About Michael Cameron, CEO Game Space
Michael is a stalwart entrepreneur with six successful business ventures. Since entering the blockchain industry in early 2013, he has served as the core founder of numerous projects e.g. GoChip, Unity Labs and Game Space. He has over 9+ years of experience in blockchain and cryptocurrency and over 4 years of Game-fi and Metaverse experience
Michael founded Game Space in February 2022. Game Space provides a unique one-stop, GameFi as a Service (GaaS) SDK to traditional AAA web2 games. Working as a bridge, Game Space helps traditional Web2 games to seamlessly migrate to the blockchain, and take advantage of their game development and distribution, to produce AAA-level GameFi.
The Conversation
This insightful conversation has been excerpted from the recently conducted AMA with Michael and hosted by Adeeb Sayeed, Content Lead, Lysto.gg | Metanomy. The link to the entire conversation is given below
Key Highlights
- Game Space brings a unique mix of Game-fi as a service (GaaS) offerings, ranging from technical solutions to marketing support to web2 games looking to transition seamlessly to web3
- Large web2 companies/ brands will eventually transition to web3 provided the eco-system remains healthy in terms of security and the companies remain true to their mission
- Games should focus on good gameplay rather than worrying about tokens etc.
- Tokenomics and in-game asset creation for games should be kept simple and not over-complicated for a better user experience
- Game Space to create several tournament IPs with large prize pools for its community
Interview Excerpts
Adeeb- Hi Michael. A very warm welcome to our community. Let’s get started with an introduction of yourself and a little bit about Gamespace.
Michael-Thank you, Adeeb. I’ve been in the blockchain/crypto industry for quite a long time, roughly around 10 years. I started in 2013. We started with being a layer one company and then transitioned more into layer two, then Defi and finally into gamify. I’ve been through almost every bear and bull market that exists.
Initially, we set out to provide a technical solution which helps Web 2 gaming companies transition to web3 using our SDK. Our SDK provides quite a lot of functionalities. It provides the ability for games to deploy on chains without any development. So they can do it actually in a dashboard just within a few clicks. Currently, we support around 9 Chains all of which are EVM-compatible. We’re working with a few non-EVM-compatible chains to integrate with them this year.
Beyond that, our SDK can also help gaming companies build white-label NFT marketplaces. The problem with open marketplaces like OpenSea is that they are not suitable or compatible with Game-Fi resulting in high gas fees. With Game-fi the big difference is that NFT assets are not meant to be in hundreds or thousands of dollars. Rather they are meant to be in-game items like swords or game-interactive NFTs, hence not that expensive. We noticed that a lot of games early on were using secondary marketplaces to host their NFTs. Hence when users wanted to transfer or deposit NFTs in the game itself, it was a separate application from OpenSea, resulting in more gas fees which at times was even more than the NFT’s value itself. So we created a white-label solution which allows gaming companies to have their own NFT marketplace directly in the same app that the game exists in. This allows for a much easier user experience for users.
This third element of our SDK is wallet integration. We provide a dashboard which allows gaming companies to manage all of their NFTs, and all of the assets to create new NFTs, mint NFTs, and destroy NFTs.
When we set out we planned to do SDK, and last year we had a lot of growth in terms of user acquisition. We passed 100k registered users on our application. For most of 2022, some of our games were trending in the top 15 in terms of most users / DAU. Not something that we originally set out to do. When we set out we wanted to be a technical foundation to help web2 gaming companies move into web3, but slowly we built up a large and dedicated community. So now, we continue to develop mini-games that have game-fi elements. We focus only on building free-to-play games however we provide NFTs that once purchased can provide better chances of winning. I don’t want to use the pay-to-win, as I am not a big fan of that, but we try to build a healthy eco-system within games, that not only allows us as a company to continue to build and grow but also through our games, we give a lot back to our users and our community. This speaks a lot of truth about how our community has grown so large so fast. This is because we are generous in terms of the games and ecosystems we have built so far. So lots of exciting happened for us in 2022 for Game Space.
Adeeb - I feel like you guys have completely understood what games need in terms of going to web 3 itself. Most of the projects I’ve seen have set out to build marketplaces for web3 games, but you guys are building marketplaces, not one but for every web3 game to have its own marketplace. What’s your thought behind why every game should have its marketplace?
Michael- I think it’s super important. If a game doesn’t have its marketplace, first of all, it will be losing fees to a 3rd party platform. If they take fees and OpenSea takes fees, then it ends up adding less value to the user. Also, they are not capitalising on the best profits for the company. Limiting your costs by having your marketplace allows you to control the cost a bit better.
Game studios are not experts in building something as secure as Game-fi elements. Similarly, blockchain development companies are not experts in building games. So neither of those two things should be built by one person. A lot of gaming studios hire a blockchain CTO to build their NFT marketplace in a short duration leading to a lack of security and incorrect development practices. It is important that games (whether small or big) rather than trying to build their NFT marketplace or build these game-fi elements focus on partnering with companies who provide these solutions. We are definitely not the only ones providing these solutions in the industry, there are competitors in the market.
