LISTEN. LEARN. DELIVER.
What a time to be alive.
Read this a few times recently? Us too. We’re living life on fast forward. Living through history. Over the last two years, and even the last two months, we’ve all gained some hard perspective on what’s important in life, and it’s more than ones and zeros. But it’s also amazing to take stock on how fast things have moved in our particular part of the digital world, and the rate at which this interconnected and passionate community has built up.
With all the intensity in the crypto, NFT and now the P2E space, it’s easy to forget that we’re often preaching to the converted. In an echo chamber where everyone is an enthusiast, it can be hard to apply critical thinking and a discerning eye to projects when you’re worried about missing the boat. When new tools land, it’s kind of natural to want to use them… just because they’re there. One of our founders was at an event recently, and realized the party had split. “There was a bunch of guys talking crypto projects… and then there was everyone else. I had to say guys, look around. We’re the guys at the party standing on our own talking about crypto.”
That’s why it’s great to step outside the space, talk to a crowd that don’t know their chads from their ICO’s, keep your critical perspective, and have your ideas questioned. Like talking to a kid who keeps saying “but why”, sometimes you realize that if you’re saying “just because”… that isn’t really a good enough answer.
If this all sounds negative, you should know, we’re keen. Our founders have been early into the NFT space, selling out collections in minutes, innovating on things like staking mechanics and de-fi, as well as being long-time gamers. Naturally, we’ve been paying attention. Other founders and members of our core creative team have come from a background in film and photography, always keeping an eye on the way tech allows people to create art and tell stories.
It was tempting to join the first wave of NFT games, but sometimes it’s good to face down the FOMO, and just watch and learn. We all know the criticism leveled at the crypto space — bandwagon jumping, hype driven, and even those of us most bullish about the creativity on display have to concede that there are a lot of projects out there driven disproportionately by the gains mentality. In that kind of aggressive grab for territory, we felt it was hard for something with real creative ambitions to thrive.
You’ve got to hand it to those early movers though. There are smart minds and real innovators behind the quality projects and the more cynical ones. Sometimes those fast takes really hit the zeitgeist. Geniuses who know how to work the hype machine. The über-connected. We’ve all seen our fair share of rug-pulls, but P2E and P&E is a space where, only a few years in, we’re still yet to see even the serious projects deliver on their promise, or break into the mainstream. The fast projects have underwhelmed, and the big plays are still grand ideas, doing their development in public. A tiny handful of games have defined the space so far, and anyone who thinks the mainstream gaming industry isn’t paying close attention and doing deep R&D into blockchain is naive. ALL of this is why we’ve been taking the time to look, listen and learn… and find our moment.
What are our conclusions? Well, first up: It’s hard. You’ve got to believe that most teams go in with best intentions, not ready to rug. But when we’ve been talking to our community, the feedback has a lot in common: projects over promise, under deliver. What’s undeniable is that there have been a few teams out of the gate now, some with significant budgets, and we’re not seeing great game after great game. It would be a surprise if we were — indie game studios can struggle for years before they have a hit, if ever. Like any creative space, from literature to film, creating a successful piece of art that taps into the public’s imagination is rare. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
And that’s just for the game. We’re talking about a space where we’re taking the alchemy of creating a successful, engaging gaming experience AND connecting it deeply to a complex, very new system of tokenomics. Every day there are new crypto mechanics being proposed, implemented, and then tested to destruction. The pace of innovation in the space and the natural cycles of major game development aren’t a natural match. There’s a reason why some games hyped-up as innovators on a new console or game engine are almost old-gen by the time they actually arrive.
We’ve learnt some lessons here ourselves. As you’d imagine, this project has been developing for a while before we went live. There have been a lot of VC meetings, team building, brainstorms with advisors, strategic conversations with fellow devs, writers, gamers and investors. In a bull market, it’s easy to be over confident, and we’ve had some moments where we got caught making assumptions, only to get a reality check. And that’s a good thing, because it’s lead us here, to a moment where we pulled the trigger on our first tweet… not because we knew all the answers about how to make an innovative, free-to-play blockchain-based game that was both entertaining and rewarding, but because we felt we worked out how we want to tackle the crazy challenge of pulling that off. What’s important. What the soul of this project is.
Entertainment first
Cold hard fact: we don’t think P2E works without this. P&E will win. We’ll be saying a lot more about our approach to economics… but philosophically, as gamers, why would we want to be part of a project that WASN’T making that the most important promise to anyone who comes on this ride with us? A game you’ll want to play, even if you’d never heard of crypto.
Originality
We’re in a space that collides art and commerce. Motivation, reward. Creativity, and investment. Sometimes, you make that work by giving people what they want. But the greatest examples give people something they didn’t even know they wanted. Something they haven’t seen before. Sure, it’s harder to do, but the most amazing places are the ones that aren’t in the guidebook.
Community
This one’s important, on every level. On our team, it requires some vision from maverick thinkers, as well as team play. Games don’t happen on their own, and building a team of individuals, with the right skills, that gel into one whole is THE hardest, and most important part of any project.
But this is also where you come in. We know we’ve launched a little early. We had a few PR experts telling us we didn’t have enough to show you yet, that this wasn’t how the marketing game is played. But you know who was ready to go? Our community team, the real degens, who live and breathe this space, and who encouraged us to do what felt right — start talking, sharing, building a community that wouldn’t just get excited by the world we’re building, but who could give us that real back-and-forth conversation every day that is going to make it even better. So we said goodbye to the marketing expert, opened our Discord for the first time, and even though we’ve been writing lore, planning gameplay and building 3D assets with a AAA team for over a year now… THIS week is when it felt like our journey really started.
For anyone who joins us, know that we’re excited to have you along for the ride, that every time we share our work we’re going to be listening to what you think, and that you can be damn sure we’re working on some cool ways for the OG’s to get skin in the game early on, and feel the storm rising before anyone else.
What we build, we build together.
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Team Meka Prime
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