Yuga Labs: 1 Year After Dookey Dash

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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 navic gaming podcast I'm your host Nick oori we have a great episode for you today and one I am particularly excited for um last year's most popular navic podcast episode was with today's guest and we were covering the topic of yugal laabs and their then newly released game doky Dash today we go back to the future for a bit of deja vu and once again we'll be talking about Yuga one of the heavyweights of course in the web three space with bip Yacht Club among many other top crypto native intellectual properties and Yuga in partnership with farway games is going to release uh with their dooky Dash toilet themed infinite Runner sequel called dooky Dash unclogged and there are a lot of

animations from the original the most important which are that it is not token gated and it is mobile and in conjunction with this release Yuga and farway have announced that farway games is acquiring a subset of yuga's Ip portfolio so we have a lot of news to cover here so today we welcome back Spencer Tucker who as Chief gaming officer at Yuga led the development of the title and partnered with farway games on it Spencer also has some personal news to share uh as he is transitioning from Yuga to become Chief product officer at farway but he will remain closely involved in continuing to develop new IP with Yuga a lot going on a lot to unpack so without further Ado Spencer welcome back to the Pod yeah thanks for having me glad to be here and yeah definitely a lot to cover this is a media episode here a lot of news being being covered here so uh we always start with this I know you've been on the Pod uh before but just remind our listeners about your background and of course share the story The exciting personal news about joining

farway yeah so uh just brief kind of history on myself I've been in gaming for roughly 20 years uh prior to or like before that I was in banking uh doing Bank Ops for about eight years is uh so previously worked at scopely as president of games before that I was at um gree as SVP of a product there and SVP of Studios of glue and then before that I was in the kind of PC MMO scene uh running bunch of midcore games and business Ops for area games and uh most recently I forgot I should men a cgo at uh at yugal labs and now as of last week uh just transitioned over to farway uh and kind of brought uh I guess you could say that the kids with me so brought a number of ips and and uh different game experiences over to farway um and of course uh the relationship there is pretty pretty tight as you might imagine we're still making dooky Dash uh and

we're still working directly with uh with the folks over there and the founders to to kind of integrate um some of the brands that we picked up and some of their properties and whole you know interoperability uh sort of ecosystem play lives on in that sense nice um yeah our listeners I'm sure are mostly familiar with yugal labs and board ape and you know mutant uh apes and crypt punks of course was acquired by by them as well a lot of Crypton native IP like I mentioned in the intro but our listeners are perhaps not us familiar with farway games um so tell us a bit more about them um when when I got to know Alex P who's the founder there this was back in 2021 they were still very focused on building a salana native uh open world shooter called mini Royale which had of course nft Integrations and and uh open economies um but it looks like a lot has changed in the subsequent years in farway strategy and what they're were working on how has the company evolved um over the years and what are they doing now yeah so I think originally uh the vision was you know

lightweight mobile easy accessible games that you could launch up with interoperability and kind of um a Crypton native uh sort of component to it uh that's still a thing however um you know the the companies involved quite a bit so now uh it's focused on its platform strategy almost think of it as B2B B Toc d2c um sort of like a SAS sort of solution for crypto uh economies crypto G games with a Marketplace non-custodial wallet solutions to onboard uh you know non web3 native folks much easier um they've also been focused on building additional games um some of those are what I'd refer to as like kind of Dent First games or like web 3 nft gated experiences but also looking to grow the ecosystem with uh more kind of let's let's call like freetop play web 2.5 types of experiences uh and so they're real kind of Str strategy there is still to focus

on games first but to build out an ecosystem and a platform uh that really creates uh a sort of sticky um inflow from uh from more traditional gaming and gets people sort of onboarded uh to the the kind of value um proposition and and sort of retentive features that are only available through the blockchain so that's that's kind of the Focus right now nice and uh how does the Yuga partnership with farway come into play here like how does that fit into the strategy and if you can actually tell us a little bit about the background on on how the original deal came to to be and how it evolved and what is it you know what does it mean for you guys now going forward yeah yeah happy to speak about that so I think to to appreciate that you got to go back a little bit um pre far away uh at at yugal Labs so as Chief gaming officer yugal Labs we did a whole bunch of what I'd call mini games activations generally very short um sort of Dev

timelines and typically not being built with uh with developers who had a lot of robust experience in either freeto playay or at scale product or games as a service um sort of uh experiences and one of the challenges there aside from the short Dev timelines were uh just kind of the number of features you could get out the types of experiences you could build um and kind of dealing with like bugs and sort of like scale problems and things like that as a byproduct of uh sort of the development um ecosystem that you were leveraging because youa at the end of the day is just not a first first party developer um and never really was so uh after we put out a few of these games it became very clear to me that we needed to start to partner with other developers who had a little bit more experience bandwidth moved fast which is kind of critical in web 3 um but built built stuff that could stand up at scale and uh had

experience live operating product um there are obviously a lot of developers out there there aren't a ton of developers that build at the pace that kind of accommodates you know web 3 and that was that was one of the considerations so uh given my prior experience with um Alex and Dennis uh you know both at glue and also worked with them at scopely had a pretty tight relationship with them as a byproduct of that uh I reached out and I said hey would you guys be interested in um sort of building out some products with uh with Yuga I helped tee them up with uh the mutant cartel guys uh for serum City and so we already had like a a kind of ongoing conversation um and uh and we had this idea at Yuga uh to kind of grow the ecosystem I I kind of talked about that I think last time with with dooky Dash um so really this this idea of dooky Dash and clog kind of came up it was like well what if we you know open the front of the funnel no longer token gate it try to create a reward mechanism

