On September 11, at the "TimeStamp" summit in Singapore, Cointime interviewed Planet Hares CFO Jake Liu to discuss Planet Hares' development vision and the various regulatory issues facing the current development of the Web3 industry. Through this conversation, we have a good understanding of Planet Hares' development strategy and its thoughts on the development of the Web3 gaming industry.
Cointime：
Self-introduction and project introduction
Jake Liu：
In summary, Hare Planet is a 3D immersive MMORPG metaverse game created by HYPERGEM. It is committed to improving the user's gaming experience with higher-quality graphics and more interactive hare NFT virtual images. Different from traditional blockchain games, Hare Planet is determined to become a new benchmark for GameFi 2.0, using a new NFT value system and business model to create a planetary kingdom with sustainable circular development and effective connection with real value, and ultimately realize the mission of moving towards a true metaverse.
Here, the NFTs held by players are no longer just avatars, but hares with distinct personalities that can run and jump, and can drive spaceships to travel across seven different planets. Fighting, adventure, exploration, socializing, and creation, everything you can think of will be presented one by one in Hare Planet! This is why we say that Hare Planet is not just a simple game, but a metaverse.
So far, the Hare Planet project team has more than 100 members, and the members are distributed, so everyone comes from all over the world. For example, Bytes, a core technical talent from Turkey, has more than 7 years of experience in blockchain development, and David, who comes from a professional financial field, has helped more than 20 blockchain game projects successfully create project market value.
According to the functional classification, the Greater China team, mainly in Hong Kong, is mainly responsible for the construction and market value management of the Hare Planet Metaverse, and the Turkish team is mainly responsible for the development of blockchain technology. In addition, we are also rapidly landing offline communities in Europe, America and Southeast Asia. It is no exaggeration to say that the team has the ability to create original IP in one stop, from the underlying technical framework of blockchain, to the top 3D/graphic visual design, to strong promotion and marketing. I believe everyone will gradually feel this.
Cointime：
The development of "GameFi and Metaverse" has always been the focus of attention of many investment institutions and players. What do you think about the development of these two?
Jake Liu：
I think GameFi and the Metaverse are complementary models, because we can build different applications in the Metaverse, such as games, social networking, scene services, etc. These applications can make the Metaverse platform more dynamic, thereby driving the projects in the ecosystem to achieve better development. Therefore, the Metaverse is a freer and broader space that can be infinitely extended in time and space, and through this extension of the Metaverse, GamFi's own vitality can be empowered to be released to a certain extent.
On the other hand, the Metaverse is more visionary. It can not only realize the interoperability of digital identities and the circulation of digital assets, but also build a brand new virtual world, which is unmatched by traditional games. Therefore, we can foresee that the Metaverse will be an important development direction of the future gaming industry.
Finally, GameFi and Metaverse are both new models that apply blockchain technology to the gaming field. They have many similarities, but also considerable differences. Whether it is GameFi or Metaverse, in the future, they will bring new changes to the gaming industry and promote the gaming industry to develop in a more digital, intelligent and open direction.
Cointime：
There are also a lot of GameFi games on the market, but the life cycle of many games is very short. Why does this happen? In your opinion, what are the pain points of GameFi games at present?
Jake Liu：
I think the first thing is that when designing this game, everyone may have overlooked the playability and some interesting development of the game. Since the market still lacks game development teams with mature experience, a large number of them are shoddy and lack playability. Even some projects that have achieved great success before, if we study them carefully, they are completely incomparable with traditional popular game products in terms of game quality, and their version update and iteration speed and operation methods are also far behind the level of traditional game manufacturers. At the same time, the degree of decentralization of most GameFi projects currently only stays at the core assets (core NFT, game coins), and has not achieved a true full chain. These also affect the player experience, thus making the life cycle of the game short.
Then, we think there is another pain point. Like the concept of the metaverse we just talked about, many project parties are more limited to a small game, and their thinking is still limited to Web2. They have not fully utilized the advantages of web3. We need to continue to expand our imagination and game boundaries.
Finally, as a branch of the crypto industry, GameFi will be affected by the overall performance of the cryptocurrency market. Therefore, we practitioners need to work together to attract players through continuous innovation to ensure the vitality of the overall market.
Cointime：
Now the blockchain is deeply integrated with the gaming industry, that is, GameFi. However, there is also a problem with GameFi, that is, how to combine traditional games with blockchain and carry out chain reform? What do you think about this issue?
Jake Liu：
As far as we know, it is difficult for GameFi games to attract traditional Web2 game manufacturers to enter, because there are certain differences in the creation and development of Web2 games and Web3 games, namely GameFi. For example, there is no such concept of playing to make money in Web2 games; secondly, many traditional game manufacturers look down on the current Web3 game market. Although GameFi’s voice seems to be very high now, its overall size cannot be compared with the size of the traditional game market; finally, the industry is still in its very early stages and everything is in the exploratory stage, which makes it difficult for traditional game manufacturers to leave their comfort zone.
Cointime：
The popularity of AIGC has brought great convenience to game development. So, what changes will AIGC bring to GameFi?
Jake Liu：
The emergence of AIGC has brought great convenience to the development of games. At present, we have also involved AIGC to assist in the development of games. AIGC can mainly help game developers improve game production efficiency through procedural and industrialized task scene art and modeling. At the same time, it is expected to help shorten the game development cycle, create new gameplay and experience, significantly increase the supply of boutique games, and bring about a revolutionary improvement in the quality of game content.
For example, as we just mentioned, in addition to serving C-end users, we will also cooperate with some other Web3 projects to assist them in developing games or other metaverse application projects. At this time, the value of AIGC is well reflected; in addition, we will develop a new function in the fourth quarter - Al-UGC. At that time, the user experience will have a very big change. It only needs to input text to generate some items. Imagine that the previous model is that I have a model library. What items you need, you need to go to the model library to choose, and finally piece together an item. After Al-UGC goes online, you only need to output text, and the user experience will be better.
Cointime：
How do you view the impact of various regulatory policies and various initiatives to embrace web3 on the development of web3?
Jake Liu：
If we talk about restrictive regulation, it is definitely not conducive to the development of the industry. But as for encouraging policies, I think it is beneficial to formulate corresponding laws to restrict it, because it protects the interests of all of us.
But from another perspective, regulation itself may be in conflict with the original intention or spirit of Web3 or blockchain, because Web3 emphasizes "decentralization of power", and your regulation is more of a centralized policy-making, a centralized external force, which I think is definitely contrary to its spirit. Because Web3 hopes to solve our trust problem through technology, so it has two sides.
But from the perspective of long-term development, I think if it is an encouraging regulation, it may eventually help the industry move towards true decentralization. Because the development of things is staged, although at this stage of development, regulation is somewhat inconsistent with the development of the Web3 industry, but in the long run, when the industry can go further, it may be able to achieve the ultimate vision.