Nyan Heroes: Cats, Mechs & Esports in Web3

[Music] welcome to the novic gaming podcast where it is our mission to explore the business and future of video games we bring together the industry's brightest Builders investors and thinkers to keep a pulse on current events dissect emerging Trends and games share Lessons Learned and have a great time this podcast is also part of novic growing ecosystem which ranges from free and premium research to Consulting and AD advisory services for more information visit [Music] www.nic.edu higher ecpm on their iOS optout users and drives better results for advertisers this works by delivering their campaigns to more receptive and relevant audiences using first-party data and behavioral Analytics on an app

bya basis a simple two-step integration enables them to Drive Superior results for advertisers while increasing arpd for Publishers in a 100% privacy compliant way you can learn more about how nefta can boost your results at nefta doio now let's jump into the episode hello and welcome to the Nava gaming podcast I'm your host Nick oori we have a great episode for you today our topic is a fun one we are talking about cats and mechs specifically small cats piloting giant mechs uh the game is called nion Heroes it is a midcore Mech battler it's available in Early Access on the epic game store and it's from the Singapore based developer Nine Lives interactive uh the early stats for this web 3 game are very impressive which is why we wanted to have them on the show it is in the top five most wish listed games on the Epic store it has 1.3 million registered users uh and it's already got 35,000 daily actives uh and about 400,000 hours played so far and

I'm sure those numbers are going up and Max will update us on those during the episode uh and the key to remember here is that the game is still pre-alpha so very early but looking promising so to dig into nine Heroes today we have Max Fu he's the creative director and CEO of nine lies interactive on the show Max welcome to the Pod thank you very much Nico it's great to be here all righty well with that intro out of the way let's get right into the the episode so max always like to start with uh the background of our guests and you have a really interesting background um more interesting perhaps than than most uh you come from the medical field so tell us how you went from uh medicine to games and specifically into web 3 what brought you down the rabbit hole yeah thanks it's it's definitely been quite a journey I like to think of myself as living a few different lives maybe not nine lives uh but I'm on my way um I've I've basically I I grew up in a Australia um my whole life there I've

been in Singapore for the last couple of years which is why the company is based here um but ever since I was a kid I've been a really passionate gamer uh but I grew up in a really conservative uh household with my Chinese parents and obviously they're very they they they were basically the stereotypical Chinese parents so I did all the stereotypical Chinese uh kid things like you know violin piano and of course when I graduated high school I only had two options to me and that was either law or medicine um so I picked medicine and that was basically a large part of my life I did a six-year degree uh undergraduate degree uh to get my bachelor of medicine Bachelor of surgery and then I worked in the field for another seven years after that in the surgical industry where I was a upper gastrointestinal surgical registra um and you know it was it was interesting but it wasn't really my

passion um and one day I just kind of decided that I I didn't want to do it anymore uh and this kind of I guess it it it been building up over time of course um and when I left you know everyone around me was super shocked because um you know I'd already dedicated so much time into the field and uh my parents almost discerned me but ultimately you know I didn't want to just trap myself in this sunk cost fallacy H there's still you know another hopefully 40 50 plus years of my life um and I wanted to do something that I was truly interested in so I did complete 180 and I pivoted into the creative industry um which is where I bring all the creative uh Direction and Creative Vision into nine Heroes but in that creative industry I I essentially taught myself everything I started small obviously doing things like film cinematography did a bit of lighting gaffer grip all that kind of General stuff um and eventually went into creative Direction I did a bunch of

commercial work as well uh for various Brands like Samsung Netflix Google um did some music videos and stuff in the in the K-pop industry back when it was really popping um and eventually I set up my own New Media Company where we scaled it up over eight years ended up serving a very diverse online user base of over 30 million users across multiple uh verticals including entertainment lifestyle gaming comedy um and and the main sort of role that I played in that in that startup was a obviously the founder I was also the creative director but I had a huge hand in in just the overall vision of the product itself um I like to be very connected with the community and really sort of getting a gauge on on what they want and sort of really just having a close touch point with with the you know what people are saying on on on the ground so that was probably the major driver of success you know obviously a lot of go to market DNA

in in my blood uh building that up from scratch and it was during that time when I was doing all that uh Media stuff that I got into crypto so this was 2017 uh and then at the end of uh 2020 and early 2021 that's when I really started to dive into the whole uh you know web 3 gaming ecosystem a bit more which is when we've subsequently started nine Heroes so I guess if we count it that's three lives out of nine so far I'm on my third one nice well still six to go long long ways still to go here um cool so and what was it about uh crypto and web 3 that intrigued you you know why did you want to take uh you know what blockchain offers uh some of the technologies that that uh enable certain types of gameplay certain kinds of game design what was it about that that actually intrigued you and really wanted to take you down that path yeah I mean when when I got into crypto in 200 17 I

would say that I didn't really have a strong understanding of it you know it was friend of a friend of a friend who told me to get some Bitcoin and get some ethereum you know obviously many thanks to that person down the line um it was only sort of in in 2020 that I started looking at defi I believe defi summer was was the uh term of of the year and uh early 2021 was when we started looking at gaming and then of course with the rise of axi infinity um it it generated a lot of hype and Buzz in that area um as I mentioned I've I've been a gamer my whole life so I do like to play my fair share of games obviously of late I haven't had an opportunity to do as much but I've kind of been through all the different cycles of gaming you know we started in in the Box title days I I played arcade obviously when I was in high school as well and then we moved to you know sort of PC more sort of digital digital copies and then free-to-play

monetization models and I've been part of all of that uh and when I uh sort of left uh sort of my my pastime of gaming in order to pursue my career um it was the the final sort of I guess uh Paradigm of gaming that I that kind of left on a bit of a sour note actually was the freet to-play model in Mobile there was a lot of microtransactions it was quite predatory and I didn't really get a good feel for for that kind of genre because I I am I am a bit of a a spender in in some games I can get quite addicted and I felt like a lot of that that money that was spent you know and luckily for myself I was in decent financial situation but not everyone is and it just kind of got me thinking well you know when I was young I used to spend a lot of money on magic cards you know I was a big Magic the Gathering player uh back in high school uh and that never left me with the kind