to kind of simulate the the original uh Zeitgeist and sort of like driving Factor behind what I uh saw as like kind of Best in Class kbii profiles for a game like that um and then built it you know for scale mobile first new engine Etc um so they were they were into that they thought the idea was great um and uh and that's kind of how it all kicked off uh we've been developing that for call it I think seven months now something like that um and uh it's a brand new engine lots of changes we can get into some of that stuff uh and how the strategy changed a bit but that was sort of the the Genesis Point um and then from there you know as they continue to to kind of iterate and create this game uh Yuga was looking at the product and kind of the the quality of the output and was pretty impressed with it um and they're like you know these guys are basically delivering a great product a great Pace um and we've

got all these other games that we don't really have the the capacity or attention span or focused energy to really go deep into maybe it makes sense to have a conversation when farway reached out to Yuga and said hey we're interested in some of these IPS maybe it makes sense to pursue you know exploring that route and so that's what ended up happening um as a byproduct of that far away picked up Legends of the Mora and heavy metal um they're still attached uh like you know in the typical web 3way through interoperability to the the UB ecosystem but now they're like dedicated um sort of farway ips and are getting the love and attention of a dedicated you know developer who actually has like the capacity to build uh for those communities so that's that's kind of the Genesis of both the IP the games and then my uh sort of factoring into that is part of the conversation when we explored um IP going over to to far away

um they were already making the game and I was spending you know the majority of my time working on these products anyway I was like does it you know doesn't make sense Alex and Dennis were like you know we Spencer really knows this stuff uh better than anybody else what do you guys think about maybe he coming over and joining uh far away um and so we had a back and forth uh about that U with Yuga but I think we all generally um arrived at the conclusion that that made the most sense um and so I I was happy to uh to be able to to join them officially um and uh and still continue the work that I was doing at Yuga and uh again keeping the relationship strong between Yuga and farway as a result of that so it's uh that's the the change and the move for me but ultimately it's um empowering uh for those IPS and those communities to be able to have a dedicated person who understands the brands and understands product focused with uh those guys to to kind of put all those resources behind

delivering great excellent kind of sticky experiences for those collections yeah that's uh a lot has happened as we say and things move fast in web 3 and you know you blink and you miss it you know like I said I was uh looking at the far away website in preparing for this this episode and I just remembered Alex and uh Dennis working on Mini Royale back in you know not that long ago only a couple years ago and and here we are the website looks completely different and uh uh so yeah blink and you miss it so um in addition to the some of the IP coming over and obviously you know that frees up far away to build as they see fit I presume with the that IP and then tying it back to Yuga are there still plans uh to do more uh of kind of co-development or uh taking other Yuga IP like the biggest of the big IP you know like the board apes and like you did with duky Dash and continuing to do more of those games as well or uh is this you know the duad dash unclogged is this not done there and then they're planning

on farway is planning on working on the the new IP exclusively or is there some mix of things yeah I think I think it's uh it's definitely kind of a mix of a number of things um so obviously Dy Dash unclogged is Bard a IP um and that's going to be uh developed with uh with farway and launched and operated um with farway the heavy metal stuff uh and legends of the mara think of like Legends of the mara is kind of an analog to you know Star Wars Legends so it's like you've got other side as the main brand and colon you know a Star Wars story is like some some offshoot uh stories on top of that brand Legends of the mor is kind of the same deal um so the degree to which we continue to to work together and kind of realize uh sort of that Universe collectively like that will that will be a thing um but I think you know for for Yuga and farway like the relationship will continue to evolve and we'll see you know what what

we do in the future um collaboratively together with with different brands uh but I can say from far away's point of view um we definitely want to lean into those IPS uh as kind of a a prime priority um and deliver experiences that people are really looking for and and I can get into what what that looks like I mean there's really kind of like we have a pretty unique I think business strategy at this point um which is what I describe is like uh first and second party uh like game publishing and ecosystem plays plus a kind of split Focus uh what I call dgen first games and um let's call it web 2.5 front funnel games and so the the idea there is uh first we built this uh this platform and I I actually think you know probably most people out there don't even know this stuff exists if they go to farway website and check it out I think you'll be pretty surprised at uh

the tech that already exists there like the non castalia wallets multi-chain support uh there's like Fiat payment options crypto payment options like interoperability in games a game marketplace where it shows you you know um off it chees up offchain data on that Marketplace to show you like hey you own this like nft and it's interoperable in these various different places there's a ugc layer that's already built uh that's that's already live and working in in duky dash unclogged and and mintion and some of the other products there's a lot there um from a just a pure like SAS business platform perspective as well as like a consumer Marketplace perspective so I think that's uh that's definitely something interesting but as we look at the you know dgen to um kind of D to uh uh free-to-play I guess you could call it web 2.5 gaming really the idea is the free-to-play stuff um is going to be targeting you know mobile um because that's where is like mobile

crossplatform honestly mobile and PC uh all our games are going to be crossplatform in that respect um but what you can do with those games as you might expect is like more limited than what you can do um if it's a DJ first game and so the DJ D gen first games will do things like you would expect a d gen first game to to kind of do uh like look at individual traits work those into the game play uh look at kind of the reward systems and make sure those are aligned with what people expect out of um a web 3 gaming experience uh really lean into this kind of interoperability play in a way that uh kind of really speaks to the web3 crowd directly um but at the same time you know those pieces of content will still be useful in uh the freeto playay kind of web 2.5 play and so I'll give you like a real practical example of this um in dooky Dash unclogged you've got nft um sort of benefits in the form of this thing called Yuga score and so you've got a sewer rank so if you if you remember

dooky dash1 you had like different tiers you had tier one tier 2 tier three tier four uh that mechanic still exists but in the free-to-play version of the game you can earn your way from tier zero effectively to the top tier which we call Goat tier and you get the same benefits you would if you had owned you know a board ape at the time in dooky dash1 it's the same kind of concept uh now there's two ways to to unlock that that kind of tier uh the first way is to basically play your way um all the way up uh earn Stars every run until you unlock each of those tiers progressively the other way is you own these nfts you hold them in your wallet and when you connect it gives you a thing called Yuga score um and that Yuga score then automatically unlocks those tiers so it's like a bypass for the grind in essence uh so that's that's kind of like meeting the criteria of Apple and Google in terms of you're you're not g you're not giving um sort of benefits or advantages that can't be earned or

