MU x Huobi Global AMA Recap

In this Twitter Space AMA recap, you’ll find insights about the MU project. In the AMA event hosted by Huobi Global, you will meet Montgomery Singman, CEO of MU.

Introduction

M: Actually, it’s not one game. It is our first game, and MU is a decentralized game publisher. You can regard us as a blockchain game launchpad or a metaverse incubator.

I have been in the game industry for 36 years and made a lot of big titles in my career: I was a lead programmer for Madden Football, I worked on Street Fighters as a programmer and a producer, and I worked on Test Drive; in 2015, I licensed Monument Valley, Gardenscapes, Toy Blast and more into the Chinese market. Throughout my career, I feel that there are too many leeches between game developers and gamers. Too many people are taking away the profit in the middle. The amount of money gamers pay is taken away mainly by the ad network, the marketplaces, and the publishers.

Another thing you may or may not know is that Steam Platform, they banned all NFT games. I don’t think their job should be banning stuff.

I worked for Sony, EA, and Atari, many big game publishers, and I feel that the centralized publishing model is really old school. They take away too much profit, and game developers are not profitable, while the gamers are being sacrificed with less content. You know what gamers want: they don’t need game publishers to tell them where they can play or not. So I decided to start this platform first by providing the technology to the traditional game developers so they can quickly create web3 games. We want to enable them to do what they want to do. And my goal is that gamers don’t even feel like they’re using blockchain or crypto technology; the gameplay experience will be seamless. They want to have entertainment through experiencing the gameplay. Many game developers don’t have any idea of decentralization or the idea of the whole crypto space. So I want first to lower their barrier, enable them with the technology to implement the game quickly, and then if they need us to help them presell NFTs and issue tokens, we will do our best to help them. Then, in the end, it’s decentralized publishing. Decentralized Publishing is not happening yet, but it’s my goal to make it happen.

The 1st game, long story short, is a card battle game. It is strategic in nature, and the graphic style is unique. You can create different formations depending on your enemies. What tribe are they from? The game developers are very independent because they don’t follow the mainstream, and the art style is unique. They’re going to enhance the gameplay further by putting in PvP, and crafting. For the next game, the NFT will be interoperable, so you can take our existing NFTs and play them in our next game.

I think these are all very cool and exciting. We’re coming out with new games every three months; it’s not just the 1st game. Throughout the end of this year, we will pump out one new game every quarter. Our product release schedule for the next year will probably be even faster because, after the listing of MU on Huobi, I’m getting many inquiries from all over the game industry. So yeah, I’m stepping up right now, trying to keep up with the demand. The difference between us is that I’m not from the crypto space; I’m from the game industry; I understand gameplay. I know what game developers want. The game industry is a massive business. We have 3.2 billion gamers worldwide, and that’s the market we want to target. So this is a unique project. It’s a marriage between blockchain and the video game industry. That’s a brief introduction.

H: Yeah. Thank you so much for the introduction. One thing that caught my attention is that you’re not from Crypto; you have a strong gaming background. You bring up all the background knowledge that many people might overlook if they only have the knowledge in Crypto. I want to ask you about revenue. So revenue is an essential factor for building projects in Crypto. So what is your plan?

M: Okay. Most of my team are working on the technology platform, and some of us are working on the marketing promotion to increase the industry awareness. We’re not a big team, and our expense is not high, so it’s not difficult for us to reach profitability. The business model is that I don’t want to take money away from the game developers, to be honest with you.

One developer from Hong Kong asked me two days ago how do I charge for our services? I reply: I don’t want to charge anything from you because I’m supposed to be helping you. I don’t want you to pay MU money out of your pocket. So basically, I only make money when I make money for them; I don’t want any money from them. But when I help and generate a hundred dollars, I may ask for $10 or $15 when they collect that money by assisting them to collect the money without keeping the most, which keeps the platform going. So I’m running this organization a lot like a DAO. Allow me to reiterate; I’m launching new games every 2 to 3 months. We have many opportunities to launch new titles. And every title would make money. And we’re not trying to take away the money the game developers generate; we want to collect a nominal service fee because they’re using our infrastructure. That’s our revenue model. You can call me a loss leader. We’re not trying to take a cut from everything. So if the game has other income, like, in-game purchases, I don’t want to touch that revenue. If they have a subscription model with an Apple app store, I don’t want to have a share in that revenue. I only want to help them sell NFT, and we take a cut from the sale of NFT. I’m embracing this tremendous opportunity, and I want to share it with the traditional game developers; in the process, we want to be as helpful and kind as possible.