We are different in the sense that we provide a lot of value to the games that develop on our SDK versus other companies that provide purely technical solutions. We not only provide the SDK and the correct security protocol, but we can also get a lot of user attention and help them sell at the floor price. So there are a lot of extra bonuses that we can provide to game companies who are focussed only on the technical side of things. So we provide a full service — technical solution, marketing, collaboration, user acquisition etc. We can also introduce them to any of our partners e.g. when a game decides to build on BNB, it is important to get support from BNB, be it support in terms of funding through Binance Labs or getting marketing support e.g. BNB promoting them on their game-fi launch-pad or IDO platform. We have deep connections with the top 10 exchanges that can help with the listing and IDO launches. We can add full-service benefits to web3 games trying to launch their games or web2 games trying to upgrade to web3.
To summarize, from a security standpoint, it is important not to rely on some secondary marketplace. The second is to be able to create the most value and ease of use for users rather than sending them to some platform to purchase it and then transfer it. Overall it is important to control the costs and mitigate them for both your users and the profits you are making as a company.
Adeeb- Why should web 2 games likely use web3 technology or port onto web3 services that you primarily provide?
Michael — There are a lot of reasons. I’ve been talking with web2 gaming companies for over a year and a half, about the reasons to move to web3. We have spoken to all sizes of companies. We have noticed that big companies are reluctant to transition into web3 quickly. We can see big brands e.g. Starbucks and Louis Vuitton starting to transition into NFTs and obviously gamification will be added to that. So there is an element of Web 2 brands that have already started transitioning. But the bigger you are, the harder the risks associated with Web3. So a lot of web2 brands are scared and hence not interested to take that leap, also because their web2 business is already fairly successful. However, web2 companies that have lost their competitive edge are the companies that are looking into entering web3 as they would like to innovate be it blockchain or AI or Machine Learning. Web3 is that channel that helps reignite their innovation.
The second reason is that the gaming studios are very user-focused and see the benefit of blockchain as a core technology, and understand that it’s very valuable for Game-fi. Overall it is a good transition, especially for Game-fi along with blockchain has a good synergy with each other, not just for NFT ownership but overall we are going to see web2 and web3 becoming one, maybe in the next 10–15 years such that there should be no difference between Game-Fi and Gaming.
The bear market really didn’t help in the last year with many companies looking at the price of tokens thinking this is not a great time to transition and I don’t disagree with that. However, I think that in the next bull market, Game-fi play a big role. However, the hope is that companies have a long-term strategy to move to web3 and don’t implement tokens for the sake of implementing them in order to earn quick money. Games should focus on great gameplay and not worry about the tokens, tokenomics or earning aspect of it.
Adeeb- I agree. Like we need to get that balance right between the earning aspect to the gameplay aspect. In that sense, what do you think a web2 game should tokenize first? How should that transition happen? If it’s a traditional fun web2 game, which people are just playing without any incentive, how does that game port to web 3 and what are the first things that it would port? Would it be tokens or NFTs or should it even have an earning aspect in the first place? Because it’s already running successfully.
Michael- Every game is different. There are games where tokens make a lot of sense and there are games where they don’t, also there are game genres that just don’t make sense for web 3. Like in the past, we could see trade carding games (TCG), Moba etc, kind of games that were more suitable for gamification than, maybe FPS games. But we will slowly see that transition because the point of game-fi-cation or the use of blockchain being implemented into games is not to use it as a hype word. We are still in that state where companies are using Game-Fi to earn quick money. That hurts the industry. We have seen this in crypto and De-Fi where the new buzzwords get people excited because they can earn money, but it is not healthy.
So web2 gaming looking to transition to web3 should first focus on what they are good at doing i.e building a good game and not really changing the way they think. It’s fairly simple to create tokenomics based on a game. You can think about creating in-game assets as tokens. One can create some type of liquidity, with NFTs and tokens. Keeping tokenomics simple and easy for users to understand is important. We’ve seen in the past a lot of gamified games overcomplicated the tokenomics of a game. So you buy an NFT and it starts to drop. So complicating economics is something that I think we need to stay away from. We need to focus more on simplifying techniques and finding some type of structure that works for different, different genres of games and sort of replicating that as more games enter the industry.
Adeeb- I do think every genre of the game requires a different approach. traditional gaming skins that cost anywhere between 70 to 100 dollars and the speculative value of the NFT skins that cost thousands of dollars, So like there is a big negative of why these very big successful web2 gaming studios wouldn’t want to make a web3 game in the first place. From my interaction, one of them is like, what’s gonna stop gamers from trading skins amongst themselves and not purchasing from developers themselves?
Michael — The example I usually give about this is web 2 games always have been, Web 3 secretly. When you look at web 2 games, a lot of them have secondary marketplaces that are not allowed by the game themselves. The example I always give is of two popular games i.e. World of Warcraft or Runescape. Runescape came out in 1997. In the early days of the games, especially during holidays you were able to get drops. e.g. Santa Hats. After 5–10 years, they made these items tradable. Given that they were not getting produced, these items became a rare commodity. Till today some of these items sell for 10K USD. So the users sell these items offline in a secondary sort of black market as the game doesn’t allow you to sell that asset for real money. It is a great example of why Web3 is incredibly useful for that kind of game.
