Cambria: The Degen MMO With $1M+ Seasonal Prize Pools

Transcript

You're now plugged in to the Deli podcast. [Music] Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Deli podcast. Today I am delighted to introduce you all to Ben, the uh founder of Cambria, which is a project I'm extraordinarily excited about. Um, many of us have been big uh long-term Runescape enthusiasts in crypto. Many of us graduated from Runescape to crypto. Um, and Ben is the man at the tip of the spear at leading that sort of intersection now and building game worlds around it. So, Ben, thank you for coming. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me on.

Excited. Absolutely. Maybe we could kick off with a bit of background on on kind of where you started, right? um tell us a bit about your origins in the sort of Runescape private service scene and and kind of uh yeah the the journey towards founding Cambria which has just posted a $1.5 million prize pool in only their second season. So things are really heating up in um yeah where to start? So yeah, I feel like Cambria sometimes is like kind of always the you know when I was a kid like always the the game I wanted to build like you know at that time you know wasn't super familiar with crypto but you know was kind of so you know grew up playing Runescape like was obsessed with it as a kid. Um I think

very quickly kind of got into you know like the botting like the private servers right kind of this game on top of the game right where you know it was like you know romantic trading of of the gold um you know various you know forums that you know just you know scripting or um creating private servers. So yeah I think it was you know kind of this this macro sort of level of of play. Um also did a lot of trading you know it was called merching in the game you know buy um buy low sell high sort of thing. Um so yeah that was another part of the the trading that I I sort of enjoyed. Um but yeah I think with with private services was like you know we were kind of building our our own Runescape right it was you know this community of you know

uh most mostly kids you know just kind of like hacking away at the Runescape client like you know creating their own versions of of Runescape like on the back end. Um, so yeah, it was, you know, some of these servers got pretty crazy. Like, you know, people would like, you know, go like for uh yeah, it was just like all different like twists on the the Runescape sort of uh core core sort of game loop. Um, but yeah, you know, ran ran one of the bigger private servers. Um, you know, was like 14 15 years old, like had a couple devs, right, that were hacking the game, right? Um, had a a support team, right?

We would have like forums. So, yeah, very very I guess reminiscent of of what we're doing now. But um but yeah, it was it was kind of funny. It was it was actually my first uh intro to programming as well, you know, kind of writing some of these scripts, writing some of the the private server code. Um so yeah, it was it was very cool to kind of have that gray sort of market sort of Yeah. forum back in the day to to kind of hack hack on things. I love it. Um yeah, maybe you could touch on then when did you sort of see the opportunity in crypto? What was that sort of transition period? uh and yeah curious when you realize that sort of onchain economies might be an interesting area to dabble in. Yeah. Yeah. So this was actually later. Um so you know kind of like 2022

I think. Um so yeah you know kind of got into crypto with with NFTTS right came from kind of uh meme stocks right GME the classics. Uh but yeah like the you know I was I think Wolf Game. Yeah. Was was my first you know in terms of crypto gaming first experience there. And that hit really hard right. You know, this was like, you know, back in like Beanie's Discord, right? Like, you know, was was just hanging out with other DJs and, you know, like you would drop the link to to the initial white paper for for Wolf Game. And yeah, I think the the risk meets, you know, kind of onchain assets, onchain, you know, contracts, like just the way it was set up, like, you know, in terms of yeah, just balancing risk and reward like the fact that you could like steal like these

NFTts and yeah, I think that really hit. I was like, "Wow, that's that's pretty." And you know it didn't help uh didn't hurt that you know the the the floor price due the supply shock went up like you know 100x like you know couple couple hours after that. But um I think yeah I on the crypto side it was like I I don't know like the the hot and fast liquidity like you know seeing how fast like things pump and like how fast like just tremendous amount of money um can go through some of the stuff in the space. Um I was like yeah that that's pretty cool. like you know just the the volume itself sort of makes it ma makes it interesting.

Totally. So yeah 2022 era some of the yeah a firstg games I suppose caught your intrigue. Um I think we met in late like December 22 or or maybe Jan 23 around that kind of period. Um remember DMing you on Twitter. You still got one of the most brilliant Twitter handles ever. Just cyber fun. Super clean. I like it. Um but yeah like a lot's evolved since then. Obviously, I became enormously excited about what you were working on, right? Uh, as I say, we'd kind of been discussing this intersection of Runescape meets crypto and what that might look like for years, and it really felt like you were uniquely positioned to execute on this.

And so, at the time, I think that was actually my largest angel investment yet. Uh, and yeah, proud proud investor from the early days, but maybe you can yeah, give us the like succinct elevator pitch on like what is Camri? What is the the core product? Yeah. Yeah. So at Camber we're we're building uh let's call call it like DGEN experiences or you know it's it's high stakes right high stakes and chaos. Um so Camber itself you know is a risk to earn sort of MMO with um massive onchain stakes. Um we currently have two game modes dual arena as well as gold rush.

Um so dual arena is kind of a high stakes like one versus one duels um duels to the death. We have this like public arena um in the middle of the game. Uh but yeah, you're you're you're wagering ETH outcome of of these tools. Um it's kind of very DGEN. Um gold rush is sort of this risk to earn I guess. Yeah. MMO. Um again, you know, inspired by Runescape games like Albian Online. Uh basically you buy in by minting a battle pass, right? NFTt battle pass. And you basically compete to um exploit, you know, limited resources inside the game. So there's there's skilling, right? You have the PV PVE loop, right, where you're you're hunting um uh monsters. Uh but yeah, it kind of revolves around this game loop where

you're going on expeditions, right? You know, this risk and reward like the longer you stay out, the the more in danger you are from other NPCs as well as players. Um so yeah, it's kind of this continuous decision of, you know, do you kind of go forward or do you kind of like uh take the the cowards X, if you will, um back? There we go. And yeah, then I'd love to understand a bit more a bit more as well around the sort of like early thesis formation. Like what was the intuition that you had for this audience having grown up in Runescape private servers, having found crypto? Yeah. Like who is the player archetype that this appeals to? Yeah. Yeah. Like when we initially started like a lot of the game was like, hey, like let's just build a game that we would find cool, right? because you