of emptiness that I felt like spending money in microtransactions on gacha games because at the end of the day I still have those cars and I can still take them out and even though I don't really play anymore it's still it's still somewhat sentimental I still have those whereas with all of these online games you kind of dump your money into it maybe you get a bit of fun for three months six months if you're lucky 9 to 12 months but ultimately at the end of the day it's a zero sump game and you're left with nothing uh and maybe you know you move on to the next one and so I think blockchain technology uh this sort of ownership and and the and the layer of transfer that is just so fundamental to a lot of these games I used to play as a kid when you're trading cards with each other you know and and just being able to hold it and have something tangible I do think that there is this subconscious level of I guess reluctance now to to spend a lot of money on these games especially with the latest phase of account Banning and you know blizzard

coming out and saying oh if you haven't logged into your account for x amount of months then we're just going to terminate your account um it it does leave a sour taste in my mouth and so that is the that's the main reason why I was so attracted by by web 3 gaming it's you know kind of bringing it back to my youth and and the sort of sentimental feelings that I had when I was collecting cards and getting these actual collectibles in my hand and knowing that that these are mine you know no matter what happens in the future I can I have custody and I can do whatever I want with them yeah yeah that ownership piece of course is a is a very common thread with Founders in in web 3 uh and those kinds of stories from you know magic or um World of Warcraft games like that where you put in a lot of time a lot of money um but you don't come out with anything at the other side uh it's a very common founder story that we hear on this podcast okay so um really appreciate that very interesting background um third Life we'll we'll see

where the Lives four five six seven eight and nine take you um but for now I think Dian Heroes uh what is it uh how does the gameplay work you've got cats you've got mechs obviously Nine Lives interactive uh cats right like you know cats have nine lives or so they say um so obviously you love cats uh and you've got a I think a charity or you've given quite a bit of money $350,000 um to two cat related Charities as well so very curious to hear H how the gameplay works uh why cats and why mechs and why cats and mechs together yeah so a quick overview of the game itself uh we consider ourselves a competitive team-based movement shooter um that's built around this pretty crazy and quirky idea of you are actually a cat and you're piloting this giant mech suit um the game itself is uh objective based with two teams so it plays very similarly to familiar games like Team

Fortress 2 and OverWatch 2 uh where you have two teams of six and you're competing on various maps to take over certain map objectives um fairly familiar game mode and you know one of one of the main reasons why we went with this game mode is because it's something that has stood the test of time f f first and foremost um it's a proven game mode and we're not really trying to Define our game based on our game mode we we see the game mode mode as a rapper you know you have mobos you have BRS you have Deathmatch um so so that's kind of more of a rapper uh around our unique combat system so so you know we obviously have different Heroes we can have different mechs with different abilities we have some pretty unique uh combat systems that separate us from from other Shooters especially other objective based Shooters so we have very unique movement abilities where all the mechs are sort of designed based off cats and so they have the agility of

cats and they can climb up walls and they can wall run and they can jump off walls and do back flips and they can Dash in the air and things like that and the idea is you know if you were a cat how much sense of Freedom would that would that would come with that and therefore you know we're trying to get as much of that into the game as possible so that that's the first one and then we have some really uh indepth combat mechanics that as far as we're aware haven't been done before we have this really dynamic DC ability system where you every Mech has one ability that changes dynamically based on your load out um and so you know obviously it can get quite confusing I don't want to get too much into it unless you're really interested but the best way to learn about it is to play it um and we've had a lot of Gamers uh come through and say hey I've never really seen this kind of ability system before it's really unique you know depending on my load out my abilities do completely different things uh which is really interesting um so yeah that that's kind

of a little bit about the game and then why cats you know I'm I'm a cat person obviously I have five cats at home I've always been a bit of a cat person I think they they're really hilarious um creatures to to own and and to to spend time with once you the more time you spend with cats the more you realize how unique they actually are and even though I have five they all have completely different personalities and some of them are super sweet and caring and and loving and others are super independent they want nothing to do with you and others are just plain bastards you know they just like to cause havoc and and I think that kind of dynamic nature of cats has made them quite powerful as Internet sort of meme icons you see all these internet videos of cats doing annoying things um and that is something that I'm really excited to be able to inject uh into our game you know all of the personality they offer all of the

memeable content that they offer as well and plus it's just something interesting you know I think a lot of Gamers these days they look at games and they see a lot of very I guess copy paste assets uh they they're just you know they they they feel Bland there's not that much life to them there's not that much soul to them and so we want to create something that is really different has that shock value uh but then can also capture the hearts of people as they start playing and start creating all these really memorable experiences of you know of cats uh you know having their little emotes in the game doing catlike things getting involved with the meme side so we're going to have you know cats with bread uh around their heads because there's that bread cat meme they're going to have cats flying with rainbows you know coming out of their butt so it's it's meant to be a little uh quirky and meant to be a little memorable but under the hood there's a lot of very serious gameplay yeah I I I like cats too but I have to confess I'm a I'm a dog person

uh we have a ginormous bernes mountain dog called Mr jalapeno uh and he's afraid of everything even though he's huge um and he's very afraid of cats uh so if he ever sees a cat uh when he's going out for his walks uh he will cross the road and and uh and hide uh in the bushes so um but I like cats um but I'm more of a dog person all right uh that's neither here nor there um what I think is interesting though is that you have chosen to do this kind of quirk um this is again what part of the reason we wanted to have you on the on the podcast is it is quirky it is a little bit different yes it's a Mech battler but it has this you know layer of of cats and quirkiness going on there and so I I do have to ask the question um you know how big do you think this intersection of you know Mech Battlers cat lovers and web 3 Gamers like how big is that intersection and why did you choose this particular genre to to go after and we'll talk about the web three components versus web two components in in just a second but but I I do want to

