From Bootstrapped Startups to Blockchain Gaming Mastery with Noah Bragg from Stokefire

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One, it's not really a crypto project, I feel like unless you have a token that brings in, I think, one of the superpowers of crypto, which is speculation.
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Right? People don't necessarily like to say that, especially when they talk about meme coins and stuff. But really one of the new abilities that crypto brings in is being able to speculate on things.
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Hey, welcome back to another episode of behind the Screen with G.
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The podcast where we unravel the stories, insights and secrets of top tier artists, avid collectors and innovative builders shaping the digital frontier better known as Web3. I'm your host, G, an avid crypto enthusiast. Yeah, this episode is super dope. I sat down with Noah Bragg, who is the creator of Stokefire, which is a blockchain game, really cool game.
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And we get to talk about kind of the lead up to the game.
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So two companies that he's kind of founded before, how he got into crypto, why he launched a token.
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And kind of where we're at with the game right now, he has a couple hundred people playing the game and it's been really fun watching him kind of develop the game live in public. That's kind of what he does.
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So, yeah. I hope you enjoyed this episode and thanks. Let's, let's go into it.
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As much as you feel comfortable doxing yourself, like who, who is Noah Bragg or who's Noah? I'm like completely doxed, basically. I have, I have like a ton of stuff online if people want to go find. Like I think I've got like 200 YouTube videos on my YouTube channel of like me building things and doing things. I've got a podcast that I haven't done for maybe a year, but a podcast with like 150 episodes of me building a web2business. So yeah, people can find stuff. And I'm basically a builder. I just like building things. I've built a couple web two businesses. I've sold a business or two and then I've been in crypto for like four years.
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And in the last year and a half I've actually gotten my businesses into crypto and so I had still have a website called Poolfish that's one of my businesses that is kind of still going. It's a website for liquidity providers. So it has lots of uniswap data and analytics data to help them make decisions. And then I started Stokefire maybe 3 1/2 months ish ago and I've been working on that and so that's kind of like my main Focus right now. And it's a mobile game that's built on chain. And so, yeah, I just like building things, like creating things. That's what really motivates me and gets me excited.
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And I'm really into crypto. Enjoy crypto stuff. So that's pretty much me. Awesome, man. Yeah, I saw that you had a lot of YouTube videos and stuff like that. So, yeah, it does seem like you're comfortable kind of building it public, which is great. I was going to ask you a little bit about kind of the Web2 company. I know you sold it.
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I don't know if it's an observation I have or maybe it's the people I interact with, but a lot of builders on. Actually just a lot of people in Web3, I would say if they've gotten big in Web3, it's like their first time ever, you know, running a company, let's say, like, they. They are their own company, like as a content creator or whatever it is that they're doing. This is like their first time running something more than like, you know, $10,000 or something like that. So, like, it seems kind of rare because I've spoken to a couple people that like, you know, have gone companies from like 10 million AR to like over 100 million, and now they're in Web3. And to me, it's like those people are very few, you know, like, their experience shows and it's very clear to me, like, based on how they approach things in Web3. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about that in terms of like, you know, like, what was that business, you know, why did you sell it? I'm guessing you sold it because crypto was a bit more interesting or you were just ready. Yeah, Just wanted to talk a little bit about that, you know, and if you think that helps you with what you're doing now, essentially, Web three. Yeah, I mean, so I kind of really got into kind of like bootstrapping, so. Bootstrapping. If people don't know, it's just like trying to, like, make businesses without having to raise money and get venture capital and stuff like that. And there's actually like this whole community on online, a lot of people on Twitter and stuff called indie hackers. And it's kind of this idea of, like, a lot of times solo builders that are just trying to make a business online by themselves that, you know, it scales with just them at least. But it's not something where it has to become like a huge startup or a big unicorn. It's just like make a nice business online and do it with small, you know, a little bit amount of resources, a lot of times just yourself. And so that's something I really got into and I just liked the kind of the vision of that of like, you know, kind of being able to build a business on your own terms.
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And so that's, I kind of started some of my Web2 businesses with that kind of goal in mind. Like just trying to build like a, a SaaS, which is like a software as a service business and just kind of build something that works, that's profitable, not have to go raise tons of money.
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And so my first kind of, I've had a couple, I've had lots of projects, lots of businesses and things I've tried. But really the first one that worked and did pretty well was Potion and It was a SaaS. It was this tool that allowed you to create a website out of your notion pages.
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So I don't know how familiar you are with notion, but like with notion it's kind of like note taking apps. You can do all kinds of things in there, organize data and put content in there. And so what Potion did is and kind of why I named it Potions. Like you add the magical potion to notion and it allows you to like turn your notion pages into a website and then it hosts it for you and lets you kind of stylize it and stuff. Yeah, so that was kind of a tool that like pro consumers used or different kind of small businesses would use to like host their website online. It's just like an easy people or it's, it's an easy way for people to make a website with a tool they're already in every day, like notion. So yeah, it went really, it went pretty well. Like it kind of grew slowly and I spent maybe two and a half years on that business. The first year I started it while I had a full time tech job because I'm a software developer. And then I finally got it to a point where I could go on it full time. And ever since I went on that full time, I've been doing my own businesses since then. And then yeah, I kind of decided to sell it for a couple different reasons.
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One was that was kind of during like the crypto last crypto bull run and I was really into crypto. I was very intrigued and wanted to do more in the crypto space. So I was kind of starting to get just a little bit bored with the business even though like it was going well and stuff. And then the Other reason was just like there's always a risk that something could come in and like ruin your business and make it go to zero or whatever. And there's always that little bit of fear, you know, in the back of my head that like, what if this ends up like it's doing good right now, but what if something changes and then like it doesn't work, you know, tomorrow? And so being able to sell it and kind of move on is just kind of a good way to be like, all right, I've made something that's valuable, sell it, kind of reap some rewards from it and I don't have to worry about that anymore and I can kind of move on.
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I think the other kind of thing reason is like because I like to build things and make things. It's like there's always like the new thing to build is always an interesting, fun thing, like new challenges to figure out and to solve. And so that's why like eventually I was like, I want to go do something new and different. So yeah, that's kind of why I decided to sell it. Yeah. No, thanks for walking me through that.
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Seems like you were. Your intuition was right, you know, at least like from the sense of, you know, notion. This year launched, you know, how to generate websites kind of like natively. Yeah. I was using another tool for a while called super, so. Oh, yep. That was my biggest competitor. Yeah. I don't know what it was about them, but I was using super because you're in that space and I think we're in like similar. We follow similar people probably on Twitter, but probably I follow easlow. He's like a template person. I don't know. I followed him when he was like. I'm pretty sure it's him when he was like really small. I think now he's like recently blown up like crazy. Yeah. But he was the one that got me into like no shit and Super. Yeah.
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So it made it like very. Yeah, I was just down there and for me, like as a non technical person, I. Before that website, I had a. What did I have like a Ugo or Jekyll, like static website generator.
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I forget like what the. What it is, but it. Jekyll maybe. Yeah, I think it was Jekyll. It was like very like low.
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Like I found like a template or something online. I was able to edit it like the JavaScript like just enough to like tailor it to myself and then I was able to deploy it on like, I don't even remember like GitHub pages or something. It was like very. Yeah, like a free. Free option. Yeah, it was like a free option basically. And it was nice and there was like way easy. It was, it was better than WordPress for me because WordPress, like, for some reason I could never get it to click for me, but like updating it. When I had like a blog, I was like, this is, this is too much. Like now I have to go back into the JavaScript and like open it up and edit it. So when I found that notion, like, hey, like I'm already in notion and I'll like to update the content. I just gotta like type and that's it. Yeah, it was pretty magical how it kind of worked. Like you just kind of edit things in notion like you always do and then your white website just automatically updates.
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Yeah, no, that sounds really cool. It's a really good spot that you were in with potion and I mean, in my opinion. I think you think you timed it well, man, because I'm sure Super is doing fine or whatever. But yeah, like you said, it is kind of scary when Notion can kind. Of eat your lunch a little bit. Yeah, exactly. Pretty quickly too. And it looks like they're going after a couple markets. That's awesome. So let's see. I wanted to go into your Poolfish app for a little bit.
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I was poking around in it and I'm trying to understand kind of what made you want to build Poolfish. And this could be a little bit of like, I've been going deeper recently as I've been in the crypto space for a while, but I haven't really messed around with liquidity pools. Yeah. Can you walk me through kind of like, you know, like the problem that you're trying to solve with Poolfish as like a noob, you know, like someone has no idea what to do with liquidity pools. Yeah. So kind of what I did with Poolfish was I was kind of, you know, I wanted to start a business in crypto and I was looking at the space and I was like, what has worked in crypto that I can like build something around? Because the problem with crypto is a lot of its new technology. There's a lot of speculation and it's very volatile. Right. So it's like there's a lot of things that work one month and then they don't work the next month.
