On August 26th, we hosted an AMA on our Discord with Pikaster, a leading P2E GameFi project coming to BNBChain soon. We took some time to discuss the general crypto market and everything about this promising project. Kevin, Operations Manager of Pikaster, joined the Gametaverse community and had a fun yet sophisticated conversation with us.
Here is a recap of this amazing AMA session:
Session One: GameFi Insights & Pikaster Visions
Q1: How do you see GameFi sector becoming a major branch of the wider crypto universe? What was the initial point of attraction of GameFi?
In 2020, we have begun to notice Axie Infinity's enormous popularity, and this has sparked our interest. Obviously, we would like to participate in sectors that are fast-growing.
DeFi has been fast growing since 2017, and by 2020, it is mainly saturated and leading players within the space have been formed.
The opportunities for DeFi innovations are there, but at a much slower rate as compared to GameFi/NFTs space.
We are excited and constantly paying attention to other spaces in crypto, but GameFi for us is an attractive space to participate - It has elements of tokens, NFTs, and gaming all together, and we feel that there are lot of components to control/innovate.
At the same time, our founding team members consists of outstanding game developers with a wealth of experience in game development. So we thought, it would be a perfect match as we have the expertise, and the timing is right, and our team has that same interest and vision at the exact moment.
That’s how most projects start: people, timing, vision. Our founding team members are specialized in different fields, crypto-natives, coders, marketing, BD etc.
Our vision is that games are the best way to bridge more people from Web2 to Web3, because it is the easiest for the average player to understand. Most gamers are familiar with buying equipment and virtual assets in web2 gaming anyway, and GameFi is nothing dissimilar.
It is a similar logic, but runs on-chain, but what's interesting in web3 gaming is that we provide earnings/returns to gamers for their time and their investment.
Q2: Can you introduce Pikaster and let us know what is special about it?
Pikaster is a leading play-to-earn GameFi project developed by Metaland and powered by Unity Engine. It is built on KuCoin Community Chain (KCC). A card-based battle strategy PvE and PvP game, featuring Pikaster (as NFTs).
The game includes a range of features, including innovative NFTs Staking and Evolution mechanisms, Scholars system, Guilds, World Trees, Marketplace and in-game wallets.
A cool point to mention is the NFTs staking and evolution, releasing in V2.0.0. It is one of the innovations which our team has made. By evolving the NFTs via retired NFTs, it will take out the NFT in the in-game circulations; therefore, generating a deflationary trend overall.
While NFT staking encourages potentially lower NFTs liquidity, which lowers the supplies when NFTs are bred and minted. All in all, these are the ways which the team has innovated in order to balance the in-game economy, to reach sustainability in the long-term.
We care about fair game-play, with players’ earnings generally having a safety-net, and earnings upper-bound is very high.
In-game earnings are correlated to players' skills. We are dedicated to eliminating all kinds of anti-competitive behaviors such as cheating programs.
Obviously, we have also got an exceptional community-base. Our community bonding and interactions are strong, and that we think is really special.
Q3: During the stages of development and marketing, what are some of the unexpected hurdles faced by the team?
During the phase of developments, as early as back in February, there have been a lot of arguments, different views and perspectives about the directions and mechanics of the game.
I guess disagreements are always expected, but the frequency of disagreements is unexpectedly high. Issues such as whether to establish an independent account system, whether to establish a vitality system and an evolutionary mechanism to force NFT consumption etc.
Back in June, we closed our marketplace for almost a month due to upgrades in graphics. Users had to trade in the marketplace in app. That created some anger among our players that we did not expect. However, the team believed the upgrade was necessary and it was worth it in the end.
The hack of one of our in-game wallets was devastating, and another expected event.
However, players are everything to us and therefore we coped with all of our players, reimbursed for all of their losses and moved on.
We strengthened our securities, investigated the culprits, stabilized our token prices through relisting new game tokens etc. All of these were executed immediately without a doubt. Financially-speaking, we took a large hit during the hack obviously, but the hit should never incur on our players.
Or the fact that we were very time-tight for our deployment on BNB chain: we initially thought the process was shorter and quicker to execute, but it was longer than expected.
So our team is dedicated to rushing through the process, meanwhile making sure all our work and communications are maintained at the highest possible level.
Just a reminder: Our INO is on the 29th and listing on DEX 31th of August, so stay tuned!
Q4: What is your business model?
Our main sources of income derive from 3 ways：
A) the unlocking of tokens owned by the team,
B）the fee income from the NFT marketplace(5%) and assets withdrawals and transfers,
C) the income from the INO of NFTs.
Part of these incomes will also be used for user incentives, in buyback and burning in the secondary market. Advertising and co-sponsorship fees will also be one of our important revenue streams.
At this stage, our most important considerations for us are:
A) optimizing the product experiences
B) building the underlying tool infrastructure
C) optimizing the economic system within the in-game and Metaland ecosystems
D) expanding marketing influences to gain support from more users.