kind of understand like why go after this opportunity how big is this opportunity in your mind yeah I think um the question about the the size of the opportunity is is obviously you know no one no one truly knows right now because we haven't really seen a web three game truly break out into uh you know traditional gaming markets and so I I think that's still a bit of a question mark obviously you know I I personally think that the opportunity is enormous because whenever you have a paradigm shift in the way that monetizing monetization works in any industry not just gaming it you know often follows a huge wave of of change and often you know a lot of capital flows so I think the opportunity is is at the moment whilst it's unknown I I do think that it has the potential to be absolutely massive um obviously our thesis in the future and we don't know what kind of time frame it is but it is that at some point down the

line you know all games will have some element of blockchain Technology Incorporated into the system whether it's a fully onchain game or whether there's just some part of that system that is kind of quartered off but but you know has blockchain elements blockchain technology underpinning it uh we don't know but we do think that at some point it'll touch every game in in terms of the backend infrastructure uh in terms of the the intersection uh this one's a little tricky because if you think about intersection of cat lovers and Mech lovers and web 3 Shooters and Mech Battlers I wouldn't say just based off that alone there's not a huge intersection but I think I think we you know we're out here to create a game that is fundamentally appealing to a younger crowd of of shooter Gamers uh obviously we're a movement shooter and that has been a really popular and growing category of of Shooters lately especially with all the kids uh coming

up and and they've they've grown up in a bit more of a fast-paced kind of Lifestyle compared to us uh and you know they have platforms like Tik Tok that you know kind of encourages this fast-paced moving environment and that's why I think movement Shooters are such a good fit for the for the new generation of Gamers coming out um so that's that I believe is our main kind of target audience it's it's these it's these new generation Gamers that are coming out that they like movement they like something interesting they like something new whether it's cats in mechs um is kind of beside the point where we're trying to create our own IP and something that is interesting memorable and unique and I think if people enjoy the game they'll they'll slowly start to attach themselves with the IP because if I said you know what is the intersection between people that like blue hedgehogs that roll up into a ball and move really quickly and collect coins probably you know you would also say well I don't know what's the intersection between Italian plumbers that you know jump down

toilet drains and you know shoot Fireballs like again it's not it's not based on the IP itself it's more of a well Mario is a platformer it's an adventure game uh Sonic the Hedgehog is also like a 2d sidescroller Adventure game although they have had 3D versions subsequently as well but it's more about the game genre itself who does that who does that appeal to and then how do you create your own unique IP to to kind of mold to mold to your game and suit that game and how do you Market that to to your community in an interesting unique way yeah that's a great answer um but I I I was a huge blue Hedgehog offici a before Sonic came out so I knew that one was going to work um but uh but yeah no I I take your point there uh yeah creating IP is hard obviously and and you know sometimes you take a swing at it and it doesn't work and other times it's just like wow yeah blue hedgehogs who who knew um it's going to be a huge obvious in hindsight it's obvious in hindsight right of course um but but um okay so that that's a great answer to

that to that question um let's talk a bit about the web 3 versus web 2 components right so you know one of the things that everybody was doing when Axia first came out was they were highlighting the web three components like oh look we have our own token we have you know asset ownership um we have nfts we have a pfp collection we have a Dao and all kinds of things and then in the Years subsequently of course it's it's a little less in Vogue because as you say yourself you know we haven't yet seen a web 3 game break out not like Axia did and of course Axia in hindsight wasn't sustainable um in terms of of uh the play to earn component of that so I'm curious to hear all of our guests who work in web 3 I always you know ask this question which is you know how are you balancing the web 3 versus the web two components of the game and maybe we just start with what are the web three components uh are they necessary to play the game and how if I just want to play the game and I could care less about asset ownership and I could care less about you know what's onchain versus offchain um what can I do in web two

mode that I can't do in web 3 and vice versa yeah uh so for for our game we our our core or our default experience is actually a web two experience um you know we're very much of the opinion that you could you could have the best product in the world but if you do not time it right with what the market wants then you'll fail and we've seen multiple instances of that not just in gaming but also in in Tech um if you're just too early before the Paradigm Shift occurs then your product will still fail because you haven't kind of catered it to the market so our approach to the way that we structure our you know web 2 versus web 3 is that well you know we have a timeline time frame of around one year that we are planning to launch within and the question that we ask is well in one year how likely is it that traditional gamers are going to S

suddenly you know uh become bullish on nfts in gaming and and crypto gaming and web through gaming and you know is is that Paradigm Shift going to happen in one year and you know obviously we think the answer is no it's going to take a lot of time for you know traditional Gamers to slowly warm up to web3 games and nfts and so because of that we've purposefully decided not to I guess make the web 3 experience the default experience but rather create something that is seamless and uh very familiar to traditional Gamers so that's why web 2 is our default experience you don't need an nft to play it's free toplay game none of the assets that you're sort of initially uh collecting or ACR or in some cases purchasing with premium currency none of them are nfts uh it's just a regular game experience that any anyone can pick up and play and for a traditional gamer it

it shouldn't feel any different to a web three game uh we have our web3 sort of game Loop built on top of the web two game Loop so this is an optional component that not you you know if you have no interest in it whatsoever you don't have to uh have anything to do with that it's more for the people that are either web 3 natives that that either enter through that Loop or the the web three curious that kind of have an opportunity to play the game they start seeing some of these web three elements kind of in the periphery and they decide hey I'm I'm interested in this I want to learn a little bit more how do I do that we'll obviously provide a lot of resources and tutorials and informations on how they can onboard on into web 3 if they are interested but certainly not something that we shove down uh their throat from from the get-go um so so so that's our overall approach yeah yeah if I can just uh not interject here it sounds like you actually finishing thought anyway but um what what what is the promise of web 3

