Scaling Web3 in 2024: Making the gamer the hero (with Honeyland) – Games Growth with Upptic

<br00:00:00:01 – 00:00:18:15
Xander
Welcome to Games Growth with Upptic. This is another one of our interview episodes. So we interviewed Corey, Great CEO of Honeyland, a very interesting interview. We talked a lot about the cross-section between Web two and three. They’re building a really, really tailored and interesting project that really hits the sweet spot here. More What did you think about the interview?

00:00:18:17 – 00:00:39:22
Warren
Yeah. So today we went deep on the web 2.5 million, which we are going to make happen. We’re going to get that adopted. But yeah, that’s kind of the optic thesis on the first successful. What, three games it will be free to play in the front, watching in the back at the Web 2.5. But we’ve known Corey and the Honeyland team for a couple of years now, and we’ve checked in with them.

00:00:39:23 – 00:00:44:03
Warren
They did a mini interview with us, the GDC, what, two years ago goes?

00:00:44:05 – 00:00:44:22
Xander
Yeah.

00:00:45:00 – 00:01:02:00
Warren
And it’s been really cool to see them fully ship their products. It’s one of those rare with three games that you can just go on the iOS or Android store download and play it, and you don’t need any prior knowledge, even for, you know, our listeners that don’t have any interest in going deep down the rabbit rabbit hole.

00:01:02:00 – 00:01:23:23
Warren
It’s a good kind of dip your toe in the water and see how one of these hybrid games work. But yeah, I think Corey super effective speaker he’s got a lot of past business success for his work prior to Honeyland and I think it’s a good case study on how a team with a stronger operational background in building start ups attacks the what through gaming space.

00:01:24:01 – 00:01:28:14
Warren
How about you, Zander? What were your thoughts on Cory and some of Honeyland vision in his opinion?

00:01:28:16 – 00:01:46:03
Xander
You can see why he’s successful and have many exits. He’s a very, very eloquent speaker, a thinker, very inspiring as he speaks. I think the thing that I thought was most interesting about this episode was talking about economics with him, and they made some pretty interesting choices. They went for a one token economy versus two talking economy. I think that’s the right decision.

00:01:46:08 – 00:01:58:10
Xander
You talking economies are borderline deadly. One token economy is also maybe borderline deadly, but we’ll see how this one goes. I think they’re being very, very intelligent about it. But there’s a lot of content around that where if anyone told them what 3% to and think about.

00:01:58:12 – 00:02:15:00
Warren
Yeah, that’s true. We talk very candidly about the almost perfect failure rate of web3 tokens in gaming. And if that scares the Honeyland team and if and how they think they might be different. So yeah, for our listeners, keep and you’re out for that part, I think you’ll find it very interesting.

00:02:15:02 – 00:02:19:23
Xander
Awesome. Enjoy the episode.

00:02:20:00 – 00:02:48:11
Warren
Awesome. Welcome to the show, everyone. Very excited to have Corey right from the Honeyland team joining today. Corey We met a while back through mutual friend and mentor of mine, Justin Bar on the Hunting Ground team and really excited to have you guys on the show because we’ve now been in touch. It feels like an eternity in the Web3 space, but like from before you guys were even at soft launch the game to now you guys becoming a pretty prominent name that I’m seeing everywhere.

00:02:48:12 – 00:03:13:08
Warren
And you guys are right at the nexus of an area. We focus out a lot which we refer to finally as the Web 2.5 mullet, which is like free to play best practices upfront but blockchain in the rear. And that’s a lot of our bull thesis for like this next era of gaming. So we’re super excited to sit down with you today and dig into the state of Honeyland and kind of like that nexus of traditional gaming and what’s your gaming and the things that you guys have learned while building.

00:03:13:08 – 00:03:14:16
Warren
So welcome to the show.

00:03:14:18 – 00:03:30:02
Cory
Awesome. Well, thanks, Werner. I’m going to steal that. The Web 2.5. Molly I love it. Yeah, that’s really what we’re trying to accomplish and break down, you know, a lot of those projects who have gone for that either end up just going fully web too, or kind of getting out of the space. There’s a lot of unique friction point challenges to be solved.

00:03:30:02 – 00:03:33:09
Cory
But yeah, I think we’re doing a good job of it and having a lot of fun doing it.

00:03:33:11 – 00:03:38:17
Xander
This to start off, can you tell us a bit about yourself, your background and what brought you to starting a game design studio?

00:03:38:18 – 00:04:10:01
Cory
Yeah, so I am a lifelong entrepreneur, been running businesses and digital marketing SAS eCommerce for many, many years, almost two decades, and eventually it’s sold kind of my last business. The thing that I’ve kind of been building all along, packaged all of it together, that building with my brother and ended up exiting that business and then moved into business coaching and I wanted to kind of stay involved with growing teams and these businesses that are moving from like definitely have product market fit and then really moving through significance in terms of revenues and profits.

00:04:10:01 – 00:04:34:14
Cory
And so I became a business coach for about two and a half years. Got to work with a couple dozen like really high performing teams to organize just all of their communication and vision and accountability and all that stuff. And it was a ton of fun. And then got a call from Justin Bar who wanted to talk to kind of a mutual friend of ours, and he’s somebody who when I was running my previous business, he had a big business in mobile user acquisition and somebody that always just had an incredibly high level of respect for.

00:04:34:14 – 00:04:53:13
Cory
And he said, Hey, are you familiar with Web3 Gaming and Axie and have you every bid? We’ve got this opportunity here and kind of looking forward to assemble a really cool team that can help build this project. And so that was kind of the genesis of how things happened. It was not really me trying to forge my way into Web3 gaming, but more getting back into operating businesses.