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And to make that work, what a lot of crypto companies do and have to do is they go raise a ton of money. Right? Like they get a lot of venture backed, they get investment, or it's either that or it's like you have to have a token of some sort that people are investing in. And so as a bootstrapper, I was like, where can I make a business in crypto that can, like, work in between all that? And so this was in the bear market, and I was doing some liquidity providing investing myself. And it really was the one thing, like I'd kind of decided when I looked at all of crypto that liquidity providing was like the one crypto thing that had found product market fit and that, like, had worked. Because, you know, Uniswap has been doing this for years now, and there's been, you know, different dexes that do it as well. And the fees that you make from liquidity providing are like real fees. Like this is like real yield. Where what's happening is people are trading on a dex. They're trading, you know, you want to buy some meme coin and you have to go from ETH to that meme coin. You're paying a fee to the. To the liquidity providers, since they're providing a service basically where they have the liquidity to allow you to swap from ETH to the meme coin and you pay them a fee. So it's like, it's a real yield and there's like product market fit there where it's like you're actually serving someone for real.
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And it's not one of these crypto projects where all the yield is like this fake made up like incentives or inflating a token away that eventually has no value.
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So it was the one thing I saw in crypto that was like, okay, there's actually something there that's like, working. And that I think is going to continue to work because there's real money being made, there's a real service being provided. And so I looked at liquidity providing. I was like, all right, how can I make a business kind of around liquidity providing and like, you know, solve a problem that's helpful for people there?
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And so actually what I ended up doing was I bought the website from somebody else. So Poolfish used to be called Uniswap Fish because it was built all around Uniswap and a kind of solo developer built it. And it was around for like two years. It had a decent amount of traffic. And so I found it because I was liquidity providing myself and thought that it would be a good website to buy. And so I went and bought that website, kind of rebranded it, added lots of features, kind of Added things to it, and then kind of built kind of a business around it. Because it actually was a website that made no money. It just had, like, traffic. And so I kind of built it into a business. And so, yeah, to go more, because I know you asked about the liquidity providing part, basically. And so how kind of Poolfish helps that, I guess, is when you're liquidity providing, one of the things you're doing is you're trying to find opportunities. Like, there's so many different pools that people are trading. And so as a liquidity provider, you're like, okay, where can I put my liquidity? Where it's going to gain the most fees. And typically that has something to do with where a lot of volume is going. You know, where people are trading right now, there's different, like, fee tiers, like fee buckets for each pool that gives the liquidity provider more fees. And so Poolfish has like, this pool explorer where you can kind of filter down different things and find pools or you can find new pools to then put your liquidity.
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So that's one of the problems it's trying to help solve, is find the opportunities. And then the second thing is there's this whole thing of V3 pools.
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So Uniswap launched V3, which it's kind of this whole technical thing that could be hard to explain. But basically there are. When you provide your liquidity, you decide more than just what pool to provide it to. You're then also deciding what range basically that you want to provide your liquidity at. And so there's. There's like a price of any pool, there's a price, and you're trying to kind of match your liquidity, you know, somewhat in a range around that price. So that as the price is kind of moving around, your liquidity is used, but it's optimized, and that it's only used at that range where kind of the old version of uniswap, which is V2, which is still used a lot today, when you provide liquidity in that, your liquidity is provided over the whole price range. And so it makes your liquidity not as optimized, and you get less fees over that. Got it. And so what Poolfish does is it has like this calculator where you can basically play around with different ranges in a pool and kind of just kind of play around with the potential of what fees you could get. And so it will tell you these are the potential fees you could make based on historical data around volume at that. At those Ranges. So it kind of helps a liquidity provider make a position in a pool. So I don't know. I'm sure you have like a follow up after that because I don't know how much of that made sense because it is kind of. It gets into the weeds. No, no, it's awesome, actually.
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Like, you answered a lot of questions. So, like, I follow it enough.
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Like, I remember when Uniswap announced V3, and, like, there was like, obviously when it first launched, there wasn't that much money in V3 contracts versus old V2. And like, so I do remember. I vaguely remember some of these things. And now that you're describing it, like, it's all. It all kind of starts clicking to me and it all starts making a lot more sense, you know? So, like, I remember, like, I recently tried doing like a. Because, like, I recently joined down, so I was like, trying to do liquidity providing for now, and it started asking me for, like, the range and I was like, what's that? What's that? Like, I'm kind of confused. Like, what do you mean? And so then I was like, oh, I wonder if it's like, doing it where you got exactly what you said. Like, if I put it in as like, you know, usually nouns, like, the lowest I've seen in the last couple, like, months or so. It's like two and a half. It's like a, like, really low. And then like, 10 would be like, you know, kind of high at this point. Yeah, you know, I could be like, okay, like between two and a half and seven. Like, that's where I want to provide the liquidity. And if it goes past that, then obviously, like, my impact, I guess, is lower or something. So I had a feeling it kind of like, played. It all played into, like, what you were just saying. So thanks for literally describing that. And that's really cool, like, what Poolfish is trying to do. I had a feeling. I was like, I bet it's like trying to make you find, like, what pool, like, is best. Like, kind of like an arbitrage, you know, like, where can you get the fees for. Yeah, the best.
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So kind of randomly are you trying to go for, like, we're gonna get it to stoke fire, I promise.
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Yeah, you try to. Are you trying to go for, like, the levels. Do you remember, you know, levels, like, where he has like. Oh, yeah, like, levels on Twitter.
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Yeah, levels on Twitter. You try to go for the levels, like, companies right now? I mean, I. I definitely. So he's an indie hacker, so he makes businesses solo. And so I'm definitely following that. He, he does this thing where he like makes a business and then like he moves on to the next business, but he still keeps the last one and, you know, kind of keeps them all going and automated and stuff.
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I don't think I necessarily want to do that. Like, in some ways I, like, I. It's really hard for me to focus on more than one thing, I guess. And so, like, even now, like, I'm starting to think maybe I should sell pool fish because it's not really something I'm focusing on right now and I can't really. And. And I kind of don't want to. And so it, like, it definitely hasn't been making as much money as a business the last couple months because I haven't been focusing on it. And so I have considered maybe selling it. But at the same time, it's also a good business in that it's just like a very passive business where it's just like a website traffic kind of comes through mostly through Google and people that are direct searching it or going to it. And yeah, it doesn't have to take a ton of my time, which is, which is nice. But yeah, I don't really want to do like five, seven different businesses at the same time. Like I think Levels does. Yeah, Levels is a little. A little much. And I know a lot of people are doing that too. I'm sure there's other people other than Levels doing this. That's like the meta right now. No, that's really cool. Honestly, I could see how, like, what Poolfish is trying to solve for and what, like, what is the, what is the fee structure in there for Levels then?
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I mean, for. Yeah. Do you get like a percentage cut, like of those fees or. Well, no. So I have a couple different things.
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So one, I have sponsors, and that's what's mainly dropped off the last couple months. But typically I'll have like two different crypto companies that are sponsoring the website to get in front of all the traffic. And a lot of times it's like a crypto company that's also helping liquidity providers or it's like a Dex or something like that. And so that's one of the ways I've made money is through having crypto companies pay to just get on the website.
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The second way is I added like a pro, kind of like SaaS. So like, you know, you get all the free things that you get with the website, but if you want, you know, if you're like a very pro liquidity provider and you need a little bit more, you need some extra features. You can pay $30 a month to get the pro version, which kind of unlocks a couple extra features. So that's kind of the other way that it makes money.
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And then the third way is this, was this last spring I made a video course that's just like a one time purchase video course that, you know, I'm not trying to.
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So basically I'm trying to teach, I teach in that course how to do liquidity providing and kind of how the tech works, how the math, some of the math works and just like how, how it all works.
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I'm not necessarily trying to tell people, hey, this is how you should invest and this is what you should put your money into. Because I don't want to get into, into that. But it's mainly a course to kind of help people get started in liquidity providing. So that's kind of like the third thing that I offer on the website that people come through and they can pay for a one time thing to unlock that.
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Awesome. Yeah, no, thanks for that. Seriously. I appreciate you kind of giving the insight to all that.
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Yeah. So I think people should definitely check out Poolfish. I'll be checking it out too, just to see what's in there, poke around, explore the world. All right, so for Stoke fire.
