The Token Takeover
Join us on "The Token Takeover", where we dive into the exciting world of web3 gaming and explore the latest trends and developments in this emerging industry. From NFT collectibles to decentralized gaming platforms, we'll break down complex concepts in a simple and fun way, making it easy for anyone to understand and get involved in this rapidly growing ecosystem. So, whether you're a seasoned crypto veteran or a gaming newbie, tune in and discover how blockchain technology is revolutionizing the world of gaming and beyond.
The Token Takeover
#13 Building a Web3 Game in the Bear w/ Simon Davis from Mighty Bear Games
In this episode of the Token Takeover podcast, we shared a conversation with Simon Davis, co-Founder of Mighty Bear Games. We talked about his unlikely start in gaming as a game tester to cover his rock n' roll lifestyle, that quickly evolved into a lifetime career of gaming innovation and leadership.
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Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/simondavisgames/
https://twitter.com/skilllevel7
https://prezi.com/buoqkgd4pel9/the-professional-history-of-simon-davis/
https://mightybeargames.com/
https://mightybeargames.com/portfolio-item/mighty-action-heroes/
Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/GamingStartUp_
Hey everyone. What's up? This is no autopilot from the token takeover podcast. Number 13. I'm going to call it lucky. Number 13, not unlucky. That's lucky. Today I'm joined by Simon Davis from mighty bear games, which I'm sure needs no introduction if you're in the web three gaming space, but we're going to do one anyhow what's up, Simon, how you doing? How's things?
Simon Davis:Hey, nice to be here. Yeah, it's good. It's it's morning in Singapore and I'm looking forward to having a, you know, an exciting start to the day and having some interesting channels. Yeah,
NoAutopilot:man. Well, we'll get you started off right for sure. Okay. So one of the first things I like to do is to just learn more about the person. And you made my job pretty easy because you have like a Prezi link on your LinkedIn profile, but can you like, you know, talk to us a little bit about your aspiring career as a as a rock star and maybe the progress on that. Maybe you're a rock star and you're part time. Who knows?
Simon Davis:Yeah, who knows? See, I have a music degree as you correctly alluded to. I used to be a working musician. Like, I think most working musicians are pretty broke. Yeah, one summer I took, I applied for a job doing localization so that my hometown, there was an outsourcing studio that did work with like Sony and Nokia and Capcom and lots of big companies. And I applied for a job there just because I needed a bit of extra pocket money. I was only really expecting to do it for six weeks, and it's been a 20 year career in gaming. And I think some point this was 2004. I want to say some point around 2008, 2009, I made the decision to make gaming my, my main career. I'm very lucky, you know, I've made a living from doing two things I love, which is playing guitar and playing video games. Unfortunately, I don't play as much guitar these days, though.
NoAutopilot:Okay. So, so I would, I'd be lying if I said I was like a a rock music or punk music aficionado per se, but, but give us a little taste, like what type of musicians inspired what you create. Oh man.
Simon Davis:Like, I think when you study at music school, you you are exposed to so many different things that, you know, like I could give you references from like, jazz and pop on one day and then like, you know, obscure Scandinavian black metal from the nineties another day. So like, depends what kind of frame of mind you catch me. But growing up, like when I was a kid, I just wanted to be James Hatfield from Metallica. That was basically my, my hero as a 12, 13 year old.
NoAutopilot:Yeah. I mean, that's a good idol to aim for, man. That's not bad. That's not bad. Okay. All right, man. Well, that's, that's super cool. So, so the original passion was to chase music being a musician. You started doing localization work at a studio to make a little bit of cash. And then like, to your point, like your career trajectory is. Ridiculously amazing. It like, it seems like each role you took is more responsibility and more exposure to big studios. Like. Ubisoft. Yeah, I guess like, do you mind just giving us a, a quick, quick run through of your, your time in gaming and, and what you've all done so far? Yeah, of course.