00:04:53:13 – 00:04:59:04
Cory
And this was just a really, really cool opportunity to do some new stuff in an emerging market and never looked back since then.

00:04:59:08 – 00:05:24:05
Warren
And so just that natural pipeline of business coaching to be based, mobile web3 game development, all this. Yeah, I tell it all this time round. Our audience is a bit of a mix of all teams across gaming, but so you have in traditional gaming and have in the web3 ecosystem in some way. For those that are not familiar with Honeyland as projects, can you give kind of the 1 to 1 of what the game is?

00:05:24:07 – 00:05:42:06
Cory
Yeah, so it’s a mobile web3 game. It’s casual to kind of mid-course as you start to play more. There’s a lot of strategy. It’s a strategy and resource management game at a high level. You come in, we give you a series of BS and you kind of earn more as you go through tutorials and progress and your job is just basically send those BS out on missions.

00:05:42:06 – 00:05:57:21
Cory
It’s kind of a proof of management game and the more you send those BS out, the more items they’re able to bring back both the HD, which is the currency, the cryptocurrency that runs the ecosystem as well as items in the game and all of that cryptocurrency and those items can be used to grow in strength in your colony of bees over time.

00:05:57:21 – 00:06:16:01
Cory
And then there’s just a little metagame and micro decisions that need to be made in terms of what asset is going to be more valuable to help you accomplish your strategy. And so I always say at a high level, it’s just keep your bees busy, send them out. It’s just can replace your social media in more of a gamified way instead of like doomscrolling through Twitter or Instagram or whatever it is, right?

00:06:16:01 – 00:06:36:21
Cory
Gives you a little bit more fun. There’s a lot of strategy that can take place and it can keep even midcourt. Gamers really, really engaged, spending a bunch of time, energy, money, resources to really perfect their colony. And of course it’s built on web3. So it’s got all those, you know, really cool things that Web3 brings to the table as well in terms of player to player marketplaces and experiences and real stakes gaming and, you know, things like that.

00:06:36:21 – 00:06:37:09
Cory
But is it.

00:06:37:12 – 00:06:41:11
Xander
Fair to call it like an Idol game with a web3 element, or is that simplifying it too much?

00:06:41:13 – 00:06:52:10
Cory
No, it’s Idol game with Web three elements. I think we’ve really tried to bring in a lot more activity and things that you can do to create this like social experience. But at its core, it’s and I’ll get.

00:06:52:12 – 00:06:53:23
Xander
Okay here make sense.

00:06:54:02 – 00:07:09:02
Cory
Yeah. So I think from the free to play style we really wanted to build a game that was fun first. And I think a lot of projects kind of caught on to this. They’re like, We can’t just build a game with a token. We’ve got to build a game that’s actually fun to play. And so I think we’ve really tried to build a game that you don’t know is Web three.

00:07:09:02 – 00:07:27:14
Cory
When you first come in, it doesn’t have blockchain and crypto, and NFT is at the forefront of what we’re doing. Those are things that are kind of learned over time. And so I think that’s probably what we stole from Free to Play is just a lot of these really fun, creative mechanics of like achievement progression ownership that don’t necessarily involve any sort of a web3 or financial component.

00:07:27:20 – 00:07:42:21
Cory
What I think we try to bring in with the Web3 stuff is there’s just so many different ways to play the game When you have a player to play or marketplace and you can breed and hatch or create more bees or upgrade those bees over time and then you can actually trade those to go find maybe bees that were a good match for your colony today.

00:07:42:21 – 00:08:02:12
Cory
But next week, the way that your colony has grown, that you may want bees with different moods or different traits or different styles of what they’re good at in the game. And so I think it unlocks so much of that. And then there’s a financial component to it, right? And so, like every decision that you’re making isn’t just like, do I take this in-game jewel and spend it on something cool or let it sit there and rot?

00:08:02:18 – 00:08:22:10
Cory
The decision is different, right? It’s do I take this HD and do I spend it on something cool or do I figure out does it have more value to me outside of the ecosystem than it would inside of the ecosystem? So I think that’s kind of where we tried to approach this. The challenges that come with that are how do you not make the only thing that you’re selling people the fact that there’s a financial component?

00:08:22:10 – 00:08:40:14
Cory
Because as soon as you start to do that, it creates this revolution of extraction instead of participation. And so we’ve had to think really, really long and hard. I think we’ll get into this. And Warren, I think you’re so thoughtful about this too. Can Web3 games with tokens actually survive? Right? Has anybody done it in a really significant and sustainable way yet?

00:08:40:14 – 00:09:06:01
Cory
And I think there’s certain things that we’re doing that we’ve really tried to approach it from not a way that we can like just incentivize people to come in and extract, but really say, come in and play the game and have decisions of where you’re going to find the greatest level of happiness through ownership of these items, whether it’s in the ecosystem, trading in the ecosystem, or at some point extracting from the ecosystem, but only at a point where we’ve made the player think really long and hard about where they’re going to derive the most happiness for their own personal experience.

00:09:06:03 – 00:09:27:23
Xander
Yeah, interesting. Yeah, well, definitely get into token components and that’s a really interesting space that we’ve talked about a lot and I think you have a really specific insight on. Ivan played a lot of humans, but I did downloaded it. I was signing up this morning and one of the cool things is like you have a do sided with app always with email or you sign up with wallet And so that’s like, okay, you’re clearly making it easy enough so that anyone can just come in, use it for the first time, and hit the ground running.

00:09:28:01 – 00:09:44:14
Xander
He said that one of the thing would pop into the token topic, which I want to press on, which is you talked about this transaction economy where people are buying and selling components of your game. Where is that mostly happening? Is that happening mostly in the game or does that happen on Opensea and the like? Predominantly, whereas actually that economy was.

