Hatchy Pocket AMA

#ama
Hatchy Pocket AMA

This is a partial transcript of our AMA Space with Hatchy Pocket. We picked a handful of questions we found interesting, and for the full experience, we recommend you listen to the 2-hour long audio recording. What I found intriguing about this project was the team's competence and understanding of the traditional and blockchain gaming market. Their drive to innovate and create a unique business model is here to inspire other builders in the space:

What is Hatchy Pocket?

We're decentralized IP. I believe the first proper go at it in the world; we're fundamentally an open-source brand that everyone. We've got some low-resistance engagement rules and no fees to start. Very easy to start and something only when you get successful, but basically. We try to push the envelope of decentralization and creativity by building our community resource pool and the free-to-use brand. Everything we do is based on that objective, some games, some content, and hopefully, a bunch of future stuff!

What's the degree of decentralization Hatchy Pocket reaches?

You are asking a good question about the whole space and the human experience. Because it's a, it's like a fundamental philosophy, day-to-day strategy, and interaction. It's a comprehensive question. It has two layers. There's this organic approach. It makes sense in some places, and you don't want it.

Sometimes, it's an experience design in our space, and it takes quite a bit of effort to work it out. To put some meat on the bones, it's like threads, you know, no individual thread is important, but only together do they kind of create a bigger, more functional structure, and it helps to have a cohesive direction, or you end up with a tangled mess.

So decentralization is a massive problem, especially through this lens. I think some things make sense and things don't. In product direction, we try to distinguish between what is public and what isn't. You already take a lot of feedback for the games, but taking feedback is different from decentralization.
Having an open forum and being engaged and open to critique is slightly different from "anybody can lead this." It still relies on a kind of leadership. But for certain things, they are kind of a little bit more flexible. If you throw in a whole bunch of assets like a red dragon, a blue dragon, a fireball, or a water beam. We have mental models that we already interpret this a certain way. We can take it into a kind of, I would say,  deviating directions, but they would never really conflict. Even though they might not run parallel, they might go off on tangents. It's still part of the same fractal and feeding back into the same thing by generating experiences and therefore value generating greater association and value. And in this sense, there's so much more flexibility, and that's the part that we're aiming for the most. Then we've got our games and stuff, which we kind of unapologetically say: "This is our direction, this is our game, this is my passion, this is the group's ambition, this is this feature, what the intention was." Yet, we're open to feedback, but the feedback is as if we were to rent out a space and run a party. We know what space to rent, what we want out of the party, and what experience crow wishes to have as much as we're listening to. The crowd is there to drink and dance, and after that, they're off all of them and have little clue what's going on backstage, who's setting up the lights and stuff. The crowd doesn't know what they want and how to do it most reasonably.

You mentioned decentralized IP and sharing assets with some negotiation rights with Hachy Pocket. If I am a developer and start, I have a great game idea, but I want to make only some of the assets. I don't want to make the end game world, but I'm aiming for something like a similar look, similar feel, and maybe some tweaks. How do I get those assets from you guys to use, how would I do that?

We had a more decentralized structure and were supposed to have an interface where anybody could create artwork. it didn't even rely on our work specifically, but for now, we just give a straight link to the drive we've got. All of our stuff is being cleaned up to put up on GitHub. So as we have. Closed-up packet like the first package that we'll be sending up. It has some stuff from the previous work, like all of the 3D work we've done so far. But the main asset pack we're putting up now is all the 3D animated game-ready stuff. There's also a unity package that could just be dragged in, especially for 3D. It's like 99% of that stuff is done.

We've got the assets for you, but you still need to do the integration. You could message me anytime. And otherwise, we intended to have an interface similar to Kickstarter, where I could put up something like an independent artist, a solo dude, I could come to the website, click a few buttons and say if you give me an arbitrary amount of $100, I'll give you guys three of these 3D artworks that I maybe did. Post some examples of my work, and then people can fund it. We built it and stopped because we just kept asking security-oriented questions question. This is so easy to take advantage of and the people using it. People are naive and sometimes just ignorant to certain things that they just don't know exist, that you can be sent a file and it could have a Trojan in there, and it's really hard to turn out because they're massive files, so that's what that's the only reason we stopped.

