Don Norbury on building Shrapnel, a blockchain-enabled first person shooter

0:00i'm ashton addison from block quest capital for investmentpitch media and the cryptocoin show and today on blockchain interviews we have don norbury neons cto and the head of studio at shrapnel john welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time thanks ashton thanks for having me you're very welcome i'm excited to dive into blockchain gaming there's so much going

0:22on gamers rejoice as we move into the next evolution of gaming and finance as well which is an interesting pairing i would love for you to kick it off by telling us a little bit about the game studio neon and then we'll dive into the details for sure um uh you know neon comes from a pedigree of almost entirely triple a game developers multiple decades

0:47um we all kind of met hbo and realized that we really wanted to do something more interesting together and kind of spun ourselves out into neon everyone's work on some of the biggest and have leadership roles really in some of the biggest franchises that everybody knows from uh you know the halos to sunset overdrive crackdown call of duty et cetera so um that that's

1:13sort of the background that we come come from uh in terms of the game space uh and um neon has been focused on that caliber of entertainment continuing to deliver that caliber of entertainment uh and you know through our um expertise in that space as well as our investigation and exploration of the latest and greatest in blockchain that's kind of how we came to

1:37where we are now with our laser focus on shrapnel definitely and i am super interested in learning more about shrapnel because it's a type of game that i have not seen in the blockchain space yet yet it's one of the most popular types of games in the world and i would love for you to just tell people about shrapnel yeah absolutely shrapnel edits core is a aaa

2:05extraction-based shooter with a kind of creator side to it that is blockchain enabled so that's a you know lose your loadout high stakes treasure hunting essentially but in shooter form which we thought was kind of a perfect fit for um you know the blockchain space particularly when you think about um ownership principles uh and then we also um were invigorated you know we all came

2:31from game creation and even before that we were most of us were modding games before we even you know got formally into the industry um so we had this notion of this these generations that grew up on minecraft aged into roblox you know and sort of looking for something to go go to next people don't stop creating um they just have different avenues of creation um so one

2:54of the things we wanted to do is offer people um a space for expression um that they could identify with um so that's the kind of the other piece and you know plays very nicely into um that kind of blockchain participation as well as ownership uh principles as well definitely i like that you tied that together don and yeah there are where are the blockchain shooters you know all

3:20these call of duties and some of these multi-billion dollar industry of just shooter games uh now moving into the blockchain space which is super cool and i'm looking forward to that and i know that there's a lot to do and i would love for you to just give a little bit more information on where exactly you know because you have a game studio shrapnel

3:41is the main game but there are maybe there's other games i don't know if you're working on multiple things and i know it's early on so you can get a snapshot of where exactly is shrapnel at right now yeah i mean we're laser focused on shrapnel right now um uh and it's in early development right we're um kind of perfecting what you consider the the feel of um the shooter and the game

4:05mode itself um nailing down the specifics of how the economy works and in game sense that's um not just from uh you know a traditional economic perspective but also from um how you think about what you pick up and you know how you spend and how you like get the things that you want and that kind of churn from a second to second to a minute to a minute

4:28to an hour hour basis for a player experience so we're right in the midst of that as well as preparing um how we engage the community so we're gonna have some big beats uh coming out very very soon in terms of how people can um get engaged and be part of the journey very cool and i'm guessing there might be some ways to get engaged prior to you know the full public game

4:52coming out oh absolutely absolutely yeah um we want to get the community engaged as early as humanly possible in um all of uh all the ways you would expect especially in what we see as um merging crypto um the crypto community is very familiar with you know all of the principles and the way projects are um not just like funded but engage with the community all the way to the gamers who

5:20have a very different view of how that works where you might not know about a game until a year before it comes out and then you know that this kind of six month beat and then the big marketing uh fill and then you spend your sixty dollars and you play your like retail title obviously this this space doesn't make sense for that sort of um that sort of uh path so we will be

5:44engaging very very hot and heavy with as many people as want to get involved as early on and with a extremely transparent development process very cool and when i look back to you know shooting games in the past and before nfts and before blockchain you know they used to have you can get skins on your gun and you can look cool and you mentioned at the beginning they're

6:07about you know adding creativity in and having creators and artists involved i think that's really cool and i'm curious to know more about that is it going to be skins or can you hint at something more on how nfts will be incorporated into the game yep um i will say uh what i can say is we will have multiple different layers multiple different uh asset classes i guess is

6:33the best way to describe it of things that people can customize and share with the community and have other people experience as well as just you know buy and sell or use to customize themselves we'll have many options i think the important part is we what we don't want is people to just immediately have thrown for an exam for example like a full engine

7:00slash editor that is it's a lot for people to to work with so we have curated asset classes where um if you just want to put your brand on something and you're comfortable with um you know that that level of interaction will have a path for you and then there'll be more and more complex and professional styles of approach that people will be able to

7:22engage with as well so we want to we don't want to push anybody out by having it be too complicated but we also you know need to have enough so that there's a good malleable expression so we get lots of interesting stuff from the community definitely i like that don and you're right it can get complicated obviously you want the players and interaction to make it as easy and

