6 Questions for Simon Davis of Mighty Bear Games

Simon Davis is the co-founder and CEO of Mighty Bear Video games, a multiplatform recreation developer in Southeast Asia creating accessible multiplayer experiences in Web3.

Davis has spent nearly twenty years working within the gaming business, however he by no means deliberate to truly work on this area.

Earlier than crypto, he was knowledgeable guitarist who made ends meet by enjoying in metallic bands and canopy bands and by educating guitar. However after his cash dried up one summer time, he scored a six-week gig as knowledgeable recreation tester — and he’s by no means seemed again.

Throughout his time within the gaming business, Davis has held administration and product lead positions at gaming corporations together with King Digital Leisure, Ubisoft, Bigpoint, AKQA, Empire Interactive, and Laughing Jackal. 

In 2017, Davis teamed up with some associates and fellow business veterans to launch Mighty Bear Video games in Singapore, the place they supposed to deal with creating conventional video games — earlier than pivoting to blockchain in 2022. And in 2023, the agency launched an open beta for Mighty Motion Heroes, its first Web3 gaming title.

Davis, who additionally goes by “Papa Bear,” stated each Mighty Bear worker receives a “bear title.” A few of Papa Bear’s workers embody “Arty Bear,” “Bear-Abel,” “Excel Bear,” and “Bear McNumbers.”

Why the pivot to blockchain gaming?

I used to be fortunate sufficient to sort of get into Bitcoin accidentally in 2015, so I’ve been within the area for a couple of years. In 2021, I began enjoying with NFTs, and I’m fortunate sufficient to be additionally based mostly in Southeast Asia, so I may see firsthand what was taking place with Axie [Infinity]. I believe, for me, as somebody who lived via the transition to free-to-play, it felt very very similar to a second, sort of like when Farmville got here out on Fb. 

I believe that for stay service titles [games like Fortnite, League of Legends and Apex Legends], a dominant enterprise mannequin goes to emerge to revolve round player-owned and operated economies. As a result of I don’t consider you may have digital worlds with out digital property rights, basically.

And I believe that does allow loads of new issues that we’re actually beginning to scratch the floor on. So, I believe that basically was the pull issue.

What format do you suppose serves as the easiest way to draw customers to blockchain gaming?

I believe cell gaming goes to be the dominant platform due to geography. You see this in the event you take a look at the charts for the international locations which have a terrific slope of curiosity in crypto or Web3. They are usually international locations the place present cost rails should not tremendous developed.

Persons are largely unbanked in locations like Indonesia and Brazil. These markets are mobile-first. Like, individuals within the Philippines and India should not essentially utilizing high-end PCs. 

So, you have to go the place the customers are. And this can be a little bit of a spicy take, however because of this I’m very bearish on individuals making tremendous HD high-end Web3 video games as a result of it’s simply not the place the markets are right now. So, you see loads of these groups elevating, like, mega bucks to make console-quality titles, but when nobody can play them, then they aren’t going to do very a lot.

What do you suppose the present hurdles are for large-scale blockchain gaming adoption?

Lots of people speak about it when it comes to silver bullets, proper? Like, “Oh, we’d like one good recreation,” or like, “We have to clear up the pockets drawback.” I don’t suppose it’s any a kind of issues. I really suppose it’s simply loads of lead bullets, loads of small issues that have to occur. 

What I’ve skilled right now remains to be fairly horrible, and scary, like social restoration. And it’s beginning to grow to be a factor, however that should grow to be so much simpler.

I simply suppose, basically, it must be as straightforward and as brainless to make use of as a Web2 expertise. And so I believe there’s an inherent battle right now with how individuals take into consideration Web3, you realize. They are saying issues like, “Oh, you have to educate the customers,” or, “Prepare individuals to carry their non-public keys.”

However you realize, my mother doesn’t wish to maintain her personal non-public keys. She does all her buying and selling on Crypto.com. We have to make it basically idiot-proof so anybody can do it.