in nion Heroes right like I love the fact that you can play the game completely oblivious to the web 3 components and then there's you know this this uh kind of onboarding loop if you will for those who are curious who are web 3 native what does what do the web three components offer um that would make you want to opt in that experience what is the value essentially that the web 3 components provide to to players yeah so the web 3 the web 3 value ties in a little more with you know what happened in 2021 with the rise of axi and obviously uh that it wasn't sustainable in in the long run but there are a lot of things that they did right in terms of aligning the incentives between developers and players and really just creating that flywheel uh to to Really I guess supercharge their user acquisition channels uh through through their token um this is something that has obviously been proven already to be

quite a powerful flywheel and so our goal is to take parts of that flywheel and incorporate into our game in a sustainable way which is where the web 2 element comes in because obviously for sustainability you need more more money in than out that's that's kind of basic maths right so we have that process through the web two side of the game and then we can apply the web 3 side on top of that so what is the what is the I guess the the value of getting involved in the web three Loop of of nine Heroes um it is essentially having that access the nft Gated access to our token ecosystem to our rewards Loop to that web3 flywheel that kind of works so well with axi but unfortunately wasn't sustainable in the long run so we we have a lot of Revenue generating opportunities the standard sort of monetization models in web 2 the freeto playay with inap purchases commercial deals ads sponsorships all feeding in to our web3 kind of token Network as well

and so that is where the sustainability comes because ultimately at the end of the day you need players that come in that have no interest in financial reward whatsoever and are just playing the game for the fun of it they're spending money and that money is being sort of broken up part of that obviously will go back into the studio and go into development growing the Enterprise value of the studio and the product but part of that will be funneled back into our token ecosystem to grow the pie for all of our web 3 Gamers yeah I mean I think that's and the reason I always asked this question is because that is that is the the fundamental challenge I think for all web 3 games post Axia and for Axia itself of course is you need more money coming in uh you need money coming in that people just want to spend free to play that they have no expectation that there's going to be any kind of financial value uring to them as a result of them playing playing the game and again I would argue playing a game where you're doing it to earn is actually not playing anymore it's it's doing a job right um yeah so I I I like

how you're thinking about this um and of course the you know the trillion dollar question for this entire ecosystem uh this entire ecosystem of developers and gamers in web 3 is you know can you make that work can you make it sustainable can you make that flywheel turn uh in a way that hasn't yet been achieved so I wish you all the best of luck and I'm super curious um with all of our guests who are who are working in this space um on how they're thinking about these things um okay let's talk a little bit more nitty-gritty about the actual Tech that you're using so what chain are you building on um you mentioned a token I believe your token is called Nan um tell us a little bit about what that does and uh what utility it has to use the the jargon of the web3 space uh you have a DA decentralized autonomous organization um what does that do so just let's get into the nitty-gritty of the web three components here um and talk through kind of one by one of what you've what you chose to incorporate and chose not to

incorporate um and uh what they actually do uh in practice for the for the players and for you the company yeah absolutely so so we've been building on Solana for just over two years uh Solana is our default chain and we have two collections that are both uh Solana based collections when we launch our token it'll also be an SPL token based on the salana standard and so yeah we we are hoping uh as one of the sort of I guess Flagship games in the salana ecosystem to kind of spearhead the salana gaming narrative which has uh I guess been a little quiet lately and uh we're hoping to you know capture or divert some of the attention from the mem coin uh season into uh the gaming narrative and hopefully you know something a little more tangible um no shade to me meme coins of course I do play a little around myself and I I love the fact that it's become so big on on

Solana as well um but yeah we're hoping to sort of I guess contribute to the to the overall Narrative of solo as the you know people's chain for example um in terms of the the token itself the the nine token there's a few major functions of it in our game um and I would say you could probably summarize it into four main functions although there are a few more uh but the first one is that it is the first uh I guess resource that is required to actually mint a regular game item into an onchain item and of course in the game we're not going to be calling them onchain items or offchain items we have gamified terms for it so they'll they'll undergo a process of Awakening and you'll need to spend a bit of Nan to actually process that and there'll be the the obviously the onchain fee as well as a platform fee in order to make that conversion and again this is the uh nft G access pathway for

for our Gamers to actually get involved with our rewards Loops so people who who want to get involved will have to do this a lot of our community have some already but of course people that are transitioning from web 2 to web 3 they'll have to kind of undergo that process and so n token is the Catalyst for that process uh that that's the main one the second one is also quite a large uh component so in our game we will have an in-game Marketplace uh people will be mostly trading P2P uh on that Marketplace and we imagine our game to feature a very vibrant kind of P2P trading system uh a parallel would be Warframe uh I'm I'm not sure if you're familiar but it's also kind of like this biological Mech uh lutter shooter where you uh people are kind of trading mechs blueprints mods uh in in their own P2P Marketplace and it's done through their premium currency so this is the kind of model that we're also adapting for nine Heroes

we have we will have we we don't currently uh because the pre-alpha is just the the core Loop but in our next major update we'll be implementing progression systems and character customization systems where not only do you pick a Mech to go into battle with but you can also customize it with a number of different modifications or add-ons think sort of cyberpunk mods uh where you know you can kind of soup up your suit to your own liking in in a similar way to a skill tree however what's different from just being a regular skill tree is that you don't have these skills um essentially out of the gate you have to earn them you have to play the game you have to farm resources you have to craft you have to collect these things and eventually you'll be able to craft resources together to form these modifications that you can then Equip to your characters and the way way that we kind of think about this is it is similar to

a skill tree in that you have a wide uh array of mods that you can use and as a player you can determine how you would like to I guess push your character if you want to have a Healer that is super defensive that's totally fine just you know equip a whole bunch of defensive mods onto your healer and you you're good to go alternatively if you are a bit more trigger happy and you want to deal a bit more damage feel free to go offensive and you can create sort of like a a battle mage where you come in and you can deal a lot of damage as a Healer but you can also heal a bit on your teammates so you still have a bit of utility it's really up to the player how they want to kind of mix and match their mods to their Mech but through this entire mod system we imagine that there's going to be a ton of materials a ton of resources and also the end products themselves that will all be traded on the marketplace this is not including of course things like Cosmetics skins you know weapon various additions banners emotes all of these