know like you know obviously growing up in Runescape like you know we're we're kind of in the 25 to 40 year old sort of audience that you know either grew up playing Runescape and WoW um I think for me like um a lot of the the appeal was the both the onchain element as well as the the risk right um it's kind of like that twist that you know kind of adds enough meaning or like you know has has enough stake or like pulls you know has enough you know sort of investment that you know creates that you know kind of uh real involvements or like you know thinking about like I don't know it's it's kind of like uh playing poker right like if you're playing poker with you know like uh you know just play chips right your behavior is like very much

different from you know when you actually play with with real chips right it just like it creates um so so on the MMO side like you know a couple things that you know I think we we uh noticed was like number one like real specialization right you know if you're you know kind buying buying in with this battle pass like you can't create like unlimited alts Right? So every, you know, account you create, like, you know, whatever you specialize in, that's, you know, kind of kind of what you have, right? And then, you know, if you're, let's say, like level 99 in smithing, right? And you're the only person on the server that can, you know, craft like some rare armor, like people go to you, like, you know, there's actual like market demand for that inside of the game. Um, and, you know, it kind of creates ways for for people

to to specialize almost like, you know, in a in an actual economy, right? Um, where, you know, they have, you know, room to to create Yeah. some some more emergent sort of gameplay around um you know specialization there. Um but yeah, I think I think in terms of like who it who it appeals to. Um yeah, definitely definitely DJs. I think that's currently our our focus market here. Um you know, I think the the intersection of you know, people that are in crypto now and like doing really well in trading that you used to dominate the the grand exchange back in the day, right? Or various auction houses uh across different games. Um, yeah, there's just tremendous overlap there. So, I think we we also kind of bought or got a lot of sort of goodwill just with the Runescape angle. Goodwill as well as like, you

know, being able to on board very quickly, right? Um, you know, Runescape players just kind of, you know, because a lot of the game inspired by Runescape like you know, they're able to just hop in and play. Um, so I think, you know, that kind of intersection of it's it's actually been interesting like season 2 like in terms of the number like different types of players. Um we actually got more kind of more casual players like more players interested in PvE. Um and then you know we we also had our main stay of you know the the dgens right you know either Salana like who would otherwise you know be trading you know memecoins or um you know trading whatever it is on Salana or otherwise.

I love that. Yeah I mean the sort of DGEN onchain DGEN thesis was something that I had total conviction in early on. Right. Um, but I think you know, you mentioned these two different products like Jewel Arena to begin with, the sort of 1v1 50/50 head-to-head if you like, which for those that don't know, the Runescape uh jewel arena, the sand casino we used to call it, literally had tens of millions of dollars gambled through it in in-game currency over the years. Um, which was yeah, brilliant fun. I spent many years of my life there. Um, but Ben, I'm curious like how did uh the outcome versus your expectation uh sort of manifest because you guys shipped Jewel Arena and it did like $100 million in volume in the first three months across two different, you

know, across bass and and blast. So yeah, I'm curious like whilst you and I both knew that sort of DGEN uh thread was there, I mean that's a pretty insane outcome in such a short period when you first launched that. So curious any thoughts on that before we jump into some more details on season two? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think at the start like when we first had a couple of the first early builds like Yeah. I think it was obvious that you know it kind of work. Um and at that point it was just like you know kind of handling the the volume. Um the cool thing about dual arena is the the contract is actually kind of um permissionless sort of uh escrow. So you know basically we never take custody of assets like you're kind of depositing the contract and then

we're issuing signature and then you you're kind of withdrawing from the contract. Um, so yeah, it wasn't as high-risk, right? Like, you know, in terms of managing the ops there, but yeah, definitely on the game side, like, you know, handling the, yeah, it was a trial by fire, if you will. Um, handling, you know, some of the the issues like, yeah, cuz like, you know, with lag, like people are trying to exploit, like, you know, people are trying to hack the contracts like um it was, yeah, quite a quite experience. Um but yeah, I think I think really the that first, you know, kind of core set of users. Um kind of formed the the core of the the community, right? Like basically our our current current community, if you will, is yeah, mostly mostly pulled from from players um from

the essence. So yeah, I think the the the onchain dens that were, you know, kind of early to to dual arena um yeah, were were early to CRA and kind of have formed that that for core base of of fans um for us. Yeah, maybe you could give us some color then on season two like what was it? How was it structured? Uh maybe you can give us some of the Yeah. the headlines of how things evolved since season one as well. Yeah. Yeah. So for for season two we um we did a couple things I think that that definitely made it um interesting and I think like contributed to the the size of the price pool as well. So the the first thing we did was um we had kind of this almost like idle sort of speculation loop. Um so we had

uh what was called the the pay masters. Um so basically you're you're buying charters. Um which you know you you have to have at least one charter, right, to play the game. It's kind of the the battle pass, but you can buy multiple charters and basically deposit it into the syndicate vault. Um so the syndicate vault is kind of this this shady sort of you know in the background or the Illuminati, right, of of Cambria. uh where they're basically taking a cut of the cashins. So, you're basically getting a percentage of in-game economic activity, right? So, you know, based on how much you're depositing, like that's kind of your share of of the split. Um but, you know, it it's it's also not like guaranteed, right? Like, you know, you have to kind of see like who else is uh depositing, like how much are they

depositing because there's also some, you know, winners take all sort of, you know, like weighted distribution sort of mechanics inside of that. Um so yeah, you know, kind of ma made for this, you know, interesting sort of strategic um choosing how much to to deploy into the the vault. Um so yeah, you had that, you know, so at in the first, I think five minutes like 200k or whatever of of charters were minted and kind of deposited. So that really like like started the flywheel going, right? You know, you had the immediate like 200k number, you know, that we had a number on the the main site that updated based on the the size of the prize pool. So like that just kept going up, right? And then you know we can basically use that, right? To to kind of be like, hey, there's 200k the prize pool, right? All

