“What I saw in 2010 with mobile, I’m seeing again now”: BoomLand CEO Hannibal Soares on why blockchain is the future of gaming
What happens when the founder of a publicly traded gaming studio with over 350 employees and more than 2 billion total downloads enters the web3 gaming market? We sat down with Hannibal Soares who, with Hunters On Chain, is doing just that.
Hannibal has been into gaming for as long as he can remember. “My older brother had one of those old gaming computers where you had to load up a tape, like in a Walkman. Then, you wait… At the time, it could take up to 20 minutes before you could even play a simple game. And that’s if you were lucky enough for it not to crash.”
Over the past few decades, Hannibal has seen the gaming industry evolve to where it is today. Every step along the way, people have laughed at innovation, he says. “First about mobile games. Then about free games with in-app purchases. But just like I saw mobile gaming as the next opportunity in 2010, I now see blockchain gaming. I really recognize it as the future of gaming.”
A pioneer in the gaming industry
In 2010, Hannibal was working a job in London as a stockbroker when he got his hands on his first iPhone. He saw a massive opportunity: the App Store. “People take downloading an app for granted today, but it’s like black magic. An app is developed in let’s say Vietnam, and in seconds you can have it on your phone.”
It changed the gaming industry. “I always wanted to work in gaming, but at the time you had to work in one of those big studios. You couldn’t just start a gaming company from your bedroom. Like absolutely no chance.” But he says the launch of the App Store made development a lot easier, because of the support Apple offered — and so Hannibal got to work. “I hired a graphic designer and a developer. We made a quick game and released it in November 2011. It did really, really well.” So well, in fact, that he decided it was time to go all in. With his Boomland co-founder, Hannibal released his first game: a ‘flick football’ mobile title piggybacking on the Euro 2012 soccer tournament. “It became number one in 80 countries straight after the launch.”
Thus Boombit Group, Hannibal’s first company, came into being. Today, it has over 350 employees, over 200 games launched on the App Store, generated over 2 billion total downloads, and went public on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE: BBT) in 2018.
Enter blockchain gaming
It was around the same time Boombit Group was founded that Hannibal got interested in blockchain gaming. “We had a few in-house developers who kept trying to convince me about the technology.” Eventually they were successful. As someone who has spent over $10,000 on Clash of Clans, “I saw the potential of digital ownership. What if that was on the blockchain? My son is 12 years old now. I could have just given him my assets.”
Once again, Hannibal saw an opportunity and got to work. “We tried to make a game, but the tech wasn’t really there yet. It was just Ethereum. With the transaction speeds and gas fees of Ethereum, it was simply impossible.”
The start of Boomland
Fast forward to 2021. Thousands of people in countries such as the Philippines are making a living off Axie Infinity, and the potential of blockchain gaming is becoming evident to the masses. This inspired Hannibal to give it another shot. “Boomland was born.”
While Boomland is connected to his other company, Boombit Group — “We’re backed by its huge powerhouse of experience, IP, and tools. We can tap into their people, knowledge, and reach” — Boomland is not dependent on Boombit: “We are very much an independently run web3 studio.”
When starting Boomland, Hannibal assembled a core team of people with the same vision. “And this team is still together. We have a knowledgeable web3 expert, a strong game designer who designed some of the most profitable and fun games at Boombit, and myself, with the experience of building studios and startups.”
How Boomland shapes the future of web3 gaming
The path ahead is clear, according to Hannibal. “The future of web3 gaming is not to acquire the web3 degens. The future is getting all the web2 gamers into web3. The grandmas, the housewives, the kids. When those people are playing web3 games, then you know that it works.”
Boomland is addressing this gap head on. One of the games it’s working on is called Hunters On Chain. It uses the IP of Hunters Royale, Boombit Group’s most successful game, which made $45 million in revenue already. “And we’re doing it in this exact way with every game.” They take a game that has a great track record and solid foundation, and tokenize it to add another level of depth. Other examples include Tiny Gladiators 2, Mighty Heroes, and Baseball Club, all successful games by Boombit Group.
The path to long-term success
For Hannibal, the key to web3 gaming success is to make it as easy as possible for the end user. “If you’re going to target and onboard millions of web2 users, you can’t have anything even remotely related to web3 in the first few days of playing the game. If you ask someone who downloaded your app from the App Store to create a wallet… forget about it. That will never work. Not in a million years.”
But again, he thinks the solution is clear. “The challenge for developers like ourselves is to work with parties like Immutable, who [help us] to hide every single web3 element in the backend.”
The goal is to have users download the game, press play, and go on for days and days having no clue there’s anything ‘web3’ about the game at all. “We’re currently doing that with Hunters On Chain. You have no idea there’s anything web3 involved until day fourteen. And even then, you only have to engage with it if you want to.”
Hannibal couldn’t be more excited for the future of gaming and how blockchain plays into it. The road ahead won’t be one without challenges, but Boomland is confident it has the tools and expertise to overcome them. With a founder who’s been a true gaming nerd since the very beginning of it all, Boomland is ready to take on the coming decades.
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