In the first few days of our soft launch on iOS (download here), we’ve got 3k downloads and 400 people playing our first weeks game. We love it. Brick by brick we’re taking this gravy train to the moon. That said, we’ve noticed that a lot of our users have questions; questions about what Hashletes is, how to open packs for free, how to play games with tokens, what exactly a Hashletes “token” is(?!), who we are, etc. The new and improved version of our app, coming out this week (11/5) will answer a lot of these questions, but we wanted to address them before that.
Take it from the top; what is Hashletes?
Basically, Hashletes is a digital trading card game. In the Hashletes world, each NFL player has 25,000 cards (or “tokens”), and once a user buys that card, they own it forever until they choose to sell or trade it to another user. By owning a card, users can enter the player it represents into games for real cash prizes if you are in a state we support. If you aren’t, don’t worry, we’ll be rolling out cash prize games for you soon and free games in the meantime. It’s pretty simple actually! Player cards look like this:
Oh okay; how do I get Hashletes cards?
Good news! We actually give you 5 packs of Hashletes when you sign up. That means that you’ll be able to select your favorite position on the football field (i.e. QB, RB, WR, DB) and get a bunch of Hashletes for free in that position. Packs are just like opening up old Pokemon or Baseball card packs when you don’t know whats inside. Right now, when you go in the app you’ll be prompted to select a pack, then you’ll be dropped into the marketplace. If you want to open your next pack for free, click on the $.99 on any other pack in the marketplace, click “Buy Tokens”, and then you’ll be taken to this screen. If you’ve got a pack credit left (we gave you 5 just by signing up), you’ll be able to get this pack for free. It should look like this:
What if I want a specific player for my lineup?
Bingo. Individual players will be available in our marketplace for $2 each. Yes, every player is $2. You’ll be able to purchase them this week (11/5) before games start. Remember, there is only 25,000 of each player available for sale. Once we sell out, you’ll have to buy them from other users at a non fixed price.
What do you mean games?
We’ve offer two games right now: Offense and Defense. In each of these games, you set a lineup of the player cards you own during the week. As the games are played, each player will accrue fantasy points. The goal of these games is to beat a points target that we set each week, and you are playing against everyone to beat the target. If your lineup beats the points target, you get a share of the winnings, but as others do, so do they. Spooky. Last week the prize for Offense was $6K and the prize for Defense was $2K — about 100 people won $80 each. They look like this when we are playing:
Can I play for free?
We’re glad you asked. The great part about Hashletes is that you can play for free — if you want to play Offense for free open up the QB, RB, WR, K and TE with the packs we give you during onboarding. If you want to play Defense, open up the DL, LB and DB packs during onboarding.
Who are you guys?
Vance, Brennan, Michael, Alec and Jake. We’re from Snapchat and Netflix. Fun fact: We came up with the idea in a hot tub after the 2017 Super Bowl.
Whats next?
Theres a lot. We’re releasing v2 of our app with a bunch of different upgrades (i.e. buying players with credit cards) and bug fixes this Thursday (11/8). In terms of major feature development, the roadmap for the month of November has two things:
- Teams with Friends: A way for you and your squad to build a combined lineup of the players you own and compete against other teams for yuge cash prizes.
- Marketplace: Once players start to sell out, we’ll be building a way for users to exchange tokens with each other. Fun
And of course, Cash prizes will generally be going up as user growth increases, and we’ll be adding fun tweaks to keep the games exciting each week. A Punter Only game? Offensive Lineman pancakes game? Keep your points total between two numbers to win? Who knows. Stay tuned.
