Primer: Sarutobi Sasuke is the Head of Partnerships at Yield Guild Games (YGG) and the Founder of BlackPool Academy. He is a competitive Axie Infinity player, having ranked high on the leaderboards. In this episode of the Zima Red Podcast, he discusses about Axie Infinity and his involvement with YGG and BlackPool.
Origins
Has a tech background
Used to sell enterprise SaaS solutions
Been an avid gamer
Impact Of Gaming On Society
Gaming has become more ubiquitous
Everyone has access to gaming titles on their mobile phones
Processing power has been increasing while cost has been decreasing. Gaming becomes more accessible to people
Change in people's outlook on video games
Gaming as a profession is becoming more accepted
Same thing for cryptocurrencies. Used to be viewed as a place for crazy hobbyists, anarchists, technologists, and cypherpunks. Now people find crypto as a cool place to be in
"So it's like the rebels of today are like the cool kids of tomorrow." - Andrew Steinwold
Initial Attraction To Crypto
Initially attracted due to the financial gain
Started to explore the underlying technology, the implications, and the use cases and found that it resonates with him
"I really think that the community in crypto is just crazy, like the kind of the drama, the madness, the memes, the anon cartoon characters on Twitter, I think the kind of just the pure craziness of it all, has definitely kind of helped to kind of stick me and allow me to stay in the space." - Sarutobi Sasuke
A big Sci-Fi fan. Observing how these technologies develop over time
How He Learned About NFTs
In 2017/2018, people were investing in crypto because of the hype
For himself, he was investing time. He did his research and found out about NFTs
Listened to an Anthony Pompliano podcast where the invited guest was Delphi Digital. Delphi Digital made reference to Axie Infinity and he went to research further
Axie Infinity
A play-to-earn blockchain game that allows gamers to collect NFT collectibles known as Axies
Axies are organized into teams of 3s where they battle against other human players in a competitive arena mode or against the computer in the PvE mode
Winning battles will allow gamers to earn Smooth Love Potions (SLPs) which are needed to breed Axies
Likes to try crypto stuff that have a working product (e.g. Uniswap, SushiSwap, Axie Infinity)
What made it stick for him was getting to know the people in the Axie community (e.g. Nate, Gabby Dizon, Cloudwhite)
Realized that he can make a business inside the game
"So that was kind of the idea that we could kind of create these businesses inside you know, this evolving gaming environment was what really kind of gave me that kind of aha moment I suppose." - Sarutobi Sasuke
Winning On The Leaderboards
Initial team he used for PvP was pretty crappy. Had spent $50 on each Axie
Found it expensive in comparison to Triple A gaming titles. Had some concerns doing so
Treated it like research and went into it
Did some more research and consulted other Axie Infinity community members. Invested into a better team and was able to hit the top 200 players on the leaderboard
Found that having a better team is the optimal path to take. Playing with a weak team provides a suboptimal gaming experience
Factors Contributing To Axie Infinity's Rise
Status on leaderboard, the social aspects, play-to-earn feature, and the dedication of the team all contributed to its success
Axie core team has been very strong
Jiho on the community management side
Tech team has been keeping their head down and building tirelessly
He himself is starting to become a prominent member in the Axie Infinity community
Compared to other crypto projects, the Axie community is almost becoming like characters in the game/part of the game story. There are players who are so legendary, they are like a rare Mystic axie, forever enshrined in the history of Axie Infinity
High level of trust among the Discord community. Community was more than willing to help anybody
"What am I doing here? Am I really gonna do this? Like, am I really gonna send some ETH to this cartoon character I have never spoken to before. So there was this amazing kind of level of trust within the Axie community that I think really differentiates it from, you know, crypto in general." - Sarutobi Sasuke
Saw Cloudwhite's youtube videos. Reached out to him on Twitter and he introduced him to the community
Gameplay Mechanics
PvE
In PvE mode, gamers use their team of 3 Axies to fight against small monsters called Chimera
Upon defeating these monsters, their Axies would level up and become stronger
Progressively, they can move on to later stages to fight stronger monsters
They earn more rewards from defeating stronger monsters
Extremely challenging PvE section towards the end
PvP
No level system at the PvP side
Each Axie has 4 cards. Used to attack or defend against other Axies
Quite intricate and complex card game battle between two players
Game has an energy mechanic. Using cards cost energy. So the player has to properly time and understand the energy levels of their opponent and themselves
To climb the leaderboards, people design teams that are capable of defeating the currently most successful teams
PvP is based on complexity and skill. It's not where someone can pay to win
Top 100 players have multiple teams to switch into whenever the meta of the game changes
Axie Classes
9 classes: Beast, Aquatic, Plant, Bird, Bug, Reptile, Mech, Dawn, and Dusk
The Mech, Dawn, and Dusk Axies do not have their class-specific cards yet. Will make the game more intricate and complex when they are eventually introduced
Interbreeding axies of different classes is a complex thing that most players are not aware of:
Go for high purity classes, gaining certain buffs for having a high degree of purity
Mix breeding to introduce unique move sets from different classes
Land Gameplay
Could be compared to Farmville with battling mechanics of the original game
Owned a plot of land and played the pre-alpha of the land gameplay
Developing your land plots and putting objects and items on them. Has a dungeon crawling element where monsters in the dungeon can be defeated to win prizes
Ability for people to raid other people's land
Will large guilds (Yield Guild, BlackPool, etc.) ally with one another or battle each other over resources?