00:09:44:16 – 00:10:02:06
Cory
Yes, back on December 21st of last year, 2023, we launched our in-game marketplace. We worked with Magic Eden for about five months. We had them completely rework their piping so that players could actually buy and sell our nfts in HD. Both on Magic Eden as well as inside of our game. They then had to build an API with do all the testing.

00:10:02:06 – 00:10:29:09
Cory
I think this is something that will ultimately be pretty groundbreaking in Web3 gaming and unlock a lot of opportunities. But when we did that it meant that players could now not only buy and sell NFT in HD on Match Eden giving more utility to our token, but that we could now port all of this directly inside the game and so players can from their bees when they’re in their hive they can see a B they can directly listed in the marketplace from the app and they can go to the marketplace in the app and baby with their in-game balance.

00:10:29:11 – 00:10:44:09
Cory
And then all of that stuff is taking place on chain outside of the game. So there’s no friction, you know, it just feels like it’s a web to game. But all this stuff is taking place on chain in the background with basically systems that we’ve set up. And so when you list in the game, it actually is viewable and magically.

00:10:44:11 – 00:11:04:05
Cory
So it’s really, really cool what we’ve done to get to your question, we saw our energy sales five X since we launched that. My whole thing was like the availability to participate in Web3 just doesn’t exist for a lot of Web two players. And so how do we make it available to participate in everything? So find it in app stores, Google and Apple anywhere in the world?

00:11:04:07 – 00:11:20:11
Cory
Zander You talked about then you can sign in with a Google or an app like you don’t need a web three wallet, you don’t need an NFT, the ability to purchase HD. So when you want to go participate in the marketplace to purchase as an in-app purchase through Google Pay or Apple Pay, so you don’t need to have a crypto wallet or anything like that, but you can actually own the deal.

00:11:20:11 – 00:11:38:00
Cory
You can go participate in the marketplace. And so we’re really just trying to cut the friction out of all of this. And that’s where we talk about kind of this 2.5 moment. I think a lot of games have not really taken the challenge of actually making it feel like a Web two game in terms of the frictionless experience to get in and start playing and participating in everything.

00:11:38:06 – 00:11:51:23
Cory
But then all along they’re actually owning cryptocurrency, They’re actually participating in owning, buying and selling and trading. NFT is minting them in the game. And so there’s a lot of really cool things that we’ve done and we want to educate them over time in terms of what those web3 components truly are.

00:11:52:01 – 00:12:13:19
Warren
Corey At this point in the journey of Honeyland, what’s your audience like? How would you break down the percentage of the playerbase that comes from a Web three? First were Python you for Web three space versus people who are maybe having one of, if not their very first web three experience through honeyland. What does that look like today and where do you think it’s going?

00:12:14:01 – 00:12:37:14
Cory
Right now? We’ve got about 8000 players coming in and playing daily. We’ve got about twice that weekly and that number is growing. We just started doing like paid user acquisition as we got into app stores globally and stuff like that. So we’re about 30 to 45 days into like a lot of paid user acquisition. If we look at the daily active players right now, I think there’s almost a 50% split that about half of those are Web three natives that have a wallet.

00:12:37:14 – 00:12:59:08
Cory
They may own some of our NetEase and about half of those are coming in directly from our acquisition which we’re really targeting web to gamers to come in and start playing a web three game. And so I think we’re seeing about 5050. I think when we fast forward to the middle of this year, I think we’ll see probably about 80 to 85% of the players playing will be Web two natives experiencing Web three games for the first time.

00:12:59:10 – 00:13:20:20
Warren
Got it. And from a business standpoint, an ability to monetize different segments of your player base, do you feel like honeyland in its current state? If I friggin hate all things blockchain, but Honeyland is appealing to me. How full of experience in the economy can someone who’s not ready or interested in participating what you component? How full of an experience can they have today?

00:13:21:00 – 00:13:25:01
Warren
And is that a viable business segment for you to go after today in the current form of honeyland.

00:13:25:02 – 00:13:40:18
Cory
You’re not earning very much as a gen-z player, but your purchasing power is the same. You can still go earn items, you can hunt for free to find items, you can go upgrade for free. The shop is like 3% or 2% of the cost of items that you would have to purchase for the generations, bees and things like that.

00:13:40:18 – 00:13:58:05
Cory
So we’ve created the purchasing power to be the same without the actual emissions being anywhere near what that for web3 economy is. So the goal is that they can participate in everything. If it’s just a fun game and you just want to kind of progress through and earn and grow XP and breed and hatch and upgrade and strategize that you can do all of that.

00:13:58:07 – 00:14:22:14
Cory
You just can’t do it in the Web3 economy. The final piece that we’re working to solve and we’re going to do this through what we’ll call proof of unique human being is that we can actually build a bridge so that with time and energy invested in the game, we can actually build a bridge to true web3 ownership, where you can earn and own actual entities that have actual marketplace value that they can actually go and earn more significant amounts of HST.

00:14:22:14 – 00:14:41:16
Cory
And so we need to do that without diluting the existing web3 economy. But I think we can be incredibly intentional and thoughtful about this. And again, the fear of that is what about multi accounts and bots and all these types of things that can destroy a gaming ecosystem when you offer too much without the real gates on it to make sure that they’re real people playing a game.

00:14:41:16 – 00:14:58:00
Cory
And so we’re working on like an optional proof of unique human being. And if you want to opt into that, the rewards become significantly different. That if you have not opted into that, well, you can play in any capacity that you want fully Web two without opting in. Web two with opting in, which would give you a clear path or bridge to web3.

