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Michael Migliero Of Big Time Studios, The Multiplayer Adventure With Infinite Replayability, Plus: Adi Sideman Of Revel.xyz, Shopify Merchants Sell Avalanche NFTs, And More...
The players who are going to stand the test of time in the NFT space for a long time are those that have been playing the long game from the very start. That is what Big Time Studios has been doing in the NFT gaming space. In this episode, CMO Michael Migliero explains how they craft their games in ways that are revolutionary even in the already disruptive crypto gaming universe. He also explains how they handled the process of building their game and engaging their community during the critical transition from a relatively bullish market to today’s bear market. For our hot topics segment, we are joined by Adi Sideman of Revel.xyz, who explains how they are reimagining social networks as a place where stakeholders can co-create and collaborate to a greater extent than what was previously possible. Plus, learn more about the developments at Shopify where merchants can now sell Avalanche NFTs. Tune in for all these and a lot more!
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Michael Migliero Of Big Time Studios, The Multiplayer Adventure With Infinite Replayability, Plus: Adi Sideman Of Revel.xyz, Shopify Merchants Sell Avalanche NFTs, And More…
This is Michael Migliero, the Chief Marketing Officer from Big Time Studios, a new game company dedicated to crafting online adventures through space and time. I am here on the Edge of NFT, the show bringing you what will stand at the test of time and throughout all of space.
Stay tuned for this episode to learn how Big Time is creating an ownership economy for a game that is fun to play.
Why might caring be the secret to getting everything else done right in life?
How Revel.xyz is changing the face of social media through NFT Trading and gameplay.
Don’t forget. We put together a gathering called NFT LA that brought out thousands of the world’s most innovative doers in the Web3 space. Head over to NFTLA.live to get tickets to our bigger boulder and better, but also says an intimate and impactful event happening in Los Angeles from March 20th to the 23rd, 2023. We will see you there.
This episode features Michael Migliero, the Chief Marketing Officer for Big Time Studios, crypto’s first AAA quality multiplayer ARPG. Before this role, Michael was the Founder and CEO of Fractional Media, a mobile marketing platform that uses machine learning models to optimize decisions. Michael joined Machine Zone as the Director of DSP for mobile games, working on titles such as Game of War, Mobile Strike and Final Fantasy XV. Michael joined Big Time in 2021. Big Time is a free-to-play multiplayer action RPG game that combines fast action, comment and adventure through time and space.
Michael, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me, guys.
It’s a pleasure.
It is good to have you, Michael. This is a show that we have been looking forward to because we heard about this project a little bit after it started. Some of these juggernauts and traditional gaming are getting together to do something new and original and that sounded exciting to us. It does feel like you guys are on a mission to change the directory of crypto gaming. Can you tell us a little bit about what that entails and how it came to be? How did you land in the spot you are in along the way?
I have been mostly on the marketing side. I have been doing user acquisition since about 2008. Over the years, I have worked with many gaming companies. At one point, I had a marketing technology company combined with an agency. I worked with a whole lot of games. I have a decent understanding of game economies and I was early into crypto. Ari is someone I have known for a long time.
What was interesting was when Ari talked a lot about the idea of all these players spending all this money on video games. They don’t own anything. When you think about video games over the last several years, you can think about video games in these five-year increments where video games used to cost $50. You could see them getting better. Think of Nintendo to Super Nintendo and Super Nintendo to Nintendo 64.
The thing is, over the last several years, that momentum has slowed down. All the while, these video game companies are asking for more money. They are making more money. In 2020, video game companies made something like $190 billion. It is more money than most other forms of entertainment. The general idea or the core behind Big Time is that the players may have an important position within the game, whereby the players are able to sell what they own in the game, which is a new idea.
Big Time Studios: One of the core ideas behind BigTime is that the players may have an important position within the game whereby the players are able to sell what they own in the game.
