AAA Gaming Studio on Hedera! Michael Mumbauer of Lithos / King Solomon (Part 2)

This interview was originally published by Genfinity.

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King Solomon interviews Michael Mumbauer, CEO of Lithos as part of the Hedera Corner in the LightHouse by Genfinity! Brought to you by LightHouse Report sponsor Hedera Hashgraph and in collaboration with our partner and Hedera wallet provider HashPack.

Transcription

Liithos – Michael Mumbauer – Founder & CEO
‍And frankly, there needs to be a maturing understanding of that. If you can build great games that are games first within, you know, this new environment, that it will change the paradigm for how people look at both spaces. But there has to be, you know, better, more mature games that just don't feel any different to core gamers, right? And it can't, it can't just feel like a kind of a farming, you know, for revenue. That's not going to work as a game ecosystem now. How do we get there? And how do I think we just, you know, we have to stay the course and build the game, which is what we're doing. But I think to satisfy the web 3 audience, while it is going to take a while to build the, that's why we're kind of taking a strategy of giving them and giving the audiences things that are within the world of Ashfall and things that we can build and share and, you know, use while building the game. So for instance, again, this idea of okay, well, we did, I don't know that we'll do this Tik Tok thing again, but that was an experiment that we did that's in the IP and that leads to the comic and the comic is there's a six-issue series. So that people can along the way, you know, kind of have a monthly experience and then you and enjoy a really good story and characters that are within the world. And then we'll release other things that are able to be connected to the larger game, right? They might be a card game that's like glint on Witcher that kind of plugs into AshFall that might, that's something we're exploring, again, things that will give players and fans things to participate whilst the game is in development and as we develop core features that we could potentially release as standalone like the UGC pieces. Those might be something that players can interact with and trade and build while again we're building the core experience that's going to take years.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yeah, no, 100. And, you know, I have a couple of questions I want to get into with you guys in Bountyblok and some of the aspects you guys are facilitating together, but I love the mindset around, you know, we see, you know, if you talk to like traditional people and then like normal people in the world and you say web 2 or web 3, they don't really know what I'm talking about, but I'll bring up the example here anyways. It seems like you guys are taking a very web 2.5 approach which is brilliant, and you're doing it from the ground floor up where you have all the experience, you know how to build these successful games, you know how to make games for gamers first, and then being, I think you guys have a huge front run in this ecosystem just because of the fact over the next year, two years, however long it takes to develop the game, you guys have the ability to monitor the market, take suggestions, potentially, and then inject in web 3 or crypto value in ways that make sense. Sport Gamers as time goes on. Um, so I love the ethos. I love the mindset. I wanted to maybe get into um Bountyblok as well and open the floor up and actually ask the Bounty block team a background of themselves as well as a history and their experience in web 3 also if you guys could, come up to the floor, that'd be awesome.

