There’s no playbook on what’s working inside of Web3 right now. That’s the reality of building in the space and we’re all trying to figure it out together. Building and pulling off a Web3 game isn’t as obvious as it seems. When you add asset ownership into a game or ecosystem, it makes things more complicated to manage. Suddenly a game economy has become a real economy with real money consequences. It’s something to design around and it’s what we’re trying to solve here with Stacked.
We’re figuring out how to make all of this work together, how to introduce benefits of ownership, make things fun, and reward users. A Pixels priority right now is adding another endgame feature in the short term before we start working on attracting new players and casual players. My take on how we solve the new player funnel is fixing the reputation system with targeted smart offers (coin and $PIXEL through the Taskboard) inside of Stacked.
During the AMA, Heidi did some organizing on her land (#179) and visited lands 3785, 2217, PABL0’s Speck, GxGorje’s Speck, 180 and 177 for some animal care, farming, and crafting. She also did her weekly Pepe drops on Sophia’s Land (4772), completed some Merchant Ships tasks, and showcased some of the new Chubkins designs.
Questions from the AMA
When we expect major updates? Or have you reached endgame?
We haven’t reached endgame yet. Pixels is performing well and the thing we’ll figure out next is how to scale Pixels, which will help evaluate the future features.
Growth? With 2% 30D retention?
The biggest issue with the funnel is not day 30, it’s day 1 and 7. Retaining the first users is the challenge. Day 30 is fine because it tells us that when users take the time to learn the game, they stick around.
Wen LO AMA again?
Next Thursday, March 5th at 6 PM UTC! Going forward, LO AMA’s will be quarterly.
You mentioned hypothetically give reward in dollars, have you considered substituting coins for USDC?
Coins in USDC would not be legally ideal. What you need to be considerate of with in-game currencies is anti-money laundering.
Luke, when USDC as rewards? Pixels as rewards with this market now feels as there is no play2earn at this point. Do you agree?
USDC rewards is something we’re trying to transition to more quickly. We will take a lot of the earnings in Pixels, move them to the Stacked platform and do a USDC cash out that way. Then we can introduce USDC revenue inside of the game.
USDC sounds cool, but I’m concerned fractional USDC earnings won’t psychologically feel as good as whole tokens like $PIXEL or $vPIXEL (like earning $0.005 vs 1 $PIXEL
This is the one concerning thing. We might still frame the rewards in $PIXEL and allow USDC cash out so you can spend the $PIXEL first if you want.
It’s unclear how Stacked would benefit the Pixels ecosystem “token price”
The idea is that Stacked can help games inside the ecosystem that are producing revenue create more revenue. Stacked will add some revenue flow. If Stacked monetizes games better, it produces revenue and that revenue is shared with the Pixels foundation.
Onboarding is hard it’s complicated to buy crypto all around right now there’s more going on
This is why I also don’t love in-game spend for this reason. Even I’m annoyed when I have to buy crypto, so how could we ever expect a normal player to do this. This is why credit card purchases inside of a Web3 game is still really important. These are the mechanisms we’re trying to figure it out.
How is this sustainable?
Pixels technically is sustainable. Every month for the last few months it’s held up. The model is sustainable, but it’s not growing so that’s the next stage.
The game mechanics are so good right now, I only deposit $PIXEL instead of withdrawing. 🙂
The game mechanics are getting better and the animal care update has been better than previous updates.
Because there is a chase for the animals
That is the whole idea. These game mechanics right now are winners. Now we want to fix the day 1-7 funnel and build out better mechanics after that.
Luke if you were a user what would you do if you’d have 1 mil $PIXEL balance in-game hypothetically (nfa of course)
If you have $PIXEL in game it will always be spendable. In the long run, I’m really bullish on $PIXEL being used for staking, especially if we can give out USDC rewards for staking instead.
Wouldn’t combat fix everythingggg
Probably not. There’s a lot of games with combat that aren’t working too, but now that we have a base that’s working, I’m more bullish about adding things combat. The priorities first are adding endgame mechanic, getting earnings into Stacked, first-time user experience, and then we’ll go back to more mechanics like that if they’re working.
From a newbie perspective Pixels has a less grindy start than most Web3 games.
There’s no Web3 games that have cracked it yet, even games that are doing well right now. How do you do well for years? That’s what we’re trying to crack.
I think combat would be a great way to create an endgame resource sink. Like players needing to grind resources to consume in combat
I don’t disagree. Every time we’ve added in competition mechanics, users seem to like it. Priorities right now are endgame mechanic, getting earnings into Stacked, user experience, fixing day 1-7 retention, and then something like this if we see things are working.
Have you ever considered using $PIXEL token in-game as a substitute for coins or creating a new in-game token similar to BERRY? Would increase $PIXEL value. Transition could be presented in a event
I have considered that. I don’t think that would have a positive or measurable impact on the token. If done wrong it could lead to coin inflation. It’s a scary thing to manage.
$PIXEL will be Stake (Stock) exchange. Games performed RORS+ would be a good stake (buy stock). Is this where it leads?
$PIXEL and the Stock Exchange are not the same. When you’re growing an ecosystem and focusing on real players and revenue, ideally that’s increasing revenue each month. It has to have more people staking in order to secure the network better. If we’re able to grow revenue every month, that’s more security we can grant and more staking incentives we can give out.
They also have a great plan on their game token which is amazing and has a great burning mechanism. I think Pixels should do the same, more Pixels burning mech in-game
Pixels is performing sustainably and has a sustainable model.