of this is going to be split based on the silver in the game. So that that was the other aspect was, you know, basically all the silver in game was backed by this prize pool. So 90% of the prize pool was split um you know, after the pay master cut, after a different a couple other cuts um to silver and game. So basically the more silver you have like the more USDC or whatever it is at the end. Um so yeah I I think that made for a a very interesting economy because like basically any action in game right if you're you know good at trading if you're you know whatever you did in game like you know you could you could al it it was also liquid right you know people are kind of OTCing inside of Discord right kind of trading as well. Uh but

yeah that that kind of role versus like the guilds. So the guilds like you know they're you know sponsoring scholars like they have these massive guilds of you know players that are coordinating inside the game or they they have a split of the rewards as well. So they kind of like counter the pay masters um in a way. So it's kind of like a a sort of a yeah fight between them like you actively deploying and actively managing players versus pay masters that are you know taking a cut of of the the cashins. For sure. Yeah. It's super exciting to see, you know, the vision of a lot of these like uh web three guilds if you like from many moons ago. Exactly this, right? We were craving environments like these for people to actually go headto-head and coordinate big uh pools of resources and collectives of people.

Um so it's really cool to finally see an arena for that. And then yeah, so just to set the stage and give some more context for people, like season 2 was run for two weeks, right? It was a limited time thing where everyone had to pay basically an entry fee. Uh I think it was like 30 bucks, right? like uh your sort of um um and yeah, that's was was like the primary source of these um this prize pool. And then yeah, Ben, maybe you could just run us through like some of the key highlight figures from this season, right? Because there's some pretty impressive numbers that have been kicked out already. Yeah. Yeah. I think um total prize pool 1.4 four. Um, and total players, I think, uh, in terms of players that cashed in, like at least one one plus artifact, you know, had had

10k um, you know, maybe 20k that that created account and logged in. Um, so yeah, quite quite a big group of people like thinking like especially like cuz cuz everybody uh, playing and cashing in artifacts like they would have minted a charter, right? You know, 0.02 ETH. Um, you know, a lot of them kind of went on to also mint orbs. So that was kind of like the continuous sort of mint, right? That kept like building up the the price bowl as it went along. Um so yeah, it was pretty crazy. Um I I think retention and just like the the total session time was just insane. Like like I think uh you know 60% retention I think by day seven um you know for our kind of golden cohort there it was like like 83% u for

you know caching one plus artifact. Um, CI it was it was crazy to see like you know some of these guys like the the other thing is like there there was so so like the people were playing for so long like they were playing for like 16 hours a day that we kind of ran out of content right I think if you play something for for 16 hours a day like I don't know you could play anything you kind of get sick of it but um yeah that was that was kind of cool to see. Yeah, I it was amazing. I mean, the entire Twitter feed for the whole two weeks has just been dominated by gameplay stuff and uh yeah, some of the people grinding this stuff was crazy. Also, some of the clips we saw in terms of the you know, out in the wilderness kind of PvP of

people packing artifacts PK vids like you know like a throwback to it. It felt very nostalgic. It felt very cool. Um but yeah, I mean those numbers are pretty crazy, right? in terms of all of those uh registrations as you say like 10k daily activives like 4.5k peak concurrence is what you'd shared before like um yeah man seeing that world map you know before you log in and all the different uh icons of where it's pretty amazing to see um so that's uh yeah super exciting I'm curious like um what what is some of the weird like strange or interesting emergent behavior that you observed in this season as you say like so much of the objective here is for people to read the white paper

prepare before the season and figure out ways to exploit certain mechanics. So yeah, maybe you can speak to that because I think that's one of the wonderful peculiarities of doing things with real money stakes doing them on chain is you know the incentives to do this [ __ ] is so much higher. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically like you you get like it's almost like a Darwinian environment where like you know the smartest players like find out like the the best uh exploits and you're they're they're kind of like trying to max exploit it. Yeah. It's it's tricky because like you know with with games especially like there's always like bugs and like you know kind of weird exploits like we we we did a bunch of testing and kind of like you know fix some of them but there's always ones that we didn't catch. So you know

part of it was just like you know following the best players around and basically see see what they're they're trying to do there. Yeah, I'm trying to think. Uh, so we we had a lot of uh guilds that were, you know, basically um trying to yeah, squeeze out an edge by, you know, like um lowering the the efficiency of like the top farmers. So, a a lot of the, you know, in the early in the early, I think, few days, the caves, the dungeons were, you know, the highest, you know, sort of EV in terms of like the monster rewards. Um, so they they they just had a bunch of like guild members that would like just stand there and like throughout the dungeon like blocking the spawns because you know with the spawns like they they don't

spawn if like a player is around, right? So they would form this like little honeycomb formation. You just like see them just like sitting there like and then yeah, essentially you just shut out the income, right, for you everybody had to farm something else cuz you know you could try to kill the the guilds but like you know they were just like rag they would have like nothing on them. Um I think that was cool. Um there was a lot of like guild drama of course like you know with the guild system. Again some of this is like we we didn't have enough tooling um to make it perfect but you know like players like joining guilds like you know taking uh you know stuff from the guild chest right and just leaving like there's like restrictions of like the energy orbs that they would like sell it. We also

had guilds that had like problems like managing their players like almost like you know the these like almost like corporations in real life, right? Like they had like you know players that would like use the energy to like fish and then use the fish and then like sell OTC like cash out that way, right? you know, like so they had to like track like, you know, the guild history of like, you know, which items they were withdrawing and like the some of these guilds like, yeah, some of the analytics they did, they were like tracking exact like, you know, um, you know, productivity of of how many things you cashed in, like versus how much you took, like it was pretty crazy some of the the metrics that u people were doing. Um, but yeah, besides that, it was just like every possible edge like

you can think of like, you know, they they they would exploit. So, you know, we kind of every few hours we had to like push something. um whether it was like you know using the ballista right inside the game you know similar auto the dwarf cannon in Runescape like they would like kill the boss they would like create a fireplace sit at it because it used no energy they would just like wait for this you know ballista to kill the NPC a lot of ragging right you know groups of naked dagger you know sort of people dropping on top of you we we had some issues with like switching worlds as well because you know people would just kind of like you know scout out an area like get a big group and just drop a bunch of people, you know, with with daggers on top of you. Yeah. Yeah, it

