AMA Recap: Mad Droids x MetaBrands
On March 16, our friends at MetaBrands held an AMA in which they invited two of our Core Team Members, Juan Nates, Producer and Creative Director and Alejandro Narvaez, Business Development Director. In this AMA we discussed key data of the project! If you couldn’t be there, you’ll find out everything that was discussed in this recap!
You can listen to the AMA at this link!
MetaBrands: I would like to start asking you guys to introduce yourself. You know, how the team came together to build the project.
Juan: OK, well my name is Juan Nates. Uhm, I’ve been working in game development since 2005.
I actually own a company. A Game studio and one of our lead artists, William Santacruz, he worked for The SandBox Game some years ago. And yeah, we were looking at this NFT space and excited about what’s going on in the play to earn New Revolution. So, we started with some ideas. He’s an expert in Voxel Art so we brought some ideas to the table, and we thought about this voxel related characters. We started with a blueprint of this project and go out and see here in the community and meet some interesting people like Alejandro, Arley, Luis and other people that boost our project and that was a kind of the beginning. We came from being developing games for companies. Also, we made some mobile games in the years before. And yeah, we have like good experiences, bad experiences. We also had the dream to develop our own Angrybirds. Our own Clash of Clans. And yeah, we think this is like the new opportunity to have like this great game and we meet the people that that can help us to bring this to the real life, you know. So, Alejandro, I don’t know if you want to tell a little bit about the part of your story.
Alejandro: Yes, of course. Well, my name is Alejandro Narvaez. I’m also an entrepreneur, same as Juan. But I do come from the ecommerce industry. I’ve been running drop shipping businesses for the past seven years. When I started working online, obviously this allowed me to be remote, so being a digital nomad all through this time. In crypto just a bit quick background. Been in crypto since 2017 around the time of I remember the Bitcoin Cash fork. Became obviously fell in love with Bitcoin at the beginning. Went through the crypto winter and I think like as many of us who’ve been in the in the space for a while. Play to earn gaming are fairly new to me, even though I’ve been familiar with crypto kitties and punks and so on since back in those days I did not get involved directly. However, last year I would say November is when I got a chance to meet Juan. At the time I had just come back to Latin America. After living in Eastern Europe for most of the year and I got to meet Juan through one of our partners, as well in the project, and he showed us the art of his ideas, his plans to build first initially this collection and then the game. I immediately liked the project. I saw it also as an opportunity for me to really get to know more about NFT play to earn in general. And yeah, we partner up with some really talented people coming from different backgrounds. It would be nice also that at some point, in future, you may meet the other guys from our team because they will have really cool stories. From going from mining, from investing from DeFi, we got guys who have been in crypto since 2012 on our team. So, OGs for sure, especially here on the Latin American market. And that’s a bit of the story. Now I’m helping out with business development and I’m happy to talk a bit more later in the AMA about some of the activities that I’ve been doing in some of the events that I’ve been attending. You know, spreading Mad Droids its exposure.
MetaBrands: So, Alejandro I know that you are in Rio de Janeiro, right? Attended the Ethereum Rio event. The main question to me is like what’s your impression about the event when it comes to the game metaverse. I’m asking this before I go ask the actual question relates to the project itself, but just the impression about the event so far.
Alejandro: Great! overall it’s been a great organization, just it’s been the 1st edition of Ethereum, Rio, E- Rio. Overall, I think successful. The event finished yesterday, so it was two days. First of Launchpad Sessions where emerging projects were able to connect and meet with some potential investors, VC funds etc. And then two days of main conference which just finished yesterday.