7:42convenient as possible but in terms of the team and actually building the game i know that not only can it be very complicated but it's a very long and tedious process and some of these games that are worked on for years and years and years just to get it right and i know that your team has been working really hard and i saw that your team recently closed 10.5 million dollar

8:05round of fundraising so first of all congratulations on that that's that's incredible and and secondly i'd love to hear you know with that round closed what are the next steps what are the main focus with that capital and moving forward yep uh so we'll have a lot to talk about um in the early uh early next year in terms of both exactly what that journey

8:29looks like and that will be a very very open and publicized journey and it will take a kind of a shape that i think in crypto space most people are at least somewhat familiar with um and um you know we'll kind of go from there with all the ways that people can get involved very cool i like it and i'm guessing there's also maybe uh cryptocurrencies not just nfts but

8:57cryptocurrencies um involved in it and will shrapnel have its own cryptocurrency and if it does what will the functionality be within the ecosystem for sure i mean i think when we looked at blockchain usage uh and integration in a proper way with something like shrapnel uh something like a token economy and a utility token sort of table stakes um and then of

9:23course nfts people get uh ownership humans grok the concept of ownership very quickly which is why they've taken off so much right but even with just something like nfts and what i think a lot of the public maybe outside of the cryptosphere just perceives as just pure ownership as opposed to all the other things that it means the other pieces of utility the way networks

9:46expand and the way um you know the way you get this momentum is kind of social momentum that builds around things um we think there's also a lot of uh interesting expressions in blockchain space that you can only do you know by virtue of utility tokens and their utility expression within the protocol and the platform that we build for shrapnel um so i know that's very

10:12top level and vague but uh that's where our heads at um and you know those are the details that you'll be seeing um kind of fleshed out and shared with the community early next year definitely yeah there's a lot to do and moving forward for like you know when the game comes out what do you think is going to be the key factor to success for your team leading up to the launch

10:36date of the game uh i mean leading up to the launch date um is going to be that crossfade from what we consider uh like i said crypto savvy people into the gamer community and you see a lot of friction and pushback from gamers right now when you talk about blockchain just even mention blockchain a lot of it's understandable i mean with any anything new

10:59um people have to be brought and have explained and understand and have responsible examples um for them to get into and for them to identify with so we see a lot of it as our responsibility to um deliver that to the gamer community and to bring more and more of them uh into the fold with what will already be a well-established crypto savvy community so a lot of the pieces of that

11:27are around the friction you know some of its stigma some of it's the friction involved um in in crypto people just want to get in gamer space people want to get in they want to shoot somebody in the face as quickly as possible and you know have a satisfying experience and we like we know that we've been building those experiences for decades so a lot of our challenges uh and path are

11:49around how do we allow you to do that as a gamer and then kind of guide you into understanding and appreciating the the rest of the ecosystem and the rest of the ways that you can participate definitely yeah the game should come first game and user experience obviously it's gonna be very important especially when you incorporate blockchain nfts and wallets

12:11and whatever else into the platform especially for people that aren't in cryptocurrency how did you balance that out you know getting making sure that it's not too technical allowing people that aren't in cryptocurrency already as well to get their first nft through shrapnel or to use the cryptocurrency yeah uh i mean i don't i don't know if we've perfected

12:34and answered that question fully that's part of the journey that we're going on over over the next um and you know set amount of development time um and it's certainly when you look at like anything technical and certainly in the blockchain space this is true in device space especially true where everything's a trade-off for everything is perceived as a trade-off right now

12:54between you know security or um you know bridging capabilities you know is it is it a separate l1 is it an l2 on top of something like ethereum main net where you've got like expectation security but oh it's like because of this roll-up scheme it's a huge pain if i want to take custody and move it to mainnet and and those are all these like big trade-offs that people in

13:17crypto are um familiar with and accept and and have done the research to at least understand it or you know know other people's experiences that they've shared so they understand it you know by virtue of um other people's stories um and i think um kind of in the way that that we're gonna approach it right at the beginning it's going to be very much um

13:42like i said it's gonna be the crypto audience so we are very tailored toward its web 3 principles towards that kind of defy approach and recognize that later on there's a community of people who aren't going to want to have anything to do with that when you start talking about a version of the onboarding that's custodial wallets um where you there's

14:04not uh kyc that you have to go through until you know hitting certain thresholds um and and um kind of merging over the journey of continuing to develop the product with the community between those two audiences well said don well i'm super looking forward to to seeing more about this um i'm guessing you know you're talking about trade-offs and there's definitely trade-offs in

14:29blockchain uh but in terms of the game itself you know i i want to know more about the game i want to see it is is there is there already like trailers or snapshots of like what this is going to be like well we we i mean there are but not sure publicly we'll have a lot to um share with the community and people who want to get engaged um very soon very cool and for those people that are

14:56interested in getting involved in the communities and and following along with the journey as you continue to develop out what's the best way for them to get involved yeah right now um uh the website or our twitter are the best ways we'll be opening up larger socials in the usual suspect extremely soon so everybody should keep an eye on those touch points

15:21and then start to engage when it gets opened up wider sounds great don i will leave all those links in the description box below as well all the best with the game and everything moving forward and let's definitely follow up in the near future awesome thanks ashton you