The Battle for DeFi & Owning Your Game| Splinterlands AMA

Splinterlands co-founder Aggroed is sure that NFT based games and games are some of the fastest ways to get people into crypto. Not everyone wants to enter crypto for the first time and go full ape into a novel Defi token. Blockchain gaming is a one way valve. As players experience asset ownership, it changes the way they look at games.

This Slogging thread by Akasha Rose, Katarina Andrejević, Aggroed Lighthacker, Carrie Allen, Oliver Wendell, Justin Roberti and Limarc Ambalina occurred in slogging's official #amas channel, and has been edited for readability.

Let's welcome the Splinterlands team for an AMA. Splinterlands is the next generation of collectible card games. It allows players to collect, trade, and battle with provably scarce digital collectibles with real world value. Every battle is a unique challenge that consists of dynamically created combat rules, a timed team building session, and the battle itself. Splinterlands combines the collectability and resale value of physical card games with the convenience and speed of a digital game. Splinterlands is Available on PC, Android & iOS.

The team Aggroed Lighthacker, Carrie Allen, Chris Roberts join us here to answer your questions about the future of gaming, blockchain and NFTs. Are you ready to battle? Let's open this up!
The thread will be open for the next 48 hours. 😄

Hey Splinterlands! From what I can see, you have quite a versatile choice of characters in your cards. How did you go about creating them and are there some storylines related to different editions?

Please also welcome Sarah Nguyen DYGYCON Event Coordinator

Hi Katarina Andrejević We have a lot of creative talent in the game. Much of this has come from the crypto community that comprises the game. We've written a 200+ page book that outlines the different teams in the game, and that was derived from a writing contest with our community members. it's lead to a varied cast of characters, a history of the world, and a rich story telling environment.

Hi Katarina Andrejević
Chris Roberts is the content director and can literally create magical masterpieces within moments. It's amazing the new creatures and places he brings into existence with such ease. It's always so exciting as new characters are 'born', starting with the ideas of Chris and then really coming to life with our art team. ❤

We often hear that in some crypto economies, the rich only get richer, stake gets consolidated and centralized over time, will Splinterlands be different, in that late-comers, the less-resourced can derive value from Splinterlands in a way that is equitable and transparent?

One of my favorite parts of the Splinterlands ecosystems is our ability to rent and delegate cards. We have plenty of wealthy accounts working with less fortunate players. Together they earn: one with their labor and one with their assets. It really allows tons of people in the ecosystem to find a path to success. It also reduces the barrier to entry in the game.

Aggroed Lighthacker, blockchain gaming companies were among the first to use NFTs. Goodluck3 were letting you raise CryptoOinks which were erc20 tokens 5 years ago. But 2021 has been an explosion of interest. Has the NFT craze changed your approach? What is the secondary market like for in-game assets?

Aggroed Lighthacker to build on your response to Oliver Wendell is this comparable to token leasing?

Aggroed Lighthacker how plot heavy is the game? How many active daily users? Is it a plot driven card game with instanced missions and seasonal events like fail betters fallen London? Is the plot crowdsourced on an ongoing basis?

Justin Roberti We formed in 2018. We've been here a while, and we've always believed in the power of NFTs. It goes beyond programable money into programable assets, and the use cases are endless. I think we're seeing major brands taking crypto seriously, add successful projects to that, and we're seeing billion dollar companies form. Our mission hasn't changed in this process though. We're here to onboard new users into crypto with our game.

Justin Roberti It is a type of token leasing. Often times people are doing Defi with fungible tokens. We're essentially doing Defi with non-fungible tokens. Many of the same types of activities can apply, but we have much finer control through hundreds of types of cards rather than 1 fungible token.

Justin Roberti The gameplay isn't terribly plot heavy, but we have a base to go from to make future games more plot heavy, incorporate non-game content, and create fun and engaging story arcs behind characters.

Aggroed Lighthacker is there still a mechanism for user-sourced world building? Is your lore recorded on blockchain (which can make the almost inevitable occasional retconed plotline harder to do maybe?)

There's an explosion of gaming NFT blockchain platforms at the moment Aggroed Lighthacker. What makes Splinterlands different from your competitors? And how do you see gaming as contributing to mass adoption of cryptocurrency in the long run?

Justin Roberti we have a series of contests people have participated in to contribute. It's not constantly available though. Many parts of the lore are on the chain. Not all of it is though.

Akasha Rose Splinterlands didn't try to copy other successful games. Our goal was to make something where someone who plays similar games would say "Hey, that look just like (some other trading card game I play)," and then after spending 5 minutes say "woah, this is totally different." Many of the mainstream games are turn by turn. We're autoplay. A mainstream game takes 20-40 minutes to play. We take 2-3.

