Using (Crypto)Kitties to introduce the world to blockchain
Bryce Bladon is a founding team member at CryptoKitties, the world’s most successful blockchain game. He was primarily responsible for the brand, communications, and cat-puns associated with Ethereum’s first “killer dapp.” Bryce is also an award-winning writer, content strategist, and communications consultant. He has written almost a dozen books and his work has appeared in journals and collections. We sat down with him to talk about CryptoKitties, blockchain, and growth at the 2018 The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam.
“I’m not the sole founder of CryptoKitties,” Bladon emphasizes before the interview. “There’s founding team of about a dozen team members from Axiom Zen [the startup studio home to CryptoKitties and ZenHub]. No one person is they key to the success of CryptoKitties. It’s a decentralized effort, like blockchain technology enables. A lot of what makes our product is the creative talent behind it.”
The founding team was able to witness an exponential product growth: “We had 88.000 registered wallet addresses after ten days, and 200.000 after two weeks: It went fast… It’s been a trip. So the first 12 to 20 people were all Axiom Zen, and now we’re up to over 25 team members, many of whom we hired from the community. And now we’re starting to look at other things we can do with this technology.”
Can you tell us a bit about the idea behind CryptoKitties?
“The general thesis of CryptoKitties was building a bridge to the blockchain for everyday users — people who do not know what an ICO is or what DLT means. We decided that the best way to do this was to deliver a practical and innovative product Most of the focus on blockchain technology has been on cryptocurrencies, but that is a narrow view of what this technology is capable of. We saw an opportunity to do something new: cryptocollectibles.
Co-founder Mack Flavelle was the first person to suggest putting cats on the blockchain, using the Internet’s mascot to get people to engage with blockchain technology. Co-founder Dieter Shirley saw an opportunity to do something new and interesting; he’s the one who authored the now-standard in non-fungible (i.e. non-cryptocurrency) tokens. I saw an opportunity to actually create a blockchain project with personality, one that didn’t use jargon, that wasn’t hypothetical, and most of all, was fun for industry insiders and the the everyday user.
We found that the best way to forward this new technology was with a game, or a platform with gamified aspects, because games are typically found at the forefront of technologies. That gave our developers the space to play with it, and it allowed us to leverage the novelty of introducing people to blockchain.”
“The concept for CryptoKitties took off because it’s on the blockchain, but that also means that a lot of it is transparent.”
Can you clarify how the team, or the community, plays a role? Your users can eventually ‘run’ the platform, right?
“They can. The modular design, the extensibility of an idea, product, and a platform. That can motivate a core development team: if we had just launched this platform and then left it, it would be very likely that someone would’ve taken the concept, used our smart contracts, and deliver the UX experience that we are at now. Technically, that is possible. But that is what serves to motivate us. It’s not a matter of competition disrupting us, but if we don’t continually deliver to our users they might overtake us. That is also why so much of our newer talent comes directly from the community.
The concept for CryptoKitties took off because it’s on the blockchain, but that also means that a lot of it is transparent. Our community of independent developers could have access to the platform and the player base. They just have to develop a more interesting or better experience. So, we saw different experiences bubbling up, from kitty sales to kitty races to kitty hats. Someone even made a kitty calculator that will tell you what the children of the cats will look like! That feature, our most-requested one, was made by a community member.”
How come that CryptoKitties is one of the first successful projects on the blockchain?
“It wasn’t the first, and it depends on how you define successful. For example, CryptoPunks actually preceded us. We had the benefit of looking at what they did. With CryptoPunks for example, their art was quite simple — nothing wrong with that, but we thought we could do something a little more interesting there. Also, we had ambitions like adding animations to the cats; we introduced the hats, and environments. Another thing is that they [CryptoPunks] immediately launched with 10000 trading cards — that’s it. What we learned from that is to make sure that more tokens were gradually introduced to the ecosystem without exponentially releasing them, to avoid that the tokens would plummet in value.
That’s how we came up with the concept of ‘breeding’ and rules for the breeding, and using it as a gamified aspect. For a while, collecting and breeding was the extent of the core experience. However, we recently revealed the KittyVerse, which represents CryptoKitties move from product to platform and serves as our way of formally endorsing the dozens of complementary games, tools, and experiences independent creators are working on. These tools leverage the tokens that represent each CryptoKitty in a variety of ways. These creators can apply for the NIFTY Program to receive tools and training directly from the team — some folks may even see some funding. And because this is a blockchain platform, these creators don’t owe us a dime: instead, they diversify the ecosystem, provide nearly infinite experiences and utility for every unique CryptoKitty, and give players, the core team, and other developers more value as a result.”
The growth of CryptoKitties went super fast, especially in the first month. How did you deal with this?
“Our immediate solution was to transfer some team members from other projects [in Axiom Zen]. The long-term solution was that we revisited our planning processes, which allowed for a lot more room for flexibility. And then there are the little things: we’re condensed on the West coast, and although we’re an international team we’re mostly in the same time zone. As a result, there are some blind spots: some developments happened when most of us were sleeping. So we coded an emergency response system: if something goes down now, one of the developers gets a signal to address it.
