Blast Royale — Telegram AMA — June 14
On Tuesday, June 14, we had the pleasure to welcome to our Telegram chat:
Dan, Nik, and Anil
We asked them questions about the development of Blast Royale.
Some sentences have been slightly edited for readability but the meaning has been conserved.
Introduction
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Please introduce yourselves. Tell us about your background and your crypto journey so far.
A — Dan from Blast Royale: I’m Dan and I’m the marketing lead at First Light Games. I have over 7 years experience working in marketing and branding, having launched my own international NGO, and been part of multiple web2 and web3 start-ups, and a passionate gamer, First Light Games was an obvious choice for me.
I got lost in the crypto rabbit hole around 2 years ago when I began investing in blockchain games and metaverse projects!
A — Nik from Blast Royale: Hey, I’m Nik, game design director at First Light Games. I’m making games for more than 10 years now. I’ve started doing freemium mystery adventures, but over time I’ve worked on many other types of games and models, ranging from casual to hardcore, from premium to free-to-play. I’ve spent many years at Wargaming gaining strong expertise in free-to-play and live operations. That’s where we met with Anil.
A couple of years ago Anil invited me to join First Light and here we are — doing web3 games, exploring this amazing frontier. I didn’t know much about it a year ago, but since then the more I learn, the more I believe that this is the future of the games industry that we are shaping right now.
First Light Games was established 4 years ago by Neil McFarland and Anil Das-Gupta. Neil was the head of UsTwo game studios, creators of Monument Valley, for which he was the Product lead, whereas Anil worked at Capcom on franchises such as Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, and Lost Planet, before also working at several Free-to-Play studios such as NaturalMotion, GREE, and Wargaming.
At First Light we aspire to be the world’s best web3 studio, making high-quality games and projects that are created by professionals with care, passion, and joy. Fun is at the heart of everything we do!
The rest of our team has over 50 years of combined experience making games such as Tomb Raider, Merge Dragons, and World of Warships.
About Blast Royale
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: I believe First Light Games is the brain behind Blast Royale. What is the Blast Royale project about in a few simple sentences?
A — Dan from Blast Royale: Blast Royale is a fun, frenetic adrenaline-fuelled short-session game. Players are pitted against each other in a ‘last one standing’ Battle Royale survival match. A player’s meta inventory influences the quality of items carried into a match. Players earn rewards based on their performance, invested time, and overall effort.
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Cool. What makes it different from the many games out there?
A — Dan from Blast Royale:
game screenshots of our Deathmatch game mode (Currently in beta testing)
A — Nik from Blast Royale: Not only do we have previous demonstrable experience working on top-tier games in web2, but we’ve also already deployed an enjoyable Beta test version of our Deathmatch game mode to over 700 of our community members, of which we received feedback and implemented changes to improve experiences throughout the test. Whilst web3 has seen many P2E projects fall short on their promises, we however aim to bring Blast Royale players a truly great gaming experience.
There are a lot of details in the project that makes Blast Royale different. PUBG and Fortnite, for instance, are similar on paper, but they play in a different ways.
Q — Twitter user @See_Lite: What kind of equipment can players create within BlastRoyale, as 2nd generation what are the differences with 1st generation?
A — Nik from Blast Royale: Great question! We have a concept of Generations and Editions. Editions may be quite different from each other because they may have specific purposes, like Anniversary Edition or some editions that are around certain collaborations.
As for Generations — all pieces of equipment that come from Blastboxes will be Generation 1. Then in a replication process for newly replicated NFTs, this value will be increasing.
Currently, the Generation affects the strength/chance of attributes being passed to the replicated NFT. E.g. If you replicate from Generation 1 NFT and Generation 5 NFT then there are bigger chances for the newly created NFT to inherit attributes of the piece that has Generation 1.
With the evolution of Blast Royale, we may introduce more gameplay-related things that will rely on Generation
Q — Telegram user kunlefighter: Can you please tell us more about the Blastlisting event which you’ve just kick-started? What is the essence of the event and how can we participate?
A — Dan from Blast Royale: Our Blastlist event is an NFT whitelisting event aimed at gathering our most passionate community members who will be the first-ever holder of our genesis NFT collection of Blastboxes, which each contain 3 NFT equipment pieces. At launch, you will need at least 3 NFT equipment pieces to join a match.
Therefore entering into the Blastlist campaign will improve your chances of being one of the first. Entry methods to the blast list include giveaways and contests, community contributions and activity, winning game tournaments in our Beta testing event, and being nominated by other community members.
Q — Telegram user Krish🎖️: What kind of Perks are Available with every piece of Equipment? and how this will help our equipment or in the gaming process?
A — Nik from Blast Royale: Good question! We integrated many attributes into our NFT equipment to create a good variety in the gameplay. For instance, our equipment will have different Factions, and factions have advantages and disadvantages for each other. A clever approach on this front will increase your chances of winning.
Another thing we have are Manufacturers — they also grant certain specific qualities to items that may be used to counter other items, even of greater raw power.
Also equipment quality and perks will affect your Craft Spice earning capabilities, increasing your daily pool and/or how much you can earn per match.
Q — Telegram user Sheby: You have Planned to Launch the testnet marketplace in Q2. Tell us more about it and what will be the interesting features of the marketplace?