I was having a conversation with a fellow podcaster about the rise of social media and the journey that we have all been on. We’re wondering how to make our place in that. There is an analog thereof giving value to a system, and that system thanks you. We are not thanking you, but you don’t get much back. General question for all of our readers out there. How does Big Time go beyond the 2D experience of a play-to-earn title?
A better way of structuring that question would be how does big time compare to the first generation or play-to-earn games? Is that a better way of phrasing the question?
How are we doing more offscreen and onscreen and taking things through different dimensions?
I don’t know if we call ourselves a play-to-earn game. We certainly incorporate NFTs. The thing that you see with the first generation of play-to-earn games is you see games that were crypto’s first game segment. These games were made fairly quickly. They didn’t have customers. When you think about it, what is a company like customers? A company like customers is more of a service. That is much of what existed before.
All these companies are trying to solve this problem of how we have a game where the players are perpetually selling in the game, and they are able to make money. What separates Big Time in this regard is that Big Time is focusing on making a game that is fun where we are going to let the players own a part of the economy and can do what you can’t do in a game like Fortnite where you can sell what you make in the game.
That is a drastic move in terms of going beyond the pay-to-win or pay-to-play model. It can get gamers that are more traditional in nature excited. Can you walk us through a little bit more of the nuts and bolts of the economy and some of its features of it out of the gate and down the road?
Gameplay-wise, this is an action MMO RPG. It is a Diablo or War of Warcraft hybrid. That should be a good description of what the gameplay is like. It is PBE 6 Man Dungeons. You have about 39 instances that we call public events. It is a rich gameplay experience. The key things to understand at first are that when the game hits open data, which should happen in 2023, the game will be free for anyone around the world. They will be able to go to the game, click download, install the game in a matter of minutes, and they will be playing. You don’t need to know how Ethereum and blockchain work. You don’t need to own Bitcoin. You will be able to play the game. It is free to play.
The game is not a pay-to-win game. If you choose never to put a dollar into the game, you will be able to play the game as well as anyone else. That is super duper important. In the game, we sell. There are two types of things that are sold. There are space land and utility NFTs. If you own that stuff, you can participate in the crafting within the game. If you don’t own that stuff, there will still be some things that you can do. We haven’t quite specified all of that yet, but in general, you own space, land and the utility NFTs, and you are going to be able to participate in the crafting.
The other thing you can buy in the game is cosmetics. Cosmetics make you look cool. One key important thing to understand about becomes the season concept. In Big Time, there are seasons. Every season, we are going to list, as the game company, all the things you can craft. All the people that own space will be able to go into the game and craft those things.
When a game has a patch, and they have a new season, the game company typically lists to the store, and they will say, “Here is all the stuff you can buy.” In Big Time, it is different. The players see all the stuff that they can craft. They rush, and it is a race to be able to craft all the stuff to sell to the other players. In each set of armor and weapons, there is one unique and everything crafts up. The lower-level things turn into higher-level things by combining multiple lower-level things. Each season is exciting.
I like the term cosmetics as opposed to skins. It is a little bit more accurate in the depiction of what we are talking about and maybe that terminology will be a little bit more gender inclusive too. This idea of putting on new skins is a little bit creepy at the end of the day. You could call my hat a cosmetic. I wear it on the regular. You can take it on and off. There is something cool about that word. I want to point that out.
Josh, I would like to wear your skin if you don’t mind. Does that sound offensive?
No, that is creepy. You can have my cosmetic self.
What do you say, Michael?
We are optimizing the language all the time, especially during the downturn. We are trying to stay away from NFT, but collectible cosmetics is a good word.
We haven’t dove deep into it. I would like to let our readers get a little bit of exposure to the concepts around the game of time and space. What do we mean when we are playing the game through time and space, specifically? What is the storyline behind all that?
We haven’t used a whole lot of the storyline yet. What I can tell you is that in the game, we have this concept called space. Space is our take on virtual land. There are only 600,000 of them. We sell them on www.OpenLoop.com. The game has to do with time travel. The cryptocurrency in the game is called Time. The land is space. The cryptocurrency within the game is time.