Land has been profitable from a business point-of-view
Play-To-Earn Mechanics
Breeding new Axies require burning SLPs
To get SLPs, one has to play the game
People who want to create an Axie breeding business has to buy SLPs. This increases the demand for players to play the game and grind out SLPs
"As players want to play the game, to mint this SLP, it creates the demand for Axies, which in turn creates the demand for SLP." - Sarutobi Sasuke
Axie Scholarship
Axie Scholarships involve managers renting out their Axies to scholars. Scholars play the game to farm SLPs, with managers taking a cut of the earnings.
Starting an Axie Scholarship has an impressive ROI
Glad to see that the majority of scholarship managers are ethical (70% earnings to scholar, 30% to manager)
Even with the heavy weightage to the scholar, it is still extremely profitable for the scholarship manager
Enjoys seeing the Discord community grow in an Axie Scholarship program
As play-to-earn evolves and new games that are compatible with a scholarship model arrive on the scene, they can onboard their large player base to the new game
"Like, if I invest in more NFT assets that are kind of compatible with the scholarship model, I will straightaway have this kind of player base ready to deploy, this human capital ready to deploy into these games." - Sarutobi Sasuke
Control Of Axies In A Scholarship Program
The game is played off-chain using a username and password system
Do not need access to the underlying cryptocurrency wallet
This creates a secure mechanism for the Axie owners to allow others to play the game without endangering their assets
This mechanism is unfairly weighted to the owners of the Axies since they can rug their scholars
Unfortunately, there has been such cases
As scholarship leaders, they have massive responsibility to behave ethically and make this a safe space for players
Axie Infinity's Success
Think that their success is tied to the scholarship model
Wealthy crypto investors can reliably invest in Axies and safely allow them to be used by players
Entrance of gaming guilds and new players feed into this virtuous cycle
A decent team right now cost $1800, which is beyond the budget of some crypto investors
If You Could Improve One Thing About Axie Infinity
Reliability of the game
Increase more servers for the game
Interoperability Of Blockchain Games
Spoken with blockchain gaming devs. Starting to see murmurings of interoperability and partnerships
Blockchain games may mirror DeFi where games are collaborative and composable with one another
Have to attract big NFT investors like Cocobear and draw them in by ensuring that their existing assets are interoperable with the new game
Joining Yield Guild Games And BlackPool
Joined both in parallel
Yield Guild Games (YGG) is a play-to-earn blockchain gaming guild that lowers the barrier to entry to players from all around the world
Followed Gabby's Twitter posts for awhile. Decided to approach him
Nate, his Axie dealer, shared with him about YGG as well
At that time, he was in the process of developing his own guild called Cryptic Scholarship Guild
Offered a head of partnerships role at YGG
BlackPool is aiming to become a tokenized NFT Hedge Fund. Token holders will get rewards in the form of yield that's generated from the various verticals that BlackPool is involved with
He also reached out to Julien Bouteloup. Julien introduced him to the BlackPool Telegram group
He shared with BlackPool that he is building an Axie scholarship
BlackPool took his Cryptic Scholarship Guild into their portfolio. Rebranded as BlackPool Academy
Any News To Share
YGG
Token sale on 27 August 2021 on SushiSwap
BlackPool
Plenty of exciting developments that he cannot reveal
BlackPool is part of a greater ecosystem, which includes StakeDAO, a DEX platform
BlackPool will have a whole range of DeFi strategies available on StakeDAO
Favourite Video Game
Difficult question to answer. Played too many video games and love them for various reasons
From a business point-of-view, it is Axie Infinity
For playing with friends, he likes Tekken and Call of Duty
Really enjoys FPS games and strategy games. Was a big fan of Warcraft 2 and Command & Conquer
Recently enjoyed The Last of Us Part II
Single Favourite NFT
YGG Founders' Coin
Genesis Metakey
Most Controversial Thought On NFTs
NFTs are going to be the single largest mechanism for onboarding the next million users to crypto
Bitcoin Maximalists and staunch DeFi guys have not realized the power that gaming has on onboarding people to crypto
NFTs and the tokens inside NFT gaming projects would completely decouple from the greater crypto market
World Of NFTs In 3 Years
NFTs will be ubiquitous
Mainstream studios will try to jump into the crypto space but it will be a big challenge for some of them
"One thing that I think is amazing is that, like I have Axie scholars that didn't have bank accounts when I onboarded them in November, they still don't have bank accounts, but they probably have like two or three crypto wallets that then allow them to hold NFTs." - Sarutobi Sasuke
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