responsibilities
So she's pumping out all of our content on X and on Instagram and all the other platforms. That we're on. And she's been integral not only in getting the word out there, but also these deathmatches that I mentioned earlier on the game. So she's contacting all of these different partners that we've had in the past, or new partners to organize and set up game nights in their communities. And Ama's with them so we can get our brand out there and build up towards this tournament that's happening. So she's managing a lot of that. What else? We have Joyce, who's another one of our developers, who's helping with the front end.
The Structure of the Development Team
So we kind of have two different factions of our website and our project. Right. You have the web, two basic versions and the artworks of it, but then you have that whole back end of, you know, the blockchains. And we're on two different blockchains at the moment. So she's helping the front end of that section of it. Of the. Of the blockchain section of it. Yeah. And then we, of course, the devs, which, I mean, we have five devs that are based in. Mostly in Europe, that are, you know, grinding every day, helping us put in the hours to try to make this dream of mine and ours come true.
Final Thoughts and Upcoming Events
And as we're approaching the top of the hour, I kind of want to turn it back around. Is there anything we didn't get a chance to cover tonight that you were hoping to? Anything we left on set around vendetta games. Let me see here. I got my notepad next to me from, actually, last night's Ama, so I mentioned the game nights. I hope everybody who's interested could come to our discord. We have game nights every Tuesday and Thursday for this deathmatch, and we built. And hopefully they can build up a team to enter the tournament. The tournament's free to enter. This is kind of like our season one, so we're, you know, it's a bit of a trial to see how it's going to go and.
Future Tournaments and Community Engagement
And get us ready for season two. There's going to be massive prizes. We're going to try and, as I said, throw everything we can at it. We're looking for gaming projects to join. We're looking for guilds to join the. We're looking for anybody that has a group of ten to 20 people that can join, play a game with us and then put a team together. So that's that. Also, we're trying to be a bit of an ambassador for web three in general as well. So we're hosting Taipei Game Fest, which is gaming conference that will be held in Taipei, Taiwan, alongside and in tandem with Taipei blockchain Week, which is always a really good event, draws a lot, a good crowd, draws a quality crowd.
Building Community at Taipei Game Fest
So, I mean, we're talking about followers and community members. I mean, the ones that come to Taipei blockchain week are high quality members. So we're. Yeah, we're hosting Taipei game Fest where we're going to bring in 15 to 20 different projects to the conference. And it'll be its own section within the whole, the whole complex itself. We have our own stage. So we're going to run, we're going to be running tournaments, live streaming. Anybody that comes, any project that comes, they'll be able to have a panel or, you know, a keynote speaking post.
Inviting Projects to Collaborate
And then, yeah, I mean, this is happening in December. So anybody here that has a project or a game that would like to come to the conference and maybe have a booth, please hit me up. It's gonna be a sick conference again. It's gonna be very vendetta style. So we're gonna put our heart and soul into making it, you know, the best game fest we can. And as much fun that we can have with it. Our marketplace is going live. So we've been working for months and months on the back end to build our own marketplace.
Marketplace Launch and Future Prospects
So that should go live in the next week or so. So people can use now VDT on the immutable to buy and sell our nfts. And we're connecting it to other marketplaces on immutable, so you could also buy other, potentially buy their projects on there as well. We are a telegram game that I mentioned. What else? I think that's it. Poker is coming out in the next week or so. I'm super excited about poker. For those of you that have been with us for a while. We had poker in the last version of the game, but it was pretty bare bones.
Enhancements in Game Features
This one is completely different. It's if you played Red Dead, if you played poker and red Dead, it's that kind of feel to it. So you're sitting around the table with the players and you talk shit. You'll be able to, you have a beautiful background to it and very nice UI and then just classic poker. So we can start getting our degenerate gambling going. I think that's it. Hell yeah. There's definitely something absolutely quintessential about poker in a western game, especially if you can blast somebody, if they beat you, there's a dopamine hit there.
Closing Reflections and Gratitude
But Alex, absolute pleasure having another conversation with you. I look forward to our next one. This has been the neo Tokyo vendetta games. Ama. Very grateful for the audience who joined, and fractilian for putting on the space, always crushing it behind the NT account. Thank you very much Alex. Greatly appreciate. Thank you Matt. Thanks for having me. And again, I hope we can organize a game night in Neo Tokyo and get that team Neo Tokyo out there 100%. And look out little alpha at the end of the AMA.
Future Plans and Announcements
Look out for some announcements soon all around, some cool gaming initiatives coming to NT. Thanks everybody. Have a great night. Thank you.