I wish there were something we could do with this episode where we could do some weird time travel thing. We are talking about the past or future version of Michael. We should have planned that out. I know there is some inspiration from Einstein, relativity and fun stuff like that. What are the details behind the Big Time invite-only beta models? What is that looking like right now?
When we look at our time, we are looking at our roadmap. It is on the website. We are in EAL. We have been in EAL since April 14th or 17th, 2022.
Can you define that term for me and readers?
EAL means Early Access Launch. It means a lot of different things to a lot of different game companies. Typically in the game industry, EAL means you are dealing with the early version of the game. In our early access, especially early on, you made it clear to the users that there were going to be a lot of bugs and resets. There wouldn’t be a whole lot of content at first. All of that has improved over time. The biggest thing that we defined was the economy. We defined it not too long ago. The big thing that is coming out with invite-only beta is when the economy will occur in the game. What we do is drop pre-crafted weapons and armor. You can see them. They are in our store at www.OpenLoop.com.
When we get to invite-only beta, that is when you will be able to act the craft and collect the cryptocurrency. That is a huge milestone because, for the most part, one of the reasons a lot of people are interested in games like Big Time is while the gameplay is great and all, this idea of crafting the stuff in the game is new. It is what people want. It is a huge milestone for us. We are aiming for Q2. We have been good about getting things on the front side and the backside when we look at quarters. We hope we can do the same again.
Are there any other utilities around the NFT itself that you haven’t touched on yet?
The first thing to understand is there are two types. There are cosmetics and utility. It is always worth reinforcing that neither is going to make you great in the game. You go to be good and level up yourself that the utility NFTs have. Utility in the sense that they can participate in the economy. They can craft and collect. I’m sure that the scope of what can be done will increase. The game team is creative and always looking for ways of making the game more exciting. The general focus is we don’t want to become a pay-to-win gaming company. We want to focus on making the game fun and letting the players craft the stuff and sell it to other players.
When you think about professional sports, you can’t use that stuff that causes you to have better performance than everyone else, but you can get into different leagues, play different competitions and have different types of perks if you invest in the sport. I appreciate the analogy there. To call out the pink elephant in the room, we are in a quirky bear market. Folks like Ethan, myself, Jeff, and the rest of our team like to ride the bear. It is pretty fun. I’m curious what has it been like building this game and starting in a relatively bullish market and that transition to a bear market? How that shaped the process of building this game and engaging in the community?
They have a decent comparison. This reminds me much of the early App Store. What is the first mobile app game that you can remember?
I played Madden.
I didn’t play much, but I know people were playing those jewel games. That was the thing that everybody played.
That is later. I will tell you, it’s Angry Birds.
I played some Angry Birds too.
Angry Birds was in 2009. Everyone was excited about Angry Birds. I remember when Angry Birds came out, and Angry Birds said, “We are going to sell apps.” It was interesting. The only problem was no one had a business model. You could make some money on the brand spend because there were some brave brands out there who said, “We are going to burn some money on mobile,” but in general, there were Angry Birds.
What is interesting about the mobile app industry is you saw this huge fundraising that goes on for two years. Everyone is building all these games that no one can remember. Something happened in 2013. Does anyone remember what happened in 2013? Candy Crush. From Angry Birds to Candy Crush, you had this period where everyone was trying to figure out the model. Some people tried to make all their money through ads, but there was no business model that could scale into that. There was no one that could buy that endlessly. It was all burned.
You had games that attempted to lock their game. They would say, “If you want to pay for a level or you got to pay one time, you get all levels.” These two models did not work. The problem with the second model was that you couldn’t make enough money off of any individual user. This is a game of whale. What made Candy Crush work was that Candy Crush had deep monetization rabbit holes. All of a sudden, they were looking at RPU, Revenue Per User. That was the industry standard. That is why in 2013 if you guys had a mobile phone, all you ever saw on your phone was Candy Crush, and I was there for all of this.
