We’ve been working on a lot of backend stuff lately. New app (Stacked) and new game (Chubkins). We’re really close to solving the next problem of the growth scale and how we get a growing user base back in the ecosystem. If you’ve been following the AMAs, you know we go through phases of growth and building and we’re in a build phase again. This phase of Web3 growth will have to look a lot different. The next phase is finding a way to bring the general public into the Web3 ecosystem. Advertising is an obvious part of Web2 gaming so that’s the next stage of what we’re doing. How I view Web3 growth in the long run is a blended mix of traditional Web2 user acquisition tactics combined with native Web3 growth methods we’ve been using. We’ll continue to update Pixels in the short term. We have a new animal care update targeted to release very soon. It’ll change the mechanics around animal care and it’s not just a content update. In the new year when we start to build new stuff, we’ll start to focus on a new user experience and growth experience.
New Bountyfall Update: Hearth Buffers
If you haven’t seen the recent Monday announcement yet, be sure to check it out to learn everything you need to know about Hearth Modifiers which went live this week.
Creator Highlights
There has been so much amazing creator content lately! You guys work so hard to make such incredible work and we’re always so grateful, so let’s highlight some gems:
Shoutout to Ali Noor for making a great rundown on the Pixels Creator Program. Go and check it out to learn more about how it all works!
Thanks to Billa for giving us a great Pixels weekly recap about the Neon Zone update, the Wart quest, and more!
Ali Noor also gave a Pixels weekly update, which highlighted a lot of great information.
Kudos to Alepp Silverhand for talking about the recent Bountyfall updates.
Big shoutout to Zombina for always posting an awesome Sunday recap. They’re always so fun and cute!
Thanks to Dynamic Warrior for making an in-depth post about the benefits of VIP, which has a lot of great details! Also check out our Pixels Post for even more info.
Shoutout to EnomisEno for their post on the most recent Neon Zone update!
Lastly, we wouldn’t be Pixels without our amazing memes:
Make sure to follow all the Pixels content creators out there, just in case you miss something or need clarification. They always make amazing and helpful content, so shoutout to them!
Questions from the AMA
Why do we have the same thing on every AMA - web2 web3 web2 web3. Please answer the users’ questions, better than talking about web2 web3
All of it is connected. The team will continue to update the game and make it better, but there’s a whole ecosystem we have to be considerate of. The game is more fun when there are more players and a thriving ecosystem. There are also players that do ask about the future of the game, the ecosystem, the token, etc.
I agree the userbase in web2 is large, but lots of competition. Rebel bots went from web3 to web2 and lost all their userbase once it rugged all their web3 features. Pixels should double down on web3 features
We don’t want to build a studio that competes directly with Web2. There’s a lot of consolidation right now and it’s really hard to compete in that space because the margins in Web2 gaming have gotten so thin. It’s very hard for a new studio to break in, so you need to come in with something fresh, which is why we’re offering new things like Stacked and Chubkins.
Pixels needs a lot of work for new players’ experience, it’s kind of bad. Can’t justify this game’s current gameplay for new players who have played other similar experiences
As we’re thinking about new player experience, there’s a lot that will go into it like changing a lot of how the game is displayed and shown to users, some of the core mechanics or making things more simplistic for new users.
Add $vPIXEL on your other apps too. Add the staking directly from other game/apps. They can earn from staking
That’s what we’re thinking about with this new thing we’re working on called Stacked. It will be your play-to-earn superapp in the long run and it’ll come in stages. It will be its own app where you can see a bunch of different rewards that you can earn, claim rewards and points, then cash them out into $PIXEL, crypto, etc.
I had no idea what crypto was, my husband asked me what this game was 1 year ago…and now here we are
What’s amazing about games is that they can onboard people into crypto. Ownership over certain aspects of the game is better and there are parts of Web3 games that are better than the Web2 counterparts. Those are things we’re going to lean into.
Any new big update for core Pixels? Because honestly it’s boring now, it was really fun to play and be competitive before
The animal care update might now be coming in the early new year because we’re making it even bigger and better, so it will be worth the wait.