Adeeb- Agreed. Especially because gamers are evading game devs in that sense and hiding from them and not getting spotted. Let me move on to my next set of questions. Which are the Most bullish web three games out there for you?
Michael-There are a lot of web 3 games that already exist that are pretty good. I mean, I am not a massive Gamer anymore as I was when I was much younger and had a lot more time. But you know, there was once a time when I was fairly competitive in gaming. And I think that that’s why I transitioned into Game-Fi because I have a passion for gaming.
If I were to say which games I think are increasing the standard, increasing the bar for, web three? I think you know, we’ve got a Big Time and Bless Global. I’m not being biased here, but Bless Global is a South Korean gaming studio with over 10 years of experience in game development. They have lots of past successful games that they’ve released. We help them upgrade to web3. Bless Global is a good example of a good web2 game getting into web3.
Adeeb- We’re getting into what the Game Space tournament is. You guys are hosting one tournament, like more about the games and why those games were chosen to be part of your $20,000 tournament.
Michael- Regarding the tournament that we are planning at the moment we haven’t released a whole lot of information about this yet. We were being fairly secret about it for the time being. But we do have a lot of partners that have joined on like some of the leading companies in the web3 space and also, Some interesting web 2 companies that have joined in as well. So at this moment, I won’t release too much information, although we will be releasing it very soon like I’m talking about within a few days. lots of great opportunities for users to play games during the tournament and to earn tokens, NFTs or stablecoin while playing the tournament for themselves.
The reason we do these kinds of tournaments is that we have a fairly large community and good marketing strength. The differences between a web2 and a web3 tournament are like night and day. The tournaments in web 2 are very structured. The prize pools are very big and they’re very exciting.
So we’re trying to structure our tournaments like web2 esports tournament, but with web3 games In 2023, we will try to make more exciting tournaments and events for not only our users but just users in the space in general
Adeeb- Right So what, what’s the format of your tournament? I see that you’re hosting God’s unchained, Splinterlands, and BigTime for this $20k tournament.
Michael- Yeah. So, with each of those partners, they are providing some type of reward for there, within their games e.g. either NFTs or tokens. So, the total prize pool is roughly around 20,000 USD and still growing. We had a few partners confirm just in the last few days that they will be joining as well. Also, we have a few web 2 companies that are providing sort of business credits close to 30,000 USD in credits. This entire event has a pool of like around 50,000 USD and the participants will be able to win these rewards and be able to turn them into real money. So I think that the big focus for us is to create tournaments with good partners, which we’ve never seen before.
Adeeb- It’s pretty huge. 50,000 USD is a huge amount for a web 3 gaming tournament, even with multiple games. Right. So how do players get registered and where do they get started?
Michael- So we will do a pre-sign-up launch here very soon. Within the next few days, users will be able to sign up in advance. So I think a lot of our partners can provide different benefits. We’re looking forward to working with all of our partners to help promote this event. And so once the signup is online, users can sign up and then each day of the tournament there, there will be a certain game that is running during that time. What users have to do is access some type of task that they have to complete from a list of tasks. They will then receive a checkmark or a recognition that they have completed that. And then, if they end up playing all three games during the tournament, they can also join for the grand prize at the end. So we’re creating opportunities where users can earn by just joining the tournament one day, or they can join on all days and earn very big money from the grand prize. We’re changing the game every three days, this allows users to keep their interest and keep attending the days on Twitter spaces and playing the games.
Adeeb- That’s a great initiative. Hats off to you. Let’s take questions from the audience. Anybody who wants to come up can please request it. And I’d also be taking questions from our Facebook live stream as well as Discord. So anybody who wants to come up and ask a question.
Audience- How much time and effort does it take for a game like PUBG to move on the chain and why haven’t they done it?
Michael- It doesn’t take very long for a game to go on the chain. For example, with our SDK, we can help a web2 game transition to web3 in about one or two weeks. If a game wanted to create its in-game assets to be NFTs, that would be fairly quick to implement. It’s mainly the techniques and how the NFTs structure is going to be. That is kind of the thing that you can’t solve at the moment with technology. I think it’s better than the size of PUBG who would want to take their time and be very careful when moving to web 3.
The reason why they haven’t done it yet? It’s the same reason that GTA hasn't come up with a new game in the last 10 years. Because they’re still making money from the old one. If a company is successful and, and they’re still successful in what they do they don’t need to take any risks. It’s companies that used to be successful or maybe are not very profitable or haven’t had a good game release in many years. Those are the companies that typically need to innovate. Innovation is something that dies when companies get too big. So I think smaller companies have the benefit because they can move very quickly. And the decision-makers are in the same room as the developers.
I think the main reason why a game like PUBG hasn’t switched over yet is again, their success is still too great in web2, and perhaps they don’t see a reason to do it. I think the best example is Steam, Steam is very anti-NFT, which doesn’t make any sense because if they were to enter into NFTs now, they could dominate the entire space.
Adeeb- Thanks, Michael. That’s all the questions from the audience. It was great talking to you.
About Metanomy & Lysto
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