"Don’t say: the rewards are dropping, say that winter is coming"
SIDELINED ALPHA 94
The Founder Diaries pt. 2.
In this week’s edition of The Founder Diaries, we summarized the best quotes and takeaways from two conversations we had on our show, Sidelined:
Jihoz (Axie Infinity and Ronin)
Abhi (AP Collective)
Down below, you’ll also find posts of the highlights in video if you prefer that format.
WaifuSweeper introduced a new revive feature this week:
“For a small energy cost, you can now revive your current run exactly where you fell. Keep your loot, finish the fight, and maintain your win streak!”
Watch the video to see how it works ↓
Sponsored by YGG Play
Jihoz
Jihoz is the co-founder of Axie Infinity, which is in the midst of developing Atia’s Legacy, and recently released the 2nd playtest. During this conversation, Jihoz shared his insights on game design and tokenomics:
“What prevents them (players) from quitting when they lose their ship? […] He (Hilmar Petursson) said that the guild mechanic and the social mechanics are really important for that. First of all, players feel like they’re contributing to something…the guilds also have systems of insurance, which will help you replace your stuff in the case of loss”
“When you do the economic balancing, don’t say that you’re doing that. Always interweave that with lore, so don’t say: the rewards are dropping, say that winter is coming. He really stressed this idea of emotion. He said that every sink in EVE Online is very closely tied to greed, wrath, anger, or love”
Tie the lore to economic balancing (emissions, sinks, burns, etc.), and in some cases, eventize them. Make it an experience that the players can join, rally around, so you also control the narrative of what changes.
“We've been able to get rid of 95% of all the sybils from the system and around a 50% in sell pressure from game rewards so far (with the use of bAXS)”
Probably one of the first sets of hard numbers on how Apptokens can be beneficial? It’d be interesting to see how they can be used to attract Web2-users instead, as I believe they’re a more potent tool for that audience.
“Once you’ve graduated from that point (initial community distribution), you have to be really careful in how you’re emitting supply. You want to continue to incentivize people, but if you can make sure that these tokens are going to long-term aligned users via reputation. If you can make sure that they’re actually using the tokens for the things that you want them to do…you start fixing and addressing a lot of the issues of gaming tokens”
What Jihoz is saying here is that you want to start with a relatively “broad” distribution of tokens, and follow up with a more curated (aligned) approach. I do still think that the initial distribution (1st airdrop) is still often largely overlooked in terms of importance.
Abhi
Abhi is the founder of APCollective, a growth marketing agency, with roots in crypto gaming. This wasn’t your usual gaming conversation, as Abhi shared insights on marketing, distribution, CT, and more:
“If I post something on Twitter tomorrow, no one will remember it in a week. If I post a press release, maybe it won’t convert on D1, but people will still be able to see that when they search my project a year from now. So, in terms of producing content on Twitter that doesn’t convert, and the short-term lifecycle around dropping a hype-trailer, to me, that’s all sort of dead…”
You can’t rely on Twitter for evergreen content. Build a library of mid-funnel resources (blogs, YT videos, press releases, etc.) to create long-term discoverability and, equally important, trust.
“The biggest thing about AI or tech at the moment: development, ideation, and production have been completely abstracted in terms of difficulty, costs, etc. But distribution, users, and revenue are really difficult to achieve, which is why I’ve been using words like ROAS, because that’s what AI/tech teams are looking at”
Marketing in crypto has been largely about guerrilla tactics and community building in the past few years. Not so much about traditional marketing. That’s likely going to change, as relying on CT for users isn’t viable anymore, and crypto-companies have to explore channels beyond Twitter.
“There’s someone in there that auto-reviews every post that Raiden (example) ever makes, and anything that he shares in that group is auto-validated based on 6 parameters that we have for botting. So, when we receive a link, we’re able to conduct pretty thorough checks…”
“Spend it (in response to spending your marketing budget) on distribution and A/B test any channels they can to deliver ROAS. Spend a little bit on clipping, on X, on video production, on the distribution of certain narratives, and see what works and what’s sticking. Whenever you see a positive ROI, just re-allocate all of your resources to that specific channel until you stop seeing a positive return, and then expand to the other channels…”
On the topic of A/B testing, it’s worth highlighting the “TikTokification of social”. Guessing with outdated methods of A/B testing isn’t the play anymore. The new playbook is about publishing a high volume of organic content, looking at what outperforms, and running viral posts as ads.
Closing
And that wraps up another week of founder insights. Who’s next? Tune into Sidelined and find out.
As said before, you can visit the article below to get a myriad of insights from builders in the industry on topics ranging from scaling, marketing, liveops, tokens, and much more.
Disclaimer: None of this information should be taken as financial advice. My writings only represent my personal opinions. DYOR. I will hold some of the assets mentioned in this newsletter.