was pretty pretty chaotic. That's fun. Um, and what about any like actual sort of uh game-breaking exploits? Did you have any of those that stood out that uh Yeah. that you wish you wish you'd found first? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, definitely had I think one one dupe. Um yeah, a couple couple kind of unlimited sort of farm scenarios. um people like logging in and kind of trying to replay back like some of the the status effects. Um yeah, I think we so so we had a a bug bounty basically it was 5% of the total price pool. So basically scaled with the the size of the prize pool, right? So I think that was a good incentive um besides us you know catching people and

banning them um to kind of yeah incentivize people reporting. So I think yeah players this time yeah they're going to be splitting like 60 70k um in terms of the the people that reported them. So yeah, it was very cool to see, you know, some of the the reports actually come in. But yeah, some of the other ones we had to catch by just, you know, monitoring the economy, you know, just looking at gold like there's a lot of tooling that, you know, kind of goes into Yeah. Like, you know, basically trying to test for for a dupe um and see it happening instead of Absolutely. Yeah, that that's something I want to double click on, you know, like the sort of challenges with uh heavily onchain economies like this, right? So obviously bot busting in traditional game economies, perhaps most notoriously Runescape, right? Um, Runescape, like

old school Runescape banned 7 million accounts for bots in 2023. In 2024, one of the mods said they were doing almost 70k bands a week. Um, obviously it's a huge part of the economy and a ton of gold flows through there. But, you know, the stakes obviously only grow with these onchain economies. Like you guys had a 1.4 1.5 million prize pool. this time around like the biggest ever League of Legends esports prize pool was $6.7 million, right? Like this is big money in the world of gaming. Um, and so I'm curious like clearly you think this is a fundamentally manageable problem, right?

But like as the prize pools grow so do the incentives to attack it and like it can't all just be like bounty programs like or can it? I'm curious how do you manage this? How do you think about this as Chamber Revolves? Yeah. Well, the first thing is that the the current like in-game items and economy is not onchain. It's it's actually currently off Jade in our database, which allows us like after the season, right, to kind of like, you know, uh do some more data analysis and make sure the final distribution is correct. Uh we are yeah planning to eventually move some of this onchain, but again, like you said, like the once it's onchain and you know, like any exploit or dupe, right, and we instantly kind of rock all the liquidity right?

I think there's a lot of, you know, sort of issues that, but you know, there's there's so much that, you know, we could do though if if the the items are on chain. It is like, you know, composibility like DeFi. I don't know. It's it's definitely a trade-off. But, um, yeah, I think number one, that's that's the first thing. Um, you know, we're able to basically freeze the economy. We have a bunch of like controls over like you know freezing specific accounts like to track the money flows like especially at this point we're like a bank like and trying to figure out like if this is like legitimate income that's coming in like you know from because the the sources the sources of gold in game are are pretty predictable right you know monster yield like you know skilling yield. So um yeah some of the yeah is is

actually pretty easy to catch like kind of flows that that don't quite make sense. Uh but yeah, I think with botting the it's it's funny because like when when we initially started out I was like very kind of uh I don't know naive about you know sort of botting and kind of like was was thinking almost like you know like botting like maybe maybe it's fine right you know like eventually like we want botting to you know because technically let's say like you know so so somebody created a bot to basically arbitrage the the general store we had in game versus the the auction house u they're kind of just like buying selling based on you know the the different price um which you know was great like you know technically that does, you know, provide, you know, a function in the the market, right? But, you know,

essentially it's just like free value that they're taking out. So, I think what we're going to do for next season is just basically tax it, right? You know, tax the the the get request of like, you know, find figure out the the current price of items and then also tax the the the trade transactions themselves. Um, so I think yeah, as long as some gold is sync like as some is as long as some value is retained from that, um, I think that makes sense. I think with bots um the with the way the current economy works, it's it's actually not that bad. Um because the basically the free the tier one and tier two resources are it might as well be free, right? You know, it's it's kind of like a safe zone, right? You don't really risk anything. But um once you go

further out, the higher tier resources basically you have the chance of dying, right, to NPCs, to players. like a lot of the players like at the higher level caverns, right? The the best fish inside the game, they were just, you know, huge amount of PKers that were just waiting for for people to come by and fish. So, you know, on the fisher side, they they had to kind of adapt, right? You know, they were, you know, they trained up defense, right, to be able to survive. They, you know, trained up agility to be able to take shortcuts to to exit and kind of exit with their fish. Um, so yeah, it was a lot of, you know, kind of back and forth that, you know, kind of so, so ideally, right, like the players are, you should be negative EV to run a bot because your bot's never going to be

smart enough, right? If there's enough depth in the gameplay, like, you know, players should be just better than than bots. Uh, but again, you know, that that design goal is is sometimes hard to hard to actually implement in games. So, we'll see how it works for sure. So, you heard it here, folks. The way to manage it is not go fully on chain with too difficult too difficult to solve for. I'm hoping long term that there'll be you know once the systems and analytics are robust enough that you'll have more confidence and starting to shift other stuff. Yeah, dude. I just want my party hats on chain. When's that happening?