A — Nik from Blast Royale: Yep, we are getting ready to launch our Marketplace on Testnet. And we will likely have a lot of core functionality ready there, like trading equipment, opening blast boxes, and doing replication. The exact set of features is not yet settled, and we still have a lot of work to do, but the team is working hard to make this release happens soon and in superb quality.
Just remember, that Testnet is a test functionality, so there won’t be any real NFTs and Tokens involved, that’s why it’s TESTnet, not the Main one :) But it helps us dramatically in catching bugs and improving flows prior to the Main release.
Token
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: What role does it play in the Blast Royale ecosystem?
A — Nik from Blast Royale: Sure, tokens are the cornerstone of the economy. We have two token models. Our main token is Blast Token (BLST) and the second token is Craft Spice (CS).
Blast tokens will have a capped supply and will be listed on an exchange and it won’t be easy to get one just by playing the game. Craft Spice on the other hand has an unlimited supply and players will get it by playing the game — the higher the placement in a Battle Royale game mode, the more Craft Spice you get.
Here’s a list of Blast token utilities that are either ready at launch or scheduled in the roadmap:
— NFT equipment trading: Players can sell their NFT equipment on the Blast Royale marketplace for BLST. Other players can buy them by paying $BLST.
— Replication: This is the process of creating a new NFT equipment out of the existing two. It requires BLST to be paid in the process.
— Upgrading: This is the system that allows players to level up their NFT equipment. Also requires BLST as a payment.
— Crafting: With this system, players can qualitatively alter their NFT equipment to make it better and/or more suitable to their needs. This process will require BLST to be paid.
— Staking: Players will be able to stake their BLST tokens in order to receive rewards.
— Tournament buy-in: Players can use BLST to enter tournaments to have a chance to win big rewards.
Craft Spice will be needed in most of the utilities mentioned above (except for the Staking). But also Craft Spice will be necessary to repair your favorite equipment pieces because all NFT equipment is slowly losing durability.
Generally, the game loop is the following: Use BLST to buy Equipment -> Play Battle Royale to earn CS -> Use CS and BLST to improve your gear and adapt your playstyle
A — Nik from Blast Royale: We are publishing everything openly in our whitepaper here, so feel free to go there and read all the details!
Funding
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Have you raised funds so far? How are the funds going to be deployed? And are you planning to do any future raises?
A — Dan from Blast Royale: We recently raised $5m in our Seed Round, backed by a star-studded list of investors such as Animoca Brands, Mechanism Capital, Defiance, and DragonFly Capital, as well as some of the top guilds like Ancient8 and Merit Circle. There may be future raises however this is to be confirmed and right now we are focused on the game release coming up in the next few months.
Competitive Advantage
Q — Twitter user @Kryno_: What are Battle Royale’s unique mechanics?
A — Nik from Blast Royale: Good one, sure! Details make a difference, but specific mechanics that aren’t as usual in other battle royales are our Special Abilities, like calling an Airstrike or Dashing through the battlefield dealing damage. Players who got into our Deathmatch Technical Beta already had a chance to try some of those mechanics in action.
Another thing is our focus on shooting — skillful aiming and precise movement are very important in our game, unlike in many other mobile projects that tend to go into more slow-paced MOBA-style gameplay.
But the further we go with development, the more cool things we are going to introduce because our most important goal is to make the game fun and keep it fun for years.
Maybe we will have companions in the game, or vehicles, No promises, but who knows where the journey will take us.
Business Development
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: How far along are you with your roadmap and what should we expect in the next weeks and months?
A — Dan from Blast Royale: We’ve recently launched a Beta testing event for our Deathmatch game mode which is going really well and our community is actively playing and participating in live stream events and tournaments.
We have also this month launched our Blacklist campaign for our upcoming NFT sales, due to begin at the end of the month.
Along with this, we have our own game marketplace and IDO happening with details to be announced soon.
In July we are expecting to release a very special beta testing event for our main game mode: Battle Royale, which is highly anticipated and will be the final stretch to our global launch.
Whitelisting info
Q — Telegram user Scribe: How about lovers of games who know nothing about crypto or NFTs, how would you educate them or do you have any other options for them?
Would you be releasing any short video or thriller of the game to show the different kinds of characters we would be fighting?
A — Dan from Blast Royale: Great question and yes, we are game-first and have a very passionate and experienced set of gaming enthusiast developers on our team.
A few ways we will bring traditional gamers into our game is by firstly, making a fun and enjoyable game to play, and also by releasing NFT and crypto educational pieces on our social media channels to help them understand step-by-step how things work, in fact, we have already begun this in our Discord channel.
We plan to continue rolling out more helpful information so that more people from around the world and especially those who are not yet familiar with how the blockchain works, also get to have seamless experiences with our Blast Royale gaming metaverse.
Nik, Anil and Dan, thanks for coming into our community, and taking the time to answer our questions about Blast Royale. Do you have any final words for us? Where can we follow you to stay updated? — Ayeley from GAINS
Thanks for having us today, some great questions! — Anil from Blast Royale
Thank you for having us, and thank you community for all your questions and lots of correct answers to our quiz, that was fun! — Nik from Blast Royale
I want to say a massive thanks to the GAINS team for hosting this AMA and to all of you for the awesome quesitons and making our quiz questions look so easy!
I invite you all to follow us on our social media channels found in this link, espeically our MAIN CHANNELS:
Any other questions please feel free to ask in our Discord server. Thanks! — Dan from Blast Royale
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