Simon Davis:Yeah. So first job was, you know, doing like QA and localization work. I very quickly kind of moved up into, I guess, Management within those spaces within a couple of years, and then by year three, I was a product lead a small independent studio just outside London. That was really cool because they were the European distributor for a bunch of like Japanese RPGs like Shin Megami Tensei. So I got to work with like lots of cool Japanese publishers and also our in house titles then I moved on to a slightly bigger independent publisher and it was funny like they spent a fortune acquiring A line of music software despite the fact they were like a gaming company and at 20 Three 24, they were like, yeah, you're the chief product officer for this line because I was literally the only one who knew how to hold a guitar the right way around. So, yeah, so, I mean, I worked on franchises there, like you know, in house, we had things like Hello Kitty that helped out with like a tiny bit. And some other kind of IP is kind of an IP based independent publisher. I think we had space invaders at some point as well off the back of that. And the financial crisis here and things got a bit dark. I went to work for design agency because I figured that I'd learn a lot. It turns out that she didn't learn anything and that people in games. But more smart and brilliant than people at design agencies and so I left actually in under a year It was quite we were doing projects for xbox and the team at xbox was really smart and really kind of on it But I was kind of less impressed by the design agency side of it So I went back to gaming I went to browser free to play I thought that I would be a step down coming from console but I thought the challenge in the learnings would be really interesting, but I was actually completely wrong. Like browser free to play was way harder than anything I'd ever done on console just because it's games as a service is data driven. There's a whole set of additional considerations like your cost per install affiliate marketing, all this stuff that we just don't do it like with the console game, you just focus on making the best game. Right. As a product officer for a I had a product for a browser gaming operation or project whatever like there's just this way way way more complexity. So I was in charge of a team of 20 and we were doing like Very very solid seven figures a month in euros with a team of 20 and a flash game Browser and I was like, yeah at that time that was basically every month We're making the annual dev budget for a triple a game I was like, wow, like this is a real business and this shit's really hard and then I was addicted. And so yeah off the back of that I was suppose you just call it poached by ubisoft because they started getting into online games and games as a service and In very short order ended up coming out to singapore to help them ship Ghost recon online. We operated that for a few years It was a top three game on steam in terms of free to play once it was rebadged as ghost recon phantoms I ended up at king which is the maker of candy crush off the back of that I'd actually known some people there for many many years and you know, I would always want to work together And when king's singapore studio closed and they tried to bring us to europe I left and I took you know, some really great people on the journey with me to mighty bear and that's how we got started. So I think the first nine employees all work together at King and King again is another fantastic company. You know, can you crush alone makes something like a billion dollars a year, which is just insane, even to this day, like 12 years on. And so that was a fantastic learning environment as well before founding our studio. Dang.
NoAutopilot:Wait, one thing that sticks out to me in your story is you know, there must have been a lot of trust in everyone on the team to kind of come together. To build mighty bear, you know, like I'm sure everyone was presented with different opportunities to reenter into the gaming ecosystem, but they all chose to, like, line up behind the flag of mighty bear games and that's not easy to do. That's that's amazing.
Simon Davis:Yes, that's a good point. We could have 1 of us could have just stayed within King move to Europe. But we sold a certain vision of certain types of games we wanted to build, and I think you see this in my caption here is like we wanted to take complex games and games that we would enjoy to play and repackage them for kind of a more accessible audience, kind of more mainstream audience without losing that depth. And I think they're excited by that. And, you know, the very first game we built was wildly ambitious. It was a game called World of Legends. And that was a game where we built an MMORPG with nine people in just over a year. And I had hair when we started that, so it's not, not something I recommend doing. But but yeah, I think if you can sell people that dream and that level of ambition, and they know that you can actually deliver it then they'll come with you.
NoAutopilot:Well, shoot. I, I imagine at that point. There's, there's a realization that anything is possible, you know, like no, no goal is too lofty, no challenge, too hard to try and conquer together. That's powerful. Yeah,
Simon Davis:you have to be slightly deluded as well, but that does, that does help with the motivation. Like we did genuinely believe that, you know, in hindsight, we probably took, we bit off probably a bit more than we could chew at that moment in time, but at least we went for it and it, you know, it's. It was not like a raging success, but it did set us on the wrong path for now, like impressed enough people that it meant that we ended up working with Apple and we had investors coming in wanting to support us on the journey. And so it was, it was a great springboard on to other things. Hang
NoAutopilot:on. Okay, so that was awesome. I always like to pause and give a shout out to if anyone on the podcast who's listening wants to get in contact you or follow your project where should we direct them? You want them to chase you down on LinkedIn, Twitter?