Bountyblok – Dimitri Nikolaros - Founder
‍Yeah, so Dimitri's here, from Bountyblok. I'm the co-founder and as nice to see you Michael, I see HashPack a bunch of friends up here. So we've been around this space for a really long time you know, we launched back in the day on wax in 2019, and then we got, we got a polygon and then hedera.  We're a company based in Montreal. We're a team of eight before web 3 and blockchain stuff, we were at Dev shop for, you know, me and my partner John. We've been coding for like 18 to 20 Years, okay, a really long time. We're actually coders. Our team is a strong Tech, you know, mostly developers, team and, we've built a lot of apps for big companies, especially in the fintech world, and what we, what we've learned was they all wanted the same thing: how do we get our users to do more stuff right on my website at the time, right, like go here, click this, do this, right? So, they all wanted some level of gaming mechanics. Within their app and over the years, you know, we, you know, we started picking the few good stuff and then we ended up building a SAAS at the time where they can integrate and Define a bunch of tasks, it was quite, it was quite nice, but then blockchain came along and things kind of changed because with nfts and you know, like an actual level of ways to add these kind of gaming mechanics that you didn't have. For example, let's say you have a video Game, right, let's say you have a game and you want, you know, you want to create a, you want to encourage your users to go and go and find the blue ogre and defeat them, right, and if you do, come and claim your points, so we can check on chain uh, you know, uh, actions done from that from a user and it's on chain, right, so it's like there's a, there's a real audit Trail there that they actually went and did that task, right, so it's kind of nice. It's kind of nice because we can, you know, fast forward to today, we launched the, you know, Bondi block and all our contest tools and all that stuff and you know, we give projects the ability to Define these kind of giveaways, uh, where they specify a bunch of tasks for their users to do. It's, you know, it's ongoing, right, where um, it's evolving with a huge roadmap based directly from feedback from projects and uh, you know, we what we did was we Took What Glenn did, and for those who don't know what gleam is, it's like a web 2 style giveaway platform where you go and you define a contest. You know, you give it an image, description, right, and it's all social tasks. Follow us on Twitter, subscribe on YouTube, Discord, it's all there. Right? We took that and we wanted to add a web three twist to it. You know, combining it with like blockchain tasks or web 3 tasks. So you do a bunch of social tasks because that's important for my brand, but also, encourage users to go and perform maybe, you know, you know, burn certain NFTs or complete a collection or you know, perform something in-game. So we kind of took both. The best of both worlds and, and put it together in one package.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think you know what we, and you guys have been here doing this for quite some time around community participation and, you know, really it's a numbers game with what you guys, or what is traditionally done, I think. So, I guess the question for me becomes, like, through Bountyblok, like, what have you guys analyzed in the market in a way that that really does create fans or community outside of just like these tasks? You know what I mean to like drive, you know, to drive engagement? Because engagement's great, but how do we really create fan community members? Is that something the Bounty block has been, you know, consistently monitoring and trying to adapt towards? Is, you know, where do we go from the Gleam initiatives? And, again, if you guys aren't familiar with Gleam, it's like, you know, you can earn 10 points, and one point is if you follow on Twitter, one point if you join the Discord, X Y and Z. How do you start that participation, aspect to really create fans for the brands that you guys are trying to support, as an organization? I guess would be a question I would have because I'm sure you guys have thought about it.

Bountyblok – Dimitri Nikolaros - Founder
‍Yeah. So, I mean, honestly, what we've seen, so we did things very pragmatically. You know, we started small, and you know, we were close to projects and communities, from artists to like, games, or even, you know, PFP communities. What we've learned was a lot of the communities are obviously every brand and gaming project want to grow their communities, and without even realizing, just by looking back at all the contests that are running on our tools, there's a lot of collaborations, like for example, we saw a lot of communities collaborating with each other, cross-pollinating. So, for example, your project A and your project B, well, you know, how many times can you ask your community to follow you on Twitter, right? So after a while, it's like most of them are following you, so there's not a lot of return there. But they collaborate with other projects on in the space, and we see that a lot. And by doing this type of collaboration, well, this community is so find out about that community, and vice versa, you know, follow A, then follow B, and get points, and then it creates the both communities kind of grow that way, right? And then you multiply that with other projects in the space, and I think that's possible. Because web3 right now is still very small, the communities are relatively small compared to, like, let's say, you know, the web 2 world. And I feel like everyone is kind of available, reachable, and you're able to kind of, 'Hey, you want to collaborate with the project?' And then they go on Bountyblok, they launch this contest with like, uh, you know, a graphic that's like 50% of their brand and 50% of that, or sometimes we see like four-way collabs. Or so, it's something we notice and yeah, it's quite exciting that they're using our tools for that purpose.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yeah, I mean, it's certainly something that we've, you know, I totally agree with that with the mindset because, it's something that we've been trying to accomplish pretty much since day one, is breaking down silos between different ecosystems or different projects. Because once you open the doors up and you get people, it doesn't even matter if they're building on the same network, you get people, talking about what problems they're trying to solve, in crypto and web 3 for mass adoption. I mean, everybody has a really great, you know, initiatives that they're, that you know, if they're not a scammer, like everybody that's actually trying to build something has great initiatives, and getting people that might not normally be in the same rooms together is invaluable in my opinion. And it's going to create that kind of path work of interoperability moving forward that really does mitigate these boom and bust cycles that we've seen, and creates kind of a level of sustainability moving forward. I want to ask both Liithos and, Bountyblok, kind of the decision-making process or the reasoning behind moving into the Hedera ecosystem. So, I'll start with Bountyblok. I know that you guys are kind of OG within the Polygon ecosystem and some other ecosystems. What made you guys decide to also start trying to support the Hedera network?

