Today's guest of our virtual studio, expert and pioneer in the crypto games industry, Sergey Labutin. Sergey is the executive director of Ether Dale game development studio.
Let's not beat around the bush for a long time and move on to the most important.
Sergey, please tell us a little about you and your team. What influenced the decision to create games using the blockchain? And do you have experience working on such projects?
First of all, I am an enthusiast and I like to engage in new breakthrough technologies. I studied artificial intelligence based on neural networks, created high-loaded online modes for games. The first game can be said created in collaboration with a “friend by misfortune” in 16 years, when he was hospitalized with pneumonia for three weeks. It was a strategy on paper with complex rules and I naively thought that in programming courses I would be taught how to make games. My teacher, when I learned about this idea, advised me to wait for the university. The university also did not help me, it turned out that programming does not mean making games. By the will of fate, I got into a company that was engaged in porting games, I still remember the first nokia 3510i color phone with a screen of all 96х65, and why I only remember it. Next was a long way to blockchain technology. I do this because this technology is at the cutting edge of the latest technology, and this is my passion.
Our first project Ether Quest was a classic startup. These were 
six people who caught fire with the ideas of the blockchain community. We had an amazing experience: we worked seven days a week, without holidays, for 16 hours a day - and the result was a game that we made in just three months and which incorporated the ideology of the blockchain. Then we made a separate project in the form of an experiment CryptoAlchemy, but at that moment we ran out of money for development, and everyone wanted to sleep and eat and suspended work for a while, for me it became an important point to start acting more professionally and organize everything.
I personally approved each candidate, and the first thing I looked at was that a person should strive to create something new, which no one had done before. Also, which is also important, each member of our team has worked in a similar position for a long time and has extensive experience and knowledge in their field.
We now have a person in the 24 team. These are not just people, they are a team of professionals who are building the future now. For more than three months we searched and selected the best of the best, and then spent another month or so to immerse them in the world of the blockchain.
What lessons have you learned from working on Ether Quest?
This was our first game project for the blockchain. We made false assumptions based on the general spirit of the time. That all logic should be in the blockchain, that everyone needs anonymity, that assets will be re-used in different games. We also made a million mistakes when choosing one raw technology instead of another one less crude. We made a lot of mistakes while building the infrastructure of the backend and server code. In fact, we proved on CryptoAlchemy that a different approach and a pool of other technologies work 100 times better and more reliably. I want to make a reservation right away, for those who start punching through the search now, we promised to give 10% from the project to charity, at the moment I doubled the entire amount collected on it from my own money and sent it to good deeds. This was the technology on which we started building the Glitch Goons.
How important is cryptogaming in your opinion for the entire blockchain industry and what obstacles do you see for its development?
Let's see very carefully. Games earn enough, without any blockchain and crypts. Blockchain as a technology should and will be used with one goal in the end, keep a record of possession of something. Whether it is a cadastral record of land ownership or a game sword. Therefore, I believe the blockchain will enter gaming as a method of storing and changing the paradigm from renting an account and items to their possession. The whole history of mankind says that people do not want to use someone else, they want to personally own. Why is there so much fuss about gaming in the blockchain community? It's simple, now people own a crypt, and it is very difficult to spend it in the ordinary world, and blockchain games provide such an opportunity, in the end, no one needs a crypt, everyone needs emotions, and games initially give a huge range of emotions to the player.
Your favorite cryptocurrency?
Bitcoin - you can't write games, but I think that it will become the equivalent of digital gold, its speed limits will further increase its value, no matter how strange it sounds, and also compare with ordinary gold bars. There are also few of them and no one will exchange them for another expensive equivalent, for example, palladium. There is no blockchain for games yet, it will definitely appear in the future 5 years, hardly earlier. Until that moment, you will need to somehow live. I also pin very high hopes on TON, if Pavel Durov succeeds in building a payment system, this will make this blockchain the most promising.
Will it ever happen that the app store and the play market allow you to add games to your app stores that use NFT for crypt sales? Is there an alternative?
Yes, this will happen if there is a demand. It is important here that now the crypt is 0.0000001% of Google’s profits. This is negligible for the giants to notice, but as soon as the numbers grow 100 000 times, Google Blockchain and Google Stable Coin will be born. But such large organizations will never allow working through third-party monetary systems.
Recently, in the community, especially among those who actively use dapps, it seems that ethereum is seriously losing ground. For now, this only affects gambling and “decentralized exchanges”. There is even a segment of players who “in no way” want to play on this platform. In this case, the vast majority of new cryptogames still go on ethereum. What do you think it is connected with, will it continue and what trumps does ethereum have (now or in the future)?