For now, at least, we plan to have a. As easily accessible as possible, it won't be as actively updated as it is with the drive, but it's just Open Access. There is only a negotiation if you want to supersede our base rules. It's set up like a Republic, where the ground rules exist. The base rules are established, and for everything we want to do outside of that, you need to speak to the Community and get a vote. For now, we're the largest holder, so. If you negotiate with us, we've got a pretty aligned thing with the rest of the community.

Going back also to what you were saying before about the leadership, that makes sense, at least to a certain point.  as decentralized as it is, focus it to a point, to set the direction for the first development phase; similar to this first batch of assets, or the first concepts.

We're pretty easygoing with it because it's so easy to generate value and all of the value feeds back, so that's why there's no restriction. We prefer that you don't go off and make your art because we could use that as an advantage to absorb you into our Universe, you know?

I saw some really impressive artwork in the trailer that I checked out on your main website, I'm going to give you (our) DCG discord treatment and ask you, "Bro, wen game?"

It's been two months away for a year. Our community members are pretty supportive, but at the same time, we don't. We have like very limited support in our ecosystem. There are only so many people in Avalanche. And then there's even less in AVAX NFTs, and then even less in Avalanche GameFi. And in those very, very competitive projects in Avalanche GameFi. Where then you look over the pond and your. Like hoping that you're not tricking yourself with grass is a greener mentality. Some projects released half-baked projects at the peak of the previous cycle.
We feel our best chance at getting noticed is to create a great user experience. We have so much like there's only so much value we can bring in by taking out the product too early. We might even end up hurting ourselves. Some of the things that delayed it. they worked in our favor, For example, we had a content problem. We realized we should wait until we have even more unique content we own as both a proof of concept or stronger proof of concept and as a unique initial experience so that we can stand out as our own game in our place, to be different.

Yeah, we're going with that ambition and tried to do it strategically. We're developing useful art for everybody and making some example games. One of them we just ended up releasing some of them didn't make it as far, but one of them we ended up just releasing to the public a couple of weeks ago. There's an update coming in soon. And you weave. Honestly, just playing by it. The markets have gone up and down. we've got a lot of resources and felt like we had infinite potential and then felt like if we didn't do a couple of things, we might die, and then all of this feeds into this "Wen Game", which is the. Simplest question with the hardest and worst of all answers, so I apologize, but we're two months away.

We're a spectrum product, trying to capture a bit of a marker of crypto GameFI. And then there's another marker, which is more lucrative, way larger, and right now the biggest market in the world. Which is just like gamers in general, you know. And they're gamers who don't usually care about anything right now. Right now, the biggest platform for gaming is mobile. That tells you how much those gamers don't care about the platform or anything, even the console battle is lost. The console versus PC battle is redundant because the world's largest gamer base is the mobile gamer base. For us, the sooner release gives us that take advantage of the crypto market, but from this point of view, there is no crypto market.  And then the later release enables us to compete with the traditional game development market,, which is different altogether.
On Avalanche, It's tough because games like what you guys are doing, a full-on legitimate game, have a lot of depth. It's similar to the one we're trying to make; I would say even in some aspects, you've made us reconsider our structure to go a bit more down the spectrum to give a better experience than where you guys have been able to achieve so. It's such a competitive space. Before, we had some confidence in releasing something half-baked because space was relatively competitive. Then, as the space matured. It felt like it was the wrong representation, because we, as well, are game devs, and we've told people we're game devs. When you're going against people who don't identify as game devs but have turned to GameFi and they're making stuff that's just as competitive, you feel as though you failed identity. So all of these tiny insecurities pushed us back further and further. Right now, we are dealing with also a small team and maybe too much diversion. We even have to take on some outsource work, so because of that, we slowed down.