E) developing multi-products on multi-chains - our next football-themed game will be releasing BETA this October to match the World Cup! Stay tuned and don't miss out!
These are the foundations of our development, and large-scale commercialization is currently not our main goal. Our team vision from day one is to
A) Build products that people want and like
B) Build with the highest attention to details
C) Users experiences and satisfactions ALWAYS come first.
Q5: What is your opinion on the current GameFi market? Bullish or Bearish? Why?
The general crypto market is bearish, but that is okay, we all COPE. We still think the GameFi sector is bullish overall: ultimately we are a gaming product, the gameplay is always first, as it is a window to attract players.
Closely after, it is players’ earnings. Game token prices are not as susceptive to bull-bear market cycle in general, vs other projects in the field of DeFi or investments related protocols. Our token prices depend largely on minting vs burning of the in-game economy.
And as we said before, we think that gaming is the best way to get more people into web3.0, but GameFi itself is not without its problems:
A) in-game token inflation
B) NFT lasting forever and not retired (NFTs need to be recycled somehow)
C) maintaining players’ earnings in a satisfiable way, while being sustainable
D) continue to release updates and new features to maintain our attraction to players.
These are the problems that we face and combat, as a project builder. Bear markets are when quality projects, like Pikaster or many others, really build on our product, improve player experiences, improve game details, economic model circulations, players’ earnings etc., but most importantly, for projects to really think about, what people need, what users want, what players like.
Session Two: Benefits of Being Early
Q1: Where or how is Pikaster's name inspired?
Everyone must be familiar with Pikachu. That's what inspired our images. You can see many of our NFTs are so cute just like Pikachu. So we choose the "Pika" as the part of its name. And the "ster" from the word "master". Each our NFT is like a pet and waiting for our masters.
These are our new images on BSC.
Q2: What is the benefits for being early investor in your project?
For early investors, they can join our INO on BSC, and the price for INO is $60/NFT, which is affordable to many people. Pikaster is just the first project on Metaland, and our 2nd, 3rd projects are under preparation. Early investors of Pikaster can gain huge benefits to our 2nd and 3rd games.
As we all know, if you invest early, you can earn more.
Q3: Visuals/Graphics from blockchain projects are often disappointing, but you’ve been working hard to develop your gaming graphics. However, 3D visuals are a heavy load on most phones and PCs, so would you tell us what are the minimum technical requirements needed to run a game?
I think the most important thing for running a game is the community. Any projects with good community and many supports will definitely win!
Btw, our game now can perfectly run on PC and mobile (both iOS and Android).
Session Three: Pikaster Updates & Partnerships
Q1: How does the vitality system help the game in the long run?
Vitality system is like there are no forever-existing NFTs anymore. Each NFTs will be burned without any vitality. As we know many projects died of token or NFT inflation. And this can help to prevent the NFT inflation, as well as token inflation.
Burning - earning - burning - earning. That’s what we look for.
Q2: Can we do breeding in the game?
Yes of course, we can. Breeding is like another token burning mechanism in-game. Players can use 2 NFTs and some tokens to breed one new NFT. This is also one way for players to re-gain vitality to earn.
Q3: What partnerships do you currently have? What qualities do you seek in a relationship? Which initiatives or groups are you already connected to?
Currently we are partnered with KuCoin, MojitoSwap, KCC, BSC, BSC Daily, GameFi.org and other many platforms, guilds and DAO.
And recently, we are reaching more platforms on BSC.
For qualities, we want long-term cooperation. And trust is also important for both parties.
Q4: What is the relationship between Pikaster & KuCoin?
KuCoin is Pikaster’s best friend and strategic investor. We 100% trust KuCoin.
KuCoin always supports us in many aspects, such as we launch INO on KuCoin again. in the future we will still keep touch with KuCoin.
Q5: How many NFTs do you plan to release overall? Will it be limited?
On KCC chain, we have 18,000+ original eggs. And for this time on BSC, there will be 5,000 NFTs in INO and also some airdrop to our old investors on KCC chain. All these NFTs will be minted step by step.
Accurate number of the NFTs on BSC will be announced soon. You can follow us on Twitter to get the latest info: twitter.com/PikasterNFT.
At last…
We’re proud of each and everyone in here, showing support and enthusiasm towards our project and Pikaster. Hope you enjoy this recap! Follow us on social media to receive timely news, and stay tuned:
Twitter: twitter.com/GametaverseDAO
Youtube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCDOjqmiPOPAqQYSCUev-I0w
Discord: discord.gg/px9EY6zz2W
Telegram: t.me/gametaverse
About Gametaverse
Gametaverse aims to be the One-Stop GameFi Portal for everyone who wants start their gaming journey. Gametaverse provides users with an easy-to-use, real-time dashboard that aggregates all GameFi data and tracks the entire industry. It also selects individual games which you may want to closely monitor. Gametaverse keeps building customizable yield tracker for popular games, so players and guilds can track their NFT yields and game records.