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Yeah, sorry. I might like jumping, but I thought it was like cool that you have actually built a business, sold it and you already started another Web3 business and you're still kind of running it and now you're kind of in web3 gaming. So like. Yeah, walk me through. Kind of like. All right, so I have friends who work in the gaming industry and gaming as a whole is like, it's like a 70 billion. I forget like what the market cap. It's a freaking huge. It's big. Yeah, it's like bigger than movies now I think, if I'm not mistaken. So very competitive space, very hard. And then you throw in, you sprinkle in the web 3 and you make it just a little bit harder for yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, walk me through that. Like what, what, what made you want to start a web web three gaming company essentially? Stokefire. Yeah, I mean, so you know, I've jumped all around like different crypto stuff and I like using crypto projects and one of my favorite, a lot of my favorite projects are kind of like crypto games and like trying out, you know, people are trying kind of new things with games and crypto and you know, I've played. I've played lots of games growing up and stuff. I don't know if I'd even go that far to say, like, I'm a gamer, though. Like, I played lots of games, but I'm not one of those that, like, play every day or every weekend. I think what gaming allows, though, is. And building a game is just like. It's like this canvas to, like, build something really interesting, and there's just a lot of creativity to it that I really enjoy. And so that's one of the things that kind of drew me to it.
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The other thing was, I think this was, like, in last spring when I was starting to kind of dream up this idea and think about building a game. Just a lot of people in crypto kind of talking about, we need apps. Like, we have all this infrastructure stuff. We have all the blockchains. We got the layer ones, we got the layer twos. We need, like, actually good apps for people to want to come and use and play. And I was just like, I think I want to go make one of those apps. Like, I agree. We need more apps in crypto. We need, like, good things to do that are valuable.
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And building a game just in crypto just sounded really fun and exciting to me. You know, I love, like, economy kind of stuff, and that's, you know, one of the things that draws me to crypto, and I think that's what's really cool in crypto games that you can do is, like, build an economy a part of the game. And there's just a lot of interesting kind of experimentation and things that you can do with that. And there's been a lot of crypto games.
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You know, there's. There's been Axie Infinity. There's been these games that kind of do well for a little bit, but I think they. They kind of get it wrong, and that's why they kind of. They do well, and then they kind of blow up, and then they, you know, people don't really talk about them anymore, even though I'm pretty sure Axio Infinity still is, like, alive and has a decent player base. Yeah. So I saw, like, some potential there for crypto video games to do well. I just. I don't know if anyone's, you know, kind of gotten it quite right. And so I just had some ideas for how maybe I could make a crypto game that could make a lot of sense. And so, yeah, just kind of started to go for it and. And really, Stokefire, it's like, it's kind of like accumulation or it's like, bringing together almost all of my different favorite games that I play and grew up playing. It's like Civilization 5, Age of Empires 2. I wasn't a big Clash of Clans player, but there's definitely some ideas coming from that. There's this game called A Dark Room. So, yeah, there's multiple different games that I enjoyed, and a lot of times it is. For me, like, a lot of my favorite games are, like, Civilization Village Building kind of games. And so that's kind of what I did with Stokefire is like, all right, how can I take the parts that I like from each of those games, kind of put it together in something that works well for mobile and, you know, works well in the crypto space? So, yeah, that's. That's kind of what I'm trying to do with it.
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No, that's awesome. Yeah. No, it. It.
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I saw it and I instantly. I was like, yeah, this is dope. Have you.
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Have you actually, like, just a quick, like, segue, but, like, have you.
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Have you watched the video that they like.
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Jesse was on a podcast recently from base. Yeah, Jesse from base. Yeah. Sorry, I. I didn't. I don't think so. Okay, I'll send it to you. Dude, it got me so hyped, like. Whenever, like, what happened?
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He's saying, like, exactly what you're saying, which is, like, we got to build more apps. Like, we got to, like, experiences on chain. Like, he.
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But, like, man, he. He got me gas, bro. It's like, he was like, you need to start going, like, full, like, missionary style, like, or status. Like, you know, like, you got to bring in one non crypto person into crypto like, once a week or something. And I was like. And I used to do that a long time ago. Like, so I've been in crypto since 2012, and I used to do that. Like, 2015 is when I started feeling comfortable. Like, where I was like, okay, I think I know, like, what I'm talking about when I say blockchain. Like, I know what that means. So around, like, 2015 to, like, 2018, I was going hard, like, just going to meetups, like, trying to tell people, come to the meetup with me. And I kind of just like, I don't say. I wouldn't say I stopped. Like, I've kind of just, like, stopped going as hard. And I was. After watching that, I'll send it to you.
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I was like, okay, I need to. Yeah, I need to start doing it again, you know, Like, I Feel like I've gotten comfortable with like everyone, you know, like I speak to people on chain and like I don't have to explain too many things to them. So that's kind of nice. But I was like, yeah, we need to start getting people back in here again. Like, we need more normal back in here. Have you ever developed an iOS app before or was this like your first. Time kind of going into that realm? I have, yeah. Actually my first like tech job was on like the mobile team. So I've done iOS and Android and those were like native apps that I was building. So it was like done in you know, Swift for iOS or Android is like Kotlin. So it's like you're building natively for that platform where now like in Stokefire, it's actually in React, native and Expo. So it's kind of built in like web app kind of platforms which the last, you know, three or four years I've been doing more web app kind of stuff, mostly like websites and applications on, on in your browser. But yeah, so it uses a lot of those same technologies just in a mobile app. But yeah, so I've done, I've kind of done a lot of random stuff, but I have done some mobile apps before and actually one of my first projects as like a computer science, you know, software developer, like Learn Learning was I made an iOS game called Space Escape, I think it was called. And it was, it was like a mobile game on iOS that was, that was maybe like 10 years ago. So it probably, you know, it wasn't great, but it was something. It was my first, you know, experience learning game stuff.
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Yeah, yeah. When, when you were making Stokefire, did you have like this whole conundrum versus like PWA versus fully dedicated app? Oh yeah, Yep. Yeah, for sure.
00:30:26.813 --> 00:30:48.085
It is a hard question. Yeah, I mean like, you know, as a non technical, I mean I'm like. So my role is kind of weird in real life. Like I'm like. I don't even know how to describe it. I guess like a technical architect, product manager, weird role, but like more business facing. Okay. It's, it's odd.
00:30:48.164 --> 00:30:54.820
That's just the easiest way to describe it. So like I know a little bit about tech and stuff like that, but like for the non tech people.
00:30:55.012 --> 00:31:05.305
What, you know, it's funny because like on Warpcast I see like people go like people go at it and Dan's like, just build, don't build the pwa.
00:31:06.085 --> 00:31:09.184
And that seems to trigger people like very quickly.
00:31:09.605 --> 00:32:23.325
So like. Yeah, can you walk me through kind of that decision process for you, like, what. What made you go like, full dedicated app? And then. Well, kind of the whole thing is a dedicated app is better. Like, it just. It is. I think everyone would agree that it's better to have a dedicated app. And I think especially if you're trying to get normal consumer people that aren't in crypto much, none of them have heard of PWAs. No one uses PWAs. The only reason that in crypto we have these apps that are using PWAs is because it gets you around the App Store review process, which both Apple and Google are kind of. They're not very friendly to crypto apps and it's a whole thing to kind of get through that process and it takes a lot of time. And so then for crypto it's just like easier to just do the pwa. But I think everyone would agree that the experience just isn't as good on a pwa. One, like, for normal consumers, like, they would just be confused on how to install it and get it. They're just used to going to the App Store and downloading something. And then the kind of. The second thing is it just doesn't load as fast. It doesn't move around to different tabs as quickly.
00:32:24.305 --> 00:32:45.125
And I think it's actually better on Android, but for some reason on Apple phones, PWAs are just kind of weird. They don't even work as well as a normal website in the browser, I feel like. So, yeah, I think that's kind of why, you know, I did have to debate it though, because I was like, I don't even know if I can get through the, like, App Store process. Like, I'm.
00:32:45.164 --> 00:34:02.775
I can try, but then that could be a lot of wasted work if that doesn't end up working out. So it's definitely kind of a headache to get through that, but I decided just kind of go for it because I felt like that was the better decision long term and thankfully it worked out. But yeah, that was. That was kind of the main thinking around going for the. The dedicated app. And I kind of agree with Dan, you know, kind of his kind of thinking around the. The dedicated app versus the pwa. Yeah. Do you feel like now that you've introduced fire into your game, like, obviously, knock on wood. Hopefully no feds are listening, but, like, do you think that might. Because they're kind of looking for, like, if you're going to be like, circumventing fees and like the App Store. Right? Yeah, like the App Store review team, like, aren't they looking mostly for that, like, and when? Yeah, I mean, yeah, so there's definitely, I mean, there's potentially things in the game right now that they just don't know about that they probably wouldn't like. And it's just like you can, you can kind of get around things by like sending people to a website to do stuff or whatever.
00:34:03.875 --> 00:34:10.855
But yeah, they don't really like crypto because, yeah, it's like, for them, it's like, are you just like getting around our fees and things like that?