bought directly in the game uh but it's still giving utility to those nft collections um and that's something that uh that I think uh you know is pretty interesting so if you think about it that way it's now you've got this freet to-play funnel uh that we can leverage to grow the ecosystem uh we can then find conversion points within that ecosystem through various different things uh to get more people into web 3 and vice versa because there might be some web 3 players who also want to play you know dookie Dash even though it's not completely Degen first so that's kind of the idea and then on top of that we have first and second party sort of gamey um sort of development uh things going on so I can't get into too many details but suffice to say we're either deeply in conversations with or co-developing um sort of outside of the far away ecosystem on a number of games so like we want to lean into the strengths of farway both from a game JRE

standpoint and execution standpoint but also from a um knowing where we're weak uh and kind of leveraging you know those strengths in other parties outside of us so we're in conversations with some pretty large um developers that I'm sure people have seen some interestingly High Fidelity products or developers in the kind of more traditional uh free-to-play mobile space that do genres that we're you know just not prepared to to kind of develop in um so I think you'll see a number of those things coming out and again back to the the ethos of interoperability um all of these things are going to fall into one of those two categories I just described even if they're external and all of those things are going to interoperate with each other and so all of those collections that we're working with are essentially going to be given utility in these experiences and we're going to be looking at ways to to kind of um convert folks from each of those experiences into our ecosystem and we're applying uh the technology and all those things I

mentioned before at a platform level uh like the the kind of no stodal wallets easy on board in marketplace with like um all that offchain data represented for players a trade ecosystem like all that um that that people then get to not just trade within a game but trade outside of games like basically sell content from one game uh to a person who uses it in another game that kind of stuff so it's a pretty interesting play but that's uh that's kind of how the strategy is uh is evolving and manifesting at the moment so that's very meaty very very meaty um and uh lots of impact there I actually I did have a question uh that came to mind as you were talking about all the different initiatives of farway in engaging in the SAS products and the the web 3 D gen stuff and then you know free casual mobile some everything in between uh first party development second party development like there's a lot going on there right and um I did have a question on the genres because uh even before you got into that it's very rare for a

developer uh to have expertise in multiple genres uh very very rare typically you'll find Studios focus on a single genre and they'll just basically make that their entire careers um and focus on that so uh you know infinite Runner and you know a open world shooter already are very different and you've just mentioned that there are a whole bunch of other genres that are in the mix yes you mentioned some of the second party stuff where you're co-developing with uh Studios that have that expertise but I mean all of this but and then the SAS stuff that's all very different too like selling you know B2B is not the same as developing your own IP and it's not the same as co-developing with other people's IP so all that to say uh wildly ambitious and I love ambitious you know projects and and companies and and guests so I love that from that perspective but it does beg the question uh is it too much how are you able to work even with open world

shooter and and and dooky Dash the infinite Runner like how is their expertise internally to do just those two never mind all the others yeah yeah so I think uh few few things I'll point out first thing is with respect to like the platform stuff there's dedicated teams on each product and uh the platform team is no exception so that's kind of like a single Lane it's not a shared resource pool and its entire kind of like skill set is around building uh building out that plat platform Tech that like SAS stuff the marketplace stuff uh second thing is that uh in certain cases some of this is like not necessarily being built from scratch and I think like that's that's where a lot of the challenges in Game Dev can be building from zero to one is difficult um if you've got a starting position and emulation targets it tends to be easier and then you also have to look at like what you're building and who it's for so I'll give you like two examples minial na Nations um I I'm pretty sure uh that

was like a codus that pre-existed uh and was acquired uh when farway kind of started and then they built on top of it so it wasn't like they you know built a shooter from the ground up from scratch um it was like something that already pre-existed and then they just built on top of it and added a ton of metad depth and and kind of different layers um similarly with dooky Dash uh you know we did that at Yuga um the code is brand new from scratch but uh one of the hardest things you can do with like a a casual game is get that core Loop right um and that initial experience and a lot of that work was both done already and proven out um at some degree of like meaningful quantifiable skill uh with the community in doky dash1 and so what we did was took dooky Dash core concept added you know what you would refer in the industry is like a plus one right so it's like we added like the magnet and

the Slowdown timer and some of the stuff I actually want to get into the original and then we started adding in um additional layers that actually were very synergistic with stuff that farway already had so the ugc stuff for example already existed the fact that we were building in a new engine and the fact that that platform Tech already worked uh and we already had skeletons and Rigs and kind of specs for those those avatars and vehicles and stickers and everything made it like super easy to plug it in and all of a sudden now you've got a DC layer on top of dooky Dash um so it's not like you have to iterate you know your way to that point it's like you're borrowing from stuff you did historically and just adding it on top um there is a lot new going into dooky Dash as well um and that's that's obviously iterative work um I think other genres uh for example um serum City uh was also built on the back of an acquired game that they have uh I think it's like far away I forget the name of it but it's on the website it's a it was like a city Builder it was more of a 3D one and so they moved to 2D did the art

but the the kind of like core uh game uh code base and and sort of like format are pretty similar it's basically a Township like game um and then when it comes to you know Legends of the mara uh there's like the free-to-play version which we're still iterating on um and then there's the uh kind of rebirth which will be a re re reenvisioning of the current game like added a lot a whole bunch of technical death Etc but we again have the code bases uh we've already sort of imported those stood them up on staging and now we're talking about adding Health mechanics and like a combat layer and stuff like that again a separate dedicated team so I think it's uh it is true that that is a lot uh and it is very ambitious um and I have no doubt that uh the strategy will continue to evolve as we go but I think the core thesis here is to build on top of what you already have um leverage Tech that's already been executed and uh kind of put