things will be tradable by our P2P Marketplace and so one of the secondary main utilities of the nean token is that with every transaction on the marketplace there will be a fee and part of that fee will go through to the studio but part of that fee will be converted in the back end to Nan so if you're a web 3 user you might spend a bit of nean directly if you're a web 2 user you'll probably spend some premium currency as part of that transaction fee but but on the back end that premium currency we are going to convert that as a studio into buy side pressure for the token and so if you if you think of a game as an ecosystem with a GDP we measure that through the volume of transactions that occur in our in-game Marketplace and as a function of that volume part of that through fees will be diverted automatically into our ecosystem token which is which is the second main reason we also have AAL that you mentioned uh we can we can talk about that a little later and then the final thing is we also have staking

rewards uh for people that are actively staking their tokens using them in the game on their various characters you can stake them you get crystals for staking them and you equip the crystals to the characters and get a bit of passive yield so those are some of the major mechanisms for utility of Nan and I mentioned the Dow so I'll share a little bit of light on that so obviously as a game Studio there is always going to be an element of centralization when it comes to how we develop the product the vision that we have you know we can't have you know a million Cooks in the kitchen you know trying to Define that direction so when we talk about Dow we have to be fairly careful in how we roll it out so initially uh you know we we have this Dow it it is very very early stages I would say and in terms of how much impact they will have on the overall vision of the game it's going to be fairly minimal in the beginning when we're still you know getting things set up when we're still developing our systems but once we go live uh that and

and we sort of transition into our live service model uh we will start to open up pockets of the game where the Dow will have more and more control so initially there'll sort of be like this this world Garden where you can you can make some changes you can make some suggestions and as we develop that we hope to be able to expand the the I guess the impact of the Dow into other areas of the game and we might have certain seasons of the game that you know the the Dow can have an impact on you know what direction we want to take uh in certain areas we might have balance changes that obviously you know we have to vet as as a studio but you know they can be suggested by the Dow as well so all of these things will have to be done fairly carefully we do have plans for that in the future but at the moment we just need to be fairly I guess uh Resolute in our in in our guide going going towards that North Star that we currently have um so yeah for now the da is is there in in spirit uh in in functionality will will come later y

gotcha gotcha you got a lot going on by the way uh not a not a small Enterprise not a small undertaking uh lots of moving Parts lots of um uh complexities which you know hopefully complexity in a good way sometimes complexity can be uh uh challenging for players and for the studio but uh sometimes it can be really fun and and engaging for the community which brings me on to my next question which is um in you know I I rattle off a few of the the numbers which are are impressive for a pre-alpha certainly you know you have 1.3 million registered users these are all stats that you've provided so I haven't independently verified any of these um but uh you know 1.3 million registered users 35,000 uh daily actives in a pre-alpha um top five wish listed on on the epic games store uh you know all good stats all all indicating that there is heat around this um who is your intended audience you touched briefly on this uh you know it's the it's the younger players the Gen zers the the you know folks who have grown up on Tik Tok like I'm way too old

for that that crowd um but um uh talk a little bit more about the intended audience who are you seeing as the early adopters who are these 1.3 million registered users that you've you've managed to sign up um who's actually playing the game at this moment in time those 35,000 da and how do you see that split between a web two audience you know traditional Gamers care less about the web 3 aspects versus the web 3 enthusiasts who are there potentially specifically because of the web three elements yeah obviously in terms of the metrics these are the metrics that we've provided ourselves uh internally uh we have our own spreadsheets that track those and obviously there's an element of trust that goes to it um there there are certain metrics that you know we we really can't kind of game though for example the the epic game store you know we we don't we don't have anything to do with their metrics they publish they publish their their side of things and you know we're just a player in their market so when it comes to things like top five on on epic games most wishlisted games you know that is that

is out there for everyone to see we we have nothing to do with that we're not we're not kind of you know uh messing around with that number the other thing is over the course of our two we pre-alpha we were actually in the top 30 most played games on Epic uh globally again on on their on their list uh not not ours so uh this is this is across all games you know it's not web 3 games or anything like that it's it's including web 2 games you know we we saw that list the top was obviously fortnite and then there was I think there was genin impact and pubg and and titles like that and so we we're in that top 30 even though we only had a twoe pre-alpha which is pretty awesome yeah congratulations that's very impressive yeah no thank you appreciate that uh in terms of the the the target audience I think it really depends on what stage of development we are currently in because uh you know we are definitely going to be targeting uh web Gamers uh

longterm but in the initial instance we definitely want to find our niche in the web 3 gamer Market uh first because you know this is where we've been building this whole time we've been building in web 3 we've been building in web 3 for a couple of years and this is where most of our community is as well so absolutely most of our Focus during our pre-alpha and our Alpha seasons are going to be in web 3 however we are starting to send out some I guess feelers into the web 2 space uh I think there are a lot of games currently in web 3 that I I think that they're reluctant to I guess expose themselves to the web 2 crowd because of multiple reasons maybe they don't think they're ready maybe they're worried about the backlash maybe they're worried about negative kind of sentiment around around the web two Gamers um and certainly I had a lot of advice coming through that we should also be careful about that too but uh I you know stupidly or bravely

who knows ignored that and we did actually do a web 2 activation during even our pre-alpha which was maybe even more stupid than than most people were thinking because it's a pre-alpha game and so obviously there's going to be a lot of bugs there's going to be a lot of Jank as well um but we did it anyway uh I would say that the launch itself probably was focused around 70% uh web 3 and and 30% web 2 creators and the amazing thing you know I I was prepared for the worst but the amazing thing that we saw was that with even with the web 2 creators and this actually happened with all of them um initially sentiment began as as fairly negative you know they said hey this this sponsored stream it's an it's an ad people knew there was a web through game nfts crypto all of that sort of all those buzzword and sentiment was negative then they started playing the game and