Simon Davis:Twitter's generally best. I don't, I don't share LinkedIn often because there's many people trying to sell me things. But yeah, if you can add me on Twitter, it's at... It will level seven and then the seven is the number of skill level seven, just one word then yeah, I'm always happy to chat and engage with people. Okay. So,
NoAutopilot:so quick tangent, what's up with the skill level seven? What is that from? It's really
Simon Davis:obscure, man. So I'm showing my age here. So it's Street Fighter two on the Super Nintendo. So it goes back to like 1994 and skill level seven was the hardest. Difficulty setting and so I became obsessed with trying to be the game with every single character on skill level. So unfortunately, like my street fighter skills and not what they were when I was 12. Did you did you do it? Were you able to achieve? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had a lot more free time. Oh, yeah. Concentration. I'm going to do today. I don't think I'd have the patience for these
NoAutopilot:days. Am I my oldest son is firing up more wind? I was like, I'm just letting you know, you know, dad put about a hundred hours in that it's a jerk and he was like, ah, maybe it's not for me. We'll see.
Simon Davis:A hundred hours is basically what a teenager would just do in a week anyway. Right?
NoAutopilot:Yeah, pretty much some snacks. Yeah. Okay. So sort of out of all your time in gaming, right? Including mighty bear. Is there a specific memory that sounds stands out as really positive? Positive. From your career that you wouldn't mind kind of sharing with it. Wow. Yeah,
Simon Davis:that's a really, really good question. I think there's been many, you know, like, it's just going to sound really mad and really cheesy, but I think the first kind of like real pain gig I got in gaming was in hindsight, it was a crap job, but at that time it was incredible because I'd always been a musician who was, you know, subsisting. I could just about pay my rent and eat and Convince people to buy me and didn't really have money to throw much else. Right. And so I got paid to go and work on a game called Harry Potter and the prisoner of the ban. Yeah. Which is a PlayStation two title 2004. And I was living basically at the equivalent of a Holiday Inn by a highway, and EA had their. It's, it's really quite futile, actually. They used to keep their QA stuff in a separate building for the rest of the developers, just by a highway. Like, they used to call it the farm. And so I was working at the farm and living in this holiday inn. I always remember just coming in and being amazed that I was actually being. Paid to test video games and seeing games that were in development And having an allowance of like eight dollars a day to buy myself food And just thinking that i'd made it Because I come from quite a poor background and so like I was so so grateful and so appreciative and just so So happy to be there and that feeling lasted for a good like couple of years. And so I think the early days in QA, ironically, at the very, I said this to my partner the other day when I was at the very bottom of the food chain, like you know, I didn't really stress about work after hours and I just got, I just enjoyed being there and was very appreciative and very grateful. Like, obviously mighty bears been an amazing journey, but, and there've been magical moments. But I think just that realization that I could make a living from gaming and just being so happy to be there was It was actually quite special
NoAutopilot:and they thank you for sharing that with us Yeah, I feel like I feel like web three has kind of opened that door again for a whole nother generation of folks who want to get into gaming, like with a lot of these, a lot of these early studios, you know, if you're active and you're a contributing member, you bring value consistently, you might just find yourself in a job. You know quite the industry to be in, if that's something that someone is interested in.
Simon Davis:No, totally. And even if you just get an entry level job at a studio, and you show that you're willing to really put the effort in and go above and beyond, and maybe not always do like the sexiest tasks or doing something that hasn't necessarily even been asked of you, like, there's definitely opportunity. Like, there's someone on our team, I won't embarrass by naming them, but like, They joined us, you know, in a what you'd call an entry level position quite not that long ago and like they're already now designing a new game. Wow. There you go folks. This is it. It's very, it's very clear that it's someone we can trust.
NoAutopilot:Dang, there you go folks. The dream is alive. Okay. So, let's see here. So when, when Mighty Bear Games was originally created... You guys were kind of focused on mobile gaming titles. Is that right?
Simon Davis:Yeah, I mean our thesis is actually unchanged really. It's like take complex games and make them accessible. The most accessible platform of all is mobile. Because everyone has a mobile in their pocket and touch screen input, like anyone can pick up and play. Got it, okay.
NoAutopilot:And then you know it's funny. So, so when I research for these podcasts, I always try and get like a deep cut. Like I don't want to be your normal, I want to get something a little spicy. I, I had read about your title butter Royale, and there's a, there's a Reddit group dedicated to butter Royale. And I'll tell you what, man, I was, so there's these folks in there asking questions like about the game or whatever. And sure as hell, you yourself are in there answering questions for them. I just thought that was the coolest damn thing. Like, who else, like what other CEO would be in there talking to people in a subreddit from like a year ago? Like nobody, that's crazy, man.