I believe we’re nonetheless fairly a great distance away, however I’m seeing significant enhancements, really. I’m seeing merchandise which might be going to go to market subsequent 12 months that are going to assist so much. 

I don’t understand how outdated you’re, however I’ve simply turned 40 this 12 months. I keep in mind within the 90s establishing a house web connection on dial-up. It took me two days of calling technical help and somebody telling me like configs. I used to be having to go in and alter manually and stuff. And now, you realize, we solved that, proper? After which, the web grew to become a mass market, after which individuals may simply put a CD of their laptop, and it simply labored. I believe we have to get to that stage.

Do you suppose the dangerous rap blockchain/NFT gaming will get is an enormous difficulty? 

It’s humorous as a result of gaming bought a reasonably dangerous rap within the 90s. , everybody was speaking about how video games had been making youngsters violent. There was an enormous ethical panic, identical to there was in music a couple of years earlier than.

However I believe that while you begin to get these items in individuals’s fingers and expertise them, perceptions change. I do suppose loads of the repute that we have now in crypto and Web3 is deserved. There are loads of dangerous actors exploiting the dearth of regulation, however the issues that excite me: I’ve seen some video games, for instance, that enable gamers to earn small quantities of Bitcoin, And this kind of factor’s retention numbers are very robust, just like the preliminary metrics are very promising. And I believe that’s a very nice use case.

Reddit can be a terrific instance, proper? They put NFTs within the fingers of big numbers of individuals. Lots of people didn’t even notice they had been interacting with NFTs. So then that they had their first style, and yeah — there are some stats which have come up, and never an enormous quantity of them have transacted on-chain.

However I really don’t suppose that’s such a nasty factor. If individuals are not dumping the belongings on day one, I don’t see that as a damaging. So, I believe onboarding via stealth is fairly good.

What sort of adoption metrics are you in search of together with your video games?

So, individuals speak about installs and sign-ups — it’s only a self-importance metric. For me, I’m eager about how many individuals are coming in daily, how usually they’re coming again, and what the expansion curve of that appears like initially.

After which as soon as we do the cell launch [of Mighty Action Heroes], which can be round August/September, how effectively are we doing on attracting non-crypto-native individuals into the sport as effectively? That can be very attention-grabbing, and to see how they play collectively. It’s a unique angle, however it’s one which I’m fairly bullish on.

What are some concepts or tech upgrades that might assist blockchain gaming?

ERC-6551 tokens. 

Basically, they provide a wise contract account or a wise contract pockets to a 721 [token]. So, you realize, a standard NFT can be a JPG with some metadata connected. However basically, the JPG or the asset, no matter that’s, is then sure to a wise contract. 

And that is fairly cool as a result of it signifies that belongings can talk immediately with one another. So NFT to NFT, with out utilizing MetaMask. And it may be appropriate with different good contract wallets. 

I believe the actually cool factor is that, basically, your asset turns into a pockets and might have its personal logic as effectively. So you could possibly have a base character in a recreation because the 6551 token, after which all the garments or the objects or the whole lot that that character has, the sort of sub-assets, can change inside, every with its personal logic.

As a recreation developer, you begin pondering of how your characters may evolve and how one can connect new belongings with out updating the core.

Then as a dev, I believe it’s actually good for repute administration as effectively. Like, in the event you did a soulbound model, you could possibly have achievements, proof-of-work, proof-of-play, social identification. I believe it’s fairly cool. […] It’s safer as a result of it’s not simply an asset inside a pockets like it’s on good contracts with its personal non-public key.

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Brian Quarmby

Brian Quarmby found crypto in 2013 and immediately fell in love with the thought of decentralization. Brian has since lived and labored Asia and returned to Melbourne in late 2019. Brian is a lover of sport and artwork and is bullish on the potential for NFTs to rework artists lives within the close to future.