you could actually see we we we ran some analytics on the back end and sentiment shifted from negative to neutral and then in 100% of cases it was positive by the end so for us this was really amazing feedback I don't think there's been a web 3 PC based title at least that has had this kind of positive reception in the traditional gaming crowds um and it wasn't just the streamer it was Their audience as well the people that were typing in chat we were running sentiment analysis on on all of the chat as well and I think it was really validating for us because our main goal was to be able to appeal to these traditional Gamers and I I I think a lot of the times when they play these web 3 games they're either in super super super early AIS a pre pre pre pre pre-alpha or the games are just you know they're just outright scale or they financial instruments with button- clicking and so they have this preconceived negative notion of of web three games but as soon as I see a game

in my opinion that is actually fun that is actually genuinely trying to do something unique and different it's not a copy paste it's it's it's its own game with its own identity um they can get behind it and the fact is we didn't sort of jam web 3 down their throats we didn't have this kind of wallet interaction when they loaded into the game we didn't have this nft stuff when they loaded into the game they could just get in and play um that was really validating for us and actually over the course of our entire play test we had about 20% of our entire play base had nothing to do with web 3 so uh for us again another really validating metric uh that we're very excited about so of course we still have a lot of work to do uh we are still going to be focusing very much in the in the web 3 uh space for now but uh there are I guess glimpses of of a lot of potential in in traditional markets as well yeah I mean that's great to hear obviously when we talk about games they have to first and foremost be fun to play you Need to want

to choose to spend your time there um over any number of other things you could be doing including watching Netflix or you know whatever um and so uh that's the first thing you need as a game studio is you need people to be having a good time and then you can talk talking about all the add-ons and the twists and the turns and the web through components and what have you so so uh congratulations again on on what sounds like a very promising and and positive initial launch um what the 1.3 I'm curious about the 1.3 million registered users that's a big number um for any game um especially a web 3 Gabe and you know you're you're very open about the fact that you're leaning into the web 3 audience first and then finding some success with web 2 as well like 1.3 million registered users that's that's a lot where have they come from uh they can't all be web 3 folks uh giving you their their email address yeah so in terms of the user registrations these are the users that have registered

through our own website dashboard um most of them are probably uh you know they they they came because we did a uh a number of activations prior to our pre-alpha launch on Epic uh we we were running an airdrop campaign uh over several weeks even before the game became available on Epic so that was probably attributing most of most of the user registration so we believe that those us user registrations are essentially going to be basically all web3 users in in in my estimation of it wow because they've registered they've connected their Twitter accounts they've connected you know uh 600,000 wallets as well uh and so uh my guess is that most of them are web 3 users the web 2 users that ended up playing the game were the ones that actually didn't register on our website and that they kind of I assume that they discovered the game

either through the creators that we had partnered with during our pre-alpha launch or people that had just seen the game on the wish list and saw it really high and they they were kind of naturally got interested to to kind of figure out what what this game was about because because we also registered a number of users coming to our website uh directly from the epic game store so I think that there is a little bit of that but most of our uh the users register on our dashboard we're guessing or assuming are going to be web web 3 users wow I mean you know it's I always like these moments where you hear that web 3 actually is not dead I know I know that we're in a middle of a bit of a crypto bull again and of course when you're ever ever you're in the bull like everything looks Rosy and and and uh optimistic but uh nonetheless that's a very impressive number you know 600,000 connected wallets uh for a pre-alpha game that's you know PC epic game store um and and I presume you're salana

exclusive or do are you cross-chain uh in any way at this moment in time currently we are exclusive on Solana uh you know we do we have been sort of discussing internally around how can we support users from other chain communities cuz you know again we don't we don't want to I guess we don't want to put up barriers to entry for the game you know we're not we're not a blockchain we're not a layer one we're not any kind of infrastructure protocol we're a game and we want to make sure that our users and Community have access to the game no matter where they are um you know I know for example in the Japanese web 3 Market Oasis chain is pretty much you know the one chain that most of their Gamers on board through and so if we want to have any kind of footprint in the Japanese web 3 Market Market we're probably going to have to integrate with Oasis chain

otherwise you know they might not be interested so right now we are native on Solana that is our default chain uh however we are discussing ways to to figure out ways to to be able to support other chains on the back end right now we don't have that but we plan to in the future so I mean that makes the number you know 600,000 wallet it's connected even more impressive because if you're Salon exclusive you know you're limiting yourself to but one chain um and not uh available to anybody else who might uh not have a uh a salon based wallet so um very impressive uh definitely the the death of web 3 gaming has very much been overblown I think um and there's definitely uh there's definitely some some Phoenix From the Ashes uh type situation going on here with with a lot of the studios that we're talking to um okay let's talk a little bit about uh Esports um because uh despite being you know pretty early on pre-alpha you've announced uh partnership with G2 uh Esports uh tell us a little bit more

about that when did that come to to be and how is that going to work uh in practice what does the partnership entail yeah um you know obviously very exciting for us um one of the things that we've really try to do from day one is to build Esports into the DNA of n Heroes uh because there's a lot of things that are required components of any game that seeks to be successful in in the Esports sphere you know you can't just make any game into an esport uh traditionally orts are dominated by MOBA and Shooters um that that's it essentially there's there's a few others obviously here and there they're kind of more Niche crowds you have your your card uh sort of um trading card games you also have your fighting games but the reach of those has been limited compared to the the former 2 and so when we're designing I here we doing it with orts in mind because in

order to have a Vibrant orts Community the game essentially must serve the viewer it must serve the audience because without an audience you have no esport so we we really looked into what are the things that serve the audience and it's things like fastpaced exciting Combat gameplay it's things like um the ability for players to be able outplay others using skill and combination of Team based strategy um obviously we we think about things like having cameras to be able to support uh spectator views um and other than that it's it's all about readability of the game as well so we want to make sure that it's not too chaotic I know that there's for example Esports competitions around Battle Royale um I think they're doing a great job but fundamentally it's it's it's a chaotic kind of environment to try and figure out what is going on with either