Simon Davis:I appreciate that. Well, actually, look, you know, like, such a cliche what I'm about to say, but like, you know, the players are your customer, and the customers are the most important people, right, in any business. And so I felt like it's always important to be open and engage with them and You know people have written to me directly or they've tweeted at me and like as much as possible I try and make myself available to speak to players because if people can understand your perspective or you can answer their questions or you can help them like It's a it's the right thing to do and b it also helps the game truth is that I don't get very much time to do anything, right? Because mighty bears like all consuming but I will absolutely carve out time for the community always Oh, there you go,
NoAutopilot:folks. Okay. So, so let's see. So mighty bear games, you know, you're taking complex gaming titles and trying to find ways to plug it into broader and broader audience. And we were talking a little bit before we started the podcast, but can you share, you know, what was the trigger that led your team to explore a web three.
Simon Davis:Yeah, it's a good question. It's one I get asked a lot. So, I had been in crypto since like 2015 anyway, so I've always been someone who's curious about new things. And honestly, you're going to laugh at this, but when I came in 2015, I thought I was late. I was like, ah, I've already missed it. Bitcoin's already hit a thousand dollars and then come back down to 400. It's never going to hit a thousand again. This is over. You thought you missed it. Yeah, I missed it. So I was quite curious anyway. And so like, I was around when CryptoKitties took off in 2018 and like, there were people on the team who are still there today, actually, like Kyle and Abel. Who were like early into crypto kitties and really got it and I didn't fully get it and then 2021 happened and I started buying nfts and then it made sense to me. I was like, okay as someone who you know, I go back to that browser game I worked on in like the late 2000s someone who'd made mmos and i've seen like player owned not not planned but player led economies And seeing the value of trading and asset ownership and how communities form around, you know different sub communities and types of assets within games and stuff like that. I was like, this makes perfect sense. And then Axie obviously blew up and I'm in Singapore, which is not really that far from Philippines. It's like a three, four hour flight. And there's a lot of cultural overlap as well. Like Filipino community is pretty big out here. And so I got to see firsthand what was happening with Axiom, it was kind of freaking mind blowing, like, you know Gabby is someone I've known for a long time, Gabby from YGG, and what they built, and what the guys at SkyMaver's built, it's just like... Incredible. I mean yeah, I guess it was right place, right time with the bull market, but they were ready. And they executed really well. And for me, it was clear that asset ownership and non, you know, non traditional payment methods or economies were going to take a bigger and bigger part of the industry and that we had to be ready for it. And I think In hindsight, that thesis has been proved right, because you've seen all the issues with the app stores, you know, with the epics court case, and now the issues that Apple introduced with IDFA and user acquisitions become incredibly expensive. So in English, well, that means it's just become, very difficult to scale mobile gaming, bringing millions of users, unless you've got like, you know, eight figure budget. And then we're seeing unity now with a runtime fee. And so all of this points to the traditional mobile free to play model being like in serious trouble and we have defined as an industry other ways to engage and And get our content paid for and so I think web 3 makes a 3 and UGC are basically two things i'm incredibly bullish on right now,
NoAutopilot:but definitely man that that UGC part I haven't seen, yeah, like I, I haven't seen, I haven't seen it executed exceptionally well just yet in web three, but I think once that happened, like now you're building an ecosystem where people are not only supporting the network through their activity, but you know, they're also like a participant in the economics app. Like they make money and, you know, it just seems like a win win all around.
Simon Davis:Yeah. And even if you look at like these, you know, and I hate this word, I'm going to use it. Even if you look at these metal as platforms like Roblox or Fortnite creator, or Other side is when it wasn't when it launches, right? Or I hear minecrafts of building their own UGC platform Like more and more of these games essentially going to operate as platforms and then players will eventually have ways to monetize their creations right and then But how does asset ownership and interoperability really play into that? I think over time you're going to see a convergence of like on chain asset ownership and these UGC platforms. And that is really exciting. I really think that as the traditional, like free to play business model breaking more and more every day, like the industry is going to shift towards these kind of play up owned and operated economies in a broader sense.
NoAutopilot:Okay. So the one thing you had mentioned, and I'm always kind of curious to hear this from, from interoperability? Like yeah, it's
Simon Davis:a good one. I mean, I think it's very difficult to get true interoperability, right? So if you have a hero from mighty action heroes it's probably not going to make sense for that to just appear in fifa That'd be sweet. Maybe not good, but it
NoAutopilot:would
Simon Davis:be Like very weird when he starts shooting the other players, right? That's definitely a
NoAutopilot:red card.