Can there be a $vPIXEL marketplace in the future
That could be possible. The reason we couldn’t do a $PIXEL marketplace because it added legal complexities but $vPIXEL would be fine because you can’t sell or trade it.
We haven’t heard anything about Pixel Dunegons in a long time. Will there be new dungeons or events soon?
They’re going to be integrating Stacked into Pixel Dungeons and they will be testing offers to users soon. Their RORS is averaged over 1 so now they need to figure out how to grow, and that’s the next stage for every game in the Pixels ecosystem.
Will there be a holiday event?
Yes! It won’t be the carnival and it’ll be a little more lowkey but here’s a hint: it’ll be something that we do every year.
Before they fund bot on x25 dungeon, now they just farm from free dungeon, use it on x25 to extract + farm referral
This is why Stacked is helpful; if you’re not careful about distributing rewards then a lot of rewards will be going to bots which happens with a lot of games. That’s why smart reward distribution like Stacked is so important.
My concern with Stacked is how are you going to prevent people multi-accounting to max extract $PIXEL?
Stacked will give out the right rewards to the right people through the offer system. When we give a reward to a user, we A/B test it a lot to make sure we’re giving the right rewards to the right people.
Stacked demo or pre release for us?
Demo is core Pixels right now through the offer system. Not everyone is seeing them yet but we’re trying to get them out more.
Would a “peer review” system work for botting? Does that work for csgo?
Anything peer-reviewed could be botted as well. Everything on the internet has a reputation score and some Web3 protocols are trying to build out reputation scores that are public-facing, but the more information you give a bot on how to increase its reputation score, the worse it’ll do. Reputation scores can be gamed by bots, but the best thing to track is if users are actually net spending across the ecosystem.
Just a suggestion, if we reduce the rep points for people to start trading, it will promote more individuals to invest and participate in various activities which is currently restricted
This is a band-aid solution and not great for the long term. If you want to build a reputation system, it takes a very long time for the system to have confidence that a user is not a bad user or a bot.
New players not being able to use market for so long is very bad! and you making them pay $ to use it
It hurts the game’s retention and fun so it’s something we’re thinking about.
Any update on Merchant Ship
We’re mainly focused on animal care and Bountyfall at the moment.
Any update about any new collab with any games or about Forgotten Runiverse
We are rethinking this staking situation in the long run. We’re going to add any new things we’re working on (Chubkins, Stacked) into the staking system.
Can you add the Pixels aura to the Neon Zone?
That one needs to be distributed in a special way, so we’ll see.
Love Neon Zone, need more variety for mini games. Maybe open-sourcing the making of mini games?
One thing that we’re looking into more is what Pixels would look like if we open-sourced it so there’s some consideration and thoughts there.
When faster approvals for UGC?
We will definitely be working on this.
For two years I've been telling you why you're handing out so many tokens when there were half a million Pixel players, that they'd leave, and they were withdrawing everything they'd abused in the game, forcing investors to leave the token because the token was falling and not holding up, there was nowhere to spend it, and the team was getting paid for it.
When the player limit began to drop so much that the game became completely irrelevant for the 5 billion tokens you had factored into your metrics, you suddenly started doing something. Maybe take the tokens from the team and burn them. Since their work was ineffective and didn't bear any fruit, who will pay for the mistakes?
You created a separate game, having done practically nothing in the main one, which had a ton of holes and through which millions of tokens were pouring into nowhere every day. Pixel Dungeon now has 50 online players a day? Was it worth it?
Your ROR is complete crap. You still have players who buy VIP, your main audience, and your ROR has grown not because you're doing anything right, but because the token will soon be worth less than 1 cent, although a year ago it was worth 30 cents, and fluctuated between 10-30 cents. NEW players won't start playing the game when VIP doesn't pay for itself.
I've suggested you before to create some kind of NFT, like an island for pixels, so that 1 NFT would cost 100,000 pixels in the game, issue 10,000 NFT and we'll burn a billion tokens, you can set the price at 50,000 pixels and make it a significant NFT in the game, go the simple way, why come up with complex metrics