I’ll be frank; we’re still overcoming some of the challenges of blockchain. Running into these problems is an amazing learning experience and the only way it will realize it’s potential. And the technology has immense potential, but we need to go beyond talking about its limitless potential. We need to look at what other people have done and what you can do differently, to overcome these problems and keep innovating. There are going to be mistakes we make, or that others make, but the technology is going to be better for it, the user experience will be better for it, and we will all eventually will be better for it.”
“… a quality user experience is always popular.”
As you mentioned, CryptoKitties is still being developed. How’s growth now?
“It’s steady. The speculation aspect of the blockchain is something we very actively tried to overcome — the insanity of the first month was nice, but also created high expectations. Frankly, I’m thankful that the growth has slowed down because it allows us to proactively develop, not react to putting fires out all the time.
We have international launches, partner experiences, and a whole lot of player-first projects aimed at overcoming some of blockchain’s biggest onboarding challenges soon.”
Can you pinpoint what makes CryptoKitties so popular?
“Making it fun, user-friendly, and accessible. Whether you’re a hardcore blockchain fanatic or a first-time blockchain user, a quality user experience is always popular.
CryptoKitties has good design at it’s backbone, from the UI to the cats themselves. Our art director created these cats with modular components, and there are over seventeen billion combinations. There are cats that look utterly ridiculous; there are cats that look stunningly beautiful. The nature of that thoughtful design is that there’s literally a cat for everyone. Likewise, the front-end design: the player menu…
That is one of those things that show that you’re thoughtful of the choices in this space. It’s similar to how Bitcoin dominates the idea of what blockchain is and what a blockchain currency is. Intentionally or not, we set the standard for what a cryptocollectible looks like and how you sell them because you’re the most visible success story. For example, one of our last-minute implementations was a visualization of the auction process. Two weeks later, every cryptocollectible game had one of those!“
It’s very interesting to see how everyone is so supportive of each other in the crypto-space. Can you explain that?
“The collegial aspect of decentralization is unique and wonderful. It’s not all sunshine and roses, of course, but we try to focus on the fun and delight-driven stuff — others have the doom and gloom covered. We’re all in this together right now, figuring stuff out and trying to decide what the next horizon looks like. There will be projects that reach critical mass and define what success now looks like. And that success is going to influence ideas and ways of thinking, but it’s up to us how we treat each other — that’s always up to us. Everyone talks about how important culture-fit is, but at the end of day, that is what it boils down to: every person I worked with is enthusiastic about the work we’re doing. I would never expect anyone in my team to say ‘this is not my problem’. For example, our art director woke up at 5AM to send me good luck messages for my talk today. Not expected and not his job, but it’s a big reason why I’m so excited to work with folks like him every day.”
“Making someone experience something and find value somewhere they didn’t before is what we’re setting out to do here.”
What are your measures for success?
“We have a lot of considerations, but it’s mostly to engage people. That top of the funnel is incredibly difficult for blockchain. Bringing in new users is a challenge. Some elements are almost completely beyond our control. To me, success is new user acquisition, engagement, and outsider understanding.
It also matters how you measure the ‘hype’; I made a rule in the first week — we can only talk about cat sales as an exception to the rule. We do not want to feed into investment froth. We don’t want to be construed as a way to get rich. Yes, you can make money, but the takeaway is that digital assets have value — not that someone struck digital, furry-faced gold. You play it, enjoy it, and find value in it. And that value might not be in financial terms, and that’s fine — in fact, to me, that’s better. Making someone experience something and find value somewhere they didn’t before is what we’re setting out to do here.
There’s a player who made over a millions dollars playing the game, but he had the capital necessary to do that. And there’s a reason why we never talked about this guy, or why he hasn’t talked about it: like us, he didn’t want people to think that this is an easy thing anyone can do. Seeing our ideas distributed about how to shape the future: that is all an element of success to me. We don’t just want to be a part of blockchain’s future, we want to shape it in a positive way that makes it better for everyone.”
How do you measure engagement?
“Daily active users per days per week… We might shift that, it’s the Facebook model and we’re not a social media company. I want to create an engaging game, not an exploitative one that people find addictive. User friendly does not mean being constantly engaged, but that the user finds it friendly.”
So, what is the business model?
“We collect 3.75% on every cat sold on the market place. It’s possible to go around our marketplace if you want to. We also collect the proceeds of every “Gen 0” CryptoKitty: the cats that are released by our smart contract every fifteen minutes for the first year.”
What’s the biggest failure, or what’s the tip you would give your younger self, something you wished you would’ve know sooner?
“The best way to capitalize on an opportunity or overcome a challenge is to actually get started on it. Your first attempt may not be the best one — or even a viable one — but talking and considering the issue will always be less impactful than actually engaging with it. This is true in both personal terms and business terms. So much of blockchain funding and thinking was based on hypothetical potential, big promises, and a lot of snakeoil. Building, shipping, and improving CryptoKitties has given our team some of the deepest insights in the industry, and delivering the practical product resonated with an international audience at a yet-unseen scale.
Thoughtfulness is good and big ideas are great, but they are untested and ill-considered until you do something with them. So regardless of whether it’s a passion project, a big idea, or the next cultural sensation, prioritize step one, don’t expect it to be perfect, and don’t neglect the follow through and reflection from there.”