00:14:58:01 – 00:15:03:13
Cory
Or you can just fully jump into web three. Generally, money is going to be your easiest way to get into that.

00:15:03:15 – 00:15:30:10
Xander
Interesting. I mean, that’s quite a spectrum that’s quite different than 99%. The Web three experiences that exist now, which are mostly gated behind web apps and very, very focused on the monetization component, was so important. We’ve alluded to it, but I think it’s worth just talking about this token and why you made that decision. I mean, one of the conversations when I have had a lot in the past is like, it’s not clear to me that every Web3 game needs a token.

00:15:30:10 – 00:15:40:18
Xander
So explain the use of the token and how you end and then explain why that’s a right decision for Candyland and maybe for feeling funky. Explain why it may or may not be the right decision for other people.

00:15:40:19 – 00:16:01:10
Cory
Yeah, I still battle with this. My dad actually will come over. I see him all the time and he’s always like, Well, it’s not backed by anything, so I don’t know why any cryptocurrency has value, you know? And I’m like, Yeah, we are kind of creating this value, right? But if the product around it, the IP, the community, the game has value in itself, then you can actually create value out of thin air to some extent, right?

00:16:01:12 – 00:16:29:06
Cory
And so as long as you believe that you can do that and that you’re truly creating value, not just taking advantage of an opportunity, I think that a gaming token can survive. There’s got to be a lot of other things to go into it, like you’ve got to have great token mechanics. God has great game mechanics. But for us we decided that HD was going to fuel the entire hunting land gaming ecosystem and that means the core level of like the actual game things that you need, the broader board think of like online digital honeyland ecosystems.

00:16:29:06 – 00:16:49:04
Cory
So maybe merch can be purchased in HD or certain things like that where it’s not in the game, but it is part of the broader online digital experience and then potentially what I would love to do is involvement in some early experiences as well and make it whether it’s a currency that can be used to purchase other things or can be used to get access to certain events that we were able to throw or get you access to local events.

00:16:49:04 – 00:17:05:09
Cory
And so there’s a bigger vision here. And I think that when you have a token that fuels all of that, it’s important. When I talked about kind of these game mechanics, though, I think there’s three things that need to be in place. You need to create an incentive structure so that it’s more valuable in the ecosystem than outside of the ecosystem, right?

00:17:05:09 – 00:17:28:11
Cory
And so you can do this with things like a withdraw tax or you can do this with like multipliers or certain things like that. So keeping it in the ecosystem creates more value for that token than removing it from the ecosystem. There’s no alternative spending opportunity. You have to have this token in order to unlock this event. And so when you think of like credit card points or miles, you can use those to get a free flight, but you could also buy that flight with cash or with money.

00:17:28:17 – 00:17:45:13
Cory
And so when you start to think about, well, let’s create experiences or activities or things inside of the online gaming ecosystem that can only be unlocked with Ajax token, it starts to create a lot more value for that token. And then then of course, having just the right token mechanics in place as well, which is something that we’ve been incredibly thoughtful about.

00:17:45:13 – 00:17:57:06
Xander
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense, is are we too abstract or lesson from this Web3 games should have tokens, right? Is there is there an abstract way we can think about that? Like, is it something that should be the default? Should it not be the default?

00:17:57:08 – 00:18:23:21
Cory
So if you think about it like we don’t need a token, right? Like we have to follow those guidelines that I put in place. But at the same time, when I say like you need Ajax to perform something, we’ve artificially created that constraint. If we say you can only breed with HD, our next mint is only in HD, will you essentially exchange cash for that token in order to perform that activity, right where you exchange time for that token because you can earn it through either gameplay or you can go buy it on secondary.

00:18:23:21 – 00:18:42:14
Cory
And so the fact that you need that is essentially a artificial constraint that we put on it. And so I think that what I would think about is more from both a game developer or designer as well as what I would call an investor, whether you’re investing your time, your energy or your money into a game, what is the underlying value that that token brings and how sustainable is it?

00:18:42:14 – 00:19:01:07
Cory
Like, what have been the things that create the value for that token? Because they go like a casino? I walk into a casino, I put $100 on the table, they give me chips and exchanged, and then I can eventually exchange those chips on the way out. But those chips will always have the exact same value when you do it inside of Honeyland where you may exchange your money for Ajax Diego, play the game and then you want to pull out.

00:19:01:09 – 00:19:20:19
Cory
It can go up or down and I think most people coming in will want or hope that it’s also going to go up, right? Not that they’re just like sacrificing or losing value on that exchange, but they’re actually increasing in value while also having a great time. And so I think you just need to think about what are the things that are creating value, how are we creating scarcity, how are we creating utility around that?

00:19:20:19 – 00:19:40:15
Cory
That creates more demand demand ultimately that will create value. And so there’s a lot that needs to be thought of, but we could have done it with just USD or done it with something else. I think there’s little things like, you know, micro-transactions. I think real stakes gaming becomes a lot easier when you’re dealing with somebody in the Philippines, dealing with somebody in the United States, when it’s a cryptocurrency that’s created and native to the ecosystem.

00:19:40:15 – 00:19:56:18
Cory
So there’s certain advantages that I think that it provides. But at the end of the day, it could have been done without our own token. But if we’re able to create this value out of this token, it creates a much more attractive ecosystem for people who want to come in and play a game and that has all the web three components, I think.

00:19:56:20 – 00:20:16:07
Warren
Yeah, we really believe in Honeyland as a product and as a team. So this is not like a gotcha question, but like, would you agree and does it scare you as a team building? What through that, we essentially, as far as I know, like have zero long term sustainable gaming token use cases. Do you agree or disagree with that assessment as far as like the pre honeyland crop of what, three games?