00:34:11.795 --> 00:34:30.418
Or they don't understand things. Like they think that, you know, if you move any money around that you might be like a bank, basically. Like, they treat you like you're a bank. But like, we know, like in crypto it's like it's all decentralized. It's not like I have control of the money. It's like it's moving through people's wallets that they own and stuff.
00:34:30.507 --> 00:34:52.655
So it's just things that they don't really like or maybe completely understand or see the same way we do. So, yeah, there's definitely potential for them to be like, hey, we don't like what you're doing in your app. And I think even like Warp Cast has had to do this to some extent of like, the reviewers just don't actually look through the whole app and go through all the things.
00:34:53.474 --> 00:37:19.048
And there are some things kind of hidden in an app unless you have the right accounts and stuff. And so even technically warpcast with its frame transactions and stuff like that, those are things that the App Store probably wouldn't like either. But it's just things that the review teams don't really get into. So yeah, there's always potential for them to not like it or decide that, yeah, we don't like, you need to change this thing or something like that. And so kind of my thinking on that is just like to try to try putting it in the app and then if they find it and think that's a problem, then I'll have to deal with it at that point. And so that's why having a PWA is definitely safer to just have that option. And that's something I could always do is like go build like a web version or you know, something like that. So just kind of has like an add on to the mobile app. So, yeah, I mean, hopefully, hopefully you don't have to experience any of that. Any of those. Hopefully. Yeah, I'm rooting for you on that, I guess. I got a couple questions still, like before we kind of dive into the game. Um, the first one is like, do you feel that you're at a disadvantage as someone that has never built a game? Do you, like, like, do you find that to be scary or holding you back or like, maybe negative? Or do you think it's like, like, it's like liberating? You know, you're like, I'm not, I'm not constrained of like, this is what a, a game, a fun game is supposed to be. You're kind of like, I think this will be fun and you're kind of shipping it. What do you think about that? Yeah, I just enjoyed the process, I enjoyed the creative process of building something and making something. I've had some experience building a game or two, but I'm definitely not a game developer. I've not worked at the game tech companies or whatever. So, you know, there's definitely some things I'll maybe have to figure out as I go. I'm definitely weaker on maybe like the art side and I've done some kind of art, you know, kind of designing stuff, but that's definitely one of my weaker sides. But it's kind of something I want to play around with and do like some of the pixel art myself and some of the animation of that myself.
00:37:19.097 --> 00:37:33.934
Like, I think that'd be fun. But that is also something I could hire someone to help me do if I am, you know, feel like I'm lacking there. So, yeah, that's probably, maybe, you know, probably one of my weaker sides of the game. Dev kind of stuff.
00:37:35.275 --> 00:37:50.204
Yeah, other than that, like, I don't, I don't feel too, like, disadvantaged or anything. Like, I think it's, you know, I see it as like a fun challenge to like, build a fun game and learn and grow as I do it. Like, that's the fun part for me. Yeah.
00:37:50.284 --> 00:38:16.722
Yeah, I could see that. And I guess, I guess kind of another answer to that is like, I guess all the things I'm doing there, it's kind of a lot. So it's like, I don't think there's. I guess I'm not trying to say I'm like amazing or anything, but like that. But it's like, basically I have to be a jack of all trades to kind of do all the different parts of making stoke fire, because it's like you have to know the smart contract stuff.
00:38:16.869 --> 00:39:20.735
You have to know, like the ui. And then also like, you know, once I get into more art, animation kind of stuff, like figuring that out and then like back End kind of things. Like, there's. There's a lot of different, I guess, kind of pieces that go into making a game that. Especially a game that's on chain. Right. Like, that adds, like a whole extra level. And so I, you know, it's hard to find someone that's. Can do all those things and be, you know, a hundred percent at all those things. You know, I'm kind of mid midway, maybe at all of them, so. Yeah, no, I. I agree. I think maybe, like, if you. Like you said, I think you'd be good at spotting, like, you know, if you were lacking in the art area, you could be like, okay, you can get someone else to do the art for you. And there's plenty of talented artists on Farcaster as well, especially pixel artists. Yeah, I feel like. No, I think you're good. You're doing great right now with everything. Yeah.
00:39:21.275 --> 00:39:25.494
What made you launch a token?
00:39:28.434 --> 00:39:54.317
Going back. Going back to doing Web3 gaming and, like, in general, like, now you're doing tokenomics too? Yeah, Well, I mean, part of it is you're not one. Like, it's not really a crypto project. I feel like unless you have a token, like, that's kind of one of the, like, that brings in, I think, one of the superpowers of crypto, which is speculation.
00:39:54.420 --> 00:40:19.699
Right. Like, that's. And, you know, people don't necessarily like to say that, you know, especially when they talk about, like, meme coins and stuff. But really one of the new abilities that crypto brings in is being able to speculate on things. And, you know, there's downsides to that as well as there are upsides to that. And so with this game, like, I'm trying to use the positive sides, the positive things of speculation to kind of make the Stokefire economy work.
00:40:19.746 --> 00:40:40.855
So it's like a very important part, actually, to make the game one kind of be fun. Like, it's part. Part of the fun part, but it's also a part of the reward mechanism that makes the game work. And I think it's kind of a nice tool to have for that. The other thing that's obviously nice about a token is it can help you bootstrap something.
00:40:42.355 --> 00:41:15.672
If I built a mobile game, kind of just like in the normal web2world, it would be very hard to make a profitable game that makes revenue, especially bootstrapping it. And so a token kind of is almost like this bootstrapping lever that you can have that helps you kind of bootstrap, kind of be able to make some extra revenue with that, because of the speculation side of things that then can help you to make, like, a better game without having to go, like, get funding, raise capital, things like that.
00:41:15.809 --> 00:41:41.614
And so those are some of the kind of positives of a token that I thought it'd be interesting to try as well as. It's just like. It's interesting. I don't know. I think it's fun. I wanted to figure out how to make the token and economy involved with that work in a game. I think it's very interesting, and that's kind of what drew me to that kind of option.
00:41:45.155 --> 00:41:51.905
All right, let's take a quick break. I hope you're enjoying the episode. This episode was made possible with the support of my premium subscribers.
00:41:52.284 --> 00:41:59.061
Thanks again. Seattle Dog McMinals, Johan Nonlinear, Brennan, Peachy, Tree Girl, M.
00:41:59.092 --> 00:42:12.744
Branson, Trevor and Nate, thanks again for all your support. If you'd like to receive exclusive drops access to token gated content, make sure to subscribe to my hypersub. I'll have a link down below. All right, let's get back to it.
00:42:15.074 --> 00:42:22.411
Yeah, yeah, no, I. It's. It's a great name, too. Fire. Yeah, that's.
00:42:22.523 --> 00:42:37.778
I was hoping. Yeah. A name that kind of went with the game and. Get the fire going. Exactly. There you go. So for people that haven't played the game, do you want to kind of explain at a high level?
00:42:37.867 --> 00:42:48.867
Like, I mean, obviously it's like, maybe. You should explain it. All right, sure. Yeah. And then I can come in and fill anything if there's anything missing. Yeah.
00:42:48.891 --> 00:42:56.295
So stoke Fire is. It's simple premise. You want to keep it. I mean, it sounds simple, but you want to keep a fire lit.
00:42:57.275 --> 00:43:13.175
And there's a little animation. That's really cute. And it just waivers. I think you have 72 hours. So three days. Yeah, three days before it goes off. During those three days, you have to chop wood for the. For the fire.
00:43:14.074 --> 00:43:21.242
You also can build huts or houses with the wood. A little bit of catan. And you got to collect food as well.
00:43:21.298 --> 00:43:40.375
So the more houses you have or huts, the more villagers you can have. The more villagers you have, the more you can allocate them to. Well, at least now you can actually even designate the specific split on the allocation of who should go get wood or chop wood and who should go get food.
00:43:40.954 --> 00:43:48.355
And there's different timers on each of those. So I think forget what is like five hours? Six hours. Six hours, yeah.
00:43:48.474 --> 00:43:51.494
And then foods, like, every three, I think. Yep.
00:43:52.554 --> 00:44:06.836
And so, yeah, you kind of just have to before the 72 hours kind of runs out, you have to have enough wood to stoke the fire, and you have to have enough food for all your villagers or else some die.
00:44:07.021 --> 00:44:10.344
Yeah. Points go down, and then.
00:44:10.684 --> 00:44:59.684
So that's kind of where we're at right now. And you can attack other villages. Yeah, that's true. So some of the things that got rolled out, and I want to say recently, because you're moving at a very quick forecaster pace, which is. Which is fun for us here, but essentially in recent, like in the last two weeks, so now you could do different allocations of villagers for different tasks. So that's new. It used to be kind of all just click. And however many villages you had just did that rating. And I like the. I really do like the. The two, like, the leaderboard plus your, like, neighbors. I really do. The neighbors. Yeah, I really do like that. Because I feel like that's good to know.