live and battle test it um and then acquire either the expertise or the technology um to kind of give you a l up on the next uh sort of game that you make and then there's one other factor that I think is actually kind of important to mention which is the reality that like if we're going to do a free-to-play game you have to be competitive with a free-to-play market even if it's web 2.5 that is an incredibly high like high bar to Crest you know very difficult um if you're competing with a DJ game the the kind of game Quality Bar is much different and you're not over optimizing the way you might have to do in free to play it's not about like Min maxing your UA you CPI like CAC and and kind of LTV Roi sort of Bui uh stuff I mean that that will be a factor I'm sure at some point but right now that's not really the case because you've got that baked in audience and so what you really want to do there and and and I think what we're doing is like you ask yourself the

question of like what is the purpose of this game how how are we monetizing it like what actually is the strategy for this and then that in relationship with the the kind of web 2.5 funnel play um kind of create this uh this ecosystem play where it's what I'd call like collateralized LTV and UA um so it's like more of like your network function uh sort of allowing you to grow and then be a force multiplier on on that yield and that CAC um so that you can more effectively spend your way to to kind of that scale so I think it's a it's a balance um but the reality is like the DJ games don't have to be you know the most AAA of AAA games and they don't have to they don't have to be competitive with you know um like monop Clans or yeah Monopoly go exactly and it's so so I think like that's one of the benefits and even with the freeto playay stuff if you look at dooky Dash the play there is like pretty novel um in a lot of respects for that reason

right like I'm not going to pretend that like we're going to go smash Subway Surfers tomorrow just because we built an infinite Runner right that's a silly thing to to kind of assume but and it's also true that you know like in uh in the aggregate sense I don't think a lot of people know what Bap is or or dooky Dash in general right I'm there's a certain crowd absolutely um and I think we already have their attention so UA from that cow that crowd Crow is like baked in uh effectively and it's free but uh how do you reach abroad our audience so that's some of the stuff we're working on now like adding arcade mode you know with the esport layer with the prize pool that grows over the course of the season um with a pretty like big starting number you know a million dollars um with kind of like our our leveraging our relationships with different Apes uh that have like other relationships you know in media and and kind of like with other large um like merchandise sort of uh product based uh

Brands Etc so there's there's like a whole bunch going on there that's not even just the game it's like it is leveraging uh sort of the capacities of both companies to drive uh that product to success and so that's like yet again you're the the name of the game never changes you're looking for some sort of disruptive Advantage uh and here I think you know it depends on the game and the advantage But ultimately uh more that we can kind of tie these all together hence interoperability Etc the more drisk in one of these things becomes um so that's that's kind of the the play there yeah I mean all makes sense again wildly ambitious as I mentioned before um I have to ask this question I don't know if you're going to be able to answer this um but uh as far as I could tell the last publicly announced funding round for farway was in 2021 which was $21 million um a lot of this stuff that you're describing is is again ambitious takes time it's expensive I believe there's an unannounced funding R in 2023

are you able to share any on that because stuff doesn't come free it's not cheap to build um yeah I can't I cannot really get into like specific numbers but what I can say is uh we're well we're well positioned to be able to execute what we need to execute and to the extent that we uh you know want to pick up more stuff or or kind of like need the extra Runway we'll of course uh keep our option space open but we're in a a pretty solid spot right now and very fiscally responsible I think that's like one thing um that I really appreciate about farway and those guys in particular is just uh how buttoned up they are in terms of cost optimization uh and like you're not hiring Taylor Swift for your your all come on absolutely not yeah yeah it's uh you know it treat it treat it the way you should treat a startup right but uh like lean in where you think you've got like the most confidence in the upside got it got it

all right that was a very diplomatic answer I had to get it in there and I figured this would be the response but uh um but yeah well thanks for at least for uh giving the we're well positioned line there so that's uh that's at least some confirmation there um okay so I do want to get into some specifics here we are talking doke Dash we're comparing it to the original you've you've kind of touched on a few of the pieces here already but I really do want to go in on that because um you know last year we're talking about growing the audience it sounds like that's what you're really leaning into now um obviously the original duad Dash was extremely de gen like it was token gated and board apes are not cheap so you know you needed to have a very expensive nft in order to just even play the game obviously couldn't be mobile couldn't even be in the Epic store at that time or steam certainly um so it was browser based game which of course has its limitations so tell me from that starting point obviously you've got a totally new codebase um and it's mobile now talk more about the differences between what you learned about a gated very D gen web 3 truly web 3 experience to where you

are now which is as as far as anybody who doesn't know about Bard Apes is concerned it's it's just a free-to-play infinite Runner right with some then rewards at the end for for nft holders so uh a very different experience despite being a the same genre you know infinite Runner talk us more about all the changes that you made and all the things that you learned from the original coming into this one yep yep so uh learned quite a bit um which is also why we made a lot of changes so I I think first and foremost um you know the first learning is when you token gate something that the ecosystem is interesting and by that I mean the web 3 ecosystem the audience is interesting it's not what I think most people would expect so you look at like wallet count there's no way to to to kind of like uh anchor back to a a definite you know single player if that makes sense so

it's like I I could have 20 wallets right and I count as like 20 different people um but you really get a an appreciation for the total sort of size of the player base uh or potential player base when you do something that's like token gated on a single token basis and the reality is like uh looking at that it was we we're talking about like 30,000 people 40,000 people Max right so yeah very disproportionate in terms of Behavior Uh from a spend and kind of retention perspective but also very small um and so you you've effectively capped out um because I think arguably dooky Dash is probably one of the most successful web 3 games in the last couple years um and I think it it achieved its its maximum potential pretty quickly and I don't think it would have sustained you know over a longer period of time as a SAS game because there's just no front funnel uh there's like the there's the tokens that

