StepN Founder Jerry What are the considerations for Web3 game creators?

StepN Founder Jerry on considerations for Web3 game creators

The positioning of the product still needs to return to the demand level. What kind of demand will make users feel happy, generate willingness to pay, and whether the speed of payment is positively correlated with the amount.

StepN founder Jerry Huang shared his experience and latest thoughts with 55 Web3 application ecosystem entrepreneurs, using his own practical experience as an example. As one of the earliest participants in the 3G mobile Internet with more than ten years of entrepreneurial experience, how does he insight into the humanity and desires behind the players, and how does he view the economic cycle and corporate cycle? The gains and losses behind StepN may bring important enlightenment to the Chinese entrepreneurial path.

Here are some excerpts:

1. Product selection and thinking, how to find the right position?

Mainly analyze and insight into the demand side. Why do people play a game, why are they willing to pay, why are they willing to spread it to people around them, and why can it form a phenomenon like social discussion? In fact, all of these can be summarized as the word “desire”.

• Analysis Su Zhu arrested, April detention period may be extended
• Ouroboros Capital Why are we optimistic about the future of MKR?
• RWA Potential Exploration What is the Next Large-Scale Application Track After USD Stablecoin?

When I made my first game, I tried to summarize what is the most important thing in a game? Is it technology, plot, or art? In the end, it can be summarized as what desire we have satisfied for the users, which is the source of happiness and the driving force for payment and sharing. So at the beginning, we listed all the desires of people and made a desire tree. The desires of players of different ages, genders, and occupations are different. After summarizing them, we can position the product and determine which group of people’s desires to satisfy. Some desires cannot be charged, but the other party will have fun playing, while some desires can generate payment. Therefore, we believe that any game needs to thoroughly understand desires before exploring players’ behaviors. Desire is the soul, game system is the skeleton, and art and plot are the skin. Only in this way can we define a product from the inside out. Desire itself has nothing to do with Web2 and Web3, but different technologies can amplify corresponding desires. For example, gold farming also exists in Web2, but only a small part of it. After assetization in Web3, making money through gold farming becomes very important. Secondly, because of assetization, users’ desire to show off becomes stronger.

For example, when 3G was just popularized, I transformed and started developing mobile network games. Previously, they were simple single-player games. Combined with the desire tree, I thought about what 3G technology could do at the desire level. First of all, the user group would become larger, and players’ game scenes would also become more abundant. So we thought about whether we could dig and amplify desires in terms of comparison and social aspects, and then we tried to fully integrate this thought into game design. Later, our revenue accounted for 20% of the national game market, and we ranked first on the app store for nearly half a year.

When blockchain technology began to popularize, I was thinking about what desires this asset-on-chain technology could maximize, and AI is the same. What kind of desires can it amplify in people?

So our positioning for the product is to return to the level of demand. What kind of demand will make users feel happy, generate willingness to pay, and whether the payment speed can form a positive correlation with the amount.

2. What are the considerations for Web3 game creators?

First of all, we need to create a Web3 native game, rather than thinking about how to make a Web2 game on the chain. The starting point may determine the final positioning and product form. It doesn’t mean that a Web2 game cannot be transformed into a blockchain game, but if we start from this perspective, it may end up being distorted. It still adds Web3 elements to the Web2 gaming experience. I believe that it is difficult to achieve this in Web3. Just like when we think about how to create a video website that is better than YouTube, it is difficult to do so from this perspective. I believe TikTok’s initial goal was not to defeat YouTube, but it eventually became a strong competitor to YouTube. Therefore, I think it is necessary to be Web3 native from the beginning.

For example, the game we are about to release follows the concept of putting everything that is technically feasible on the chain. What can it bring to users after being put on the chain? This brings us back to the desire tree. In Web2, users spend money to buy an experience and respect. In Web3, we propose a new “triad of fame, fortune, and power” in this game because it combines blockchain. Users can play more diverse roles, not only as creators of resources but also as managers of resources. Therefore, they can gain fame, fortune, and power. As a platform, we only provide an internally circulatory economic model and intervene in game development as little as possible. Even players can decide the rules and direction of the game themselves.

Secondly, it is important to manage your real community well. When I started my business before, I often said that business should come first, rather than making the product perfect before pushing it to the market. My personal style is to push the product to the market when it reaches 65% completion, to start building the market, find paying customers, understand their needs, and grow together with players, allowing players to participate in the construction of the game.

This was difficult in the past with Web2, because Web2 players thought of themselves as masters, and spending money was for enjoyment. How could they tolerate an imperfect product from you? But in Web3, it is possible. Everyone needs to come together to create the entire economic ecosystem. StepN was established in September 2021, and in less than three months in November, we pushed it to the market. We developed running modules, GPS anti-cheating modules, built-in wallets, built-in trading markets, and more in just two months, which is really not easy. But with limited time, it is definitely not perfect enough. However, I still boldly pushed it to the market. At that time, we received test sign-ups from over a thousand players worldwide. Many people criticized it, and we fixed over a hundred bugs on the first day. What they didn’t expect was that we updated the version twice a day, and we fixed a large number of feedback bugs each time. The number of problem reports noticeably decreased in the following days. This process lasted for a month, and the changes in the product were visible to the naked eye. So early players had a strong level of involvement, and later they became loyal users.