Bountyblok – Dimitri Nikolaros - Founder
‍Yeah, that's a good question. So to be super transparent with you about that,  my partner and I were very, you know, we don't want to be on every chain, and, you know, we're a small team, you know, we want to be careful where we go. The thing with Hedera, in our view, is that, I mean, you can see, you know, just that committee, the list of committee members and valid those nodes that are on there already bring this kind of like a real, you know, mainstream, brand awareness, right? LG and Dell, recent all that stuff. So, for sure, that caught our attention, but what really made, what really sealed the deal was when we obviously met people in the community, like, we met a lot of people in the Hedera foundation, we met, you know, Zepzi and Alex and all those guys, and then they introduced us to, like, you know, Dante from HashAxis, and then, you know, all of a sudden, we were like in a bunch of telegram groups with a bunch of projects building there, everyone's just on the same boat collaborating, and it felt, it didn't feel like work, it felt like, man, we're all, you know, we're all working together and it was very fun and nice to see that there's, this type of heartbeat. And then to take it further, I got involved with like the pfp communities, which I'm a bit of a noob in general, even on Mall chains, I never really went on Spaces or even buying of these, I just, I don't know why I just didn't, no for no real reason, I just, and you know, just by getting a ghost Pixel or you know, you know, I got a, I got a few nfts on Hedera, and all of a sudden, I'm on these spaces, I'm speaking to them, I'm at Orbis, she puts me on these other spaces, and all of a sudden she gets, it's that whole thing, right? And that's what really caught our attention, is it's vibrant, it's alive, and it's also growing, and it's a nice space, and the topology is really great.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yeah, yeah, 100, and I mean, I think we've seen, I mean, being here since late oh, I mean, being in Hedera is probably 2019 with test net, if it was 2019 when you just have to like scroll down through articles to get money to get micro payments on testnet, I remember doing that, but you see like I think, especially over probably like the past, I would say, four to six months, and you brought up, Orbis 86, I mean, she's been doing fantastic work with these spaces, bringing people in from different communities, whether that be the Solana Community or the ethereum community. Well, we did the Hashentines thing, we had two people come up that were like Bored Ape Club orders, that have had launched a project on ethereum, fantastic to see all that, all also all almost doing something very similar. With all these spaces, we've consistently seen people create Synergy and try to break down some of these silos, so I'll also ask, Liithos maybe just a brief description around like why you guys decided to utilize and leverage the Hedera network and to start building,  within this ecosystem?

Liithos – Michael Mumbauer – Founder & CEO
‍Yeah, so obviously, a big part of it was, the green nature and the speed and transactions, just how the technology is working. When we were looking at you know, what chains to be partnering with and looking aat Hedera, it made the most sense for us, and frankly, also, they're making really, really great strategic partnerships on the technology sides. So obviously, the Dell and Ubisoft and so it just feels like it's a, you know, not one of the, you know, at least last year, not one of the chains that everybody was looking at for, you know, entertainment and gaming. But I honestly think that that's the opportunity here for us to kind of help drive that conversation and bring more awareness to this chain and help grow the ecosystem, which I think is, you know, I think this is the best chain to be on right now.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Yep, I, you know, I'll, I have a lot of synergy and thought with that, just because like early 2021, and again, I apologize my voice sounds like crap, I've had the flu since Friday, so bear with me guys. Early 2021, we really did see, start like, and I'm sure the Bountyblok guys saw this, a pivot into, like, starting to hear things about people maybe using Polygon for different aspects, whether it be DeFi, whether it be NFTs, whether it be, you know, the first implementations of maybe gamification, things like that. I would say people that have, people that witnessed that, what happened with Polygon at the beginning of 2021 over the past six months, that are watching what's going on with Hedera right now, that have been here long enough to recognize that there's a lot of similarities with what's actually going on. And these people are starting to take notice of the Hedera network, the services being built out, the capabilities, the speed, the utility. I think it's fantastic.