In regard to your question about the Metaverse gamefi. Honestly, most of the focus on the event, or at least the projects that were selected to be part of the Launchpad sessions, where into the social aspect. So, helping out communities. You know, through Defy always. The concept was more about social economies. How can crypto… you know… help people with through stable coins? People to bank and bank and so on. There was not so much emphasis on gamefi in general. In fact, I would say that I was representing the only project that was building a play to earn game. There were other projects about NFTs, but more about tokenizing, either real estate or physical items for sale or you know the famous staircases of Rio de Janeiro, Escadaria Selarón and also there’s a social project involving about its preservation. Same for other projects about preservation of Amazon. Actually, protecting the land and selling NFTs. There was a really cool project, play for change by some three Brazilian guys based in Salvadoran, helping communities under desert communities, mostly in favelas, which has really poor parts of many cities and how to help them make money, making income by playing play to earn games. So that was a pretty cool one. But nothing… did not find anyone else really building or in the process or with the goal of building their own play to earn game. The format of this launchpad sessions was a bit different from the usual, so this is investors that were the ones pitching to potential to US builders, so we were not giving presentations, but they were presenting exactly what opportunities, what offers, what grants and seed funding they may offer to us. Certainly got very good connections, good partners, not partnerships, I mean potential leads to future partnerships or investors, got to meet the head of The SandBox game maker fund. Some of you guys who have been following Mad Droids, you know that we are working with The SandBox on future integration with them and we in through William as well who has been part of the sandbox in the past, also we got connections. Very high up connections also in their teams.
Also I talked to… who else? oh Harmony One… the blockchain, they were one of the main sponsors. They really also liked the project. Of course, when I told him that our collection will be in Ethereum, they “oh you guys are building on Ethereum stuff” but for the game later on, if we would like to either become a multi chain or which blockchain to go with, and it’s something that will still be determined later, Harmony One could be an option. That’s the route we think it’s the best. But yeah, yeah. A bunch of VC funds. Brazilian, Latin American. Most of the focus of the event was really Latin American market. Everyone I showed the project to was very interested. So they value quality and they really wanted to get involved, maybe not in the initial stages, but they wanted to get involved. We would need that VC funding etc., but we’re open for investors as we move on through the later phases of the game creation.
MetaBrands: What is Mad Droids? can you give like a brief description of where the inspiration came from? I’m sort of like reminding myself like Pokémon Go. So can you guys describe a little bit.
Juan: Yeah, definitely. It looks like Pokémon Go. It was one of our inspirations. Actually, at the very beginning with William, we were more inspired from Star Wars because we started with the character design of this, like astronauts for the game with different species. But we didn’t want to go to that cliché, so when the droids idea came out, we thought that is like the perfect combination for this kind of trainer and Pokémon dynamic. And we thought that this is like a very important role, developers are something important in this NFT space and they are something crucial, and that has not been explored. You know, we don’t see like too many projects where developers are part of the story. So, we wanted to bring together these devs and droids a kind of dynamic where developers have this technology and they wanted to succeed in terms of saving the Metaverse. So, all these droids, we thought of Mad Droids as the name of the project and we thought that the droids could be something good and something bad, I mean, thinking also about the bots that you see so much on the internet, you know bots are always used in a good or bad way in this industry. So, we think that the Mad Droids will be trying to destroy the Metaverse, trying to confuse people and trying to bring their bad side. The dark side of NFT space and these devs are the heroes and they come from the future because they have this technology to reprogram the Droids, and put them on the good side, i.e., good droids. Bring them to the good side of story and put them to work for the good of the metaverse, that’s part of the story. And just as you mentioned, this is a metaverse and an augmented reality game. So, let’s play it in real life. We want people to go out into their cities, wherever, whenever and go out and catch Mad Droids and have the experience of being a developer. That’s the charm of Mad Droids. We want to go deeper, and we want people in the community to add more value to this story because we have a lot of characters and a lot of Mad Droids. And yes, we believe that this can be so. This can go much further than this beginning and Genesis of the Mad Droids story.