Simon Davis:But I think there are ways you can abstract it. So it doesn't have to be one to one, but say that we had, and I'm just picking an example, we do not have a partnership with EA, but say there was a partnership with FIFA and it said, okay, like if you're a mighty action heroes player, Like you get these rewards when you launch the game and it can be as simple as that, or it can be as complex as having, you know like our hero appear in a kit and have a certain set of stats and you can use them in specific game modes. So it's really down to the individual developers, but I think interoperability is going to vary from game to game and depth to depth. And at its most basic level, it would just be like, we acknowledge that you're a player of this game and here's your startup pack, which is also fine. Like you're still getting value from having that. I think this notion that it has to be one to one is, is misguided. And yeah, it obviously doesn't make sense.
NoAutopilot:I'm trying to remember the name. If you see my screen flicker, that's what it is. But I had, I had a guest on the podcast last month and they are building interoperability standards for metaverses. That's cool. Yeah. Like I, in my interview with him, it, it literally melted my mind thinking about, you know, and they've signed, I don't know, 40 or so different web three games and titles. If they're able to successfully do that, like how much of a, how much of a boon that would be That whole interoperability, like metaverse play. Yeah,
Simon Davis:I think standards would be fantastic in moving the space forward, right? I know that the guys at MiBITS, that's the whole idea behind MiBITS, right? It's that it's a character that you can have in different spaces within Web3. I guess the question is like, can we get enough developers to bind to one consistent standard? Or do we get the same situation we have even in Web3 today, right? Where everyone wants to push their own standard because they don't trust the other guy. You know if a different game studio has invented a standard that has a direct impact on your bottom line you're going to be looking at that very closely to make sure they can't just like randomly change the contract or The addresses that certain things are pointing to or like, you know, kind of impacting your business negatively. So there's there is a lack of
NoAutopilot:trust there And that's a good call out. And I never really thought about it for that angle. Yeah. So, so I pulled it up here. So sorry sorry, baddest, baddest Samadian. Sorry, brother. But OMA3, O M A 3. org. Shout out to them and what they're doing there. Really quite, quite eye opening. Interesting. Okay. So one thing that we, we touched on, I want to kind of dig in a little bit more is like, I I've seen a trend where a lot of web two studios are struggling with. You know, marketing to their audience from some of the changes from Apple around privacy and in web three, it's kind of different where, where a lot of the activity is on chain, but you have some information about that user, but you may not know exactly who they are. So I'm curious if, like, from your perspective, if that's. Much easier to market to someone who's simply an address, or is it, is it even harder than maybe what you guys would be experiencing on the app store side? Web
Simon Davis:2 is definitely harder. So if you can know who someone is down to, a demographic so, you know, I don't know like male 40 years old lives in singapore like management, right? you can build up a persona and target ads and Your approach based on that on chain. You basically just have a wallet So that tells you roughly how much money they have in their wallet and what assets they hold and what they've interacted with And then you can start to extrapolate based on that. And so we're seeing services now, which basically will look at a wallet and then what they've interacted with and link that to a Web 2 persona. And I'll be like, well, there's a 90 something percent probability. It's this person on Twitter. And this is roughly what that person would like and they can do it at quite a granular level So I think it's interesting because it hits this inherent like contradiction within website, right? people talk about like they talk about transparency and everything being on chain and then like privacy And i'm actually not convinced you can have both. I think you have to actually pick one I know it's going to be an incredibly unpopular take but It's not actually transparent if you don't know who you're dealing with It's just a wallet address, right? I think there's an inherent conflict that we have to resolve, but there are businesses already dedicated towards mapping wallets and linking them to real world people. And that's only going to get more and more sophisticated in very short order, especially once you start applying AI to that problem.
NoAutopilot:Well, so, so you'll appreciate. Where, what I had to do for, for this particular one. So I was working with a project that tried to propose the Apecoin DAO, like a 5 million grant, build a mobile UGC platform built around Fort Ape Yacht Club and we're like, okay, so we need to get all these DAO voters to one, know that we exist. So our proposal doesn't surprise them, but then two, hopefully they like us enough to vote in favor of our proposal. And so we had to pull like a wallet report, I want to say a thousand wallets and, you know, manually try and search through finding them on Twitter to like DM them and say, Hey, we're not a scammer. I promise. Do you want to like learn about what it was a total cluster? But to your point, like, it is exceptionally difficult to do that today, but it sounds like some services are are solving that.