gate there's the motivation that's like short-lived um and then the reality is there's not a mechanism for scale so so what I learned was uh a couple things like one um that play again uh is reliant on kind of current market dynamics and hype uh to to kind of carry it and it's probably capped out at you know whatever that that percentage of the total audience that's participating in the NF ecosystem at the time ultimately is uh the second thing I learned was that um you know if you're going to if you're going to build like a game that's more open you need to carry over that same motivation and there is a relationship between the token gating and the the kind of mechanism for motivation in this case the the sewer pass evolve into a heavy and and kind of rank you know based on your rank Etc um you have to find some way to to simulate that at scale right and that's difficult to do um and I think we spent a lot of

time thinking about that in particular like because I again I'm not you know naive enough to believe that the game itself is going to be hugely successful as a a free-to-play web two game just because it's a toilet humor infinite Runner um and so you look for like what are the you know what are the things you can do to give your give yourself as close to the the kind of Prior success factors as possible but out of scill that's much different like orders and unitude greater um and I think like that's what started us down that process of electing what we're going to change about the game so I really started with like what is the motivation um we already had the mechanic uh and we knew that the mechanic would work if the motivation was there and it was clear enough um and so and then you also have to ask yourself another question you know another layer of complexity which is how is this going to be promoted by the people who played the first game if it is not token gated and it's you know

like not the same sort of like narrative from a web 3 point of view and so the you add on top of that you know what can you do because you want to get the scale you have to be on Apple and Google so you're limited in terms of some of the things people would normally expect like a huge power advantage or whatever because they on nft you can't do that um and you also can't do that because of the type of game it is skill-based you know game so um so took all those factors into account and uh and thought about you know what is the what is the actual like I guess season plan live service plan SAS or not SAS uh um kind of like uh Esports uh sort of approach that we want to take to to kind of emulate the success of the last game and motivate people to behave the way they did before um where we landed was you know with respect to checking the box of giv utility to the to the old collections such that they still feel

like they want to one participate but two are going to be a mouthpiece and sort of um Elevate that brand uh through social media uh we added in that token utility I mentioned the sewer pass stuff so that was that was one component uh was like figuring out the analog to the tiers that we had before and then tying that in a way that wouldn't be problematic for Apple and Google um but still like beneficial for those who originally you know ported the the game and kind of like got the word out um second thing we did uh was we looked at uh the format for the season so the season's going to run for three months um and the way it's structured is you're competing on a weekly basis and then on a seasonal basis for uh the opportunity to win these things called Golden plungers and the golden plungers are going to be nfts and so like the way that works is um you know on a weekly basis and there's actually some interesting like esport

Nuance here if you if you want me to get into it but uh uh there the the golden plungers are going to compete weekly for a chance to win these things and then if you are at the top of the leaderboard at the end of the season you're guaranteed one so the the ones that are on the weekly basis are a little more RNG um so you basically the higher your score on the leaderboard the more opportunities you have to successfully pull one of these out of those uh those boxes that you win off the leaderboard um but everyone effectively has a shot at getting one of these even if you're at the bottom of the leaderboard you only get one box so it's more like quantity and like kind of a probability um that you're competing for in that sense but if you are just crushing it uh you still have a chance to win uh at the season you know the top whatever number of places uh TBD the exact number so these golden plungers will be minted uh and you could keep them sell them whatever um trade them around but uh those things are basically tickets access passes um

and that's how you get into the esport tournament and the esport tournament is it's fixed to the number of people who have those passes and that's where that prize pool uh is ultimately going to be rewarded so on the weekly basis you're competing for these uh these tickets to compete in the esport tourney and over the course of that season the prize pool grows it starts at a million doll and so by the time the season ends it will be over a million dollars TBD how much um and you'll be in a position to compete for for those prizes and then in the actual tournament it's very similar uh in terms of format so uh you will compete based on your rank you'll get these like these points and you'll be able to flip over tiles or open a a chest TBD on the actual mechanic um but each one of those will have you know a prize below it and those prizes can range in amounts um you know between whatever it could be as as small as maybe at you know $500 all the way up to like $100,000 maybe even more we'll see

um and the the idea there is once again you know if you're at the top of the leaderboard you're not taking the whole pie and kind of everyone else is losing out you're getting more shots at different chunks of the pie and you might still take the whole pie but somebody who only gets one uh you know shot might still win something pretty material uh and just proportionate to the their Rank and so that's how you keep the motivation really strong to particip at in that competition and then of course it wouldn't be you know dooky Dash without the key and so at the top of the leaderboard there there will also be in addition to say those number of chances you get to take rewards with um a key of sorts uh and that key is going to be a very deal no deal type scenario uh so it'll be like you can keep it you can open a chest with it you can sell it um you know what's in the chest I don't know could be anything is it a car is it a itcoin like who knows uh TBD but uh

that's the that's another kind of G dgen mechanic at play there and so that's the format and that's the motivation Factor um to try and emulate the the kind of uh you know first game and of course we'll evolve this over seasons and I'm sure it will change but uh for season one that's that's what it's going to look like now you add on top of that the ugc component the fact that the people who create the ugc literally take 90% of uh of their content that they sell if they're selling it on their storefront and there's a Amazon style referral program too with like links and so there's ways for people to monetize uh even you know like collecting a bunch of content and um and kind of creating these little collections uh for for you in dooky Dash Etc and then on top of that you've got these social mechanics where you can watch people's runs look at the top score you see their Avatar we're you know doing stuff with like Esports streamers already and you can kind of Imagine where the vision for this ultimately goes so it is a much bigger