Alejandro: I just wanted to add something quick to Juan’s answer. Yes, the community will play an important aspect on this. We do have the talent, we have a great production team as you guys have seen a lot of the content that we’ve released, Juan has a team very skilled with many years in the game development industry. We’re basically adding that spin off of the whole blockchain play to earn, but other than that, quality wise when this gets released, you guys should expect something very, very high quality, but for sure communities, central or open to all sorts of feedback. We would like the Community to help us build this game, and it’s very very important to us. And now it’s a very good opportunity with the tools that we have, Discord channel, we want to be part of this transformation now gaming can be, you know, obviously those of us who are involved in play to earn in game five or blockchain gaming, whichever name you want to call it. We know that this is going to be a huge onramp for mainstream adoption of web3 in general. And this is we really, really need feedback from everyone for sure as we go through the phases of development and any opportunities that we have to bring contributors and so forth. For sure we will. We will keep you guys posted, so that’s one of our priorities
MetaBrands: Next question is the project is going to release this collection with 10,000 NFTs as you mentioned, called Developers and people need at least one to engage with the game and interact. Can you talk about the different activities’ players will be able to do with those developers? I mean in terms of benefits and cases of use.
Juan: Sure, sure. Well, definitely, as you mentioned, we want the NFT owners of this devs to be actually the first engage with the game, and maybe, as we mentioned before, this is like a new opportunity for us working in the game development space for 15 years. This is like a revolution, you know, because in the past you need to develop a game, and work on that game for months and maybe do some small AB testing, but it was like one shot developing that game and when you launch that game you have like the real feedback and the real sentiment of the gamers about the game and that would be like, you know, like a success or like a failure. This is very revolutionary for people in the industry and it’s sad to see that not all studios don’t see this as a great opportunity, not only for the game to gain perspective, but also for the opportunity to build this game with the community, a community that invests in the project, as they invest in the NFT, they invest probably in the token and, yes! Most will have this feature within the game and there will be some of the benefits they will receive. Owning this NFT will allow you to be part of this construction of the game. Have this role in the project and to learn about game development is something that we have dreamed. Maybe teach to our community about game design, about character design, about AB testing, about Q&A inside the games. So, I would say this is like the main feature. The main benefit that NFT owners will receive. And we can talk about this because, yeah, definitely we want to give something back to our community, we also talk making these activities in real life, because, you know, we will be able to locate all the droids and maybe to encourage the people to go to and specific place in the cities or in the countries to catch this Droids and to have this Community experience where everybody gather with the game and also meet more people, is something that most of the game doesn’t allow. I mean, people to meet each other and this kind of Pokémon Go experience we’ll bring the people to the same place and maybe to have like a conversation and must meet each other beyond the game experience. So, this is only. A couple of things that we have in mind, there are a few more in the White Paper, but probably these are the ones that excite us the more, and the one that probably we can share in this moment.
Alejandro: I would also like to add just a couple more that would be interesting. As Juan mentioned, yes, to be part of the early stages of the development of the game for sure. So that means that those holders of the dev NFTs will have early access to those alphas or betas whenever they come out, they will be the first ones to be able to test parts of the game and we will. We will get their feedback and so on, and of course it’s important to mention the scholarships aspect, which will come as well implemented and that will generate passive income to those NFTs holders. This model has been implemented in several other games, and we know this is a very good opportunity, of course, we want everybody to play the game, not just those 10,000 NFT holders. So that’s something just to make sure that it’s clear that everybody will be able to play the game for sure. We saw some questions about that in the past, so it was a bit confusing, so I just wanted to clarify.
MetaBrands: So, I know there is the aspect as you know is a play to earn game and also people of course there is a token, right? There is a token, so I would like you to talk about the token. I mean the economic sustainability, people going to acquire the token, they’re going to acquire the NFT, acquire the droids, the token is going to allow them to see in a broader area, right? OK I want to catch this drive sort of 1 kilometer away, can I see these other on my map? So, what I need to do? I need to acquire more Droids token. Can you guys comment a little about sort of these mechanic’s aspect of the game? And the token of course.