00:20:16:09 – 00:20:17:21
Cory
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that.

00:20:17:23 – 00:20:27:21
Warren
My final question is where do you think these past projects have failed? What have you guys learned from that and what gives you faith in much higher chance of success for Honeyland?

00:20:27:23 – 00:20:49:12
Cory
Yeah, so it’s funny, one of the things that I was incredibly intentional about moving into this is I said there’s got to be a single token economy. It has to be a fixed supply and it has to be deflationary in order for it to maintain value over time. Those are all necessary components. I mean, we looked at whether it was defi kingdoms or axie infinity or step in or any of these kind of web3 games that had achieved success before us.

00:20:49:14 – 00:21:09:06
Cory
None of them had that. They all had these two token economies right? And so I said, we’ve got to break the mold and it creates new challenges, right? What happens when we run out of tokens to admit as rewards? We’ve got to figure out what happens at the end of that. Right? We’ve got plans for that. I don’t have like crystal clear plans on what that is, but I certainly got on the horizon a number of things that we can do to continue to add value.

00:21:09:08 – 00:21:27:02
Cory
And then you start to look at, you know, a lot of these projects, like I’ll even take actually or will take I was just going through Neo Tokyo a lot of their tokenomics these projects that initially minted without these mechanics in place are all now trying to move towards a deflationary fixed supply token economy. It’s a basic fundamental of supply and demand or economics.

00:21:27:02 – 00:21:40:20
Cory
It’s supply and demand create value. Right? And I think a lot of this stuff got missed in early Web3. And what we really try to do is come in and learn from anybody before us that did it really well. What they get right, learn from anybody who came before us that may have had holes and say, how can we fix that?

00:21:40:22 – 00:21:59:14
Cory
But you can look at something like Bitcoin. Bitcoin is almost a perfect project, right? 21 million tokens have permissions based on like block and performance. Like, all of these things were really, really insanely healthy mechanics that just got ignored When we started coming into Web3 gaming, Etherium did a very different than Bitcoin in terms of like what their token structure looks like.

00:21:59:14 – 00:22:19:05
Cory
Same as Solana. I think they’ve all done it with really, really healthy sustainability in mind though, that I don’t think a lot of Web3 games did. And so it’s yet to be seen if we’ve done it perfect. But I think that we put some mechanics that have not been in place in any of the games before us that reach some level of success, that had they done certain things like that, it creates constraints on the front end.

00:22:19:06 – 00:22:22:23
Cory
But I think those constraints can lead to much greater sustainability on the back end.

00:22:23:01 – 00:22:35:06
Warren
I think that’s fair and I like that you guys are also transparent with the things that you’re still figuring out, that you’re at least flagging like, yes, this is something that we have to address in the future phase. We have ideas, but you’re not running away from what those challenges will be.

00:22:35:08 – 00:22:54:03
Cory
The thing that gives me hope is that we have a plan and an awareness of this, but B mean coins that don’t have any utility can create sustainability. And so like we’ve actually seen tokens have sustained value without any utility. My whole thing is I don’t want to rely on just the idea as something that’s in circulation, that that’s why it has value because it raised.

00:22:54:03 – 00:22:58:09
Cory
Did I want to continue to create more and more value utility for over time?

00:22:58:11 – 00:23:21:11
Warren
It makes sense. And one area I’d like to dig a little deeper and we touched on it briefly. I just love your thoughts on the current state of how VC funding for Web three gaming teams, the impacts of that on token economies. I mean, one of my soapboxes and I haven’t had to raise personally from DC funds in Web3 before, so I just love your perspective on this.

00:23:21:11 – 00:23:44:18
Warren
For good or bad. I see like a real tough tension between the VCs raising based on in-game tokens and the negative impact on that token to how can exist in that game. Economy abuse the word predatory before that’s maybe like too aggressive of language, but at the least it seems like attention. It’s two entities with very different goals for how they perceive the token and the function of that token.

00:23:44:18 – 00:24:02:16
Warren
To them. You have the player, which as you said before, and I agree, like it’s fully got to be, I’m exchanging this token for fund and for a VC firm like that’s obviously like a pure financial play. So what are your thoughts on the current state of VC fundraising for what, three gaming? Is it a healthy model? How does it need to evolve?

00:24:02:18 – 00:24:19:09
Cory
Yeah, so first I want to make one quick correction. It’s small, but I think meaningful. I didn’t say fun. I said happiness. Right? And so I think this is the difference where I’m really trying to say ownership of HD is going to provide happiness and that can be breeding something, unlocking something in the game, playing a different thing, buying something on the marketplace.

00:24:19:14 – 00:24:36:10
Cory
But it can also be taking that out and taking my wife to dinner or my family on a vacation or certain things like that. And so I think happiness is really the thing there that that can be derived in a number of different ways. Going back to your question, we’ve raised about $4 million to date of that. We raised money from Selena Foundation, a very small amount.

00:24:36:15 – 00:24:58:01
Cory
We raised money from, I think Magic Ventures, a very small amount, which is Magic Means Fund and Big Brain Holdings, which would be, you know, a massive player in the Solana ecosystem and again, a relatively small amount. The rest of that 4 million has come from private funding because we have had exactly what you said, such a mismatch of alignment and why they want to be involved in the project that it just wasn’t worth taking the money ever.

00:24:58:03 – 00:25:27:05
Cory
When they want to shrink vesting schedules, it’s a red flag to me that says, Then you tell me you’re never going to sell my token, you’re not going to dump it. Why do you care about the vesting schedule right? And so, you know, we just really identified a lot of those red flags. And I think it’s one of the things that makes it difficult to gain traction early on, but I think ultimately allows us the traction that we do gain is built on our more solid footing, is that we’ve been focused on building great product and letting the product create hype instead of building a lot of hype that the hype.

