Building our Play-to-Earn Future: Introducing Rhagga to ParagonsDAO
Recently, we announced our gaming vision, outlining our plans to build the preeminent web3 pro team, guild and gaming community. To help execute our vision, we recently onboarded a P2E Manager, Rhagga (also known as Gus), an energetic and thoughtful leader who brings his significant passion for gaming and related experience working with Riot Games (League of Legends’ developer) and PokerStrategy.com (a top international online poker school and community).
I had the chance to sit down with Rhagga to learn a little more about him and the perspectives he brings to ParagonsDAO.
Tell us a little bit about yourself
I’ve been a gamer my whole life. I started with Atari, Sega Master System, Genesis and when people branched out to Playstation or Nintendo 64, I went with Playstation. Amazing memories, just the other day I replayed ‘Miracle Warriors’.
However, I’ve always been more of a PC gamer, especially for turn-based games. I played most of Sid Meier’s games (the creator of the Civilization series), the Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) collection and as online gaming became a thing, World of Warcraft, Magic, the Gathering became my first online games.
I love card games. All types — regular card games to trading card games (TCGs). I played a bit of everything I got my hands on: Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Vampire, Hearthstone, and now Runeterra. I also found some TCG strategy games in hidden jewels like Poxnora and Battleforge.
What attracted you to ParagonsDAO?
In December, I got involved in my first DAO and got a deeper look at the world of crypto. The possibilities for the future really got me hooked. And this is a space that is growing fast and is starting to look at onboarding more people from outside the crypto space.
Then in March this year, I found out about ParagonsDAO — uniting my new passion for crypto and my life-long passion for gaming. I knew I had to get involved.
How do you see the future of play-to-earn (P2E) gaming?
This is a very recent development. P2E demonstrates great potential — people are really interested in this. There are lots of areas to improve on,and no one has nailed this down just yet.
It’s still a space with many empty promises, and downright scams. Finding a serious project is probably the first challenge here.
Looking forward, more serious projects will enter the space. Ultimately, the first ones to unite a great game, with a reasonable entrance barrier, interesting NFT values, and build a significant player base will dominate the space.
What excites you most about ParagonsDAO’s gaming vision?
For starters, I believe ParagonsDAO has a good read of the P2E space and is focused on games that are closer to the criteria mentioned above.
Looking at the vision, what is really special, for me, is the opportunity for the “rise of a hero”. The story of the person that starts playing casually, but has tremendous talents, then ends up joining the guild and moving up the leaderboards. Making a name for himself/herself and moving up to the ParagonsPRO team. Now they are making a living at doing something they love doing.
ParagonDAO’s vision is to facilitate each step of that journey for as many people as possible. The focus is on the players — coaching, supporting, offering a like-minded community — and assisting players in a mutually beneficial relationship.
One of the most important things for ParagonsDAO (and the P2E space in general) to get right is the onboarding experience — particularly of those who may be coming from more traditional gaming cultures and are not crypto natives. We also need to prioritize generating useful, precise and concise content in addition to building and growing a thriving community. Once the basics are set, the crucial point will be finding a point of equilibrium forplayer earnings that is genuinely interesting for the community.
How can you apply your past experiences to achieve this vision?
My experience with PokerStrategy has a lot to offer here. Essentially, I was focused on how to successfully nurture a community around a game — supporting and coaching players to become profitable. For some, it was about getting better at the game, others wanted some extra income while having a good time, and there were those that made their profession around that game. We supported all those journeys, while providing a place for people to hang out, make friends and improve their game. I see many parallels in the P2E space.
Riot Games is one of the most player-focused companies in the world, and it blends into everything that happens there. My experience working with them is one aspect that will be a great differentiator.
For example, how do we make the journey of the player flow easily? What are the pain points? How do we get better at it? And when it is unavoidable, how do we best prepare the player for it?
Players matter! It has to be more than some words posted on the wall. It needs to be present in every process we use, plans we make and decisions we approve.
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Reach out and say hi to @Rhagga on our Discord, and follow us on Twitter.