For us, the game, and goes back to the centralization thing, our MMO is not meant to be the main focus of the Hatchy ecosystem. We believe it gives us a lot of opportunity, but we, as a small team, can't compete in the MMO space normally. Still, over the years, we're given at least some platform, enough to sustain and grow so slowly, and there is still infinite potential. So if we can even grow a little bit. And consistently, we'll eventually get there, so it's nice to be in the race.
In saying that, we want everyone to know that this is a private endeavor from us: we'll be paying the tax and stuff - it's meant to prove the concept of the Hachi IP, but the real focus is the Hatchy IP. It's because you can imagine that. If this game does well, the IP. It will be massive, and with that, there's essentially, a potential ecosystem that can happen, and that's what people should focus on for themselves because they've got their vision of a great opportunity. They've got their potential. $1 billion game, and like right now, the market of a billion-dollar game is not the unicorn it used to be. It's still rare, It's more like a mountain lion. It's like a rare base. It's not mythical, but it's a rare beast. Whenever you see the photo, you stop to check it out, but you've already seen it many times. It's not the same as if it was this fantastic piece.

For example, we always gave these examples in our community: a game was built out of a map editor of a different game. like a StarCraft/Warcraft map editor. They gave these to non-game devs, just people that like games, and given a few tools like some logic bricks and digital figurines to move around with those logic bricks, and they're able to make an experience, all that platform allowed the spawning of a whole bunch of things like Tower defenses, the DOTA game got spawned, the MOBA was created in that map editor. Full-moon Wars and a whole bunch of others, but if we just look at them, the fractal of the MOBA. The MOBA is one of those things that got cloned so many times. There's so much opportunity there that they claimed it into 10 different games in the same way that we have, like RPGs and FPS. They created a genre each of these games is independently worth billions and billions.

I think Dota has like 10 million active players, two or something that sounds ridiculous. And each of these games, one of the devs working on Dota made League of Legends, and League of Legends is its beast now. And within Dota itself, they carried the tradition forward of allowing people to mess around with the artwork with those digital action figures and the logic bricks created a similar platform. They even told people, we'll give you a page in our game, so all of the games could be listed there, and if you like the stuff, you can up folder. Gave them almost a market. You have to think about it like a gamer. In this (very limited) situation, you're going to a specific game listing to download a very specific game. Then, you're choosing not to play that game, choosing to go to some obscure page in that game to get an experience that was built by a non-game dev it, doesn't sound super attractive, but even in this ecosystem, they are making a game. The Autochess, Auto Battler. I think in their first quarter, they grossed over a billion!

What kind of support is Hatchy Pocket needing from the Avalanche? Is it marketing, cross-chain support, etc.? What do you need to launch Hatchy Pocket? It seems like it will be a massive hit, so you want to get as much support as possible.
Our strategy for the MMO, I think we've got a pretty decent run at it because we're trying to cater to a very niche market, which isn't much at all, to be honest with you. Still, they have a like I believe they had a very particular perception, and they look for us a certain type of experience. I'm speaking as a user, I also want a certain type of experience that, as a user, I can't get. That's the experience of the 2005 MMO. There's still a gap in the market for the early MMO experience. There were a bit more chaos, a little bit less information, and a little bit fewer directions. They're kind of glorified chat room setup, which I know sounds a little bit unappealing to some, but, then I say a big distinction between, the Western MMO and the Eastern MMOs, like the old school Korean MMOs versus stuff like World of Warcraft, they have a different pacing. They have a different structure with guilds and stuff; one is way more grindy and slower. It's not appealing to many people, but to the Southeast Asian market. We're trying to take the market of a game called Ragnarok Online, a game I used to play years and years ago. And I was joking before we used to make private servers, my cousin and me. We were growing up playing this game for so many years, I'm looking for that vanilla experience of Ragnarok Online, and we're not trying to be like a billion users. You know we're competing with WOW. We would be happy to have 10,000 users, which is our goal. I've run a few games in the top 100 on mobile. 10,000 users it's a pretty number to have in for live OPS events and stuff, it's a strange one, but we're going for a kind of niche market and each experience. It's something that we believe is a solid direction to go for because the rest of the market is essentially some of the most populated places on Earth, but we'll see how competitive we can get together.

How do you demonstrate the value of IP with 10K users outside of things like Decentraland and Yuga labs which seem to be "hyped"?