00:44:59.804 --> 00:45:11.157
No, like, seriously, like. Like, it actually makes me feel like I'm not that far down the leaderboard when I look at that thing, because there's some people above me and there's some people below me, and.
00:45:11.221 --> 00:45:14.228
And then I finally, like, one day clicked on the leaderboard and I'm like, damn.
00:45:14.317 --> 00:45:24.514
Like, I'm not even. Oh, I am actually top 100. But still. Still not that there's like a thousand, three thousand or bajillion people playing, but I was like, damn, I'm not that high.
00:45:26.255 --> 00:45:36.990
There's some people that are really high up there. What else? And I know you're going to make the rating more complex, too. Pretty. More strategy.
00:45:37.063 --> 00:45:39.914
Yeah, more strategy behind it. So it seems like.
00:45:40.295 --> 00:45:43.994
Yeah, it's changing quickly, and I like it and.
00:45:44.744 --> 00:45:51.724
Good. Thanks. That's good to hear. And you did a good job. You explained it pretty well. I like the feedback in there, too.
00:45:52.385 --> 00:46:03.849
Yeah. I'd say kind of simply, there's almost like two main goals to stoke fire is one, you got to keep your fire alive because the villagers love to be warm. Right. They just love the fire.
00:46:03.976 --> 00:46:14.849
They want to get around the fire. So that's the first goal. Otherwise your village just dies or it gets raised and you lose your progress. And then the second goal is you're just trying to grow your village.
00:46:14.896 --> 00:46:28.568
You just want to get more villagers in there, grow your population. And that's kind of the main goal is just grow your population. And whenever you do grow your population, that's when your score goes up. That's how you get a higher score. And then the rewards are all tied into Your score.
00:46:28.657 --> 00:47:11.400
So, yeah, those are kind of things. And the other thing I'm trying to do with it is it's built right now on the Farcaster social graph, and I want to make it so you have, like, fun, like, little interactions with your friends on Farcaster that you kind of know, you know, from seeing their content or whatever. But it's also, you can, like, you can go steal their wood, you know, you can take their food. So, you know, it kind of gives some different ways to have some fun kind of social interactions. And that's what I want to build more towards as well, is like making it kind of a fun social game that has some strategy to it. Like, it's. It's kind of mainly a strategy game and then kind of a social game. So it's like bringing in some of that multiplayer aspect into it.
00:47:11.512 --> 00:47:25.284
And so I have lots of ideas of ways to go in those directions, and I'll just have to kind of slowly build towards that and make progress and listen to feedback and all that. Yeah. What would you say?
00:47:28.905 --> 00:47:36.355
How long have you been building it now for? It's probably been almost four months. It's been only a month.
00:47:36.695 --> 00:48:00.594
Almost a month since I launched the token and before that. So that's. That's more or less when, like, a lot of players or more players have started playing and stuff. Before that, we had like two months or so, which I think you were a part of that. You were one of the early Access people where we just had like 20 of us. There's just 20 of us. And, you know, this is before the token and it was just like just building out the first versions of it.
00:48:01.375 --> 00:48:11.554
So. Yes, thank you for being one of those very early people. Yeah, that was helpful. I'm looking forward to my PO app. I'm just kidding. That's easy.
00:48:12.494 --> 00:48:34.161
But what. So you've been at it, let's say four. So four months. And like in the last month and a half, let's say two months, it's gotten like, more people have gone. More people are playing it, essentially. So even, like, even Dan kind of went out of his way to say that he's playing. I think even Horse Facts is playing it too, if I'm not mistaken, because I've seen him raid. Yeah. People.
00:48:34.233 --> 00:48:40.724
Yeah. Horse Facts is playing it. I don't. Dan has not actually played it. Dan just kind of cast it about it, which is really nice of him.
00:48:41.264 --> 00:49:36.824
Yeah. Horse Facts has been playing, you know, just some different forecaster people have been playing. Some people, you know, they. They drop out, like, they try, and I don't know if they. They don't get it exactly or like, it's too much for them to keep their villagers going. Um, but I have been thankful to see that, like, a very high percentage of people stick around, actually, like, the numbers are pretty good and, like, people that play it and start and then, like, keep their village going so far, at least. So I've been. I've been very happy with, like, the retention, and it seems like people are enjoying it. I think one of the challenges is kind of for sure, the challenge that I feel all the time and I'm already kind of seeing is that, like, you know, I'm trying to build a game that you can kind of play passively for a long period of time. Like, the idea that you could have a village for a year or two years, and you're just continually working on your village and like, that's.
00:49:37.204 --> 00:51:05.744
That's, you know, it's. It's hard enough to make a game, but then to make a game, you know, it's hard enough to make a game that people play for five hours, 10 hours. And that's like a lot of what indie dev kind of games are. It's like, it's an experience where you go and play this game for a couple hours, you complete the game, and then it's like, done right. And so it's kind of an extra challenge to be like, all right, can I make something that people want to kind of do over a long period of time and keep doing? And so I kind of always feel the challenge of, like, eventually people kind of get. It kind of gets a little stale or they get a little bit bored of it because it's like you've been. You've been growing this village for like a month, you know, so it's like, eventually it's like you're kind of doing the same thing. And so that's where obviously me kind of building quick updates, adding more to it, making it more fun, giving their. Making there be more things you can do is, like, important. But I, you know, I kind of feel that. That pressure a little bit to kind of keep. Keep adding. Keep making it better so that the people that have been doing it for a while kind of continue to be engaged and continue to enjoy it. And I know we were. When we were doing our pre talk, you were talking about, like, making it less, like, when the 72 hours hit, like, it's not like a black and white response. Okay, we're gonna. We're gonna take away everything that you've worked towards in the last month because you got sick, you at least keep. Your rewards, at least.
00:51:06.324 --> 00:51:34.831
Yeah, I know you've been, like, trying to make it, like, a little, like, of a softer landing, which I think will help, you know, because. Yeah. We were talking about how Duolingo kind of lets you, like, like, the only streaks I have right now. It's kind of funny. Like, I'm not very. I'm not a streaks person, but the only streaks I have are Stoke Fire Duolingo. And I. I used to actually not like the farcaster, like, posting a channel. Streak.
00:51:34.902 --> 00:52:17.014
Streak. Yeah. Yeah. I was kind of, like, opposed to it. I was like, no, I'm not gonna. Like, I tried, and I made it to, like, five days, but surprisingly, I'm like, a day 27 now for my own channel. I'm like, hey, what are you doing it? Yeah. So now, like, I'm like, okay, I got three streaks, and I'm like. And I haven't killed my sourdough. Like, okay. I was like, we're reaching, like, a culmination point of, like, things that I'm keeping alive here, guys. Well, you're doing it. You're doing it now. I just got to go back into running again. That was one I had for a while, too. But, yeah, I think that will help with. It doesn't feel like the end of the world because some people might just rage, quit, too. They're like, village is dead. I'm out.
00:52:17.675 --> 00:52:21.266
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that will help.
00:52:21.371 --> 00:52:32.523
What's been the most surprising thing you've learned either from the community or, like, while developing, like, a new skill or, like, you know, what's been the most surprising thing for you?
00:52:32.659 --> 00:52:55.574
Hmm. It could be positive or negative, too. You know, it's fine. I mean, I think one of the things. And this is another thing where I, you know, it's a challenge in some ways because you have to kind of keep it in balance, is that this is, like, I've definitely seen in Stokefire some of the superpower of crypto, like, what crypto can allow.
00:52:56.074 --> 00:53:05.804
And there's some, you know, that's where there's a balance. Some of it can be positive, some of it can be negative. And that's that, like, when you add kind of money into things, you know, it's like you add reward.
00:53:07.105 --> 00:53:09.405
It does really incentivize people.
00:53:11.985 --> 00:53:41.306
And I've seen that in Stokefire, where it's like, these people, you know, they're. They're playing the game and, you know, Some. I'd say a decent amount of the Stokefire players, they're playing it because they find it kind of enjoyable. They have a community here on Farcaster, and it's like a fun way to interact with people. But there's definitely some people that are playing it because of that potential reward they could get from playing it. And it's just interesting to see kind of that superpower of, like, if you have some reward, those people will.
00:53:41.411 --> 00:54:01.514
They'll really stay engaged. And that's one of the reasons, like, I think there's been, like, a high retention of people playing it every day, but then that's, you know, it's something to be careful of, too. And that's why I'm always kind of thinking about is, like, the game can't be. People are just doing it to make money because eventually that falls flat.