We built Splinterlands because we think gaming is a natural transition to crypto. A gamer is already familiar with computers, hardware, and usually multiple currencies and inventory. All that's changed with crypto is that you now own it all and can sell it when you're done.

Aggroed Lighthacker how does having the game on blockchain reduce friction and improve the customer experience for the players?

Hey Splinterlands team! Have you found that your playerbase is mostly blockchain enthusiasts or is it mostly card game fans or a combination of both?

Hi Limarc Ambalina 🙂
Definitely a majority of blockchain enthusiasts. Most found our game in beginning solely from being interested in crypto and blockchain. However, we are starting to see more traditional gamers catch the "Splinterlands bug". 😉

Akasha Rose Games on blockchain are usually much harder to figure out. Splinterlands has gone to great lengths to make it as easy to transition from traditional games to blockchain games. In many games you have to own crypto first to be able to play. For a new person in the USA that means going to Coinbase, purchasing ETH, downloading metamask, transferring eth and then registering. It's a huge lift. We just ask for a username and password and folks can pay with a credit card.

It's probably not noticed enough, that just having a payment gateway like PayPal in the game, lends legitimacy to the SL platform, in that, the game must meet certain standards, since chargebacks are a real thing. Do the other popular blockchain games have credit card processing in-game?

How does the team see NFT gaming as helping with mass adoption and learning about crypto? What impact will NFT gaming have on the unbanked?

I know this AMA is about Splinterlands, but I'm wondering: do you have any other projects or games in the pipeline?

Also, what do you think needs to happen before blockchain gaming becomes mainstream and the games running on blockchain or games that use NFTs will become a major part of the gaming market?

Oliver Wendell we've had to deal with a bunch of chargebacks since the beginning. We're now integrating services that will require some identification for large fiat purchases.

Akasha Rose NFT based games and games in general are some of the fastest ways to get people into crypto. Not everyone wants to come in and go full ape into some Defi token. So, we need things that aren't just purely financial. Gaming is a huge sector, and we're not alone thinking it's the best onramp for normies into crypto.

Limarc Ambalina we're going to turn our single game product into a platform for games, and that may involve white labeling the product for a national brand looking to enter the NFT gaming space.

Limarc Ambalina I think it's already happening. NBA Topshot showed that NFTs can have massive appeal and become billion dollar businesses on their own in record time. It started with garbage pail kids, and it's going to keep marching along to nearly every major brand in the country.

In terms of tech it would be good if these blockchains can figure out how to scale well. If you're talking about national franchises will millions of followers you're talking about billions or trillions of transactions per year. That's a big database and scaling is really the most central issue going forward.

Aggroed Lighthacker can you explain how the game mechanics work around a unique item? You said it could be loaned or leased... what's a practical example?

Aggroed Lighthacker how hard is it to add in game objects? Can we commemorate the ama with a bastard sword called Hackernoon slogger? Slogging used to be a term my old gaming group used to mean "hack n slash dungeon crawl" but I have no idea if we made that up : )

NFT gaming gets me really excited too Justin Roberti. I must have spent a small fortune on Pokemon cards as my kids grew up! We don't put enough emphasis on play anymore, and humans learn so much faster when we play.

"In terms of tech it would be good if these blockchains can figure out how to scale well." Good point, but what about in terms of mass adoption? Do we need a marketing push? Do we need gaming youtubers to stop playing Fortnite and Valorant and start playing a blockchain game to push it to the mainstream?

How does Splinterlands start competing with the likes of Hearthstone: https://www.pcgamesn.com/best-pc-card-games

Limarc Ambalina The great thing is that blockchain gaming is a one way valve. As players experience asset ownership it changes the way they look at games. If you're spending thousands of dollars on a game and in one case you can sell your assets, earn while playing, or even increase your wealth while playing vs simply paying thousands for entertainment it's hard to go back.

Limarc Ambalina it's really important to not simply duplicate hearthstone. Hearthstone is a great and really fun game, and if we try to duplicate it on a fraction of the budget, with a fraction of the team, and a fraction of the experience we're going to have a hard time competing. So, our game is and always has been to create a game that looks and feels like trading card games that people grew up with, but that play entirely differently. Familiar enough to be recognizable, but different enough to be something entirely different than what they've experienced in their gaming.

I'd like to thank everybody for questions and your time. It's been a pleasure engaging with you all. For the readers that are interested in our game please visit us at http://splinterlands.com and join our active community at http://discord.splinterlands.com.