It is common in the mobile advertising industry for a company to have 70% to 80% of their revenue from King.com. When I look at the industry now, it reminds me of this period when everyone was excited about it, but no one knew it. We know it doesn’t work now. The biggest thing everyone realizes right now, the games need to be fun. The games need to operate more like game companies. You need to have customers and people who want to buy what you are selling because the game itself is fun. It has to be the first and foremost. These shortcuts of focusing on play-to-earn first before anything else work during a bowl, but it certainly doesn’t work during your pair.
I appreciate your perspective. These cycles always happen. They are happening on a micro and a macro level globally all the time. We talk about them a little bit differently in crypto because we get excited about the innovation and disruptive potential of the industry. Fundamentally, when you build a business, you build it around a problem, a solution, and a customer segment that is not temporary. It is not there for a year, and it is going to go away. Everything that you are saying tells me that you guys are building for the long term, and that is what we need in this industry.
That is a certain community, and we get to tap into it, which is great with NFT LA, the show and the builder community. It is like when you are talking about the early access users of a platform. That is a certain type of user that’s similar to people who are willing to build in a bear. It is the user that is willing to use that thing because they are excited about it and it is being developed.
There could be bugs or things that need to be dealt with. They even enjoy being a part of that process. They are helping to build the game and get through things. That is where we are now, the way you framed it. There is a lot of buzz around Big Time, and we are curious to see what is going to happen here in 2023. Is there anything that you can share with us about the roadmap here?
We are an EAL. The next big thing on our roadmap is getting to invite-only beta. That is going to be huge. That is when crafting happens and where the coin enters the game. That is where everyone is focused now. You got to remember that in our community, we have to thank them so much. We didn’t define the economy until Q4 of 2022. If you think about it, from April 2022 until Q4 of 2022, we had to find the economy. We didn’t give them all the specifics of how things were going to work. They had to trust us.
The Discord was getting difficult at times. They had a lot of questions. We couldn’t answer them. We came out strong in Q4 of 2022. We told them, “Here is how the economy is going to work.” We published it on the Wiki, and we created a lot of videos. We surprised them at the end of 2022 when we allowed people to enter their space for the first time. It wasn’t the biggest thing in the world, but the next big thing to do is to get to crafting and integrate this economy into the game. That is the next big thing. There are a lot of things in the year. We stay focused on getting to the next thing, and that is the next thing.
There have been a lot of incredible projects over the last few years. Most projects are announced and selling out, like Memeland and the Captains project. I’m curious about what projects you have been following in this space or if you have any Alpha for our community, projects that you appreciate, their ethos, what they are building, and something about them that you are interested in.
We come to work laser focused. We stay focused every single day. We stick to our KPIs. I feel guilty because the projects I would mention are friends of mine. I look at those, and those are people I converse with.
We can give them a shout-out if you want.
In the next episode, we will talk about them, but there are a lot of great projects out there. I could tell you what to look for. It is all about gameplay. Can you play the game? How far along is the game, and will the game get customers? The chief metric most people are looking at is new paying customers. You are paying yours and we are looking at RPE or Revenue Per User.
Not at all, but sure, let’s go for it.
I played Mega Man in my days. That was a fun game.
Pogs.
That sounds about right.
I got a new iPhone.
Do you get the 14?
I’m from Boston. Are you from Boston?
I’m about 30 minutes North of Boston.
Whereabouts?
Peabody.
I spent some time in Danvers.
I also spent some time in Danvers too.
Were you at a private school?
No, I went to the public school route.
I hope you took some time off for the holidays.
We did not.
There is the secret.
Are you saying you stole Paris Hilton’s dog?
No, my dog and her dog are both pictures of dogs.
Thank you so much for having me.
Shopify** merchants can now sell AvalancheVenly, those NFTs can now be minted on Avalanche.**
Time is relative, as we know through the game.
Let’s play sometime.
Let’s do it. I’m down.
Anytime. You guys let me know. We will play.
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