00:54:03.175 --> 00:54:29.235
Even the rewards now, they kind of go up and down. Some days there's hardly not many rewards being given out, and then other days, just based on kind of the tokenomics and stuff, there are some more rewards given out. And so it's like the game can't just work on that alone because that will eventually dry up or. Or not dry up completely, but ideally not. But, you know, it just. It will kind of come and go. It's volatile, like, any token and things.
00:54:30.255 --> 00:55:05.454
And so it's. Yeah, it's kind of a challenge because, like, you. You. You have people coming in potentially for kind of the wrong reasons. But it's nice having that incentive as kind of a carrot to kind of get them to learn the game, enjoy the game, but then ultimately, like, you have to make a fun game that they enjoy, that they want to play and stay around for. So it's just. It's been very interesting, I guess, to see that part of it and then like, kind of figure out the problems that come from that and, like, try to do it correctly. Yeah, yeah. They come for the money and they stay for the memes. I've been cracking up in some of the memes. The Stoke Fire channel.
00:55:05.954 --> 00:55:08.295
Yeah. Yeah.
00:55:10.914 --> 00:55:14.112
Let's see. I'm looking at the time.
00:55:14.168 --> 00:55:20.681
Sorry. Yeah. Can you tell me about. I actually had a question. So what's going to happen with the hyper sub?
00:55:20.713 --> 00:55:24.409
Are you still thinking about keeping that around or. No, that's.
00:55:24.456 --> 00:55:31.760
That's pretty much like. That's. I think it's even, like, paused right now. So I don't think people can, like, continue it. Maybe they can.
00:55:31.793 --> 00:55:41.335
I don't know. Maybe I have to turn it off more. If you're a current member, you might be able to add to it, but I don't know why you would, because, yeah, it's basically like kind of closed.
00:55:41.835 --> 00:55:53.050
That was kind of the hyper sub. I think it worked out pretty well. Like, the whole idea of that was like, to build like a little community of early access people where they had to have a little skin in the game. Right.
00:55:53.083 --> 00:56:00.335
Like, they had to pay, I don't know, $13 for a month to, like, get into the group to be able to start playing Stoke Fire early on.
00:56:01.875 --> 00:56:24.184
And so, yeah, I really just wanted to know that people were like. I wanted a small group of people, but I wanted them to have skin in the game where they're like, actually going to play it and actually have good feedback and stuff, which the whole group, I think, was really great for that, you included. So thanks for that. And then, you know, once I kind of launched the token, which was kind of. I wanted it to be a surprise to everybody, which I. I think it ended up. It ended up being a surprise.
00:56:26.324 --> 00:56:33.913
Good. I just got like. Just to give you perspective, I. I was like in a. I was pretty busy all day, I think.
00:56:33.969 --> 00:56:51.244
And then I kept seeing, like, the messages pop off of people, like, saying, fire token. And I was like, what the hell is going on in that chat now? And I was like, all right, I'll look at that later. So, yeah, it was a surprise. I had no idea until, like, I literally, like, opened my phone and I was like, oh, shit. Yeah.
00:56:52.224 --> 00:57:12.054
Yeah. And I really wanted it to be like a quiet little thing because I didn't want, like, airdrop farmers to find it or come in and try to airdrop farm the whole thing. So, yeah, the group was really just like an early on thing. And then now it's kind of going on to having the token and a whole new kind of revenue model around that.
00:57:13.835 --> 00:58:19.222
We'll still have the group chat. We have our group chat for that hypersub kind of just for early OGs, basically to chat in there. And I still got to figure out, like, how to have maybe a better community for all of Stoke Fire to, like, open up to more people. But I'm still figuring out what I want to do with that. Yeah, I remember you mentioning you're talking about maybe possibly a discord or some other kind of tool that could bridge the gap for. Because it seems. Because you were saying that you were starting to get some people that, like, have forecaster accounts, but they're not necessarily in farcaster. Right. Like, half of the people I think Found it through Twitter, actually, and they have a Farcaster account just because a lot of people created accounts back when, like, Degen and that kind of stuff, but they don't actually use Farcaster, like, ever. So really, like, half of the players are kind of. There's kind of not like a community, really, for them, because really the community is on Farcaster that, like, we have our Stokefire channel and stuff. And so I think those people kind of feel like there's not a ton of people talking or whatever.
00:58:19.358 --> 00:58:21.514
And so that's where, like, a discord could make sense.
00:58:22.894 --> 00:58:48.608
But I'd like to kind of, like, use the Farcaster, like, building blocks to maybe make that community, like, into the app or, like, kind of keep it on Farcaster in some way, but still figuring that out. And if. And if I did do a discord, it's kind of like I feel like I would be moving towards that way, which would kind of make it maybe harder to do, like, my own kind of forecaster community built on Farcaster later.
00:58:48.777 --> 00:58:57.764
So I don't know. I haven't figured out or decided what I want to do. Yeah, yeah. I think. I think, like, we were chatting about it. I think, like, you would.
00:58:59.784 --> 00:59:35.505
Your game, like, the app you already have, would be, like, perfect for, like, what Dan says, like, as a forecaster channels specific client. Like, it'd be, you know, you could, like, you already have, like, you're able to swap inside the app, like, fire with, like, other token, like, eth, essentially. Yeah. You already have the leaderboard. You have. Yeah. Like, if you just brought in that, like, Forecaster channel, then. Yeah, it'd be like, the perfect channel specific client. Yeah. Like, the best example of it, I would say. You know, I don't think I've seen too many channel specific clients.
00:59:36.684 --> 01:00:12.570
Yeah, well, that was the other thing that got me excited about building something on top of Farcaster is like, there's been different clients, you know, for Farcaster, but they're all kind of just copies of Warpcast. And I feel like they're there just doesn't. At least right now, with how small Farcaster is, that just doesn't make a ton of sense for people to go over to those things. Um, but, you know, I kind of thought, like. And a client that's. I kind of see it as like a light client where it's like, you know, it's like a channel client or, you know, something where it's like you're already going to Stokefire to, like, play the game, and it's like, you're going there kind of for another reason.
01:00:12.682 --> 01:01:33.954
But then if the community is kind of there chatting and stuff, it just kind of gives you more reason to kind of be a part of that community and interact with those people. So, yeah, I feel like it actually makes more sense than a lot of the forecaster clients that have been built and kind of created with, because there's. There's another reason you're already going to the app. So if you kind of build the community there on Farcaster through the channel and stuff, like, I. I think that could make a lot of sense for a client. Yeah, more. And it's like a. It'd be a client that you're going to. Or we're already going to this app. More than you already got to gather. You already got to gather the food and chop the wood, dude. Like, I'm on this app three times a day, easily. Last night, I woke up, like, my kid woke up at a laugh. My kid woke up because she's, like, teething. And I was like, 2aM and I was like, well, I know the timers have reset by now. I was like, I might as well. Might as well chop some wood and gather some food while I'm away for these 30 minutes. No, that's great. I. I'm actually also a little torn with that, too. I'm curious what you think, because I think it's fun. Like, I think it's an interesting thing of, like, timing it and stuff, but in longer term, it's like, do you want to live to live according to the Stokefire timers? And so, you know, I don't. I don't want it to be a hindrance to anybody.
01:01:34.655 --> 01:01:45.737
And so I have thought of, like, could I eventually. And maybe that's even where it starts, where it's like, maybe the game starts out where you kind of have to manually, you know, gather and chop and stuff like that.
01:01:45.831 --> 01:02:14.155
But maybe as you build out your village, maybe you're only in that state for a couple weeks, and then you get to the point where it's almost more automated, where it's like, you have. You've built some things in place that are, like, automatically gathering food and chopping wood for you, and you can go back to, like, make decisions and change things and do strategic stuff, but it's more automated of, like, getting the resources. I think maybe moving, like. Do you think that'd be a good idea to move towards that so that you're not, like, living on this. This clock?
01:02:15.534 --> 01:02:17.594
I mean, yes, but.
01:02:19.494 --> 01:03:08.855
Yeah, I think it is some of the fun. Like, so I think, like, it is some of the fun of it as well. But, like, I think it. That probably gets old eventually. I think so. I'm also, like, I think I've told you, like, I played, like, Dark Souls and Bloodborne in a couple games. Like, I've just been beaten enough. Hardcore games. Yeah, I think I've gotten used to it. Friend Pet, too. I was, like, super early on that, and I had it going for almost like a year. And it wasn't until recently, I think, maybe not a year, actually. Maybe like seven months, eight months. It felt like a damn year. But, yeah, I. I think I had the same issue where you were, like, I was. It felt kind of repetitive. And I. I've actually been thinking about going back. Back into Front Pad recently, because I know that they've done a ton of changes to it.