00:25:27:07 – 00:25:48:13
Cory
Ultimately we got to figure out what the product’s going to be. And so we’ve never been desperate to get a VC to participate or give us money at the sacrifice of what would be the right thing for the project. And so we’ve been very, very like driven based on what we think the right thing to do is. But yeah, you’re exactly right that a lot of VC is getting into gaming push people into things that are very selfishly motivated.

00:25:48:13 – 00:25:55:01
Cory
It goes back to the extraction versus participation, right? They want to extract, not participate, and we just want to find people who want to participate, not extract.

00:25:55:03 – 00:26:31:13
Warren
Yeah, I wonder if part of that is too with just the pedigree of your team, you guys have access to more options in funding perhaps. So it’s like all of these what, three game developers you can still just raise funds as a business through like traditional means, but some of them aren’t yourself. Justin I don’t know the other team members as well, but like you guys have had successful business outcomes and probably deep networks in the Triad FI world too, so probably opens up some of these more numerous but sustainable funding mechanisms that can make it so you don’t have to make those potentially high risk game design decisions of using that tension between the

00:26:31:13 – 00:26:34:01
Warren
token and the VC function versus the gamer function.

00:26:34:03 – 00:26:51:06
Cory
Yeah, you’re 100% right. And you know, we’re fortunate that each of my founders has had exits, so we were motivated to immediately come in and have to start paying ourselves and extracting from the project. And so, yeah, all of that has had long term thinking, which I think is incredibly valuable for us in this project or.

00:26:51:07 – 00:27:00:10
Xander
I want to pivot to talk about you in just a moment, but one of the questions I had first is I just don’t understand how is Honeyland structured? Are you as a DAO? Were you a traditional corporation?

00:27:00:12 – 00:27:26:03
Cory
No, traditional corporation. And listen, I love decentralized nature of Web3, but I don’t think that true decentralization for most projects is the most healthy thing. I think that we need to allow the decentralization or the playerbase to identify the right problems. And I think we need to allow our centralized core team to identify the right solutions. And so I think your voting goes into what teams you want to invest your time, money and energy into.

00:27:26:03 – 00:27:33:18
Cory
Not do you actually control the outcome of those decisions. And I think that’s the way that web3 particularly for a game, should work.

00:27:33:20 – 00:27:58:22
Warren
Yeah, within Web3 and just general like best practices in growing a business. So many of the best businesses in the world are taking something that works and then innovating on one key aspect of it, one fundamental aspect of it. It’s really tough. If you are reinventing portions of what it means to be a game and build a game economy while also reinventing what it means to structure a business underneath it.

00:27:58:22 – 00:28:19:17
Warren
At the same time, I think that’s just stacking risk on risk. I’m fairly neutral as far as like the long term viability of Dallas as a concept, but I do know like if I were to found a gaming company, I’d be very hesitant, put like that additional layer of risk and unproven ness on top of, okay, we’re also shipping a game which is super high risk itself and we’re reinventing parts of the economy.

00:28:19:17 – 00:28:21:00
Warren
So I think that makes a lot of sense.

00:28:21:00 – 00:28:33:19
Cory
Yeah, I agree 100%. And again, I just think that Daos are going to be incredibly healthy for the right use case. I just don’t think building a business is the right use case for a DAO, right? That’s all I know. We’re playing a game, but we’re building a business.

00:28:33:21 – 00:28:49:17
Xander
Yeah, well, that’s the reason I brought up when I did was because you talked about the misalignment with VCs. And I think if you align with a corporation, ABC, there’s a very clear model of how you make that progression to go make it happen. So one of the things that you see watches, growth. Let’s talk a little bit about growth.

00:28:49:22 – 00:29:04:08
Xander
You talked about how it traditionally came from a web3 background. This game, this product supports you background for you’re transitioning to go after more Web two Native audience using user acquisition. Can you talk about what channels and tactics are using well, through that Web two audience and what is the early success cases?

00:29:04:10 – 00:29:35:01
Cory
Yeah, so one of our early theses is when we came in here was where, you know, Justin has an incredible background in high volume user acquisition, particularly for mobile games. And so we saw this as like, hey, if we could unlock the back part of the moment, right, that we could build a really, really fun game that had healthy Web3, Tokenomics and all that stuff that we could just build a great game and then we could make it so that it had to availability of every Web two game in the world that we could launch the web to playbook into a web3 game, and it could really change everything, right?

00:29:35:03 – 00:29:54:16
Cory
And so for us, the Web two playbook is exactly what you guys are doing for Web two games for decades, right? It’s app stores, it’s performance marketing, It’s all these special things, everything from social media to app stores to specialized stores and other launchers and things like that. That if they can get you a player with XRP, you pay him X amount and on Dex stuff and all these things.

00:29:54:16 – 00:30:15:08
Cory
I’m not the user acquisition pro as you can tell. I’m much more the game design and community initiatives, not even necessarily like community marketing and stuff, and Justin heads up much more the user acquisition marketing side so he could talk more intelligently and more. And I know that you could do other things that we’re using, but our whole thing was though, if we could get the availability of a web to game, then we could launch that exact playbook for a web3 game.

00:30:15:08 – 00:30:17:03
Cory
And that’s what we’ve been able to do.

00:30:17:05 – 00:30:43:10
Warren
Yeah, I think one, it’s both like a blessing and a curse, but what I’ve generally observed, I’m curious, Corey, if you guys have felt the same, was Web Street. It’s very easy relatively to go from 0 to 1 to like launch a project and call it, depending on market conditions. Your first 10000 to 80000 community members, you know, all participating different capacities, but that this can be done sometimes literally.