Come on, man. Yeah, that was my main submission in my mortgage application was my party hat set in Cambridge. So, yeah. There we go. Um but no, that's Yeah, exactly. But that's interesting. Um yeah, all those tools to manage it. Um I mean obviously like there are certain things that are very elegant being on chain already, right? Like you mentioned obviously the sort of um escro contracts for jewel arena like that stuff works pretty flawlessly. Um but yeah, no, I'm I'm encouraged to hear that then that you think the the bot busting uh is is a sort of manageable problem as this stuff scales. I think um obviously this has a very sort of there's like reflexivity in terms of the audience growth here of like every time a new record prize pool is posted it's

just going to cast a wider and wider net and realistically you haven't even started the uh you know broader go to market activations yet which we'll get on to that might draw other people in but um there's this like cottage industry of of exploiters that will hop between these these games and try to exploit as much as possible so anytime like yeah you you gain any sort of attention like it's it's interesting because like most of these these teams are like more savvy than the actual development teams right you know they they they have the experience so you know usually it's a one-sided battle there but yeah I think even even over the the number of seasons and dual arena that we've had like we've had like DDoS attacks like very very sophisticated attacks and like you know just like yeah on the opsseack side like

you know security-wise yeah it's still still not perfect and like yeah it's just going to get get worse so I think like and That's the other thing with onchain is like, you know, eventually like when you get to those, you know, $5 billion, $10 billion war games. Um, you know, eventually like, yeah, you you can't admin it anymore, right? Like if we're the only ones like controlling geese, right? It doesn't quite work. So having that fully on chain and you know, being having anybody participating like being able to read the code and be like, oh, like this is what I'm putting, you know, a billion dollars into, right? I think that's that's another yeah, very very big uh pro of of hunching.

Totally totally agree. Um yeah, we'll get on to that onto the ultimate flourishing of uh you know trustless onchain economies. Um but no, I'm excited for all of that. Um yeah, I'm curious as well just if you could give us a bit more color on how you're thinking through calibrating like the sort of, you know, riskreward loops found in these seasons in a way that isn't like pay to win. maybe some of the ways that you're thinking about balancing the like casual versus, you know, hardcore players in the PVP environments. It's like um Yeah, I'm I'm I'm curious uh if you could give some color on those pieces. Yeah. Yeah. I I think right now we don't do casual versus hardcore very well. I think right now it's just it's just hardcore. Um which I think, you know, just given how early it is, I think makes sense as

well. But yeah, I think in next season um definitely more some more more casual loops there. Um I think yeah, in terms of the riskreward, yeah, it's it's very kind of tight, you know, sort of balancing, right? you know, you have to, you know, in in in either extreme like doesn't quite work, right? You know, so it's kind of more of an art than than science there. Um I think with Yeah. the the aspect of pay to win, it's actually pretty cool. Like the the the players that are kind of um reading the docs like that kind of understand the game model that understand how it works like they're actually not too phased by the, you know, so we so we had we we were experimenting with a couple things. Um one thing we shipped like close to the end of the season was arcane research.

So basically you could um basically sink gold into um research that you know had a chance to upgrade your your level right so you could like you know spend like 300 million gold right and and get like you know 150 like% attack speed like you know huge amounts of damage it was just yeah at some point you're like machine gunning right just like people NPCs everything right it was completely sort of pay to win but you know it was actually net like we we set it up where the prices you know were just exponential right so it was it was just like completely completely, you know, negative EV um to do like, you know, especially towards the end of the season where you even the yield if you were able to blow a monsters, you still have to walk to them, right? You know, have

to walk between them like there's not too much you could get u but we still had, you know, quite a few people uh just sink like a ton of silver into that, right? Um cuz they were just having fun, right? And I think like people got that like, you know, they were basically adding to the price bowl, right? Sinking silver, like you know, increasing decreasing the supply that, you know, they would get like a relative larger supply. Um I think like as we kind of go like towards like broader audiences like it might take some more you know like uh messaging like to you know make sure people understand that you know how that kind of works um because like yeah I think like with that you know kind of zero sum sort of prize pool model like there's there's really no pay to win if it's like you know kind

of balanced because like ultimately yeah it's just like you know if you're you're you're plus EV like you're you're farming and you know you're kind of at um advantage versus other players like it's just a different kind of Yeah, it's almost like you're optimizing efficiency instead of like trying to be the the top, you know, sort of player that's doing, you know, the most damage. Um, for example, makes sense. I wanted to talk a bit about, um, yeah, the sort of road map. What can people expect from here? Um, what does season 3 hold? Uh, maybe, yeah, let's start with that.

Yeah. Yeah. I think with season 3, uh, definitely, yeah, improving some of the the skilling loops, some of the more casual loops. So, we want to definitely expand the the region tiers so that you're not hitting like full on hunger games like you know uh a hardcore mode like you know within five minutes of playing the game. Um so yeah definitely a lot of that. Um I think the expanding the sort of the economic sort of depth of the game as well. So, you know, in terms of the the main sort of monster hunting loop, like having more of a, you know, supply and demand um for the resources, like, you know, the more people are killing um XYZ monster, like just so we don't have to do, you know, sort of actual balancing there, you know, in terms of uh it's it's always tricky to to kind of figure that out. Uh

but yeah, I think uh definitely uh expanding the the content as well. So, you know, we're we're working on dungeons right now, which, you know, similar to almost like a dark and darker sort of loop, uh, where it's PvPVE, um, trying to create some, yeah, tier six sort of very kind of high high risk sort of experiences there. So, we have we have something cooking there. Um, should be quite fun. But yeah, I think otherwise it's just you know improving existing systems like fix fixing some current issues of the game like between the the guild zurging and like the solo players and like you know better onboarding for guilds like it's just yeah basically every everything um seemed to work in season 2 so you know we're just looking to to scale it up and you kind of make it more robust. I think you know on the go to market side like

we're also thinking of you know starting some more experiments with you know web two players. I think uh actually this season we had a few uh yeah Runescape players that I was talking to that you know they their friends kind of like recommend them the the game like they bought a charter like they figured out somehow to how to on board and you know they started playing obviously with a huge edge right if you if you're good at Runescape like you're you're good at Cambria uh but yeah they they really had fun and it was was yeah sort of asking them some questions about like you know what they felt about experience but I really think like it it is like very compelling like you know it's like if you're good at the game you can earn money, right? It's like that like what what better uh value prop do you have

than that? And so I think yeah, pushing that with, you know, like streamers, like content creators on TikTok. Yeah, there's a lot that we're we're sort of cooking there. Um it's funny like we we actually had a few like kind of test tweets that you sort of went viral like you sharing screenshots of the game like on Runescape Twitter. Um people are calling it like Chinese Runescape. That's that's the the name uh these days. Uh very very funny. But I love that. I love that. Um, and so hang on. So, yeah, obviously season 3 upcoming. Um, the Jewel Arena product, where's that at? Right. Like, I love that this thing can be the 247 thing like in the interim. You know that I was spending a hell of a lot of time and ETH there when it was live. Um, yeah, curious, maybe