01:03:10.554 --> 01:03:32.413
Yeah, I haven't hit that with Stokefire yet. Well, that's good to hear, but it's. Nice because I feel like every time I visit the app, something is different. So it's almost like maybe not every time, but it does feel like once a week adding stuff, some stuff is changing. What was the one that pleasantly surprised me recently? Let me look at it real quick.
01:03:32.588 --> 01:03:40.068
Was it my profile page, I think. Oh, yeah. Where you could see your activity and stuff? Yeah.
01:03:40.197 --> 01:03:54.985
See someone rated. Who the hell's rating me? While we're interviewing you. As they should. As they should. That's jacked up, guys. Luckily, I won, so. Sucks. Nice.
01:03:55.684 --> 01:04:13.494
Yeah. But, you know, there's some people, though, that, like, they have lost sleep over Stoke Fire. Like, they're especially, like, earlier on, they're like, there were some players that, like, they were setting timers in the middle of the night to get up in the middle of the night to, like, go chop wood and gather food.
01:04:14.235 --> 01:04:23.802
And, like, I think it's kind of fun. Like, you know, it's kind of fun and silly for a little bit, but I don't. I don't want to ruin people's lives over this. Over a long period. Period of time.
01:04:23.938 --> 01:05:03.215
Well, so I think the scenario that happens is that. This is my speculation, but I think the scenario that happens is that, let's say, like, you're just starting off and you only have, like, two wood, and then someone raids you, and then the timer is like, six hours or five hours, Whatever, six hours. And so if someone raids you, like, at hour five before the reset, and you already. And you already chopped the wood and you go down to zero, then you're Kind of like stuck, but I feel like the boost that you allowed recently. So you can boost.
01:05:03.295 --> 01:05:07.070
You can speed up. Yeah, speed up. Speed up. Or truncate the time.
01:05:07.182 --> 01:05:14.175
I feel like that should alleviate some of it. Obviously, that would mean, you know, someone has to have fire to be willing to pay the fee.
01:05:14.335 --> 01:05:22.844
I don't know what the fee is. For boosting, but it's like a dollar basically, in. Yeah, it's about a dollar in fire.
01:05:25.065 --> 01:05:35.804
You know, like, as an American. American point of view, I'm okay with that. But I'm sure, like, a dollar in Indonesia might be a little bit tougher, but.
01:05:36.864 --> 01:06:36.277
Yeah, I don't know. Like, I think the boost should. Olivia. Because I just saw someone, like, I went to the warpcast channel and someone's. Like, I just saw that comstark. Yeah. They're like, I'm done. And I was like, damn, Come on, man. Don't be dead. Don't be a sucker. Come on. Well, I think, yeah, I don't know. Hopefully he creates another village. But I mean, I think he's. He's saying he's done and that his village is about to get raided or raised because he got raided and he has no more wood. Yeah, I'm hoping that is sad. I am hoping that it's like this village is done, but they at least start another village. I'm hoping the same thing too. Yeah. Because I, you know, like, I wouldn't want them to just give up because. Yeah, that's. That does suck, you know, but that. That, that scenario, though, I think, like, eventually I'll. I'll make it less harsh there to where you can kind of keep going and not kind of run into that scenario. So. Yeah, it looks like.
01:06:36.300 --> 01:06:39.893
So 9 to 5 sucks that I'm still doing that with the timers.
01:06:39.989 --> 01:07:39.684
Me too. You know, it's weird, for some reason, my. I turn on the notifications. Thank you for doing that, by the way. I don't know if Siri is like, super aggressive or. Or what, but, like, I'm not getting the notifications. Oh, really? Like, I'm getting them, but, like, they're getting put into, like, my summary or like, they're like, not. I don't know what it is, but like, it's. It's not coming through, essentially. So I'm like, I still have a. Timer that could be something that I need to change. Cause there, like, there are on notifications, like, there are a couple settings of like, maybe how. How high priority it is. Maybe, like, there might be some things I Can tweak on there. Um, so, yeah, yeah, like, I didn't get one for. I think there's one for like an hour before your fire goes out, if I'm not mistaken. And I didn't get that one today. Luckily I had a timer going and I got it down to like, 13 minutes, which is the lowest I've gotten it to. Oh, got real close.
01:07:40.224 --> 01:07:51.360
Remember I told you, like, 23. I was like, oh, I was feeling. I was feeling feisty on that one. But 13 today, I was like, oh, it's getting real close. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For some reason it.
01:07:51.393 --> 01:08:42.701
They're. They're just getting trapped somewhere in the void or something. But yeah, I still sometimes have a timer as well. Let's see. I'm not going to hold you hostage too much longer, but what are some. Yeah. Is there any, like, kind of plans or things that you could share about, like, what's. What's coming next to stoke fire for people to kind of look forward to? Sure, yeah. Maybe this will be like the alpha section of, like, what's the new. The new thing. And some. Some of these are just like, ideas. So, like, I've already talked I today a little bit. I kind of shared some ideas for, like, the next, like, kind of the next close thing, which is making it so you can allocate villagers to your. To defend your wood and defend your food. And then when you're raiding, you're then choosing how many villagers to raid a certain resource.
01:08:42.853 --> 01:09:54.134
So that would be kind of the next step of adding some strategy. But then after that, which I haven't talked about, is kind of the next step of building in like, one, making more things for you to build with your villager. So you'll have some buildings that you can build that help you. And then those buildings, you'll then be able to basically craft, like, weapons with your villagers. And so you'll have to, like, allocate some villagers to, like, you know, create some spears. Or maybe. Maybe it's like husbandry, is it? Husbandry, I think, is the right thing. Like, basically have, like, horses, like, train horses, so that then your villagers can, like, suit up in these different, you know, they can suit up with their different military, like, things that they need. And then you can then send your villagers to raid with your gear and whatnot. And then there'll be some extra strategy stuff that comes with that because, you know, different kind of weapons will do better or worse versus other weapons. So maybe it's something like, you know, the archers are better than the Spearmen.
01:09:54.253 --> 01:10:09.086
And so if you, you attack with archers and they're defending with spearmen, like, you'll kind of, you'll win there where if, if it was the horses or the knights attacking the spearmen, the spearmen would win because they can kind of reach with their spears.
01:10:09.189 --> 01:10:23.948
So I kind of have an idea for. It's almost like a, a circular logic which is similar to rock, paper, scissors in a way. Like, you know, like the circular logic of rock, paper, scissors, where rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, paper beats rock.
01:10:24.117 --> 01:11:07.570
Kind of a similar thing like that, but with different kind of military units that you can create. And then that will kind of be the new battle logic of like choosing the right different weapons and stuff to go raid villages with. So I don't have like the details of that completely figured out yet, but like, those are some of the ideas I've been thinking about that we could go towards with Stokefire and kind of the always like the idea is kind of you have to kind of manage your villagers to do things and you have your kind of military side that you're thinking about versus your economy side of building up the resources you need, building the things you need to send your military out. And that's kind of always the trade off.
01:11:07.603 --> 01:11:21.914
Right. I think what makes games fun is having trade offs where it's like you can decide to go do this thing, but if you do that, that means you can't go do this other thing. And I think that's something that like I learned from like age of Empires 2 also kind of civilization 5. Like that.
01:11:21.954 --> 01:11:43.265
That's kind of. Some of their main stuff is like having trade offs between economy and military and like figuring those things out and like giving interesting decisions for the player to have some strategy around. So that's, that's kind of, you know, gives you a little look at some of the ideas and things I'm, I'm hoping to go towards. Yeah, no, loving it. I'm. I'm excited.
01:11:43.604 --> 01:11:47.385
My votes for falconry. For what?
01:11:47.725 --> 01:12:01.145
Falconry. Falconry, yeah. That's where you trade like hawks and like eagles to. Oh, what, what do they do? They go like go attack people? Yeah, they attack people.
01:12:02.885 --> 01:12:24.425
I'm just. Sounds good. I'm messing around. Well, so that does remind me though, like the other thing I want to like build towards is like more of like a economy of like trading things where it's like you can trade resources with other villages. It's like you can kind of either help villages or attack villages and kind of bringing more of that to kind of bring some social elements as well.
01:12:25.284 --> 01:12:50.314
So yeah, definitely have some ideas for that. But that's also like. It'll take some time to get to that point too I think. But I think there's some really interesting things to explore there. With some of the like the in game economy kind of stuff. With the in game like obviously like I'm not gonna hold you to it or no one should hold you to it on here anyways. But like with the in game economy stuff be like NFTs essentially to be traded or.
