Wizard Wednesday Recap, 2024-09-25
Introductions & Market Conditions
After some technical difficulties due to Elf's recent iOS 18 update, the show kicks off with a question about entering "The Banana Zone."
Dotta says:
"I think so. It feels like we bottomed out."
He notes the Federal Reserve rate cuts and the upcoming election.
Elf mentions that October is colloquially known as "Uptober," and says that he thinks the cycle is right on schedule, with the BTC ETF approval giving a bit of a false start.
Memecoins
Dotta says that he thinks that memecoins in general also threw people off, as memes tend to appear more at the end of the cycle. He says this is the year that people declared the end of the "Secrets of Crypto" graphic. He says he believes that memecoins appeared as an act of desperation in a market where substantive shipping couldn't make any difference.
Bear asks if the team thinks this could have come from a broadening of crypto-curious who arrived during the NFT boom, which brought a different culture and led to more tokenization of memes.
Elf and Dotta agree that's possible.
Elf says that he heard a lot of talk about the "left translated cycle" which assumes the bull run peak would arrive earlier than previous cycles. He says he doesn't think it is in play anymore.
Ethereum
Dotta says:
"It's in the air. My trading Telegram groups are waking up."
Elf also notes the bearishness of ETH for the past few months, noting Solana's lead of the memecoin cycle and the declaration by some that it is an "ETH killer." Elf says that what he thinks has been consistently ignored is Blackrock's ETH ETF, which didn't cause as much price action as Bitcoin's ETF. He wonders why Blackrock would create an ETF if they didn't have big plans for Ethereum, like tokenization of assets.
Dotta notes his doubt and says that he thinks centralized actors will try to centralize the chain and isn't sure they will "wholly use Ethereum or an L2." He thinks Blackrock just speculated they could make money on it.
Elf says he's also heard talk about Ethereum being more of an "institutionalized chain" where Solana is more of the "people's chain." Dotta says that he believes that Solana still has issues in terms of "decentralization" and "stability."
After some discourse on bananas (the fruit) due to tangents of the "Banana Zone" conversation, Dotta says that the game needs to open back up.
The Runiverse Game
Bearsnake asks Madotsuki when the game will reopen, to which he says, "Hopefully soon." Bearsnake says that there may be some tests here and there but that content and cadence still need to be finalized.
Dotta mentions that they know what a lot of the content is, but they can't drop it all on Wizard Wednesday.
Aligning Lore
Elf says that he has been working on aligning the Lore of the game more closely with what's in the comics, the Book of Lore, etc. He says his life has been so much fun lately because he's really been digging into the Lore side of the game, and he's looking forward to more appearing in later versions.
Madotsuki says that the Bisonic team is also excited about this alignment, and he is excited to make the Runiverse feel more familiar. He notes a community member's Wizard being used in one of the Open Beta Test's dungeons, noting that they would like to do more community integrations like this.
He mentions that the team generally looks for Characters that they think would be good in the game as well as those whose owners have taken great care with their lore.
Elf says that sometimes he just goes to the Twitter timeline to see who people are talking about or who are posting a lot of art or lore. Other times he goes to Discord to check for lore and art activity. He says he also goes to the Loracle a lot for answers to questions like: "Which Wizard has slain a dragon?"
He says overall, it helps to be active and writing a lot of lore.
A Victory Lap in Stats
Dotta then says it's a good opportunity to pause and take a victory lap for the incredible numbers for the Runiverse game. He says it's still shocking that Forgotten Runes is one of the handful of NFT projects that have shipped a game and seen active users. He says there were about 100,000 players in the Runiverse game, stating that the revenue generated was well over $100,000. He says the average revenue per user for top free to play games is only around $10.
Dotta says that the fact that the Runiverse game was able to generate 1/10th of that in just its first week is incredible. He says it's one of the biggest launches that has happened on Ronin and concurrent users were pretty consistent through the playtest. He notes that you can see in the downtrend of the first few days that there was frustration with bugs. However, Dotta says that once the game went back online, the numbers "were pretty much up only from there." He says the team should do another round of tweeting about it, adding that the average playtime was around 15 hours.
Bearsnake says that one of the biggest things for projects is distribution, noting that Pudgies have plushies in WalMart, Azuki and Claynosaurz are doing animation, etc. There needs to be something to bring more people in. He says the Runiverse game is a huge step forward in bringing awareness.
Dotta agrees, saying that tons of people have come in from the Ronin community, a real game has been shipped and played that generates real revenue,
"So, the future of Forgotten Runes is one of a substantial business that can survive for a long time."
Forgotten Runes Goes Global
Elf asks about the geographical distribution of users, to which Dotta says the Cult has grown quite a bit, mentioning players from Brazil, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia. He says the game has helped to take Forgotten Runes global. Mentioning Twitter's ban in Brazil during the Open Beta Test, Dotta says the team is learning more about the value of different social networks in different regions.
Token 2049
Elf then segues into a conversation about Bearsnake's recent trip to Singapore for Token 2049.
Bear says that one of the reasons the team hasn't made an effort to attend conferences like Token 2049 is there wasn't a significant presence in that region; however, with the game on Ronin, there's more of a reason to go and make partners, and learn more about "how everything works." He says he got to be a part of a presentation there, mentioning some of the tools the Sky Mavis team has in the works for easy onboarding of new users. He says he was able to meet with some people from Guilds that appeared in the Runiverse as well.
Main Topics & Solana Breakpoint
Elf asks what the main topics were during the event. Bear says that his view might be a bit skewed due to his own conversations, but he felt that games were a big topic along. He also mentions Solana Breakpoint occurred at the same time as Token 2049, so he stayed for two more days to see what's going on.
"Honestly, it feels so ETH 2021 to me. All these new apps are being built. There's a lot of new projects. Everything from DeFi to consumer apps. So that was cool to meet a lot of those people. I think in our world...I think it's important to just know what's going on and being built."
He also mentioned that AI coins were big, but it didn't seem that "memecoin-ridden," though he speaks about a party that Iggy Azalea threw (which he says he didn't attend). Bear also speaks about an Apechain event that he attended at the Singapore Zoo. He said overall, it was catching up with friends, meeting new ones, and learning more about what they need to know to make the game successful.
Jasondesante's Metaverse
Following this, jasondesante takes the stage to speak about a game that he has been building with a game engine on Arweave. There are currently a few different tokens that players can earn in Jason's game, including a Community Daily Donut.
Dotta asks how that people can join and interact or contribute. Jason responds that it's a work in progress and "not that fun," even though he says it's impressive, "on the backend. Impressive for the nerds."
Jason says it's still a 2D metaverse where players can walk around, chat, and listen to music via his Contract Wizard. He says that the game is written in Lua for those who want to contribute.
Feckless Rehosts A Halloween Game
Then, on the topic of community-made games, Feckless joins briefly to announce a new hosting of a Halloween game he made in 2022, which is now hosted on his website.
Lore Readings & Cult Content
As the show closes, Sporkly and SPZ both share Lore readings before the team reviews the Cult Content Chronicle—the creative contributions of the community at large—collected weekly by Tania del Rio.