game um both from a feature perspective but also from a technology perspective than the first one uh but ultimately that's uh that's the play um and I think that's what's required to make this sort of successful so like right now we're in I I guess you could call it sort of like a a beta of sorts in the Philippines we just opened up Australia we're really just right now trying to make sure that teex stable um and getting a sense of like uh sort of like UA costs Etc trying out different creative and and standing up sort of the the various um sort of ad uh you know algorithms that are going to be required at scale uh we're going to continue to iterate there and once we're happy with the the kpi profile we'll open up uh additional GEOS and and kind of eventually will launch right now we're aiming for I think uh July um probably but the reality is you know as well as I do like Game Dev is like you

don't want to just rush something out to rush it out to hit a date like this is not about like hitting dates this is about delivering something that's going to be disruptive um and that's exactly what we're we're aiming to do so that's where it's at at the moment all right as you were talking I scribbled down all the all the words that uh that you are attacking on or or not tacking on but baking into this this game you know you have social you have orts you have streamers you've got ugc layer you've got mobile you've got web 3 you got web 2.5 um you've got freeo playay you've got DJ you got nfts Ian and I think I missed a few because I only started uh taking these down about halfway halfway through I this also crossplatform oh of I'm sorry yes I'm gonna write that down too crossplatform so I mean you know for for an infinite Runner which is typically the most casual of casual uh certainly freet to-play you know genres like Subway Surfers is is just so hyper casual um um this is a lot right and so

what's the thesis here around like I get the motivation the motivation is money you could just you could have led with that money is motivation always a good motivation works every time um but uh you know why infinite Runner was were you kind of almost forced into that because of the original dookie Dash or uh I I have to believe there are other genres of games that are better suited to um you know well maybe not maybe I'll let you speak to this actually I won presume anything um and I'll let you just kind of speak to that so yeah so why why infinite Runner and and then you know why so many different layers of complexity arguably which makes it harder for you guys right like it makes it more interesting potentially for the the player but it makes it really hard for the developer to to balance all of those different uh components yeah yeah yeah happy to happy to answer that so the this like the easy short answer to why infinite Runner is one uh it's what we had that we we'd already proven worked once um and I didn't want to you know do something untested before uh

like if you have something that's kind of already proven to work in an orts capacity even though it's novel right like an infinite rer esport game is a pretty novel thing yeah but it is skill-based uh and and like there's a number of things you have to you have to have skill be a factor if you're doing real money rewards that's that's one thing second thing is um we'd already tested this out with the target audience the even unintentionally as that was you know like uh esport players came in mongr won so we know that there's a uh there's a demand for we also had other uh esport players like uh like Sway and others um playing this you know France and Dubai and whatever and the feedbacks been generally like consistently very positive so I think for me it was a um don't you know don't fix what's not broken uh we'd proven this out I think it did there are things that we found you know um in beta that I think are interesting and that we've been focused on like uh for example uh without that

motivation it's just an infinite Runner and uh and like people don't understand like what they're competing for and so their tolerance for friction or or you know lack of a fatui or whatever is like quite low um so hence we added all that stuff in and an arcade mode for the more casual players to have objective based uh things to do versus just competitive mode so we have both um but uh yeah that was kind of the idea there it was like I don't want to do something that we've never done before because I just don't know how it's going to work and if it's like not an infinite Runner you know is it going to be scalable is it going to require all this like net code uh like Shooters are a can of worms like didn't want to go that path you know so it's it was just kind of like it was the right mix I think and with respect to all the other crazy stuff that got layered on top of it I mean really honestly it goes back to that point I was making before um is there a way to leverage the stuff that already exists in interesting ways to improve the experience and again drisk um you know various different

factors like maybe LTB or you know whatever um and and the answer is yes there was stuff we could do and ugc layer actually didn't take that much effort um it was pretty plug andplay and that's kind of how the the tech platforms set up so uh and then the web 2.5 stuff same deal I mean this is the benefit honestly of uh far away having all this like web 3 Tech is you know account creation super simple a single click non-custodial wallet super easy checking people's wallets for nfts to give them the score in game super simple already done ugc component layer already built in mini Royale just plugged it right into dooky Dash so it's like like all this stuff sounds crazy but like it's been built over the past three years um for this purpose and that's kind of the idea is you just uh it's Legos you know nice so that's the the the value of having that first party Dev too you know just like Legos huh a little more complicated than Legos

but uh but sure take the analogy um a question on monetization we haven't actually spoken about that um what are the kind of monetization paths here uh is it is it a free to playay with inapp purchases which presumably is the the kind of the only thing you can do on on Apple and Google um is there anything that lives outside of the mobile experience where you can monetize some of these whales some of these you know maybe token holders um talk talk to us more about how expect this game to make make you money especially if you're giving away million dollar prize pools um it needs to make at least some money to to pay for itself what in apppp monetization absolutely a thing so we've got uh consumable Buffs that you can buy pretty pretty standard fair for like an infinite Runner right the and also very um similar to what we did with the first dooky Dash and the the good news there is yet again uh if the motivation strong enough and I think this is something that maybe people don't realize if the motivation is really strong and you have what is in effect an infinite um monation apparatus which

is what consumables are especially if they're run based um you've got an opportunity to monetize like effectively infinitely until the end of the season so the structure of the events the way it's score based the way it's your top best score and you want to burn these things every run to have your best shot for that one time that you nail your top score of getting the best score but you're constantly like trying to be one uped by other people and therefore you have to push yourself yet again it creates that Loop um so I think that's a pretty effective modation uh strategy um but in addition to that we also have content that we're going to be able to sell skins avatars stuff like that um as I mentioned we have that arcade mode that opens up a whole bunch of different on station opportunities that don't have affect the the skill Gameplay at all um but do affect kind of like your typical you know free-to-play um like meta ICS and stuff like that uh there's a profile player profile

estimations there so there's a lot of like in-game stuff um definitely uh I think out of game not specific to this game for obvious reasons I think you know we're not GNA flirt with disaster um on our maen Voyage so it's uh yeah it's it's it's not that's not really in the cards but uh to my earlier point I do believe in this this concept of collateralized LTV and so is a reason for the interoperability of content because what we will do is we will incentivize people to play these other games with the content that they own or have purchased or bought or created from du dooky Dash uh and by doing that then we can get them into those dgen experiences that I mentioned before or we can add them into like web 2.5 stuff that's not targeting mobile maybe it's just PC you know maybe epic store um Etc and there we've now got this uh this effective funnel right CU like if I pay whatever a dollar for a player in dooky