Simon Davis:Yeah, there's definitely that. I mean, I've already seen a couple in the last month of pitch to us. There's people like dedicated solving that maybe it becomes opt in, right? And you decide if you want to have that shared and there'll be benefits to sharing it. Or if you want to remain a non, you know, maybe you miss out on some benefits.
NoAutopilot:Okay. So since since your team, well, I guess let me ask this first. So how long has your team been building? Yeah. They're the web three title mighty action here
Simon Davis:game has been in development now for 13 months. Yeah, it's insane. Just over a year and it went from pitch deck to like beta in 11 months. Crazy. Yeah, we are, we are very fast team. I probably gonna say, but like, I think we're going to be less focused on speed in the year ahead because the truth is that the market is not, hasn't quite got to where we thought it would be at this moment in time. And so we'll be more focused on say polish and, you know, introducing like very important new systems, but less about just being as fast as possible, which was the priority this year, because, you know, there was a couple of projects that were ahead of us and now they're not. No, we're kind of, I would say off. So, yeah.
NoAutopilot:Well, and I, and I imagine it had to be pretty cool to like, spend that much time building it, but then it sounds like you guys are starting to see some data that that validates that what you built is interesting. People want to participate.
Simon Davis:Yeah, that's very much the case. I think the risk with the early, I'm probably being too honest there, but the risk with like the early stage of a game launch is that maybe you get the users that were most likely to engage who just come in naturally. And so maybe your numbers are slightly skewed. But I don't think that's the the pipe. So I'd say I'm pretty optimistic about where we're going and the roadmap ahead. And I'm very grateful that the community has reacted as positively as it has. Yeah, for sure.
NoAutopilot:Okay. You know what, one topic I wanted to bounce back to, and we're going to do this a bit as like different things coming to my head here. I'm sorry, but I know that your team has your beta on. Playable on Google is right now or on Android phones through
Simon Davis:we have an APK out is actually launching on Google play early access in a couple of weeks. So in October I can't give you a specific date. I mean, you could, if you were. Well, it's I mean, I could, but it's up to Google, they have to review it. Right. But at some point in mid October, like the game will be on Google play early access, and you'll just be able to download it from the store as well. And that will be like the mobile version.
NoAutopilot:And I, and I have to imagine that there's other games that are like jockeying to also be part of that, but there likely aren't that many that are as. Our long is mighty action heroes, like, like a gaming experience is legitimately fun to play. I can't be said for a lot of other titles out right now. That's
Simon Davis:very kind of you to say, I mean, we've, you know, we've made two similar games in the past. And I think that helped us a lot, you know, when we were choosing which, which games tackles our first word, three title. Part of the reason we landed on Mighty Action Heroes, we made a game called Battle Royale. That was a Battle Royale game a few years ago. It was much simpler than Mighty Action Heroes. It's not as detailed. And then we made a MOBA as well. It's like, look, we can combine the learnings from these two games. We can actually ship a fun game in a year. And that turned out to be true. It definitely allowed
NoAutopilot:you to go fast and execute at a high level. Like for sure. Okay. So, so the Mighty Action Hero title will be Or is playable on mobile as well as browser. Can you talk a little bit about like, or is there interoperability between those two and like, what's the strategy between, you know, make sure you're presenting a product to browser based gamers as well as mobile game.
Simon Davis:So the 2 games are identical. So you're playing the same build on both of them and you're playing on the same same service together and we balance the controls on mobile so that you can actually be like very competitive with people using mouse and keyboard as well. I think the best players. We'll win with mouse and keyboard. I think it's been a very elite level, but actually in general like 95 percent of the time like they're pretty evenly matched But this year browser is going to be the priority for me just to make sure we have an incredible browser experience because I feel That browser game is just massively underserved right now You know There are literally hundreds of millions of people playing browser games every month and the quality of the games out there today hasn't really shifted much since 2012 when I kind of left the space and so, yeah, I'm pretty bullish on that as for mobile, like, we've done a couple of mobile specific things especially on the payment side. But the experiences are basically almost identical. That's
NoAutopilot:really cool that they'll be able to play together. That probably helps ensure that there's a nice healthy player pool as well, right? Like forget the term for it, but yeah, liquidity. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So there's always someone to play with. That's nice.