you could give us a bit more color on what to expect on that side of the game as well. Yeah. So, we've been working on V2 of Dual Arena. Um, bring some of the, you know, we had the Excalibur on chain, right? You know, fully on chain. um some you know improvements to to basically have the the deposits work. So yeah, that should be coming live soon here. Um I think we're we're gonna have it live on Ronin at abstract like with abstract like you know there's session keys basically um so to to avoid the the popups because that was actually one of the more annoying parts where you had to click a popup like to claim and like initially to to put in the wagers. So um yeah, lots of exciting things um coming up there. We'll probably have it live in the the next couple weeks. Um, and yeah,

sorry, just just for people listening uh that aren't familiar with Excalibur, maybe you could give them some context on that. Yeah. Yeah. So, basically a percentage of like there's a fee that's taken like for for each and that kind of builds up a pool. Um, so the Excalibur um pool it Yeah. You know, it kind of just keeps building if if no one wins it. Um, you know, the chance to win is based on the scaling, based on the um the stake. Um, so yeah, it's it's usually pretty pretty huge. Um, once you have Excalibur, you also earn um additionals rewards while you have it.

Um, so it's like a multiplier on top of your on top of your rewards. Um, so until until somebody else wins it, like you're the one with the sword, you're you're you're earning a a higher multiplier. Love it. Um, so yeah, very excited leading up to season 3. Obviously, Jewel Arena V2 launching. um as you mentioned activating a bit more of the broader, you know, go to market with the existing like old school Runescape audience and bringing over some content creators. So, yeah, very excited to see how those people continue to convert as you actually um you know, sort of turn on the turn on the cannons, so to speak. Um and then yeah, I'm also curious like uh what um your plans are around the token

piece, right? It's the thing everyone's asking after every time you every time you tweet. Is there anything you can share publicly at this stage or uh or not? Yeah. Yeah. I think I think to the the token is definitely soon. So, uh with a token like I think it's two things, right? Like number one, it's the token's a mainstream product, right? Like you know it's it's kind of like the the rocket fuel, right? In terms of like growing out to you know million users um more than that. Um so I think with with us like we we want the game to be in a state where we're able to scale up to that. Um so I think we're close. I think season two like you know we're with you know 4.5k concurrence I think you know we're we're pretty close to that. Um but you know the other aspect is like you

know making sure that you know in terms of the web two kind of push that you know we have a go to market play that you know and you know ways to to grow that you know can scale right if we put a bunch of you know spend behind it. Um so I think yeah that's number one you know making sure the the game is ready for for um big time. Um but number two is yeah like on the the token piece like um with that like we want the token to basically like I I feel like the token only makes sense if there's kind of significant onchain volume right that's going through the game whether it's dual arena whether it's gold rush um there has to be you know kind of flows of you know capital that you know it just make it the token like you know make sense

right um so yeah we're we're expanding experimenting with the token I think I think what we'll probably do is like kind of do a pseudo token if you will kind of you know set up the game economy, set up the the contracts in a way that you know we can bas basically just experiment right like how would this token work like how's it crew value like um and once like you know some of those experiments right start working and then you know we we can see you know kind of how this would all play and you know there's ideally a flywheel between the token growth as well as um the in gam economy like we'll probably just go for a bigger push there uh but yeah I think at this point it's you know we with with the token itself like probably not going to be integrated in the game

um directly. It's it's like not going to be like you're not going to like try to sync like you know the the token inside the game, right? But it's it's more a factor of like you know with the the kind of value curl like with some of the volume that's going around the game like how do we you know sort of use as like the medium exchange or you know there's there's a variety of things that yeah we're we're working on there. Totally. No, and I agree with not anchoring it into actual gameplay, right? It's far too restrictive at this stage. Um but I think you guys have been nailing the like you know small bursts of iterative stuff go and tweak them again. Um I uh yeah expect uh expect it'll work just just you know just as well um on the token front as well. One one of the

other things I wanted to ask you about your perspective on I I feel like you're probably the single best game example so far of like really pursuing a multi-chain strategy. One of the things that I always loved about that, right, that we've discussed a lot was this idea of like trying to leverage the sort of inherent tribalism in different ecosystems, right? So allow anyone to log in to login via Ronin or Abstract or ETH mainet or whatever it might be, right? And allow people to actually signal that as well, right? So like above the the character logo or something like that. Maybe you could tell us a bit about your experience of deploying on multiple different ecosystems. um where you stand now ecosystem wise and like yeah just any insights you might be able to share with other builders because I think it's uh yeah pretty unique how you're

approaching that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think that would be cool like kind of uh especially in dual arena right having the the tags like you said of of you know like per chain and kind of like um you know having some some of that tribalism in there. Um, yeah, it's it's been tricky. Like I I think for us like we usually it's it's from a very pragmatic like follow DJ liquidity standpoint. It's like where where are DJs like you know currently at ETH because I feel like L2 like UX is so bad right now like you know that it like just trying to have somebody like you know bridge to a different chain or like whatever it is like it's just like too much. Um especially like you know with with some of the more less cryptos savvy sort of users. Um but yeah, I I think

with with with chains like you know right now you know currently on Ronin as well as abstract like both teams are you know incredible like you know both um you know Ronin on the Ronin side like a ton of like gaming experience on the abstract side you just killing on like product and you know the engineering and you know some of the the growth as well like with with distribution. Um it's it's definitely been a little tricky. Um I think you know we there's there's things that you get like kind of um just on a single chain that you know you just don't get with multi-chain. I I I don't even know if it's is really the the best strategy for for the at least the majority of builders. Uh but you know, I think we we have the advantage of having a very, you know, strong community that

