Zima Red ep 123: Mack Flavelle - Creating CryptoKitties & Pushing NFTs Forward
Primer: Mack Flavelle is an OG. He has a hand in creating the many iconic NFTs you see today — CryptoKitties, NBA Top Shot, Stoner Cats, and many more. Enjoy the winding path that he took in this episode of the Zima Red podcast.
Background
Worked at an innovation foundry called Axiom Zen in 2017
Was in charge of consumer apps
Roham, the founder of Axiom Zen, shifted the firm’s focus towards blockchain
Came across CryptoPunks and wanted to create something similar
They created the ERC-721 standard and made CryptoKitties
Their Reaction To The CryptoKitties Launch
The initial CryptoKitties team consisted of 3 people:
Fabiano
Dieter
Mack
By the time of the launch, their team expanded to 12 people
Went to ETHWaterloo. People were able to get their cats from them
Their project became featured in Motherboard, a tech publication
Started a Telegram group. The group grew to a 1000 people
Opened CryptoKitties to other people in Axiom Zen that were not working on the project
Subsequently, they opened it to the alpha group, which consisted of people who were in Telegram
A few hours after launching, a cat was sold for $30,000. A couple of hours later, the cat was sold for $100,000
Their site was crashing from the load
Had to find a way to provide differentiation among the cats
Transformation From Axiom Zen To Dapper Labs
Roham announced that they were going to start a new company called Dapper Labs
Mack was given the roles of Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer
Had a raise from a16z
Finally had the chance to meet Chris Dixon
Roham identified 3 problems:
Scalability
Accessibility
Content
Mack was tasked to solve the content problem
They created the Dapper wallet and the Flow blockchain
Eventually left Dapper Labs to make his own video games
Created Big Head Club afterwards
Cheeze Wizards And NBA Top Shot
Cheeze Wizards
After CryptoKitties, people started copying them
“Of course, you should fucking copy us, but then do much better, like at least +1 but more like +5 of us, don't just do exactly what we did with shittier art and shittier smart contracts.”
- Mack Flavelle
Wanted to find a new angle and came up with Cheeze Wizards, a rock-paper-scissors with strange art
Franky, his good friend, did the original art for Cheeze Wizards. Franky went on to do the art for SupDucks
NBA Top Shot
Was speaking to NBA and realized that having a major IP would be advantageous
NBA Top Shot’s Launch And People’s Reaction To It
He had already left Dapper Labs at that point
Doesn’t want to comment as it is secondhand info
Making Video Games To Creating Big Head Club
After Dapper Labs, he went to work for East Side games, a gaming company that belonged to his friend, Jason Bailey
Jason has been very against crypto
Entered as a senior game designer but was reassigned to be executive VP of IP because of his sales ability
6 months in, his friends invited him to host NFT talks on Clubhouse
One day, Jason Bailey became very interested in NFTs
As Mack refused to quit from his job, Jason had to fire him and invest in his next project
Founded Big Head Club with his sister-in-law and Jon Howard
Big Head Club
Wanted to make strange and marvellous NFTs that stand the test of time
Team of 10
Created the Stoner Cats, Oni Ronin, and Ghostbusters collections, among many others
Built a reservation system into their next NFT, to prevent gas wars
Oni Ronin
An NFT collection celebrating samurai culture
Read a book about Japanese death poetry — Samurai wanted to live and die well
One way to die well is to write a haiku that captures the spirit of your life as close as possible
Paid a translator to name all the attributes in Japanese on OpenSea
Each NFT has a death poem written in smoke behind the Samurai. They are real historical haiku
Ronin who have lost their way are consumed by oni in death
To find out if your ronin is truly noble, you can send it to the Trial of Ascension
If they triumph, they will turn into a golden Ronin
If they fail, they will turn in a fallen Ronin that consists of different rarities
Either way, you also get to hear the haiku being recited by Japanese voice actors
Getting a comic made in Japan
Created an education program for those owning the Oni Ronin NFT (e.g. flower arranging classes, Japanese language lessons, meditation, haiku lessons, a university professor teaching Japanese history)
Have a Kitsune airdrop coming this month
Have a boat game coming up soon
Ghostbusters NFT
The Ghostbusters team wanted to make Mini Stay-Puft NFTs
Mini Stay-Pufts travel in mobs
The team created a special mob consisting of 500 Mini Stay-Pufts
The mob will visit any wallet that holds a Mini Stay-Puft NFT
The team also made and gave away Ghost Trap NFTs
When the mob visits your wallet, you can go to their website and use the Ghost Trap NFT to capture a member of the mob, earning you a free NFT
“That is some cool ass shit that nobody's ever seen before. And nobody's ever done again. And I hope people do and we're going to figure out how to give away that code so that more people use that kind of innovation because we want people to build on top of it.”
- Mack Flavelle
Interesting Thing He’s Working On
Next thing they are doing is a boat game
It involves betrayal
Have to own a PFP to play the game
There are 2 boats, each having 10,000 gold on them
A giant tentacle tsunami wave will chase both boats
To make your boat go faster, you have to throw gold off your boat
There’s a prize at the end, with your portion of the prize equivalent to how much gold you have left as an individual
Have to fight amongst your team as to who throws what amount, in order to win the other team and to have some reward for yourself
The prize will be some sort of fungible token
Their Collectible Card Game (CCG)
Thinking of building a CCG that brings all of the PFPs together
Is Pay-To-Win A Concern?
Pay-to-win is a Western-centric view of gaming
Most people do not understand the history of free-to-play games
In China, 1 week before the launch of a game, a pirated version would already be available
Chinese game makers coped with piracy by offering a client-server model where the strongest items can only be bought on the official servers
The rarest and most elite NFTs do not need help. It is the normal NFTs that become more valuable when they are incorporated into games
What Makes NFTs So Appealing?
People think that NFTs are easy money
People love ownership
Tribalism And NFTs
Know of a book titled Bowling Alone
After World War II, there is a rise of the middle class and the suburbanization of America
People started bowling alone as it’s nearly impossible to make friends as an adult
The internet made people constantly available, but not close to one another
People started to define themselves by their taste and culture, a byproduct of having more time to care for those things
The internet made it easy to find your tribe online
It also leads to crazy tribalism
NFTs enable people to indicate that they are part of a tribe
“From a distance, you're like, dude, you guys are all the same. From the inside. you're like, no, no, no, no, we're different and I'm better. That is the tyranny of small differences. And online, the tyranny of small differences has created mountains of small differences.”
- Mack Flavelle
Is There A Possibility That NFTs Could Help With The Tribalism?
After the rise of Stoner Cats, people started to be very mean to him online
Got real salty and wanted to deal with his anger and frustration
Thought of creating Forgiveness NFTs where him and the person he is angry at both send some money to charity to dissolve their anger through a communal act of benevolence
Has high hopes but low expectations
Most Controversial Thought
There’s not enough PFPs yet for the 7 billion people on earth
If He Has Unlimited Money And Cannot Work On What He’s Doing Right Now, What Would He Do?
Feels that he doesn’t have enough time with his young children
Would like to own a daycare and spend an hour each day learning from those children
If He Can Improve One Thing In The Space
Onboarding and accessibility
Who Does He Look Up To And Why?
His wife — wisest person he knows
His business partner — teaches him how to become a better person
Roham — for his vision
Dieter — for his incredible mind
Maya Angelou — for her quote “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
NFT Ecosystem In 3 Years
People will stop talking about NFTs and Web3
Instead, they will talk about themselves, their identities, and the things they love
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