Simon Davis:Yeah, and that's also part of the reason that we, we looked at browser, right? Because there's a lot of people that just want to dip in and out throughout the day all around the world. And just making that as easy as possible. Mobile helps a lot as well. So we deliberately designed our sessions so you can play a match in under five minutes. Most of the time, that means that you can play while you're chewing through your coffee. I think that's something that Web3 games need to figure out. Like, some of the sessions are just way too long. You shouldn't be, if it's a mobile game, you shouldn't be spending like 10, 15, 20 minutes in a match. Yeah,
NoAutopilot:attention spans aren't that long, like hit give me the dopamine in like two minutes times and I'll come back. I promise.
Simon Davis:Also, like if you're on a train or you're on the bus or whatever, like you're out, but you can't always commit 20 minute chunks or something.
NoAutopilot:Okay. All right. So let's see here. What other whatever questions do I have for you, Simon? Oh, I, so I, I know I have one and you can totally punt this question if, if you want to, but I'm curious, are you seeing like similar patterns from web three gamers to web two gamer or mobile, right? Like typically in a mobile game, you would have your whales, right. Who make up a large portion of, of revenue. Are you, are you seeing like that same pattern in web three and then a follow up question. Is the average user value. I'm hypothesizing that it's quite higher on web three comparative to web two. Yeah, if you're open to it, any
Simon Davis:feedback on those. It's actually interesting. So I found that our web three players tend to be more interested in buying and trading the assets and so like Which is totally fine. Obviously, that's that's good for us. But in terms of in game activity, their value is actually not that high So I'm separating the kind of asset trading and speculating to like people buying stuff with in game utility I don't think there's actually a marked, obviously, no, that's not true. Obviously, the players who are buying assets for trading are spending like a lot more, but. Actually, the numbers are lower, right? And so we have a lot of people that are spending small amounts just to be part of the game or to buy like a boost or a mystery box versus much fewer numbers that are making larger purchases. So I don't see, like, a huge difference between the two in terms of economic contribution. They just have very different motivations.
NoAutopilot:Interesting. Do you guys track that separately? Like, you guys carve out, okay, we know this percentage of our revenue is coming from, you know, like the trader profile, and this is from. I guess what you would qualify as like your daily active user.
Simon Davis:Yeah. I mean, you can look at what they're buying. So someone who is like speculating isn't buying a season pass, right? And so you can look at the things like season pass sales, or if someone spent money to skip a level on the battle pass and jump up to the next level and claim the reward versus someone who's just buying crates and trading them.
NoAutopilot:Cool. I like that. All right. All right, Simon, you got three more questions and then you're back to your morning. Get a refill on your coffee here. Alright, without sharing your secret sauce, you know, what, what is your advice to teams who are smaller, maybe they're bootstrapped, maybe they're angel funded, who are trying to look towards best practices for user acquisition? Any advice? It's a really,
Simon Davis:really good question. I'm not going to be able to give you any, like, amazing insights there. I think in all honesty, like, the community on Web3, like, the town of specific Web3 games is so small that it all becomes about partnerships and finding people that are willing to back and support you, like, the right partners, so... You know, I think that our partnership with Treasure has been spoken about pretty publicly, and they've been an amazing partner to us, and we love the Treasure community, and we're happy to be building with them. I think it's realigning yourself to strong communities as much as possible. I think the other thing, which not enough people think about, is to make sure that the social element and bringing in other players is at the very core of the experience, and so it's not announced yet, but we have something coming. Which will facilitate people bringing their friends into the game and maybe reward them for it as well. And so, you know, kind of building that into the core of the game.
NoAutopilot:Man, you, so you sent me down a rabbit hole on oh, what's that game? Humble guys. Yeah. He sent me down a rabbit hole. Like literally I'm, I'm writing a I'm writing a newsletter on their user acquisition and kind of influencer thing right now. It is great. Is that, you know, is there some inspiration, you know, trickling in on that, on your, on your program or is it something different?