Juan: Yeah, this is a very important part of the game design, and yeah, we actually have a small overview of this economic sustainability in the White Paper and I would say that the most important part of this is, again, this is a new revolution of us, that we’ve been working in this game space, and we came from pay to play, you know these games that you pay to go out in and buy the game and play in the console and then we pass to the free to play, where the people actually don’t pay for the game, they download the game in their mobile, but they have to pay in app purchases, so we have like a lot of experience thinking about this free to play games where you have to think how the people engage with the game and in some places you will need to pay to boost your performance or to get to get to another part of the game. So, the new challenge here in the play to earn economy and the play to earn revolution, is that we need to design like this cyclic economy. Not only the earning part, that is like the really nice part where the players go out and be rewarded because they catch some Droids and because they have some NFTs they will be rewarded for this, but also the players will have to spend. So, so this need to be very sustainable in the time and yes, we have talked, we have talked about some things that could boost the performance of the players and actually we talk about not only catching the droids but also to hire the droids, because you can catch it and have it for you for, I don’t know, for a small period of time, but if you actually want to keep this Droid working for you for more days or more weeks or months you will have to hire him so this is only one of the of the aspects of the game that we think that the player will be rewarded, but also they will have to spend to go like in this cyclic economy and something very interesting that is in an early stage of the of the game design, and is the portals. The people also have a little bit concern about this spoofing technique that some people use in the Pokémon Go game and we thought OK, that is, that will be part of the game. Let the people… maybe… if they travel is OK, but if they are like spoofing the location of the player let’ them do this… I don’t know, one time a week or something like that, and you can change your location. But if you change your location you will need to go through a portal and this portal will cost you to travel from one city to another. You know? So, this is only a couple of ideas on how the game will encourage players to spend and make the game’s economy sustainable. You know? So yeah, he’s in the early stage of the game design, but we know that we need to have a balance on that aspect for the game to be sustainable in the future. In the long term.
Alejandro: And just something quick to add. Of course, yes, that is crucial to have to find that healthy balance between the supply and demand of the token. And using some of the examples that Juan mention, for instance, upgrading that dev to increase its functionality and also important is that we’re working with you guys with MetaBrands to ensure that that token economy is submitted in a healthy way, so certainly that’s part of our partnership you guys have a lot of experience that some of your team members building this token this game economy, so certainly we’re very grateful and that’s very beneficial. But we don’t want to end up, we have seen many other games right where ingame tokens have been just falling, their value has been crushing, with most recently, with Thetan Arena also a very good game, but it’s just their token, it wasn’t there the utility for outside of the game, so that that’s something that’s a mistake, that we are certainly wanting to learn from other games, and it’s something that we’re going to pay very, very close attention.
MetaBrands: This is a very important question I mentioned before something that I like, and I think everyone we at MetaBrands like about this project, is that people can go out and interact and engage. So, I want to ask you guys if you are going to encourage people to do such activity. Maybe sponsoring some events. Having more partnership. You know in real life with other companies.
Alejandro: Sure, I can go ahead on this one, yes for sure we’re open and that’s also one of the reasons why I’m attending this in real person events. You mentioned Avalanche that’s also a blockchain, that we’re looking at and in fact after a free up from here I’m flying to Barcelona to attend Avalanche Summit and also, we know that it’s a blockchain that it’s up and coming with a lot of really interesting gameFi projects even though it has not been determined yet in which blockchain the game will actually be played. Our NFT collection will be on Ethereum, but not yet determined where our Game will be held, however it is important certainly to already have connections, that couldn’t help us potentially bridging or becoming more touching later on. That’s still to be discussed but Avalanche it’s… we have seen that they have been pretty much picking up. I think the number one spot now for gameFi projects as you mentioned yesterday was a large game studio. So, that so for sure attending in real events that will lead to these good future partnerships collabs, it’s a key, it is a priority. Just very quickly, after Avalanche Summit, I’ll be attending NFT LA, then we have the Not Fungible Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, and then I will be attending Paris NFT Day in France which will take place during the same week of Paris Blockchain Week. So yes, for sure, that’s what I’m doing. I’m traveling from event to event, but for sure definitely give an opening up to opportunities, sponsorships for sure. These are all a great way to introduce their partners product services. Yeah, it is important. It is key for us. We’re certainly open any one of you who is listening to this Twitter Space has a project and or potentially also building another game in the space. Certainly, please reach out to us. We’re open. We’re certainly open. You have seen already on our Twitter or how we’re reaching out to other communities, exchanging whitelist spots, and so on. So, for sure for sure this is a big yes.
