AMA Recap: Avalanche Vietnam x Castle Crush

On Friday, May 6th, 2022 at 09:00 pm (UTC+7), we hosted a live AMA with Alessandro Rosa, Marketing & Community Lead of Castle Crush.
A revised transcript is available below:

1. Before we dive into the questions, please introduce briefly about yourself, your team and some key features of Castle Crush.

Castle Crush is a mobile game developed and published by Wildlife Studios. Wildlife was founded 11 years ago, it has over 70 titles published and is reaching 3 billion downloads across our portfolio. I came into Wildlife in 2016 and have worked with User Acquisition, Community and Marketing for a few years.

Castle Crush is a real-time strategy game. You must build a deck of 14 cards and outwit your opponent, crushing their castle before they crush yours. It has been downloaded over 75 million times, with over 1.4 million players currently logging in at least once a month.

2. Next, could you please update some latest news or big events of Castle Crush in the coming time?

We are introducing the Ascension update to the game in Q2. NFTs and a new utility token will be added to the game, which we are very excited about.

Our first NFT sale will begin in May 19th. We are planning a token sale in June. NFTs will be playable late June.

Meanwhile, we have been growing our community, calibrating/rebalancing cards, and updating our artwork. Of course, we are also developing the blockchain integrations and our very own martketplace, where NFTs will be sold.

3. Most users are looking for games with Play to Earn functionality as a new way to monetize and increase their income. With Castle Crush, how does the project generate profit and revenue, apart from selling NFT or native tokens? Can you explain more about the economy in Castle Crush?

So, we are not fans of pursuing a play “to earn” game. Our game has been enjoyed by millions of players even without any earning capabilities — our aim is to create a fun experience with an open economy. Some players will never aim to make a profit, while others will.

We are introducing a one-token economy into the game. Ascension Crystals, or $ACS, will be launched in June together with playable NFTs.

Wildlife will generate revenue in two ways:
1. In-app purchases for the base layer of the game: users will still want to buy gems, gold, chests, and some special deals.
2. From primary sales of NFTs in our Marketplace. 100% of proceeds from our first sale in May will go to Wildlife. 80% of proceeds from all following sales will go to Wildlife, with 20% going to the game’s treasury.

How players can participate in the economy:
1. Daily Rewards: players can earn $ACS daily by winning matches with their NFTs. Every day, we will distribute a fixed amount of $ACS (415,000), to be shared between all NFT players. In order to be elligible, a player must win a match during that day to activate their NFTs. Winning more than once per day with each NFT does not generate additional $ACS rewards.
2. Seasonal rewards: every 3-week long season, players that rank above a certain Trophy level will earn $ACS, regardless of whether they own NFTs or not.
3. Tournaments: there will be tournaments with $ACS fees, with rewards coming in the form of $ACS and other prizes!
4. NFT marketplace: players can buy and sell their NFTs in the marketplace. Players can also Ascend their in-game, web2 versions of cards into NFTs, if their web2 version of the card is already at max level or max level — 1.

4. So, Let’s dive deeper into the game. What is the gameplay of Castle Crush? How can we earn in the game?

The game is a real-time Strategy game. Players build a deck of 14 cards and play in quick, 1–2 minute battles against other human players.

Each player has a Castle they must defend. Castles are connected by 3 lanes.

Players deploy Minions or Spells into these 3 lanes and must outwit their opponent to destoy their Castle. Minions and Spells cost mana, which regenerates slowly over time.

In order to earn in the game, players must either acquire NFTs or lend them from a guild to earn daily $ACS. Players that rank well at the end of seasons (3-weeks long) will also earn $ACS, even if they don’t have NFTs. Finally, players that have very high level “”web2"” cards can Ascend these cards in-game using $ACS, converting the web2 cards into NFTs.

5. Why Avalanche? How did you integrate Avalanche blockchain within Castle Crush? How does Web3 help Castle Crush with some of the existing problems in Web2 games?

These were our tech requirements:
- Zero or near-zero gas fees, which are important for the environment and for players
- Quick transactions (<15s works for Castle Crush)
- EVM — therefore Solidity — compatible. Easier to find devs, a lot of resources and documentation, and we had a veteran team member who knew it

Avalanche has a growing gaming ecosystem, which we took into consideration.

Finally, the Commercial + Support Relationship. AvaLabs devoted significant resources to onboard us into web3 — no other chains we talked to (and we talked to all of the relevant chains) offered anything anywhere near at the time.
- Tokenomics advisory
- Marketing/Community Building advisory
- Smart contract advisory + smart contract coding by them
- Investor/Guild/launchpad/validator introductions by the dozens
- We were invited to speak at the Avalanche Summit in Barcelona, in March 😉

6. Many games today set high costs to start the game & therefore start with a small player base. Does Castle Crush have an entrance fee or starting conditions & if so, what are they? Do I need to hold an NFT or hold a certain amount of tokens in order to enjoy & play Castle Crush?

Castle Crush is and will always be a free to play game. There will be no barrier to entry apart from owning a smartphone and an internet connection.

NFT owners and non-NFT owners will battle against each other, matched by a tight elo system that ensures every match is fair and winnable.

We start with our current player base of 1.4 million players that will keep playing the game, in addition to new web3 natives that we are happy to welcome!

7. In these times where blockchain games are dominating, led by Axie Infinity, how will Castle Crush compete with the other games which started earlier with their play to earn gameplay?

We see many games entering the gamefi space that look more like defi products. This is not our approach.