Simon Davis:Totally. I mean, we love what they did and. You know, they were a team, I'm guessing that most people listening to this one know about this, but they were essentially a team, I think, of five in Finland with like no budget, self funded, who managed to scale and sell a game for a hundred million dollars and like scaled massive, massive, use the numbers, right? That number I heard, I think it was like, you know, that's the rumor. Anyway, it was the nine figures. I managed to bring in like huge numbers of players into the game. Always know your budget. And it was essentially by partnering with content creators in latin america specifically like they found an angle and so it is possible still to scale games if you can find an angle, but That's really hard You have to figure something out that no one else has thought of Everyone thinks they can do it but in practice. It's a lot more difficult than that. Yeah, man,
NoAutopilot:very cool Yeah, I love that type of stuff. I I jumped in their discord and it's like mind melting 800, 000 people or something like that's like,
Simon Davis:gosh,
NoAutopilot:Okay. Last two questions. So for other folks who are out building in web three, right, right now, is there a single piece of advice that you can give them build better, faster, or cheaper that you've learned in. Your
Simon Davis:timing with all right, I'm going to drop something really spicy. It's probably not the answer you're expecting. There are lots of people who think they want to be in web 3 or in web 3 for the wrong reasons. They will either cost you a lot of money or slow you down. And so if you start building in the space and you, you have. You're working alongside people that are not fully committed or have the wrong motivations or haven't taken the time to really understand the space and engage with it and understand the players and the products and do their homework. You should let these people self select and so they will, you can try as a founder to please everyone. And the net outcome of that, I had this back in the last year, you know, I'm someone who naturally tries to make everyone happy and sometimes you have to accept that you just can't and let people leave. And that those people will be the ones that actually hold your product back as well. So don't be afraid to let people go let people leave with their own volition.
NoAutopilot:Oh How about that folks mic drop on that one? That was great. Okay. All right. Last question simon, where do you go to get inspiration? about building your game your game studio
Simon Davis:I'm going to give you another like non standard answer. I read a lot and I read a lot of biographies. And so I will be like business books in general, but they tend to have a biographical slum. And so I'm reading a book right now about. What I think is the ultimate startup story, and it's gonna make you laugh, it's about a guy who basically took on United Fruit, which was like the world's was kind of first multinational and the biggest site for company or like they would have been worth hundreds of billions of dollars. He started off just like dredging out the The bananas that other fruit sellers would just not sell, they would just toss them in the sea and he started off with the ripes just out of a wheelbarrow and within 20 years, he was like, this is not good, but I'm not endorsing this behavior, but he was, it becomes so powerful that he was funding crews in Central America and taking on like the biggest multinationals in the world. And so, like, I think those, those scrappy startup stories from people that have an incredibly high sense of agency and. They don't let the world happen to them. They happen to the world. Always quite interesting. And even with this kind of this fruit story, there's a lot of parallels in our business, even down to like virtual integration, focusing on distribution how he formed like strategic partnerships with much larger players to accelerate his own community network. Like if you have an open mind, there are lessons to be learned, but nothing is new. Everything we're seeing has been done before by someone else in a different guys in a different business. I did a book. I go back to a lot right is only the paranoid survive. That's where I'm by guy called Andy Grove, who was the CEO Intel the 80s and 90s. And so you know, everyone knows this, but Intel used to make Ram used to make memory chips. And then in the 80s, the Japanese basically found a way to massively undercut and produce a much higher standard. So Intel was about to go out business. And so they pivoted the company towards making microprocessors, which is what everyone knows them for today. But that whole experience was like completely bruising. And I think they ended up laying off something like 70 percent of the company and be pivoting. And if you look at what they went through, and you look at what a lot of wipe three businesses are going through today. A lot of that is like really applicable, a lot of those like learnings and so yeah, I always try and read a book a week and I try and always learn something new every week and that that always gives me a fresh source of ideas and an inspiration and motivation to not just hope. Yeah. Okay,
NoAutopilot:so, so I got only the paranoid survive. I'm going to pick that one up. And then what's the one about United Fruit? Do you remember?
Simon Davis:Well, it's about Sams and Murray, I think, whoever threw them. I'm just going to pull up the name. I think it's called The Fish That Ate The Whale. Let me have a quick look here. But that book is incredible. It's pretty mad. Yes, The Fish That
NoAutopilot:Ate The Whale. Yeah, there you go. Okay. Oh, Simon, this has been awesome. I appreciate you sharing. Or it's a lot about yourself, a lot about kind of what drives you, what led you great mighty bear games, like your, your hot takes on web three and building in it. I think there's a lot of value in there for, for folks who are looking to do the same thing. So appreciate you hopping on the podcast, man. Thank you. It was my
Simon Davis:pleasure. Always happy to to get involved and yeah, have a good one. Thanks for listening. Yeah.
NoAutopilot:All right, everybody. Thanks so much. Peace.
