It starts with the user
Ultima Online first debuted in 1997. It was one of the originals for the mmorpg genre. It predates World of Warcraft (2004), Runescape (2001), heck it even predates Everquest (1999). They really paved the way for the genre to follow. It was also one of the first to make a lot of mistakes that were necessary to move the genre as a whole forward.
One of the first things that the team did is try to create an online ecology. Last year they released a video on this process you can watch here. The thought was to create an environment where a natural ecology could exist. They created plants, herbivores, carnivores and introduced players. The thought was that each would keep the other in check. Players would kill carnivores because of quest incentives, carnivores would kill herbivores, herbivores would eat plants, and plants would regrow. They created a beautiful system where everyone has a job.
Players enter stage right. “Death to everything that gives experience!” seemed to be the cry from players. Players killed everything that moved. Anytime something would spawn next to a player, they would instantly vanquish it. This created a huge rift in the ecology system they created. They tried everything including raising rewards for the carnivores and lowering that of the herbivores. They quickly realized that nothing could be done to fix this. They learned the hard way that in house testing wasn’t enough. In all of their testing they never even imagined something like this.
The only way they ended up solving this is just getting rid of all of the ecology code. In the video one of the developers said “The worst part was none of the players noticed.” They never got to see the ecology. The developers made one fatal mistake. They assumed that because they cared, everyone else would too. This thought process has plagued every kind of designer since the beginning of time.
Just because you care about something doesn’t mean everyone else does.
This is something that our CEO Brandon JP Scott and I went around and around about. When we were first coming up with the initial designs for what is to be Clutchat he had a huge amount of very ingenious ideas. One of the first ones was encrypting communications, both voice and messaging, for gamers. Brandon comes from a security background, so this kind of tech means a lot to him. Through a lot of late nights talking with other people in the industry it became apparent to us that this was not a concern for gamers. Most gamers don’t care that the voice chat they are having during their Overwatch game in encrypted. The thing they care about is that they are fast and accurate.
We went through a ton of ideas on what gamers actually want. What kinds of things are gamers looking for? We have a few ideas, but the actual conclusion that Gamer Ammo as a company came to is that is for the gamer to decide. Rather than make a whole system that the gamer would only be interested in very small parts of, we decided to start with next to nothing. A chat function, a post function, some cool trial things like native coaching, upvotes, and a few other game changers that I’m not allowed to disclose, are all we are starting with. Everything else will be from our end user, the gamer.
This approach allows us the stay agile so we can give the gamer EXACTLY what they want.
In one of those late nights we finally figured out that the key was to give people what they want. Not what we want them to want, but things that they will actually use. We decided that the thing we ended up with might not be the thing we started with. That was something that we had to come to terms with. That we actually didn’t know what was best, the person that determines that is the gamer that installs Clutchat.
This is why we are taking a minimum viable product and putting it in the hands of a small group of Alpha users. We will slowly expand this group and adapt as we go. This approach requires a lot of faith in the gamer. We have to have a system that allows them to give honest criticism and feedback. This is why the blockchain is so important to us.
The blockchain allows us to let the gamer decide
Each individual on the platform will have a voice. Every person will help decide what we are doing going forward. We can make cool things, but ultimately the gamer decides if it is going to be implemented. Smarter men than I are going to explain how we are exactly doing this, but this is the approach. This won’t get us a product that we can sell to Facebook 3 months from now for 8 billion dollars. This is going to get us a product that, while isn’t perfect, will feel different from the first time a gamer installs it on their device. From the moment it is opened for the first time it will feel like it was made for them. Everything will be intuitive, the features will be exactly what they are looking for, and the community they knew they were meant to be with.
At the end of the day, this is the most important thing to us. We want to make a difference. This is what will make the gamerchain. It’s not something we prepped for them to try to make the system make them money. It’s something that will actually bring value to the life of the gamer.
Bringing value is the key
While we could have just made a money grab (that’s what the market is telling us to do), we wanted to make a difference. We wanted to create something that is going to enrich the lives of people. This is going to be the deciding factor in the second wave of blockchains. They are blockchains that are going to get value by what they can add to the users lives. In order to move forward people are going to have to start listening to their users. Companies are assuming that people are dumb and will buy into anything with the word blockchain on it. While this might be true at the moment, wait a few months and then see what’s up. I would be willing to bet that by this time next year every blockchain that is still thriving are the ones making a difference. The ones that when someone uses, they are better for it. People are more discerning than some companies give them credit for. They will be able to spot the differences.
At Gamer Ammo we are making sure we’ll still be thriving next year by giving our user exactly what our user wants.