We at Wildlife have been building fun experiences for players for 11 years. We have 1300 employees working around building fun games for web2.

We think the blockchain will just add value to our current formula of making very engaging core loops. We think in the end, the products that will win in web3 are those that are super entertaining, with blockchain as a value-add.

8. How your game differs from any other game out there? What makes you unique? GameFi became really popular on blockchain. So what are your seeling points and why users should choose you?

There are a few key differentiators:
1. We have 11 years of experience building fun games and have attracted almost 3 billion downloads. We know how to make fun games.
2. Castle Crush is already live. You can download it and play it for free, now.
3. Castle Crush is loved by >1 million players, without any earning capabilities
4. We have a lot of funding. Wildlife raised 120 million USD in 2020 to invest in our gaming ecosystem. This allows us to scale our game faster and build better partnerships

9. The play to earn model has many limitations, the simplest being that the rewards cause inflation. Do you guys have any solution for this problem?

We are building a one-token economy. $ACS will be our only fungible token.

It is a hybrid between a utility and a governance token. We say that because it is primarily a utility token, but it will have a fixed total emission of 1 billion units.

The primary source of emission is gameplay — every day, we will distribute a FIXED amount of $ACS (415,000) to players based on the NFTs they actively played with that day. The more NFTs and the rarer the NFTs, the more $ACS you will earn as a player. This will ensure $ACS emissions don’t increase as more players join the game.

We are also quite confident that we have sufficient sinks for $ACS. It can be used to purchase Ascended Chests, to mint Ascended cards in-game, to upgrade NFTs, to enter tournaments, to buy cosmetic items, and finally, it will be our gas currency (we are running a subnet).

10. Accessing the crypto space and Avalanche blockchain will be difficult for existing Castle Crush players. How does the team plan to solve this problem?

We are well aware of the terrible user experience regarding onboarding from web2 to web3. This is what we are doing to ease issues surrounding this topic:

1. Community Assistance: providing tutorials in our Discord to creating Metamask wallets and adding funds and being very patient and helpful through tickets, DMs, etc. We have weekly NFT AMAs as well.
2. We are always giving users several days to submit wallets, mint, etc, we will never rush people into it
3. We are creating custodial wallets for 100% of players once the blockchain layer goes live in June. This means players will be able to earn $ACS without ever having to create a wallet or deposit funds. Of course, if they wish to withdraw $ACS, they will need to provide their own wallet.
4. Players will start seeing new menu buttons regarding NFTs/$ACS, and will start owning cryptocurrency even without creating a wallet. We think this will slowly attract them to want to learn more and eventually make the leap to web3.
5. We are constantly chatting with third party providers (such as Moonpay/Ramp/Transak) to enable new, simpler ways for users to buy NFTs. Opensea is already supporting credit card purchases of NFTs — in a few months, we believe this tech will be available on Avalanche as well.

11. Did you consider community feedback/requests during the creation of your product in order to expand on fresh ideas for your project? Many projects fail because the target audience and clients are not understood. So I’d like to know who your ideal consumer is for your product?

Our audience is both our web2 current players and new web3 natives.

We did around 10 private Zoom calls with our most engaged players and VIPs to get their sentiment about our new update. We have a closed group in Discord to keep conversations with these people — they are clan leaders in the game and have been playing for years.

We answer tickets in <12h in Discord, we host weekly Ask Me Anythings, etc, so we are very close to our current community.

For web3, we have secured many partnerships with guilds, investors, and individuals from other NFT communities. We already included many feedbacks from them into our final product.

12. I played and reached level 3 of the castle. The game is very attractive and it seems difficult to win against a lucky player, or a player with rare cards. In web 3, how can I win 1 player with NFT if I don’t have NFT?

Thank you for playing the game! I hope you enjoyed it. So, once we include NFTs into the game, we expect the NFT players to advance very fast in trophies, so that it will be rare that a beginner is matched against a player with a deck full of NFT cards. Our matchmaking system will ONLY match you against similar-level players.

13. What roles does NFT play in Castle Crush? What benefits shall NFT holders receive? Can you talk about what the Founders chest and Ascended chest are? What are the utilities?

NFTs are going to be stronger versions of currently existing cards, and will be the way to enter the game’s crypto economy. You will begin earning $ACS when you play with NFTs — you can then use that $ACS to buy more NFTs, upgrade NFTs, buy cosmetics, enter tournaments, or, if you want, sell $ACS for $AVAX. Founder NFTs do all that, but they generate much higher $ACS rewards, and they will be our governance token. This means Founders will be able to vote in the game’s economic decisions.

14. Will $ACS be tradeable on crypto exchanges? Can we trade cards only for $ACS or for AVAX or stablecoins as well?

Yes, we will list in Trader Joe to start off. You can do a few things with your NFT cards: use them to generate $ACS, sell them for $ACS (and we want to allow sales in AVAX too possibly), you can loan them and share $ACS rewards with a scholar, etc. Then you can, of course, exchange $AVAX for the stablecoin of your choice

15. Can you explain how is your Tokenomics Distribution? How many tokens will be minted ? And How many tokens will be locked by the team?

A total of 1 billion $ACS tokens will be minted. Our current plan is to mint 80% of those as player rewards (daily and seasonal rewards). 5–10% will be used for liquidity and the rest for marketing purposes. The team will probably not retain any tokens (we need to update this part of the Whitepaper) — we are Wildlife employees and have regular salaries + bonuses.