Dash and my conversion rate is even low you know maybe like 10% of the population that gets into the rest of the ecosystem that 10% might disproportionately spend in other experiences and therefore now the the kind of like ecosystem LTV is significantly greater than the cost of acquisition and the math works and uh you've got that yield and that CAC ratio that makes a ton of sense and so like that's that's the play here is like yes I want that game to be really effectively monetized um but I also don't want to do anything that's going to like damage its retention or it's uh it's kind of placement on the App Store as a as a front funnel uh you know to the rest of the ecosystem and then we're going to optimize um and try and maximize LTB uh through that that mechanism I described uh so yeah talking about retention actually um and another metrics how how much can you share you you mentioned that the game's been in uh closed beta or uh in the Philippines I think you just mentioned that opened up to Australia recently I know your Global release was set to be may but it sounds

like that's going to be pushed out to July totally understandable that's that's Game Dev for you Game Dev 101 um so these metrics that you're you're tracking what are you tracking is it your your standard kind of free-to-play uh g game metrics or is there some extra layer for the the web 3 component the the token holder I don't know how many token holders are in the Philippines or um or Australia um but it's it's probably not thousands um so is there a way to measure the this collateralized LTV component that you you mentioned which by the way is a nice term I think you may have have you coined that term is that is that I haven't heard it before so yeah I I came up with it before I've been think about this stuff collateral nice um okay so yeah so talk a little bit about the the metrics and what can you share uh what's working what's not if you can talk about that as well you know the fact that you're pushing out to July implies that there's some more polishing need to go of course that's normal um so yeah what's working and What needs more work yeah so I I mean I can't get into specific kpis for obvious reasons but

what I can say is um that like initially we're focused on sort of the the UA well I guess technical stability right that was the first thing so uh so making sure that the game stood up didn't crash that kind of stuff uh then it was like prepping the UA funnel getting a creative created um putting all the the kind of telemetry in place um all the sdks from the ad Affiliates like we're working with a company called super fine um oh yeah with those guys yeah yeah so they're they're doing a lot of the UA right now so we're like iterating back and forth but we haven't really spent that much money the cpis are are looking pretty decent um and really uh now we're going to start to focus on like retention so that's kind of the main uh area of attention right now um and we've got a build in the works uh that should be introducing that stuff I mentioned before like the fouille and and kind of the um the arcade mode um and uh and that's like the next key thing and my hope is that you know we're we're going

to hit the target that that I want to hit right which is the day one of like north of 50% um with a strong kind of like day overday sort of uh clip off um and uh and then once we have that we'll go we'll go live but I do think there's this factor of like part of the game and this is the part I'm kind of oddly not sure what to do with uh I think like once we put it out there kind of like dooky das1 a large part of the stickiness of the game is going to be related to this like value proposition the the monetary incentive uh and kind of format and so who knows what that does to the kpi profile but if it's anything like dooky Dash it might be a force multiplier which I would love to see um so it's a question of like how much do we optimize over how much time before we run that first season um so I think that's why I say July it's like at some point you you make a decision and you want to kind of just

like roll it out and see what uh what sort of force multiplier uh Force multiplier value is added on top as a byproduct of running the actual season because right now we can't do that um obviously uh yeah until the the game fully launches but um yeah I mean tech-wise kbi is looking good uh we're still building more Telemetry in I'm not doing as sophisticated stuff as I'm used to you know segmentation multivari testing that kind of stuff yet um so we still need to get some more Telemetry in but uh but yeah it's really I mean it's so far so good um and looking to hopefully get this thing out in the relatively at least in Game Dev terms near near future so yeah yeah well good luck with that I mean I think the tldr if I'm taking anything away from this is the wild card is the the you know the prize right the million dollar prize and that's the thing that this is going to hinge on in in many ways cuz you know infinite Runner is don't monetize particularly well they're you know casual games obviously if

you've got massive scale like subway surface then yes you can make some money um but those days are long gone where you can grow to the scale of Subway Surfers on the back of a you know very casual hyper casual game like a like infinite Arena so I wish you good luck when you put it out there I think it'll be a a you know uh hearts in your throats kind of moment I'm I'm presuming when you put it out there in July hopefully July and uh announce the prize pool and and you know Watch the watch the the the you know the the streamers and The Gamers and the Esports Fanatics and the Casual players too who think they can win and compete um watch that flood of of users come in so it'll be either very exciting moment and it'll validate a lot of the the the theory or the thesis behind this uh or you know there might be more work to do but uh anyway I I hope for the former of course and I'm sure you do too um one big question I I had which I didn't ask earlier um but I'm going to ask it now anyway because I think it is highly relevant what has the community reaction been I mean one of the things things that everybody knows about web 3 in general and of course board Apes in particular is that they are truly truly

fanatical about um their their club right it's their exclusive club and they bought into it and they are proud of that fact um you you mentioned you briefly mentioned that you know you've been trying to balance the community thing and it hasn't it's been positive I think is is kind of what I took away from it but but um you must have been nervous about uh kind of messing so to speak uh in in the minds of some I'm sure with this beloved IP that is truly a part of the personalities uh of these holders y yeah so I think um well one the response has been unanimously positive uh so it's yeah they they love it they're always you know I get DMD literally daily when dooky Dash unclog like so it's uh it's a thing I mean there like because it really was a moment I think like you know the the whole experience just was a big kind of cultural um thing for the the B

