On 23 April 2019, Garth Midgley joined us in the Phantasma Telegram channel! He is the Studio head and Creative director of GOATi who is building 22, a real-time strategy racing game with e-sport at its core.
He made some time for us all to answer the community’s questions about their role in the recently announced partnership.
I’ve mostly just copied the questions and answers from the Telegram, but also changed some things up to make more sense and put them in logical order. I hope this makes it easy to read for all of you.
Keep in mind that this was in Telegram. I fixed some typos here and there, but please go by the content, don’t judge grammar and English.
There’s some great stuff in here, so enjoy!
INTRODUCTION
GARTH
Hi guys, I’ve been keeping an eye on the channel for a while, but couldn’t jump in to after the announcement.
I’m happy to answer any questions you might have, so feel free to fire away.
And from our side, we’ve been actively looking for the right blockchain partner for years now, and have been speaking with some of the biggest players. We didn’t want to make any moves until we found the perfect partner that understood the game space and had the tech and team to back it up.
Obviously Phantasma ticked all the boxes.
We’re pumped to be a part of this, and looking forward to helping Phantasma build the No1 chain for games!
GENERAL QUESTIONS
So is the company pronounced like goatee?
More like goat-e.
The g.o.a.t is a sporting term for greatest of all time, e.g. a Mohammad Ali. We strive to be the greatest in the game space.
i = interactive
Could you clarify what RevGen is exactly and does this tech have any application on blockchain or is that mainly for the game itself? (the portion of the game that lives off chain)
On the game client side;
RevGen is an extremely fast rendering and physics engine that’s completely and efficiently multi threaded. We can get 400+ frames per sec on current cards (easily runs for player split screen at 4k) and our physics rates are 600Hz per frame, so that’s something like 60k per second depending on your frame rate.
On the back-end side;
Our game has been designed for 10 years to need a back-end like Phantasma. Fyi, the fact that we only had fiat back then and not blockchain was top of our risk analysis. So our game is designed and built to be integrated with a blockchain service/back-end like Phantasma, which is why this solution will connect with our game so we’ll.
A key point here is that we weren’t trying to find an excuse to make a blockchain game, or are now trying to play catch up, our game always needed blockchain, but blockchain didn’t exist yet when we started, so we continued to build it anyway.
With a partner like Phantasma who’s been doing the same, but from the blockchain side, together we’re now well ahead of the game … no pun intended ;)
What has been the sentiment of beta testers for 22? Is the feel unique compared to other racing games? Enough to really stand out as a new category?
We have people collapsing from excitement after our Expo tournaments, literally ;) AMD are trying to get our game into their booths at upcoming shows (lots of legals and different AMD budgets per region to work out), so the response has been great.
From a game design differentiation pov. We’re the first game to;
A) Combine future racer like speeds with real physics
B) Combine racing with resource strategy. Players capture sectors, earn energy, can spend it mid race to upgrade your vehicle
So we’re extremely new and different!
From a “at glance” look into 22 series I felt there was a lack of diverse reviews or depth regarding their input. Have you guys considered reaching out to streamers, vloggers, etc. to create an organic growth for web presence? Or do you feel the game is still too early on to reveal to the public as much. (i.e. working on upgrading graphics, tweaking looks, etc).
Our game isn’t out for review yet, but we will be definitely doing this before launch.
The plan is to have a closed beta for Esports teams, Phantasma holders etc first. Then we’ll do another closed beta before launch with streamers invited. Then a launch with full PR.
N.B. the agency that do the PR for PAX approached us after discovering us at one of their shows. They want to do our PR because they’re sure they’ll be able to get a lot of press with this.
Curious, will 22 series be exclusively on phantasma chain? If not, does this mean each platform will essentially have their own marketplace such as steam, ps4, Xbox, & phantasma?
So NFT’s in phantasma will or will not be transferable to other platforms? (Don’t think this is even possible but curious anyway)
This is something that the Phantasma guys can jump in on as well, but the beauty of using blockchain and Phantasma chain for NFTs, means that this can be cross game and cross platform. Phantasma chain will support interoperability with other chains, so your in game assets as NFTs will be able to be traded more widely and easily than ever.
Bill continuing on the answer above from Phantasma’s perspective:
The objective is to have the NFT’s cross marketplace and we are definitely focused on make the NFT’s cross device compatible AKA play them on any incarnation of the game where the API calls into the chain can called. We will start with PC and then focus our attention on console.
Intially they will be exclusively on the Phantasma market place and then we will have them accessible from others.
WHY PHANTASMA
As we all know (and your team aswell) blockchain is arround for a while now. Even smartcontract platform with NFT support also.
Can you explain in a nutshell why you guys skipped the “first movers” and why you ended with Phantasma and how did you noticed them?
Yep, I was in at the start of this. Even installed the very first release on the bitcoin miner on my machine, back before they were even with anything.