100 100 people or or 20 teams and and really just trying to I guess figure out like where the team that you're barracking for are it it's quite challenging whereas traditionally it's those two team uh competitive games that that tend to do well so again we we've kind of crafted it around that so obviously we have goals um that is definitely I I think we're we're we're approaching it in two different ways because on one hand it's going to take a lot of time to build up a true sort of professional level orts scene you know we're not we're not I guess naive enough to think that you know we're just going to launch the game and suddenly we're going to have um an Esports league around nine Heroes that's that's really difficult to do um but obviously we have goals around it um the thing that we do want to start with for sure is sort of Grassroots um Esports uh communities and competitions

between various guilds and in fact even during our pre-alpha we ran I think three or four Esports competitions um you know I think two two of them were handled by by our team and two of them were actually handled by other guilds who were just really excited to get involved and they ran their own competitions and we just provided the support for them to to do so um and it was great to see and that's that's definitely how we want to start we want to start with these core sort of gaming communities that really love the game they're forming teams around it and they're just playing the game we we set up uh like a like a eight team or 16 team round robin elimination kind of format and it was it was great and we have a lot of footage around that too which we haven't shared yet but we will soon uh everyone had a great time um so that's that's how we're going to start in terms of the the G2 partnership we actually announced Partnerships with not only G2 but also so fanatic and Evil

Geniuses and these are some of the largest Esports in the world both both very big names yeah um which is amazing and obviously very exciting you know our goal is to I think you know leverage these Partnerships to to to build out a long-term strategy for our eventual Esports Vision um obviously right now the game is still too early for any real kind of top down Esports uh professional level organization to occur but we are working with them to to figure out ways in which we can plug their Community which are obviously very much excited about Esports into our development uh cycle so initially it started out with a few uh sort of G2 fanatic and Evil Genius uh Affiliated content creators and streamers to to play the game get involved with the game game give us their feedback as well uh eventually it

may uh I guess we're thinking about doing some Community competitions where we have you know G2 streamers versus Community uh a lot of fun events like that and just sort to sort of build up the community uh Grassroots I think uh seen first through those very wellestablished Esports organizations so so that's our plan at the moment as as it relates to our Partnerships with those guys but obviously we hope that we're able to cultivate that into something broader once the game goes live yeah again very ambitious uh and I love how much how much you've got going on um and the the uh the sheer yeah audaciousness of of trying to accomplish some of these things and build a game that could actually become uh Esports worthy uh as you say it's not easy to do and very few games have done it but uh kudos to you for for uh the Partnerships and and uh getting to where you are already uh okay couple more questions as we come to towards the end of our um our episode here um do need to ask you about

uh how the recent bull market crypto bull market has impacted your road map uh has it made it easier for you to uh you know build in web 3 because of course building in web 3 was very very difficult for the last 24 months um and so how has the the recent um Crypt bull impacted uh I mean salana fun fact and not so much fun but uh I sold all of my salana at $20 um um and that's now I bought it I so I I I did several buys Back in the Day 2020 2021 uh and I I literally bought it at its peak at $235 and then sold it for for 20 so uh yeah listeners don't don't don't take any trading tips from me whatsoever are you telling me that you are the ultimate counter signal we just need to know when you buy and sell and do the opposite yes exactly exactly well i' I've held on to my my Bitcoin and my ethereum I've been hodling that since 2016 so um I'm not like too too sad but yeah salana definitely not I was not a uh a a a

brilliant Trader yes I am the counter signal so I will I will post my trades on Twitter and uh uh you can uh take that for financial advice the opposite do the opposite of what I did anyway um but let's talk a little bit about the Crypt bll and how that's impacted your road map has it made it easier for you to build um I know you you announced a a fund raise I don't actually know when that uh closed but I think you've announced $3 million fund raise talk a little bit about that too and then just kind of the current environment for web games with the crypto raging all around us yeah I mean for sure it's made it a lot easier to fundraise um you know we we were able to close our funding round a couple months ago which is really exciting for us um and I think with the Bull Run obviously there's a lot more uh VC Capital that's willing to deploy I think we had a lot of sideline capital in the last couple of years that were you know just a little scared a little un certain about the the lay of the land but certainly you know for us as well as

many other uh web 3 gaming Studios building in the space um you know I imagine it's been a lot easier you know I I think we we've seen a lot of funding announcements across the board not only for game studios but also gaming infrastructure so uh that has definitely helped I think you know the other thing that has helped is with with the Bull Run obviously there are a lot more eyeballs on web 3 and gaming specifically and so you know the great thing about n Heros and where we were at as a company is that you know we were fairly heads down during the bar Market you know we didn't do a whole lot of marketing we didn't we weren't shouting out from the rooftops just because the the ROI wasn't there and it wasn't worth our time and so we really just focused down on the game and we we focused on developing the best kind of product that we could uh with the resources that we had and this has turned out obviously really well for us

because now with the with the bull market kind of coming back we were able to uh deliver a pre-alpha that I think many people were surprised at because they didn't hear much about us during the bear and I think there were a lot of other shooter games in in the space that had kind of captured a lot of the attention of the markets and we were really kind of the Dark Horse when we when we started our marketing campaign and no one really knew what to expect but I think at the end of it all um you know a lot of people are now I I think they're thinking about us as as maybe even the front runner when it comes to how far we are along in our development cycle how polished and how refined the gameplay actually feels compared to some of the other Studios building in the space and so that for us um has been amazing uh I think you know we were able to um uh pivot fairly quickly when the

markets turned simply because we had adopted this agile way of working uh ever since you know day one of the studio we'd always tried to uh build through agile methodology using Sprints and things like that so when the market started turning around we were able to quickly pivot uh whatever resource we had from development and concepting and R&D into rapid prototyping into uh you know sort of Fairly polished pre-alpha build so that definitely helped you know with the market coming back and more eyeballs on on gaming as well yeah I bet it bet it did um the um pre-alpha just uh when did you guys close that you had it live for two weeks um is it still available to play the game or are we now in the next phase where we're taking the feedback from what you learned um and then putting that into the the next version of the product and when will that come out so talk us a little bit about the road map and uh where you guys are at in uh this