Vitalik Buterin is a fairly well-known person with a good vision of the future. Now it all depends on whether they release a good update. The platform itself is not to blame for the fact that EOS, which thanks to this blockchain gathered 4 000 000 000 dollars, began to deliberately dump the cost of the broadcast, because in one hand a significant share of the ether gathered and, of course, to merge the competitor, who would not use? I do not think that EOS will replace AWS, the concept itself is absurd from the very beginning, but so many people believed it was scary to believe. For games, this is not the best platform, because ultimately their technological problems will increase, and with them the prices of RAM and CPU. However, the games will do for all the blockchains, but under the broadcast of games will be released much more, since the programming language is easier. Those who can really oust him are Tron, Neo and others who have the support of solidity. It is important to understand that at this stage they have a million bugs and I am now talking about the end of 2019 of the year, at best.
You recently launched a game Glitch goons. What inspired you to create this game?
I partially answered above. I love hardcore games, played a lot of browser games at the beginning of 2000, I also like skillful games. Of course, when I can not just play, but create, I want to build on the fact that I can do the best that drives me through life. In my mind to create a game in which I myself will not play, probably the worst occupation in the world. All my life I was engaged in games, once I met a new year playing contra. Therefore, there is no clear occurrence that prompted me, I just could not do otherwise.
What are the key features of the game, what innovative approaches have you used and how can players earn money in it?
I'll start my answer with making money, half of the readers will probably fall off here, the game is a method of getting emotions and a charge of energy, this is not forex. Therefore, here, as in poker, the one with the best understanding and the best strategy will remain in the black. And of course, in order for someone to win, someone must necessarily lose. Now I want to answer about the innovations that we are already bringing to the crypto world. Our first innovative idea was the idea of a multi-blockchain. We presented this idea to the public at a conference in Minsk. Yes, there are already teams that have implemented this concept in life before us, but we are innovators and do not stop in our vision and do not get stuck. The second idea that has grown within the walls of our office is the second generation side-chain. We will also present this to a wide audience at conferences soon, but in short - it is something like a loom in its ideology. A sidechain that records the overall balance change back to the blockchain, not every action. But loom works only in Ethereum, the second generation in our understanding is a third-party multi-blockchain chain. Well, the last thing we are doing is a game that will be completely legal on mobile devices, it is completely free-2-play. Now, to play any blockchain game, you need to pay, but we understand how far this approach is not real. In any other business, they always work for the client and in the car dealership they provide you with a test drive, there are samples in the cosmetics store, even in the market you will always be given a piece of watermelon to taste. I am absolutely confident that free-2-play will become the norm as well. However, it is unlikely that many will be able to repeat our achievement and side-chain will not become a trend, and I also doubt that gameplay, UI / UX will become trends. So far, the one who figured out how to make an account in EOS is considered hardcore by definition, and hardcore are not the people who will pay for the UI. Also, little competition does not force you to do something difficult. Therefore, while there is no demand, there will be no supply, as they say - only business, nothing personal.
What are your future plans for your team and your project?
The main plan is a massive adaptation through a free game on a mobile device, if everything goes according to our plan in 2020, only through our application, we will teach you to use blockchain items over 100 000 people who have not used the crypt at all before. This is more than all players today in all blockchain games. We also plan that we will open the 2.0 side-chain for game creators, and they will be able to create blockchain games without knowing how the blockchain works, developers will be able to simply create an NFT for their game in the user interface and use it through our api. It will also be a step towards mass adaptation, because gaming studios will not have to spend a year to understand and realize how it works, a year is a very big expense, I know it myself, and as soon as we drop it from the equation, there will be a lot more games better quality as well as a wider audience learns about the benefits of blockchain games
Can you name key dates or steps that you would like to share with our readers? Any ads?
At the end of February, we will open the 2.0 side-chain for the record, and in March we will introduce duels for bets. I think after that it will be much better, we will also introduce NPS to the leagues, it will be a character from the history of the world, who will be able to go through the leagues, you will not have to wait for the others, but you will need to swing, because the NPS will be stronger and stronger with each level . Also for these 2 months we are working on improving the first day in the game, it is necessary that more new players remain in the game, and not fall off. Next we connect TRON, Waves, Neo and so on. We are negotiating with these blockchains to advertise us and the base of players would become more and more.
Thanks to Sergey for taking the time and answers to our questions!
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