We’ve been keeping an eye on the market for a while, and kept out leading up to and during the bubble burst period because we didn’t want to get caught up in it or associated with it. We’ve been working on our technology and company for too long now to have it brought down by that.
So we watched and waited to see who the serious blockchain developers were so that we could be sure we’re partnering with someone that will last.
By waiting, a lot of the dodgy blockchain companies have either already collapsed or been exposed, so letting that happen saves us a lot of time reviewing those companies.
You said you’ve been looking for a proper blockchain for years. What was it about phantasma that made you pull the trigger?
Number one was Phantasma project philosophy. Having a team that understood what we want to build. The kind of integration that we’re building goes WAY beyond what any other crypto game has even thought about. Every other team we met were more interested in building little games with little integrations that would raise early hype rather than building long term tech solutions.
Phantasma understand the need of games better than any other chain I’ve spoken with.
The Phantasma chain had already been developed with long term solutions in mind. And the last thing we want is to partner with tech that falls over once you get halfway through. We want to do this long term, so making sure that there’s underlying blockchain quality and stability was key.
What other chains did GOATi consider?
I won’t say exactly, but they were well within the top 100, and many near the top (at one point).
Was ENJ a possibility?
Yep, I spoke with them. I won’t go into it too much, but they’re not thinking about the community and the eco-system in the right way. The plan we have with Phantasma will be much better!
Is there anything that you are allowed to specifically speak to regarding the defining difference?
The two main points were;
1) Depths of smart contacts — there are things we want to build that will be a great disruption in the Esports and game industries that they absolutely couldn’t do and hadn’t considered
2) Creation of NFTs. Enjin require developers to pay them for every NFT they put on chain, regardless of whether it’s free or sold. Steam don’t even do this.
Phantasma will include staking of soul to generate kcals, they can then be converted to NFTs. This means that developers will be able to generate NFTs for free in line with their stake.
CUSTOMIZATION AND ECONOMICS
Are there any plans to add extra things in the game, like regular vehicles, civilians (and collisions with them) etc.?
We’ve already created two new game genres, “future physics racing” and “real time strategy racing”.
We’re going to open up our game and engine to be modable as well, so if people want to make on-chain recreations of other game designs that already exist, like cops and pedestrians (NFT, gta), then they will be able to with our engine, and so then they’ll be on Phantasma chain as well.
Will the NFT be able to be used cross platform? Trade something from PC and use it on PS4?
That’s exactly the point of what we’re going to build together with Phantasma, a way to unlock your digital assets from a particular game/platform so that you can sell them and move them wherever you like.
What sort of things will be customizable / trade-able on-chain as NFT assets? Is it just cars or is it also parts, skins, etc?
These, but much more even. I don’t want to give away to much to early, but imagine a moder builds a track, released that to our game and Phantasma chain, then they make an ongoing cut of sales for the track forever.
Also, what will the currency be? Soul, KCAL, Phantasma gold?
In terms of currency, there will be different integrations for different parts of the game, all to be fully explored.
E.g. kcal and soul for NFT, event entry with soul etc. There will be a lot of crossovers, and we’ll use the best for each case, while keeping things as flexible as possible.
Will there be plans to launch a native token for 22series? Or for GOATi?Will there be a pay to play side of the game where you can mine the token by playing and earn rewards/dividends based on how many tokens you hold?
We’ll be looking at things like this for sure.
One thing we definitely won’t do, is pay to win. Everyone starts each match equal, regardless of what you pay.
RELATIONSHIPS AND PARTNERSHIPS
GARTH
Re relationships/partnerships …
AMD — we’ve been working with them for four years after they saw our engine tech and flipped out. They provide us engineer support, they run our game through their QA labs, they provide internal hardware support, hardware as prizes for events (we have a pile of laptops and Ryzens ready to give away) and they’ll be helping us promote and market closer to launch.
Publishers like Sony and Microsoft offer different levels of support and marketing to different teams/games. We have a great relationship with both that goes above usual indie team support for a number of reasons like; experience, technology already on their platform, industry connections etc. If a publisher wants your game on their perform enough, then they don’t just allow it, they pay you to make it happen. At which point or moves from relationship to partnership.
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
BILL
Garth Midgley many thanks for taking the time to be with us today. I’m sure everyone here really appreciates it — note everybody we will do an AMA post main network launch on reddit where both Phantasma and Studio reresentatives will be able to provide more answers to questions you may have between now and then. Thank you again Garth
GARTH
Happy to jump in and give a heads up on what we’re doing. Looking forward to doing reddit chats and YouTube vids etc along the way to get more info out there.
And most of all, looking forward to working with Phantasma to build out this game changing technology!
Hungry for more?
- Join the Phantasma Telegram channel here: https://t.me/phantasma_io
- Official Phantasma Medium: https://medium.com/phantasticphantasma
- For more details about the game 22 series, see http://www.22series.com/
- What are the NFT’s everyone keeps talking about? https://bit.ly/2DtbF5a
- And a little teaser of the game that’s discussed here, including a Phantasma car!