Community um and they they missed it and the reality is like I'd also get asked all the time when dooky Dash relaunched just so we can play it like I I had that all the time it's just like just put it up it doesn't matter you know if there's an incentive there we just want to play the game um which is obviously a good sign uh from a from a retention standpoint but the the irony is they didn't know and we didn't talk about it we were building it uh and we were going to launch this uh this dooky Dash on clog game so the the buildup of that demand was kind of funny to see from the inside because it's like you know it's coming and you know you're G to announce it um and the cool thing with with this game and the fact it's crossplatform also is that um we're able to you know do like IRL events um so we did like Paris uh Dubai um you know once the game's live we might even have like think of it as like a land party type situation where you stand this thing up

and you've got like a bunch of people directly competing maybe for Merch like in real time you know so it's not just the the like game itself at a scaleable kind of persistent State it's also like standing it up at AP Fest or you know whatever event or like this place that place whatever maybe doing it for Partners at their events like who knows so uh I think the community's just been really um enthusiastic to play it more uh we ran a big huge beta uh with like a mutant ape as the top priz um and uh and that went over really well too uh so I think yeah overall it's as positive as you could possibly imagine so yeah yeah no no concern on my end uh on the Community Front nice and you you mentioned a follow-up question here you mentioned that you're hoping to activate some of the kind of more famous SL influencer SL engaged uh Apes in the community to hopefully give you that extra oomph on the coll literalized LTV um you know spread the word more broadly uh H how are you planning on doing that

I'm not asking you to mention individuals of course but but uh you know how big is this network of of uh highly influential Apes that you're hoping to to activate for for this purpose yeah I mean there there are quite a few um and uh and the community is pretty strong and the really cool thing is it's not uh like you'd be surprised like a lot of these people just do it for for other because like the community it's like really it's not a paid thing it's just like they want to be part of it because it's part of their their uh kind of Club um and uh and we've seen that numerous times and we see it even now like I mean even you know working with sway just flew him out to to France we made him an avatar and a bike and like he was cool and he's been streaming it and you know it was it was great so it's like that that kind of stuff is um pretty one of the cooler things about the the Club is just like the networking and kind of like the

passion behind um supporting stuff uh within the ecosystem and within the community that's great to hear well we are coming up to time here uh We've we have covered a lot of ground obviously we had a lot of ground to cover and uh there's plenty more things I could I could ask you about but uh I'll throw it over to you are the any parting thoughts on on uh what you'd like to call out you know what's what comes next uh other than the July launch what does the Post launch road map look like anything at all that that we haven't touched on here yet today yeah I think we've we've touched on a lot uh I appreciate that yeah yeah so nothing really jumps to mind but I think I think like yeah my my partying I guess thoughts um are yeah it's it's ambitious the road map's ambitious we're doing a lot um at both companies at Yuga and at at far away uh but I think you know the the benefit here is this idea of like this this concept of like an ecosystem um and sort of dividing and conquering

and then using uh sort of effective work done in different places to reinforce and sort of like um level up uh the new stuff that you're doing so we'll see um you know what the future holds but I am very bullish overall um and I think we've seen like a return at least of crypto uh and I think like you know web 3 gaming is going to have its time when people realize the opportunity there uh and it's one of those things where at least in my opinion um you know it's easy to argue against it if you're working in a traditional freeto playay business but when somebody breaks the seal and achieves exit velocity as we all know the entire industry is going to follow suit and that first mover advantage in that position especially when you when you think about it in the context of this collateralization of LTV and network infrastructure and sort of like how all these things tie together you're going to have a real hard time breaking in after that so yeah it's uh

that's the play um you know this is not a small play but uh I am confident that it is an interesting one and if you're going to do anything in an industry as super optimized as gaming is at this point it has to be something pretty novel um and so that's that's the game that we're going for yeah I mean wildly ambitious I love it um good luck with it you know you kind of want to be the subway surfers uh 2024 that captures the collateral LTV you know as they were to early to uh you know them and um the Tomb Raider one the one where you're oh yeah Temple Run Temple Run thank you yes I I was blanking on that yeah you kind of want to be early early yeah because that way you do capture the infinite Runner I remember Zinga was working it was a really good game actually it was um co-founder of mine Justin on a previous company he was the design director on that it was uh Running With Friends and it was it a really great game but it was way too late to mobile um and uh sadly um it just never reached

that escape velocity that we talked about so yeah you do need to be early and once you get that you get going and it's really hard to unseat so yeah good luck with that um final question I ask all of our guests uh favorite three games that you're either playing or are excited by um could be web 2 could be web 3 could be mobile could be PC could be anything sure um so I am getting back into Eve online uh I just started playing last Epoch curious to see what that trade system's like uh whole bunch of mobile games and I'm looking forward to like the uh the Elden ring uh update um so I'm kind of like all over the place you know uh different genres different platform different genres maybe maybe this is exactly right for you guys in it far away you know you could you can be a master of lots of genres or are you a a a master of one or a jack of Alla I'd say I'd say I'm I have definitely like I I have some skill sets that I'd say are like genre agnostic definitely

um especially on the product side but uh when it comes to design uh I'm probably more a midcore like RPG guy got it all right well uh perfect place to end uh thank you so much for coming on the Pod again Spencer you're welcome back anytime I'm very very eager to have you back um once you guys launched and you you have some metrics to share and you know maybe that first million dooll prize poll has been won by somebody and uh we can kind of talk about how that all went down and and hopefully look back at the uh the success of the game so thank you awesome yeah thanks for having me on and as always a 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 fstar 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 novic has to offer make sure to check out our website www.nic.edu ww. nov. thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode