Primer: Jason Brink is the President of Blockchain in Gala Games, an ecosystem of games. He shares his interesting background in blockchain and foreign aid and how he eventually landed up in Gala Games. He takes us through the various aspects of the Gala Games ecosystem, giving us a broad overview of the platform.
Background
Came into the blockchain space in 2014
Wrote a paper on the use of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to fix some of the problems that are endemic to foreign aid
Got an award from the Global Development Network - Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for that
President of Blockchain in Gala Games
Blockchain And Foreign Aid
He's the type of person who will read about things that he finds interesting
In 2014, nobody was paying attention to blockchain
At that time, he was living in Thailand and was working as an academic consultant
Was looking up essays on Google and the recommended ads showed him a call for papers for the Global Development Network
Before that, he had done a lot of work in foreign aid:
Post-earthquake Haiti
Peru
Saw firsthand how badly foreign aid was managed
Had 8 hours to complete the essay. Decided to use blockchain technology as a novel way to address the problem
A few months later, he received a call from them. His essay is the only one that took a different approach
His Journey Post-2014
Connected with them and started working on various projects
Has a Marcomms role that involves explaining highly technical things in a very simple way to people
Did work with ReddCoin, Verge, etc.
Kept working in that capacity because he believed in the space
One of the projects that he was involved in was called Quoxent. Project is currently idle
"The way that I see myself is as one of the people who takes this kind of messy space and builds a real thing out of it, a real legitimate thing." - Jason Brink
Early last year, he was talking to his friend, Eric Schiermeyer, the founder of Gala Games
Found ways to improve Gala Games' website and social media handles. Was invited to join them
"I mean, it's about finding ways that you can contribute value to the world seeing something and saying, hey, you know what, I can make this better, I can leave this better." - Jason Brink
First Impressions Of Gala Games
First reaction was that he loved the idea of game ownership
Had written a paper on player ownership of in-game items before. This was before the time of CryptoKitties
95% of blockchain projects have great ideas, but are not able to execute those ideas in a real world business context. Joined Gala Games because they can execute on their ideas
When he hopped on to a Gala Games Zoom call, he saw that there are actual developers working and building stuff
Gala Games
One liner for Gala Games: We are here to give power back to the gamers
Most of the people working for Gala Games are from the games industry, using blockchain as part of their tech stack. This is very different from a blockchain company that tries to make games
A lot of people who has joined them are established figures in the gaming industry
Gaming Company Using Blockchain VS Blockchain Company Building Games
Half of "blockchain games" are not games, but are Gacha slot machines with some sort of economic component tied in. If people were not paid to do it, they would not play it
Play is at the very root of what makes us human
In anthropological writings on early humans, they work 4 hours a day on average. In today's world, people work a minimum of 8 hours. People have forgotten how to play and the importance of it
The COVID pandemic made plenty of people jobless. These people turned to play-to-earn games to put food on the table. This brings them back to the same spot where they started, having a job and grinding for a living
Gala Games wants to make games that are fun, that people would love to play
Every game is pay-to-win. The question is what the gamer is paying in:
Paying in money
Paying in time. A highly skilled player has put in time to get to what he/she is today
"Everything is pay to win, what are you going to pay? You're going to pay in money, you're going to pay in time, you're going to pay in sweat, you're gonna pay, you're gonna pay in something, nothing's free." - Jason Brink
They are creating an ecosystem where people who want to pay in money can pass that value on to people who want to pay in time. This is the core transaction of a play-to-earn game
Most crypto games do not want to acknowledge this fact (pay-to-win)
When Triple A game developers enter this space, the games that will be introduced will become more complex. There will be a lot more work towards making the game rewarding in terms of fun as well as monetary benefits
Play-To-Give
Excited about the concept of play-to-give
Had an AMA on their partnership with Opera, the browser, and Mercy Corp Ventures, a well-known global charity
Created a building called the Sanctuary in-game. Players gain a certain amount of starter materials that can help them in the game
A certain percentage of the resources collected over the next 7 days goes back to that building
Those resources could be given out or sold on secondary markets and given out to charity
Allows players not just play-to-earn, but to play to give to a cause
Large Gaming Companies And The NFT Gaming Space
The larger an organization is, the harder it is for them to pivot and go in a new direction
They recognize the tremendous value here but have a very hard time pivoting to this space
"We've kind of like bought into this idea that that's okay for us to spend money on something that's just a database entry. Why are we doing that when we all know that there's a better way. And that's what people are beginning to kind of wake up to, and even these very big game companies are realising like, oh crap, they're really onto something here." - Jason Brink
Tokenization Changing The Gaming Space
Game developers have been working on game economies for a very long time
Traditional games have a closed loop system
When developing games for the blockchain space, game developers have to be more careful about the ecosystems that they are setting up
Eventually, he foresees that tokens, tokenomics, blockchain, fungible tokens, and NFTs are going to be how we are going to build the system. People will not think about it as blockchain; it's just going to be blockchain by default
Games In The Gala Games Ecosystem
Develop some of their games internally
Town Star was their first game on the platform
Mirandus is an internal project
They also work with game developers around the world. Worked with GAMEDIA to produce Spider Tanks
These are traditional game development companies who approach Gala Games for their blockchain expertise
Spider Tanks
A brawler/MOBA game
Own Spider Tanks, which are spider-shaped tanks, and fight one another
Use resources to upgrade your tanks
Getting ready to release information about the land ecosystem and how all of that is going to work
Recently did a test play with a few thousand people from their community
Town Star
Their first internal game. Produced by Michael McCarthy and his team
A town building farming simulation
There are people who go deep into the strategy of the game and share spreadsheets that they have created to project how many points they are going to be able to get
Gave away a million dollars in May to players. There were people in the community who were able to purchase their homes using their winnings
Fortified
A tower defense game that is still in development
Players build towers to defend against enemies that come in from portals
Echoes of Empire
Developed by Ion Games
A space 4X strategy game
4X stands for Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate. Best known example in this genre is Civilization
Mirandus
MMO RPG with an entirely player-driven economy based around a medieval feudal system
Mirandus is a deep simulation with multiple layers
First layer is a mirror web/ecological web
Second layer is a resource layer (e.g. what does it mean to collect rocks and wood?)
Third layer are the characters (e.g. where do we put the player characters?)
Have smaller homesteads all the way to massive citadels
Citadel purchases:
First buyer was Polyient Games. Purchased for $800,000
Second buyer will be announced soon. Purchased for $1.6 mil
Third buyer was Flare Network. Purchased for $3.2 mil
Difficult to give a rough launch date while working in the blockchain space. The team iterates with the feedback from community and launch dates would get shifted based on the feedbacks received
Some stuff would be out this year. Hoping that the large multiplayer release will be ready next year
Gala Nodes
One thing that differentiates them from everyone else is that they have never had an ICO
Most gaming projects have done this, which creates regulatory risk
Instead, they set up a series of node licenses that allow people to buy these licenses and run nodes
By running nodes, they are supporting the network by providing processing power and storage
In return, node operators are rewarded in GALA tokens
NFT data is stored in a distributed manner across all nodes. There won't be cases of NFTs disappearing because the host did not pay their hosting bill
In the long run, there will be game-specific nodes that will handle game-specific workloads
Experimenting with Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC). Using it to render across the entire network
GALA Token
ERC-20 token
Can be obtained through a variety of ways:
Operating a node
Getting it from different exchanges like Uniswap and Pancake Swap
In the long run, the token will exist on a variety of networks
Anticipates that other entities and organizations will use it as a currency for their marketplace
Will Different Games/Products Have Separate Tokens?
Yes, there is nothing worse than a project with a fantastic idea that has hard costs set in their token
If the token value does down, the project ends up handing over something tangible for next to nothing
If the token value goes up, people become unwilling to spend it on in-game items
To make everything work, they will have interlinking ecosystems. While Gala will tie everything together, each game will have their own separate token
Future Of Gaming And Blockchain
There will be a unification of blockchain and gaming after a period of time
"There's not going to be blockchain gaming, there's just going to be gaming. And all gaming will have user ownership of assets because that's what all gaming has." - Jason Brink
Grand 5-10 Year Vision
Believes that they have the ability to become the next Steam
Want to see hundreds of games, all with player-owned assets, integrated with Gala Chain
Any News To Share
GalaCon at Las Vegas in December
Lots of personalities from the gaming space are attending it
Announcements of things that are coming to the platform both before and after the event
Really cool stuff that will be happening in relation to Mirandus during the event
Triple A gaming titles coming to the blockchain space. An example is a FPS game
Favourite Video Game
Final Fantasy 7
Had crap graphics but the story and the gameplay was incredibly compelling
Other favourite series of games would be the Fallout series
He is privileged to work with some of the people who were involved in the creation of those games
Single Favourite NFT
Owns quite a few buildings, shops, and deeds for Mirandus
Owns a couple of Hashmasks
Owns several VOX
VOX: Avatars That DeFi. There's 8888 of them. They are avatars that are inspired by Town Star and are randomly generated. Each of them has certain abilities based on their rarity. Players will be able to lock them with Gala to generate VOX coin
Most Controversial Thought On The NFT Space
Loves NFTs, but there's a lot of trash out there
Thinks that there is a degree of collusion that drives the value of some NFTs up
Some projects will succeed tremendously while a lot of projects will fade away
If He Could Change Something In The Space
Ethereum's gas fee issues. It is hampering a lot of movement in the space
NFT Ecosystem In 3 Years
Going to be a shakeout in the blockchain collectible space, same like what had happened during the ICO craze
Legitimate projects will continue building while the rest will fizzle out
After the shakeout, there will be innovation in the space
NFTs will start to move to different chains. Thinks that Flare, Polygon, and Gala will become heavy hitters in the NFT space
Larger acceptance of the concept of NFT art. May lead to a mass onboarding of new users
On-chain photography/selfie to verify user identity to counteract deep fakes
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