This thing is 10K users are online at a time; that's a lot of users! There's probably more looking at the 100K unique users. it's a pretty high ask. The thing with the value of the IP is to be able to generate the perception of an opportunity is the only value of an IP. Outside of the emotional association, they don't have that much utility. These are storytelling tools or base content that you can use for a product. Again, they're conceptually things that the person needs to think about, they need to do it at some stage, and the more people put into it, the greater that value is. We're going milestone by milestone, the potential is generally the potential does not stop what we're able to do. It stops when there's no value for anyone outside to use the assets. It stops when artists have easy access to essentially well-curated and consistent art and the community that's easier to market to than if they have not been exposed to anything. We've set up warm leads of qualified users and a clear set of resources that enable them. It's when that stops being valuable the value of the IP. stops, it doesn't matter if our game comes out or not. Now, imagine that imagine tomorrow I die. There's the best example just tomorrow, there is no Sols. Sols disappeared. We don't know where he is. I can't reach him. There are still assets, and right now, it's the Unreal Engine; their main job is getting game devs, so you've got a company with billions of dollars spending their money to inspire kids of the next generation to be game devs instead. Look at the way that they work. They've just spent hundreds of millions of dollars, the best devs in the world making tools that make tools that make experiences, and they've given it to you for free because they know that, like VCs, they've given you access to something that doesn't even really cost them anything, just the server. But by giving access, you've essentially signed up. You're now one of those soldiers who're working for their agenda. Which is the more games with Unreal Engine, the more users come back, they get a feedback loop. The more games with Unreal Engine, the more money may find Unreal Engine. The more times we get 5% of the gains that they make, and that's what they need because these are massive markets and 5% of, you know, a trillion dollar market. Those are good odds for the ROI, and they don't even need to make games, although they can. They made Fortnite, they made Unreal Tournament. They can make games, but it's not their focus.
Asset store and the engine is the focus. I would say, in most cases, it's probably giving them the most, not taking away from the fact that they were also able to produce Fortnite. It's a double question there.

Would they have been able to compete with Fortnite had they not been unreal? Because they cloned a bunch of other games like they weren't the first to make the Battle Royale, it was made similar to the MOBA. It was invented in a game that was built to be easily moddable. So in DayZ, someone made PUBG, and Epic cloned this game. Maybe it would even be that big hadn't they created this platform. Hadn't they created the opportunity for others and given themselves essentially a platform, In that sense, our structure is set up to be organically incentivized so that the opportunities at every level feed into creating a better opportunity for every other level. It's easy to extract from the system while adding value. To use another metaphor, you can let the cows onto this pasture. They're going to eat the grass, and they're going to poop everywhere,  that's great for the soil, and the benefit comes later, even though it's seemingly destructive, you're working with the organic process, and you're getting a better outcome for all parties involved. In respect of that, the IP isn't reliant on us, but there's already a lot of opportunity. One of the things that we're focusing on even more than the MMO at the moment is getting a comic out. Making sure that the assets are a little bit more versatile for a few guys that want to work with it, so this is the angle that we most want to focus on, and this is the inspiration that we most want to give our guys, especially our community. The expectation that we're trying to establish is more on the side of freedom, open, useful, utility-valued, objectively-valued tools, resources, and the fact that they're empowered to use them, and that there is opportunity. It's not just saving money on the assets, there's a rabbit hole that will slowly become bigger and bigger.

I know probably it's hard to pick one, but if you had to play one game for the rest of your life, which one would it be?

It's very similar to the ones that we're building. The old action RPGs, MMO expression games, Ragnarok Online, and even Runescape are competitive. One of the first games I ever got the first RPG I played, called Secret of Mana. It's an awesome game to get as a first. It will almost ruin games for you, but anything that the Square Enix guys did, like the Final Fantasy series, especially Secret of Mana. If you love emulating games and like to play old-school games you haven't played yet, it's worth checking out!

You can listen to the recorded Twitter Space here: https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1kvJpmzpAELxE?s=20
To join Hatchy Pocket’s community, visit their website: https://hatchypocket.com/


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