MetaBrands: Highlighting what you guys are building. So, is there anything else on that people might be you know? Keep an eye on it.
Juan: Yeah, well, actually we want to surprise our community. We have like some development already in place. And yeah, definitely this year we want the game to be launch. Definitely something that will take through some stages. We will see an alpha version of the game. We’ll see a better version of the game. We’ll definitely are going to AB testing, some ideas that we have with our community. So, in terms of the game, definitely by the end of this year we will see the game up and running and we expect with a lot of people having this community experience of playing the game and going to places to catch droids. But also, in the side of the game we will expect to contribute the mainstream adoption of the Web 3 technology, you know, that is why we’ve been talking about these NFT, and NFT verification application that we actually we expect to launch in the next few days where the people will be able to see verified NFTs in real time in augmented reality. It is something that maybe in this moment feels like something that you know it only will be used like to showcase your NFTs, but in the future we expect this to be actually a very important tool, if you want to integrate this in augmented reality metaverse, because you won’t only be able to see the droids and catch the droids, but also you will be able to see who else from other communities are playing this game and which other NFTs are related with experience so, yeah, this is only like the big hits and the big steps we want to achieve in this year. But as we mentioned before, we want to surprise the community, we want to engage the community with all the process and, yes, I think it’s… for us… it’s very important to show to the to the community how this development is going and how all these constructions of the lore of the game and the Mad Droids Universe it’s going this year. So yeah, definitely the community will be seeing a lot from us in each and every week. We want to show to the Community how everything is going and definitely the game is going to be up and running by the end of the year.
MetaBrands: Yeah, and the NFT collection, I am just curious about that. How you guys are going to release it? It is come soon… say… next quarter? because the game is going to come later. But the NFTs are going to available right for people to mint. Is that correct?
Juan: Yeah definitely. The NFT collection, the Genesis Devs NFT collection will be released this quarter, so that would be like the first step of the launch and definitely we will give the role to our community to be part of this construction. And yeah, we… as you mentioned, this is the first step.
MetaBrands: So I would like to end here. But before that, I just wanna ask you guys if you guys wanna add anything you know any call to action for it. For people that are listening to us.
Juan: Yeah, well, definitely we want. We want to see you all in the discord. Do not hesitate to reach to reach out to us. We definitely think that’s this is like a new opportunity to developing a game in Community. So, yeah, the idea for us is that each of everyone that is part of this Community to have a role in this construction of the game. In this construction of the story and definitely we would like to reward the people that actually add some value to this project. So yeah, that’s it’s something very important for us.
Alejandro: Yes, and also as Juan was saying, we have a quite a lot of exciting announcements coming up, so I please just stay tuned. We’re working really hard behind the scenes. We have a team of very talented people. Overall, we share the same vision. We want to become leaders and this is just the beginning, this game is just the beginning. What we’re building here it goes beyond even the play to earn game itself. This is a whole universe, it’s a whole Ecosystem that eventually will lead to our animated serious comic books, etc. And you will see that very soon. We’ll see. I know some of you are aware of the Lego brand and what we’re that we have some words in with them, with some of their official certified professionals. So yeah, toys will be something as well coming up. But we’re taking it step by step, step by step. We’re not rushing things here. We also are aware of the current sentiment of the market. We know that we’re going through a bit of a crypto winter, but we’re here for the long run. I mean, this is we have a long-term vision. Very, we know that we have the right team to make this happen, and we certainly value your support. Please bring any ideas to the community. We certainly are open to listen to any sort of feedback and we want to have this community keep growing internationally. So yeah, thank you very much for the opportunity. And if there are any further questions, so we’re here happy to answer them.