01:12:53.654 --> 01:15:31.255
I haven't decided. I think, I think, I mean it's going to be on chain for sure. But would I make it tradable like right now like wood and food? Like that's not an nft. It's not something you can actually really trade in marketplace. It's just like data in a smart contract and I could make that tradable within game but then it's not something you like buy with real money. I don't know if I'd ever, I don't know. I think in some ways having like extra NFTs and stuff that people are buying and stuff, I think that in some ways adds some extra monetary things that could potentially take away attention from fire. Kind of being the economy of the game. I think, you know, it's been hard, I think it's been harder for some games to do the NFT marketplace kind of right where it actually is something, you know, either profitable or long time beneficial to everybody. I think the only reason I would do NFTs if it was more like a POAP kind of thing, right where it's like maybe you reach some level with your village and it's more just like a for fun kind of NFT that maybe means something to the player and I give that to them, but it's not really meant to be worth something of like dollar value. I think I could definitely see doing stuff like that where yeah, it's kind of more like a PO app like you've like an achievement basically unlocked. Like you get this NFT so you can like hold it in your wallet to kind of show you you did something cool and in Stokefire, but it's not necessarily something you're trading. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, no, it's good to hear your take on that because I know before for front pivot specifically it's like the example I'm thinking of, they didn't have NFTs and then I know that they've built some recently. So I was just kind of curious. But I will say that I don't know if you knew this, but your stoke fire, like your village is an nft. So you're. So your. Your whole village is connected to an NFT that right now I have it like, turned off. Like, you can't trade it. Like, you can't move that NFT to a different wallet right now. But technically I could open that up to where you could sell your village to somebody else, or you could, you know, give it to somebody else and then they literally have your whole game and they could start playing with your game. Cause, yeah, the whole game is connected to an nft, which is just kind of an interesting thing. But again, I don't know if I'd actually open that up to be, I don't know, something that people are paying for. Yeah, no, that's the crazy thing about Web3 games. You can do so much crazy stuff with it.
01:15:33.274 --> 01:15:47.962
That sounds cool that you could do it, but at the same time of what anyone buy my village? I guess, you know, like, you don't want to grind it. Like, I mean, people are buying, they're paying for like Strava Mules.
01:15:48.099 --> 01:15:51.907
So I. What is that? I did not hear this. Oh, no, you don't know.
01:15:52.011 --> 01:16:25.225
Dude, this is hilarious. There's like a whole underground economy about, like people. You pay someone and you like 300 bucks and they'll run the New York marathon for you. And you just give them like your phone or your Apple watch and they'll like, wear it while they run. Oh, because your app then shows that you did that. And then you can just like post it on social. Like, you know, rather have What? Yeah, it's like Strava muy, dude. So I'm like. So you could be like, yo, like, I've had a village, like alive for a year.
01:16:25.564 --> 01:17:00.600
This is worth half and half an E, you know, and if you don't want to put in the work, I. Guess I haven't thought of it that way because in some ways, like, like, if you are done, if you don't want to continue your village, you can just redeem your rewards and like, kind of the rewards value, like that's what your village is worth, right? Like, that's what you can redeem it for right now. But in some ways, it's actually worth a little bit more than that reward amount because it has a score tied to it. And if someone wants to take that on and like, keep it going, like, it is potentially worth more than that reward amount to someone else if they're going to continue the village going forward. So I don't know that that's kind. I haven't thought of that.
01:17:00.632 --> 01:17:21.505
It's kind of interesting. I mean, I'll give you another anecdotal example of that, and I'll promise I'll let you go soon. But I collected all 151 Pokemon, and I have from, like, Pokemon Red. I. I think everyone's done it, but I got this little bad boy right here.
01:17:21.545 --> 01:18:04.465
It's like a GB emulator so you can connect your Game Boy games to it, play it in your desktop. The cool thing about it is I actually got it to save my like status. So I was like, okay, I have wall 151. And the issue with, like, the original game. Game Boy games is that when the battery dies, it wipes, like, your whole save. And I was like, no, no, I'm not. I'm not losing these. These 100 hours from back in the day. I was like, I'm saving this. But someone was like, yo, I'll buy your save state, essentially. And I was like, what the hell? They just want to show that they had all 151 without putting in the work. And I was like, oh, I didn't even know that was the thing.
01:18:05.005 --> 01:18:23.609
Wow, that's crazy. Yeah. Like you said, it's like the value of your account, but also the street credit or the history behind it. Why live? Why let it die? Yeah, I think we should do a PO app. Dude, I want to do a PO app. Maybe we'll do a community driven PO app.
01:18:23.777 --> 01:18:27.444
Let's chat about it. I've been in a PO app craze recently.
01:18:27.824 --> 01:18:29.204
You like PO apps?
01:18:31.744 --> 01:18:42.925
Like, might be strong, but I like the idea behind it, so I use it right now for. You're actually going to get one for being on this podcast I started doing.
01:18:43.435 --> 01:18:50.019
If you've been subscribed to my newsletter for, like, so I just did one for your. I've been doing the newsletter for two years. So, like, I did that.
01:18:50.106 --> 01:19:06.730
I'll do one for the podcast, like, for episode 25, I think. So this is episode 20. Oh, wow, you've been doing it. Yeah, but I think so. I think you did, like, a lot more than I did. I think you're, like, at episode 100 or something. I know that 20 is good, though. If you. If you got into 20.
01:19:06.762 --> 01:19:13.820
I think I heard some stat that, like, most podcasts end at, like, episode three and they. They don't continue on. That's exactly made it. Yeah.
01:19:13.853 --> 01:19:26.784
So, like, most stop at like 3 or 5 and like half of that even make it to 10. And then like, literally like less than 1% make it to 25 or something like that. So that's why I was thinking of doing like, episode 25 as, like, another one.
01:19:27.324 --> 01:19:48.502
I just like it to, like, I don't know, like it. I think of it like as a phone. Moment in time. Yeah, like a moment in time. That's exactly it, you know? You know. Is it cheesy? Yeah, a little bit probably, but it's cool, you know, like, let's capture the top 100 players or something like that. Maybe. Maybe we can wait when it's a bit bigger or something. We'll see. We can figure out the parameters.
01:19:48.559 --> 01:19:59.034
But yeah, we can do something. I know a couple of Pixar artists. That's why I'm like, it'd be fun to do one with them or something. Yeah, for sure. All right.
01:19:59.694 --> 01:20:03.385
Because I know we've been going for about an hour 20.
01:20:06.125 --> 01:20:13.064
I wanted to ask you one question that I ask everybody. This is a very hard question, but what is your favorite snack?
01:20:14.005 --> 01:20:17.653
It's a hard question. I don't think that's that hard.
01:20:17.788 --> 01:20:34.951
Ice cream. I don't know if you call the snack, does ice cream count as a snack? But, like, ice cream is my favorite thing, basically. We'll allow it. My snack is PB&J, so. Well, what kind of ice cream? Yeah, that's a sandwich. Okay, Mr.
01:20:35.023 --> 01:20:41.755
Dessert. Technically it is dessert too, but. Okay. Yeah. What kind of ice cream?
01:20:43.975 --> 01:20:47.262
I mean, it changes. It goes up, you know, I like a couple different ones.
01:20:47.279 --> 01:21:01.798
I like cookies and cream. I like anything with peanut butter, basically, like chocolate peanut butter, stuff like that. Very good. And I have ice cream almost every night before I go to bed. So that's what I'm gonna do after this. Yeah. Yeah. You're living the life, man.
01:21:01.846 --> 01:21:08.994
You're like fire rich. Number one in the leaderboard and then eating ice cream every day. Like, this is a life.
01:21:12.095 --> 01:21:19.342
That's awesome, man. Yeah, that's all I had. Thanks again. Yeah, let me. Thank you. It was good.
01:21:19.479 --> 01:21:20.234
Let me.
01:21:26.484 --> 01:21:43.744
All right, welcome back. Yeah, thanks for making it kind of to the end of the episode, this week's Cast Off. And for those not familiar with Cast off, it's kind of where I want to hear from you. This week's question is. Yeah. So you've listened now to two back to back episodes on kind of web3 gaming.
01:21:44.925 --> 01:22:50.435
What are your thoughts on web3 gaming? You know, like, is there a future? Do you think it's the best way to kind of onboard people. Yeah, let me know. I'll tip out some djen. You know, if you respond, you can cast in the Area 51 channel or you can hit me up on Telegram. Yeah, seriously. So thanks again for listening to the whole episode. If you're listening to this on pods, make sure to collect it. If you're not on pods, make sure to head over to pods to collect this episode. You can also find me on Web two podcasting platforms if that's easier for you to listen. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Make sure to leave me a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or wherever you listen to it. Share any people that you want me to talk to or any topics you'd like me to explore in the future so you can get in touch with me via text in the show notes or on social media. Predominantly, I'm on Farcaster and Telegram, so hit me up on there. Yeah. See you guys next episode. I will have something special for the 25th episode, and we're getting real close, so make sure to mint at least one episode. All right, see you guys.