We also did a lot of operational activities on Discord at that time, and many projects are still referring to these activities. After winning the third place in the Solana hackathon, more than 10,000 users immediately flooded into Discord. However, we found that 95% of them were non-effective users who came to grab whitelist spots. So, I did something bold at that time and cleared all the suspected bot users. If they didn’t speak for a few days, they were deleted. The most important thing for the development of a game is a clean and pure early community with original motivation, not just the number of people. At that time, WeChat’s red envelope was very popular during the Chinese New Year, and we were also considering whether we could send red envelopes to users on Discord. However, there were too many people trying to take advantage of the situation, so we didn’t dare to do it easily. So, we came up with a solution: we let everyone answer questions about the whitepaper. We created many questions for everyone to compete to answer. If they answered correctly, I would send them a pair of Genesis shoes. According to the rules, they had to invite three friends to participate in the quiz. As a result, we attracted many real users. Thanks to this activity, our Discord community grew from a few hundred users, which I had cleaned up, to 100,000 users. What’s more, this growth happened while I was continuously deleting suspected bot accounts. So, almost all the remaining users were real. As the activity became more and more popular, users had to answer 10 questions correctly in a row to get rewards, which made them constantly read our whitepaper carefully. This activity brought us tens of thousands of high-quality and loyal users who read the whitepaper more times than I did. They genuinely recognized our product and even actively helped us spread the word.

Lastly, I want to talk about market globalization. At that time, we also spent a lot of effort considering which market to enter first. In the end, we decided to enter all of them. We focused on the market that showed the most potential. In the end, it turned out that our initial conclusion was correct. Our largest market is in Japan, and the second largest is in France and other European countries. Even now, we still have one or two thousand new users every day. So, our initial approach to globalization was to let the market choose itself, and then we would help the fast-growing market develop even faster.

3. How should founders deal with the ups and downs of economic cycles?

In Web3 games, I don’t think market cycles are that important because games and other applications like DeFi are different. DeFi indeed relies heavily on economic cycles because during a recession, both users and funds disappear. However, games can form their own system with their own pricing, tokens, and ecosystems, so they are not as dependent on external macroeconomic cycles.

Additionally, I want to mention that bull markets do attract more users and funds, but there are also more competitors. StepN should be considered at the tail end of a bull market. Initially, we had a large number of competitors, but if we can establish our own ecosystem during a bear market, there will be fewer competitors, and the market’s attention will be less likely to be divided.

4. When is it appropriate to hire a PR team for a project?

To be honest, we didn’t do a great job in this aspect. The first thing a Web3 game project needs to do is make players feel that we are genuine and that we are with them. So in the early stages, we did weekly AMA sessions even though the product hadn’t been launched yet. The first time we did it, there were only a dozen people, but we persisted and continued to do it every week until more and more people joined and could feel our sincerity. In the end, we hired a PR team because we were too busy, but we realized afterwards that we should have done it ourselves. The most a PR team can do is crisis management, but for day-to-day brand and influence, we still need to do it ourselves. Our communication with users is the best PR.

5. When starting a blockchain gaming venture, should we focus on attracting new Web2 users or meeting the needs of Web3 native users?

Internally, we all agree that we should convert a large number of Web2 users to Web3. This includes the many features that StepN has developed, such as integrating wallets and trading platforms, which are all aimed at lowering the barriers and attracting more Web2 users. We want players to have a seamless experience without realizing the technology behind it. This is something we have been doing in the past and will continue to do in the future. Our future games will also achieve login, transfers, and gas-free transactions through decentralized methods. The goal is to convert more Web2 users into Web3. At least half of our StepN users had never been exposed to blockchain before playing.

6. How should we approach users who play games solely for the purpose of making money?

First, we need to determine if they are purely playing for profit or if they are part of a gold farming guild. If they fall into the first category, we must remove them. Different games have different views on gold farming guilds. Some games are very friendly towards them and even invite them to join because they bring traffic quickly. However, at StepN, we were somewhat resistant to gold farming guilds and refused to cooperate with them.

7. How can we keep Web3 games constantly generating value?

The key is to create happiness for users through the game. If your users experience joy while playing the game, that value is already sufficient. There is no need to overly obsess about the definition of value itself or others’ judgments. Games are fundamentally an experiential economy. If users spend money to obtain the experience they desire, that is enough. As for how others define this process and whether it has value, every user has a different perspective.

We will continue to update Blocking; if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us!