00:30:43:12 – 00:31:06:18
Warren
I’ve seen cases where it was literally overnight. You know, if a project is hyped enough to get that five figure community on Twitter and discord and there’s this can give a bit of a false sense of confidence but then you also just a hard ceiling just based on where adoption is at today. And what we see and what I really love about you guys is like there’s often like no plan what to do once that ceiling is hit.

00:31:06:20 – 00:31:25:07
Warren
I’m just curious, in your own journey with Honeyland, have you seen that That’s kind of the growth path of like you had like the what, three phase and felt like kind of nearing market saturation there and then kind of transitioning your go to market focus and your use acquisition strategy beyond that to that broader but more mainstream audience?

00:31:25:09 – 00:31:44:11
Cory
Yeah, it’s funny, the virality in Web three is far easier to accomplish, but like you said, the ceiling is far lower and the attention moves so much quicker, right? That like you constantly need to be re fighting for that Web three attention. And so we play all the Web three games. We did our HD summer sweepstakes where people who were staking we’ve got a new staking program that we’re going to be launching.

00:31:44:11 – 00:32:05:12
Cory
We do ecosystem partnerships and collabs and we’re on Twitter spaces. And so all these like ecosystem things that you do to grab attention in Web three, we’re doing all those things, but we do that because it’s fun and because we love the Web three part of the game. But in terms of growth, Web two is our growth plan, like just going doing the boring, repeatable, predictable, scalable type of activities.

00:32:05:16 – 00:32:20:14
Cory
And so we get to play both games. I think if you’re a Web three game, you have to play those Web three games unless you intend to have, you know, ten, 15, 20, 30,000 daily actives, then that’s what you’re happy with. But if you want to reach six figures or seven figures of daily actives, you’ve got to be able to play the Web two games, right?

00:32:20:16 – 00:32:25:07
Cory
Or you’ve got to be able to pardon me to have that Web two scalability and do it at an incredibly high level.

00:32:25:13 – 00:32:43:14
Warren
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, at Upptic like about half our partners, our what, three games of some capacity and half for traditional and the concept of scale and these two ecosystem games is just like so wildly different. And I know you guys have good reads on both, but it’s like there’s probably at least top ten, maybe even top five, like Web three games by day.

00:32:43:14 – 00:33:05:14
Warren
You like, or biggest game today. That’s not to brag. It’s recursive. It’s like we acquire that scale literally every day. And like, the scale is just so different when you open up those opportunities, get on it. Make your ego to BigQuery. But that’s one reason that we follow it and support your team is you guys have always had one eye firmly on how we have the mass market strategy in both game design and go to market.

00:33:05:16 – 00:33:25:23
Cory
The way that our game is currently structured, like as a web3 game because of these limitations that we put on that single token, the fixed supply, deflationary for a lot of these kind of player to player mechanics, I don’t know that we could onboard 30,000 players a day right now right like the game can’t support it And so the web three game has a different what I would say for us a different definition of success.

00:33:25:23 – 00:33:48:00
Cory
If you look at Axie when they had 2 million daily active that put Web3 gaming on the map, it helped them reach a $10 billion market cap. It did all these great things. It was also probably the exact reason that they couldn’t sustain that economy because web3 games, just because of the limitations that need to exist to be successful probably are looking to bring in a million, 2 million, 10 million, 50 million daily active like Candy Crush.

00:33:48:00 – 00:34:03:07
Cory
Yeah, right. So the objectives or the definitions of success are radically different. And so I think for us it’s about predictably going out and growing it much larger than most web3 games, but not necessarily trying to reach the scale or success of Web two games in that capacity.

00:34:03:09 – 00:34:21:10
Warren
Yeah, it makes sense. And I think there’s a lot of value. You know, one of the things I’ll herp on is just the value of the novelty of being able to own the game pieces. And at the end of the day, anyone here, we’re all just trying to build successful businesses. And it might seem like a completely random tangent, but I was reading some analysis today talking about Monopoly.

00:34:21:10 – 00:34:45:23
Warren
Go and that was one of the big success stories across gaming and essentially like Game of the year from a growth standpoint, scale standpoint for last year. Now there’s a lot of talks and analysis sort of like, wait, is this actually a profitable endeavor? And we have no inside information here. But there’s a lot of analysis that says actually a successful as it seems, they may be burning more in cash each day than they make.

00:34:45:23 – 00:35:12:02
Warren
We’re probably not going to find that out anytime soon. But there’s been estimates made that they’re spending, you know, in the 2 to $3 million range zero to just can and Matty who yeah both were doing some discussions around this but that’s all to say they’re competing in the biggest arena and even though it’s viewed from the outside is this is a huge hit it may be struggling to be above break even as far as like a sustainable and profitable business.

00:35:12:04 – 00:35:34:12
Warren
I think the opportunity for a lot of the more innovative teams like Honeyland is to carve out these lanes and work with some of the novelty and innovation that Web3 gives us to where you might not be Monopoly go in the charts next month. I hope you do, but you might not. But you may carve a very sustainable lane for you because you’re taking a lane that these bigger companies are going to take longer to move into.

00:35:34:14 – 00:35:50:22
Cory
That’s exactly right. It’s funny. Go back to my coaching days. You know, every time we get in for annual planning every year and you look at every business and they’re doing 25 million in revenue this year, right? And you go, Great. What does your business look like in three years? There’s very few businesses that say, I want to be doing 25 million or 20 million in three years.