basically yeah, are going to follow us to to wherever it is. Um so, you know, we're kind of able to to tap into, you know, various uh sort of pools of of capital. Um, so yeah, I I think I think um yeah, on the Ronin side, like, you know, we have a ton of player liquidity, like a lot of the the stronger guilds, like a lot of these players have, you know, grown up with AXI, right? Uh they've played Pixels, right? They're they're really deep in, you know, sort of the these games. Um so, you know, some of the existing kind of community and connections that they have is amazing. Um and yeah, on the abstract side, it's it's very kind of DJ and sort of liquidity that these guys are are just risking crypto, right? You know, which is perfect. just you know usually

on on chains like yeah the onchain activity is like dead right nobody's doing actually anything of value like they're just shuffling around tokens like you know on DeFi or whatever it is so yeah I think having having experiments um and yeah I think the other thing to consider is just like network effects of like who else is on the chain right you know onchain heroes like it's doing really cool things like there's a lot a lot of other you know sort of games I'm wrote in that are you know um you know the audience like overlap is is pretty huge right so I think yeah That was the other big factor of like, hey, how can we capture some of these audiences? How can we make it, you know, in terms of the the onboarding um pretty smooth. Um so yeah. Yeah.

Very cool. I love it. Yeah. Excited to see how that evolves. Um and uh yeah, I mean there are still many large pockets of onchain DGEN liquidity out there for you to tap, right? Um so excited to see uh excited to see how that evolves in the future. Um I wanted to talk a little bit around like yeah your vision for the future of onchain economies right like um you've thrown out these numbers of like five or 10 bill uh like guild wars or trade wars and economies like where do you see this stuff going right as someone that's been very deep in the weeds uh for many moons now going back to the private server days like yeah how would you like this to evolve how do you think it might evolve? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think with

with these onchain economies, especially ones that are tied to games, like it's really about the significance, right? So like you you want to be playing signi significant games that are onchain. You have your actions reflected on chain and there's kind of this this sense of like oh like you know I'm I'm writing into this this blockchain, right? That's going to live forever, right? And like my exploits, right? It's almost like the the game achievements sort of thing like where you're looking at your achievements and like you know seeing all the things like you you you did. Um so I think yeah there's definitely the the sense of that where you know I think like as these games mature I think there's a lot of you know shots on goal um currently with with various uh MMOs and like various games as well um where yeah I I do I do think it's a very kind

of real possibility that we'll have these like massive billion dollar sort of um yeah basically games play out on chain um I think with that like what onchain provides like not only the you know the hot liquidity that I was talking about before but also you know the being able to have like guilds, right, that are on chain that are, you know, basically, you know, composability like, you know, be be able to to tie into various DeFi protocols or like they have a treasury that's because because with with these games like, you know, essentially they're they're indistinguishable from from in like real life like corporations, right? There's there's some gold, there's some value to be extracted, right? There's some, you know, group of people to coordinate sort of onchain. Um, so, you know, there's some goal, right? So, you know, these treasuries that are like capturing these

these digital sort of uh you know, treasure chests, right? Hordes of wealth, um are yeah, I mean, they they're going to get more and more complex as we go. And that that's really why you know I'm excited to see you know all the guilds that are currently in CRA like some of the sophistication of you know some of the processes involved because yeah I mean that's really what you need to to scale out to these you know billion dollars multi- because you can imagine like these guilds having like you know multi-million dollar treasuries and like they have like assets in inside the game like you know huge cannons or like whatever it is right that are worth like 100k each right and they're kind of like deploying these across you know various like game modes or you know deploying them you know in this yeah Eve Online type, you

know, sovereignty battles. Um, yeah, I think I think it's going to get crazier from here. Um, and I think with the stakes like there there's just a lot more creativity like with, you know, people like playing diplomacy or like, you know, doing unique things on chain to, you know, source liquidity for for the guild like main um onchain actions. Yeah, I I have a tweet uh about like kind of like yeah like the the future vision like you know of and I think prediction markets as well like you know heavily favor um factor into this where you know maybe have like speculators that are trying to like actually influence the outcome of their their prediction market right you know they're they're betting on one player versus the other like you know intervening with in terms of one guild versus the other it's almost like a yeah space sort of drama

like you know in terms of yeah some of the the parties involved so yeah I think very early days still like we have yet to see like some of these these MMOs kind of um come into to full form like you know in a in a form that you know can support some of this uh gameplay but I think yeah I think it's soon I think it's yeah I'm super excited to see how all of that stuff evolves um in particular I think this idea of yeah the super high stakes like you know guild wars vision of where there's like some kind of resource stronghold where you know there's a big bounty and people are competing uh you groups of people who are competing over control of these resource strongholds that actually have like big real money payouts. Like that is going to be so much fun, right? Like

um you got to realize that like the Eve battle in 2021 or whatever it was set the new record um of like most, you know, real world dollar destruction in a video game ever. It was like 378K, right? That's peanut for crypto. That's peanuts for I mean come on. you guys just did more than every day. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Get rug that much for breakfast in crypto. So, um yeah, I think it's going to drive some insanely high stakes and and and very exciting and engaging gameplay. Um because I agree, as you said at the start of the podcast, like, you know, there's way more meaning to this stuff when there's something on the line, right? Um and uh yeah, I really I really believe that.

So, no, very excited to see how all of that uh comes to fruition. Um yeah, I also wanted to ask, you know, from when we first spoke, uh whatever it is like almost three years ago, um yeah, what I I guess what's like the most unexpected component of how your thesis around this stuff has evolved as as the products come into view more? Yeah. Yeah. I think not much has changed, I think, from the the early days. Um I think we we Yeah. A lot of the the assumptions we had were were pretty accurate. Um I think some of the the things that have been unexpected I guess yeah I guess people caring less about like you know the onchain part like you know some of the the you know

uh I own this asset forever or like you know the im immutability of certain things like yeah I think there's there's generally you know some yeah skepticism now in in just like you know like does this actually matter to players right and I think like a lot of it hasn't right um so I think yeah just trying to figure out like you know with the current set of people that do care, right? Like what do they care about, right? How much do they care about? And like what are ways that, you know, we can have gameplay that, you know, kind of feeds into the the the couple things, right, with with onchain economies or with just crypto in general that, you know, are unique, right, to to crypto. I think, yeah, it's it's kind of like a very yeah, realistic, I guess, approach to to crypto gaming. And and the thing