H: Maybe I’ll ask you another question about the platform and the game. So what are the specific plans that you have? Say anything in particular that you want our community to look out for.

M: Okay, yeah. My team is really, I guess, conservative in terms of pre-releasing game information. As I mentioned, the 1st game is the card battle game, and it’s more strategic in nature. The middle of May is the launch of our 1st game. The 2nd game is coming out three months after that. And the schedule right now is one game in three months. The second game will be an idle game along the line of mining. We’re also planning on a farming game, like Farm Ville from Zynga, because, you know, mining and farming games have long retention rates.

I’m from the game industry, and my skills are about keeping players interested, keeping players in the game, and keeping players engaged. There are different ways to design games. Some games would like you to come back to the game three times, five times a day, but each time is only 1 or 2 min. At the same time, there are games that will want the players to stay in the game for 2 to 3 hours at a time. And right now, most of the games are leaning towards shorter play sessions. Each play session is shorter but more number of sessions per day. These games may encourage players to come back to the game three to five times, and each time you go in, you click, click, click quickly, and then you move on and do other things. That seems to be more popular these days, simply because we all have a hectic lifestyle, and some of us cannot afford to spend 4 hours in the game each day.

The thesis is that I want to support most game genres, at least one game per genre. So, you know, the 1st game is a card battle game. The 2nd game could be a mining game, the 3rd game could be a farming game, and the one after could be a fighting game, and the one after that to be like a 1st person shooter, so, and then maybe mobile and that kind of like, LOL League of Legend. We want to try each genre in at least one game. After we ship out ten games or more, we will learn which genre better suits our demographic. Slowly we’re going to get more triple-A products from the game industry. Many players in blockchain games are investing and playing at the same time. Some gamers from traditional games may not invest, and some people will invest, but they don’t play. We may use mainstream media, you know, to attract those investors. I think the landscape will be changing as with developing games. I think our games are leaning more towards blockchain game types; while the games are in development right now, they are closer to the traditional game industry with blockchain features. I hope I have answered your questions.

H: That’s more than answering my questions. You give a lot of excellent references to what to expect. I’m just going to leave the remaining time for this session to our audience.

Okay, So the question is, what is the most significant advantage of using MU? I can come back to other platforms with the current NFT and crypto gaming space.

M: I’m very outspoken about how I hate scammers and pump and dumpers. So 1st, you can see that I’m a real person with a real name. I’m not anonymous, and I’m someone you can look up on the Internet; you know who I am and what I have done. Some of the other platforms and projects, you don’t see them, hear about them. I’m here for the long haul. The product plans that I make are usually 1–3 years, if not longer. I won’t just make one game and disappear. I am taking on 600 pound gorillas, centralized publishers like Electronic Arts, Steam and Activation.

We’re trying to form a community of independent game developers, help them with our technology, help them finish their games, help them presell their NFT, and help them launch their games and everything that comes with it. I have licensed more than 50 games from all over the world. One of them has been Monument Vally. I’m all about servicing developers because we’ll have no games without them; we wouldn’t be here talking. I was a game developer, so I know them; they know me. I used to be one of them, and I’m still trying to help them and work with them. Thirty-six years is not a short time. I have run into people who have spent 5 years in the blockchain game space, and they call themselves OG. I guess in that case; I’m 7x OG. So I think that makes a huge difference. We’re here for the long run, and we’re not going to disappear. I love making games. The only reason we launch tokens is that I will have the budget to make more games to help more developers. Some of the games will be made by us. We will incubate the developers and help them finish the games for certain games. That’s the most significant difference.

H: Thank you so much. I want to add something personal. I’ve been a team member of Huobi for a while. I’ve met many people from different projects, and I think one thing I love about having this conversation is the confidence you have and openness and frankness about being a real person in Crypto. Many likes to hide behind profile picture and stuff. But here you are in the flesh as yourself and sharing with us what you’ve been through, what you’ve experienced. I think that’s really valuable and something that makes you honestly outstand from the rest of the community and the space. You show authenticity, and I like that.

Yeah, it was a great pleasure to speak with you, and I hope our community learned a lot more about MU. Thank you so much for having this conversation. I wish you the best of luck with what you have in your roadmap and everything you plan to do. I hope you are accomplishing in the time to come. Thank you.

M: Thank you. Bye-bye.