current stage of development yeah uh so that one closed out on April the 9th uh there are a lot of people disappointed to hear that the servers were closed and we also had a number of people joining our community afterwards uh wondering where the game is and feeling a bit of fomo I think that they missed out uh so luckily for for everyone um you know we are planning on opening up the servers again and fairly soon uh we would consider this sort of like a pre-alpha version 2 where the game itself won't actually change that much but we are changing a fundamental uh system in in our matchmaking services so in our initial pre-alpha matchmaking was completely uh open and sort of pob style where anyone would match with anyone uh there was some you know that we had I

think a hundred different locations of servers around the world but essentially it was it was a freefor all and that led to a lot of lopsided battles where you might have really good players who were you know teaming up versus you know people that hadn't played much and it was it was fun for the people winning not so much fun for the people getting stomped so uh for our pre-alpha version 2 we actually have fairly similar build few minor tweaks but a major overhaul in our matchmaking system where we will have u under the hood A ranked system that uh sort of internally uh separates People based on their MMR rating and therefore you know when when they matchmake subsequently they'll they'll matchmake with people closer to their own ranks so hopefully that will make for a better matchmaking experience we'll also have our own ranking system on the back end so you know all the way from bronze uh you know and silver which is where I probably will be at uh all the

way up to Diamond uh Master Grandmaster and uh Champion tier at at the very top so that should be a lot of fun for the more competitive oriented people and for the people that missed out on our initial pre-offer they'll be able to get a chance to to get back into the game in a couple weeks and uh test it out and you know test their skills on the leader board nice I'm going to have to get my son uh who's 11 and is a very very good uh fortnite player he he wins more than he loses uh and he'll win multiple matches in a row so uh he also loves Mech Battlers by the way um so I'm gonna have to get him into uh he's not a big cat lover though maybe he gets that from me but uh but uh he's probably at the intersection of of uh uh of your target audience and uh could could potentially be a competitive player I'm I'm I keep joking that I'm going to retire based off his Esports earnings uh and uh you're never too young to start 11 is totally fine so anyway um Okay so we've covered a lot of ground today I'm really

excited for this I'm I'm always excited for web 3 air quote success stories obviously the the success story has yet to be written fully um but I I feel like nian Hero has a really good shot at doing so which is part of the reason we wanted to have you on on the show and uh you know we're all fingers crossed hoping that 2024 is the year of the first few hopefully but certainly the First Quality web 3 game that is really fun to play that has the ability to stand the test of time and does something interesting and unique incorporating Weg 3 without shoving it down the player's throats and without the over financialization of uh you know the tokenomics and and things like that so um keeping my fingers crossed for you and and hoping and wishing you all the best um but tell me a little bit about uh when the full final version of the game you know when do you it's never going to be full and final of course there's always more work to be done but when do you expect to be kind of not pre-alpha anymore when do you expect to actually have the product out there and saying like yeah we're we're mostly done

now it's live Ops time yeah uh we're we're actually targeting uh open Beta by the end of the year and depending on how many bugs there are in open Beta we're either going to uh take take the game offline and fix those bugs or if they're not too egregious we'll just hot fix it and seamlessly transition into live from from open Beta so it could be at the end of the year year it could be early 2025 it all depends on you know how our Dev pipelines hold up um and how many bugs and quality of life fixes are needed um okay well that's that's amazing so not not that long you know we're talking months not years um for what we hope is a kind of a fully fledged uh robust and highquality bug-free release uh for nian hero so good luck with that um all right final question for the day um final question that I ask all of our guests uh is what are your favorite three games that you're playing at the moment or the the three games you're most excited by and again this doesn't have to be web 3

or web two it can just be what you like playing and what you're excited by well I I wouldn't say necessarily playing at the moment uh I do find myself with a distinct lack of time uh to play games at the moment uh but I can tell you my three favorite games of all time um you know first one is one from my childhood it's Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time good chice that one was on the N64 it was an absolute classic yep um and I replayed it multiple times when I was young and had nothing else better to do in my holidays um the next one is OverWatch the original OverWatch like OverWatch one that one completely redefined the hero shooter industry and I just remember a lot of really fun day uh like really fun days when I was playing with my my high school friends um you know in in the original OverWatch and I still try and get a few games in of of OverWatch 2 here and there where

possible but uh yeah not not as much as I'd like and then isn't really like similar to the J that we're building in but Elden ring um I can't really passed by a top three without saying Elden ring all right I would say that I was a huge like Dark Souls player or anything like that before but yeah Elden ring definitely captured my attention um with a lot with a lot of interesting gameplay and storytelling elements so yeah fantastic some fine choices in there some Classics um okay well that is a great place to to end today uh Max thank you so much for coming on the Pod today it was a real pleasure uh learning about nian heroes and and uh I'm excited like I said I'm genuinely excited for you guys and I'm hoping that you know fingers crossed this is a web three breakout moment um when you capture the attention of the players without uh you know the web 3 component necessarily being shoved down people start so uh appreciate how you thoughtful you've been and uh really enjoy talking to you

appreciate that thanks for having me on the show yeah and of course uh always big thank you to all of our listeners we'll be back next week with more interviews more insights and more analysis from the weird and wonderful world of web 3 so until next time friends stay crypto curious and feel free to send questions guest recommendations and comments to me my email is nikvik.com if you enjoyed today's episode whether on YouTube or your favorite podcast app make sure to like subscribe comment or give a five-star review and if you want to reach out or provide feedback shoot us a note at podcast nov. or find us on Twitter and Linkedin plus if you want to learn more about what navic has to offer make sure to check out our website www.nic.edu advisory Services again that is www.nic.edu [Music]