00:35:50:22 – 00:36:06:23
Cory
All of them have this wild number of we’re going to be doing 50 million or 70 million. And I feel like what people fail to realize is that doubling or tripling in size isn’t always the best thing to do. Sometimes profits start to erode, sometimes culture starts to erode, like there’s an erosion of assets at the same time that there’s growth.

00:36:06:23 – 00:36:25:22
Cory
And so I think it’s really about focusing on like, where do you reach peak efficiency for a business in terms of the culture, the business, the community, the gameplay that the profits for the studio that allow you to go do more. And so I don’t think for us it’s just about getting to a million daily actives. That would be really sexy to say It’d be a lot of fun, but I don’t think that’s where we’re healthiest.

00:36:25:22 – 00:36:45:10
Cory
I think we’re healthiest over the next year, certainly in the five figures of daily actives, if we’re only in four figures, we’ve done something wildly wrong. I think if we’re at 150,000, we’re probably balancing on this idea of like how sustainable or where are we going to break first. Too many things could break that we haven’t necessarily accounted for, not like from a performance standpoint or things like that.

00:36:45:10 – 00:37:01:22
Cory
Just like the ecosystem wasn’t designed to have 150,000 players when we only have two universes like, right. And so, like we need to basically grow based on sanity, not vanity. This is a shout out. Steve Woody I remember this one thing that he told me he goes, You can have standard numbers or vanity numbers and different projects want different things.

00:37:02:03 – 00:37:09:00
Cory
I really want to grow to these sanity numbers, things that are done in a way that’s really, really healthy for the game, the project community, the ecosystem and the assets involved.

00:37:09:02 – 00:37:17:14
Xander
Corey Just before we wrap, is there anything else on your roadmap or any key beats that you really excited for that you want to give a shout out to the audience to keep an eye out for?

00:37:17:16 – 00:37:31:04
Cory
Yeah, So I’ll give you guys really Alpha because this will release by the time this is live, but we have a web version of our game going live, which will be really, really fun. So the mobile version, you can do everything. The web app is a little bit lighter, but you can send all your missions Manager B’s throughout the day.

00:37:31:06 – 00:37:46:21
Cory
So for those people who are playing at work and their boss hates it, they can now do it in a lot more secrecy. But behind the tab, we’ll have Staking going live. We’re really focused on two big goals for the project. Make sure that we have enough daily trading volume to support any movement in or out of the ecosystem.

00:37:47:02 – 00:38:07:05
Cory
It being noticed, right? And that’s both with our head of TS, like the marketplace stuff that we’ve done, but also our token, because I want this to be really, really healthy and then make sure that the assets have more value tomorrow than they have today so that while you can move them into the ecosystem, there’s daily trading volume to kind of support that that you may not want to unless you need to, because you feel like they’re going to have more value tomorrow.

00:38:07:06 – 00:38:24:16
Cory
So that’s kind of what I’m thinking at at a high level and doing this in a really, really predictable way. But token staking is something that’ll be really important Part of that. I think we’ll have some really, really cool, thoughtful, as you might imagine, incentive programs to make sure that it’s designed in a way that’s really, really healthy, given a fixed supply, deflationary token and all that type of stuff.

00:38:24:18 – 00:38:44:06
Cory
And then we’re moving toward totally centralized exchange listing. You know, we’re starting that conversation already, which I think will really support that as well. And then from the gameplay side, it’s all about making the player the hero. This year we have a ton of like really, really sound mechanics in place. We have a tutorial on staking your breeding and missions and all that stuff, but we haven’t focused enough on making the player the hero.

00:38:44:09 – 00:39:01:12
Cory
And so this year is really about giving you ways to acknowledge and celebrate your achievements and growth and progress and the game to share that and flex that in front of other players to compete at a higher level against other players through things like leaderboards and reward incentives and badges and all that stuff. So I think there’s a lot of really, really cool things that we’ll be doing.

00:39:01:17 – 00:39:11:09
Cory
On the player experience that makes the player feel more fun and feel a little bit less mechanical in terms of what we’re doing. So let’s say those are the beats that we’re trying to hit on at a high level here.

00:39:11:11 – 00:39:17:16
Xander
Awesome. Well, it’s joining us on the podcast. Really appreciate it. Your perspective. It was a good conversation that spanned quite a bit.

00:39:17:17 – 00:39:22:10
Warren
Yeah. And if Corey, if people want to learn more about Homeland, where is the best place for them to start?

00:39:22:12 – 00:39:39:13
Cory
Yeah. So Honeybee Outland is our website. And then, of course, like I said, you can find us in Google Play or Apple Store anywhere in the world. So go search Honey land, download, start playing super easy onboarding. You’ll be playing in minutes and picking up all the mechanics. And then if you’re Web three, we’ve got our discord, but we try and really cater to more of a web to audience.

00:39:39:13 – 00:39:53:08
Cory
So I do a lot of like in-game announcements and videos. We write medium articles and things like that. So you don’t have to be a Web 3D. Jen to participate in our community and get all those updates and stuff, but you certainly can discord’s a really, really fun place to kind of play another part of the game, which is the community part of the game.

00:39:53:08 – 00:39:54:06
Cory
Also.

00:39:54:08 – 00:40:15:03
Warren
Awesome. Thanks so much for joining us today, Corey. As always, the podcast was brought to you by our team here at Optic Curate Optic. We do all things to help games grow traditional user acquisition web three, Native Growth, Creative data analysis. And we built some really awesome software that supports and automates all that. So if we can help your game grow and you’re building something super cool, reach out to us through our website.

00:40:15:03 – 00:40:18:06
Warren
That’s UPPTIC.com.

00:40:18:07 – 00:40:18:23
Xander
Talk soon.