is like the the other thing is like a lot of the you know just the things that we used to talk about right with economies or um crypto gaming like they they kind of like need some time to mature. You need the the actual games or you need the actual communities you you need a lot of this kind of in place for it to to really you know kind of uh yeah for the value to to be apparent. So you know let's say composability right. Um, so yeah, I I think you know like focusing on basically hey like what are the one or two things right that make you know crypto gaming interesting like how can we uniquely like position ourselves right like versus other games because really like you're you're you're all we're everybody here is is competing with web two games right like there's

there's definitely some some advantages right with you know like the the crypto aspect that you know kind of uh make it easier like um or or stand out uh but it's really like a you're you're trying to find like you know We're not trying to like rebuild Runescape, right? Like we're not trying to compete on the quest. We're not trying to compete on the content. Like it's more the sandbox aspect. It's more the economy aspect. It's more the, you know, emergent sort of gameplay, emergent social with the risk breeding social connections. Like, you know, there's a lot of things that, yeah, in terms of like, you know, one of the one or two things to focus on. I think, yeah, focus is definitely, yeah, the the trickiest thing in crypto. So, um, I'd say that that was probably the biggest biggest learning for us. I love

that. And yeah, I totally agree. Um, I think there's obviously been a ton of learnings for the for the sector broadly. Um, I don't know. I probably subscribe to the camp though that I I I don't know. I do think um well firstly I do think that thesis of like you know uh immutability ownership provenence all that kind of stuff that comes on chain like I think it remains to be seen that thesis being validated, right? Um uh ostensibly it's it's been invalidated but I don't think that's the case, right? Because I do think we're only just getting there with the products and and all of that kind of stuff. And when you had the scale of hype that came from that initial wave, like it's only, you know, everything's an action and a reaction, right? Um, so yeah, but I but I'm excited, right? Because I think what

what you're building is a huge uh step in that direction. As I say, once you put the party hats on chain, everything will change. Yeah. No, I'm excited. There's lots of good stuff going on out there. Um, yeah. I I also wanted to ask um Yeah, just some sort of closing questions. curious for your perspective on what like what would you describe what would you say is the most impactful digital experience you've ever had digital experience it's funny because like yeah I think I think for a lot of us like we're kind of like termally online right so I think digital experiences are are you just our experiences right uh but I'd say yeah yeah yeah multiplayer games

like you know Runescape like yeah that first sort of moment and I don't know like as a kid right you know the first video game I played was Runescape. Like, you know, I was at like some some library computer or whatever. But like that first moment of like, you know, in the tutorial island like going down to the dungeon and then, you know, like uh biting some horse like smelting it and then, you know, it was it felt like, you know, a little bit scary, right? It was like a little, you know, like wow, like this is like, you know, dangerous, right? Um, but yeah, like, you know, kind of the full immersion into the world was was kind of that that huge point. So, kind of got hooked ever since. I was like, hey, like I ought to be this these worlds. Uh yeah, as much

as I can. I love that. I uh I really love that. And no, I agree. I remember the first time going down in tutorial and you know freaking killing a freaking rat, getting an arrow and shooting through the fence. It was scary down there. It felt extremely high definition, but of course there was about eight screen. But yeah, that that's I tell you that's one of the funniest things that's occurred to me in recent years is that like there is this huge percentage of the global gamer population that genuinely loves playing like old school graphics nostalgic like you know 2D um you know people are pushing all of this you know RTX rate racing whatever like most people most

people just give give me the pixels you know that's been quite a fun thing to realize but uh but yeah I like that answer Um, well, my next question was going to be favorite game ever, but it feels like it's got to be Runescape, right? Yeah, for sure. For sure. I say do enjoy Age of Empires AoE 2. Um, yeah, that game's a classic. Like, never gets old. Never gets old. Um, there we go. Um, and then yeah, I also wanted to ask, what would you say is a book, article, or sort of like, yeah, game design read um that you'd recommend to aspiring onchain game devs that that was yeah, instrumental in your evolution?

Yeah, I haven't I haven't read too much. Um, I think there's there's this uh series on on YouTube called um I think like critical path or something. they have like these little short, you know, five minute segments on they just interview a variety of, you know, like top top game designers across the industry. Um, that that's been really fun. Like, you know, I I kind of go in the rabbit hole sometimes just like watch like a hundred different like short videos there. Um, because yeah, like you know, you kind of get the breadth of and really like, you know, a lot of a lot of what, you know, people are saying with game design in in web two like games like there's really no difference like it's fundamentally like like you're you're just creating emotions, right? Um, so I think yeah, a lot of the lessons kind of uh, yeah, are

are very useful for for design. Very cool. I like that. You're just creating emotions. There we go. Uh, and then yeah, lastly, I wanted to ask, what's the most important book you've ever read? Most important book I've ever read. Yeah. The the funny thing is like at this point like I like I read a ton like you know, as a kid like you know, pretty much read pretty much every every book I could get my hands on. But I think yeah, I mean at like haven't read read a book in like years at this point. Um so yeah, I I can't actually remember a book that you know I've I've read that yeah has has made a a big impact. Um kind of is a blur at this point. But I think like you as a kid like you know as as you're

reading some of these books like it kind of like gets uh you kind of just like absorb it, right? kind of becomes like some of your personality like how you think like um yeah I think you you kind of like by osmosis like capture capture a lot of it so yeah it's it's the way of the world my friend my attention spans nuked these days as well I'm struggling through a couple of books but uh that's that's been the case for a while but um but there we go Ben I really appreciate you coming on um yeah very excited by what you're building uh yeah season 2 was a massive success and a big testament to every everything you shipped so far. Um, look forward to more of that later this year. Uh, look forward to the Jewel Arena being back and uh, yeah, feel like you guys are

very much leading the charge of these like onchain DGEN games and um, that is one aspect of the crypto gaming thesis that I feel like is being irrefutably validated thanks to you. So, um, yeah, all very exciting and uh, thank you for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me. [Music]