Simon Davis is the co-founder and CEO of Mighty Bear Video games, a multiplatform recreation developer in Southeast Asia creating accessible multiplayer experiences in Web3.
Davis has spent nearly twenty years working within the gaming business, however he by no means deliberate to really work on this discipline.
Earlier than crypto, he was knowledgeable guitarist who made ends meet by enjoying in metallic bands and canopy bands and by instructing guitar. However after his cash dried up one summer time, he scored a six-week gig as knowledgeable recreation tester — and he’s by no means appeared again.
![Mighty Bear Games' Simon Davis' guitar collection](https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/photo1690009192.jpeg)
Throughout his time within the gaming business, Davis has held administration and product lead positions at gaming firms together with King Digital Leisure, Ubisoft, Bigpoint, AKQA, Empire Interactive, and Laughing Jackal.
In 2017, Davis teamed up with some associates and fellow business veterans to launch Mighty Bear Video games in Singapore, the place they supposed to deal with creating conventional video games — earlier than pivoting to blockchain in 2022. And in 2023, the agency launched an open beta for Mighty Motion Heroes, its first Web3 gaming title.
Davis, who additionally goes by “Papa Bear,” stated each Mighty Bear worker receives a “bear title.” A few of Papa Bear’s workers embody “Arty Bear,” “Bear-Abel,” “Excel Bear,” and “Bear McNumbers.”
Why the pivot to blockchain gaming?
I used to be fortunate sufficient to form of get into Bitcoin by chance in 2015, so I’ve been within the house for a couple of years. In 2021, I began enjoying with NFTs, and I’m fortunate sufficient to be additionally based mostly in Southeast Asia, so I might see firsthand what was taking place with Axie [Infinity]. I feel, for me, as somebody who lived via the transition to free-to-play, it felt very very like a second, form of like when Farmville got here out on Fb.
I feel that for reside service titles [games like Fortnite, League of Legends and Apex Legends], a dominant enterprise mannequin goes to emerge to revolve round player-owned and operated economies. As a result of I don’t imagine you possibly can have digital worlds with out digital property rights, basically.
And I feel that does allow a variety of new issues that we’re actually beginning to scratch the floor on. So, I feel that basically was the pull issue.
What format do you suppose serves as one of the best ways to draw customers to blockchain gaming?
![The Mighty Bear Games team](https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/photo1690008256-1024x768.jpeg)
I feel cellular gaming goes to be the dominant platform due to geography. You see this for those who have a look at the charts for the international locations which have an important slope of curiosity in crypto or Web3. They are usually international locations the place present fee rails usually are not tremendous developed.
Persons are largely unbanked in locations like Indonesia and Brazil. These markets are mobile-first. Like, individuals within the Philippines and India usually are not essentially utilizing high-end PCs.
So, that you must go the place the customers are. And it is a little bit of a spicy take, however for this reason I’m very bearish on individuals making tremendous HD high-end Web3 video games as a result of it’s simply not the place the markets are at this time. So, you see a variety of these groups elevating, like, mega bucks to make console-quality titles, but when nobody can play them, then they aren’t going to do very a lot.
What do you suppose the present hurdles are for large-scale blockchain gaming adoption?
Lots of people speak about it when it comes to silver bullets, proper? Like, “Oh, we’d like one good recreation,” or like, “We have to remedy the pockets drawback.” I don’t suppose it’s any a kind of issues. I truly suppose it’s simply a variety of lead bullets, a variety of small issues that have to occur.
What I’ve skilled at this time continues to be fairly horrible, and scary, like social restoration. And it’s beginning to change into a factor, however that should change into rather a lot simpler.
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I simply suppose, typically, it must be as straightforward and as brainless to make use of as a Web2 expertise. And so I feel there may be an inherent battle at this time with how individuals take into consideration Web3, you understand. They are saying issues like, “Oh, that you must educate the customers,” or, “Practice individuals to carry their personal keys.”
However you understand, my mother doesn’t need to maintain her personal personal keys. She does all her buying and selling on Crypto.com. We have to make it basically idiot-proof so anybody can do it.
I feel we’re nonetheless fairly a good distance away, however I’m seeing significant enhancements, truly. I’m seeing merchandise which can be going to go to market subsequent yr that are going to assist rather a lot.
I don’t know the way outdated you might be, however I’ve simply turned 40 this yr. I bear in mind within the 90s organising a house web connection on dial-up. It took me two days of calling technical assist and somebody telling me like configs. I used to be having to go in and alter manually and stuff. And now, you understand, we solved that, proper? After which, the web grew to become a mass market, after which individuals might simply put a CD of their laptop, and it simply labored. I feel we have to get to that stage.
![](https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/スクリーンショット-2023-07-24-121116-1024x760.png)
Do you suppose the dangerous rap blockchain/NFT gaming will get is a giant problem?
It’s humorous as a result of gaming bought a fairly dangerous rap within the 90s. You already know, everybody was speaking about how video games have been making kids violent. There was a giant ethical panic, similar to there was in music a couple of years earlier than.
However I feel that whenever you begin to get these items in individuals’s fingers and expertise them, perceptions change. I do suppose a variety of the status that we now have in crypto and Web3 is deserved. There are a variety of dangerous actors exploiting the shortage of regulation, however the issues that excite me: I’ve seen some video games, for instance, that enable gamers to earn small quantities of Bitcoin, And this kind of factor’s retention numbers are very robust, just like the preliminary metrics are very promising. And I feel that’s a very nice use case.
Reddit can be an important instance, proper? They put NFTs within the fingers of big numbers of individuals. Lots of people didn’t even understand they have been interacting with NFTs. So then that they had their first style, and yeah — there are some stats which have come up, and never an enormous quantity of them have transacted on-chain.
However I truly don’t suppose that’s such a nasty factor. If individuals are not dumping the property on day one, I don’t see that as a unfavourable. So, I feel onboarding via stealth is fairly good.
What sort of adoption metrics are you in search of along with your video games?
So, individuals speak about installs and sign-ups — it’s only a self-importance metric. For me, I’m all in favour of how many individuals are coming in each day, how recurrently they’re coming again, and what the expansion curve of that appears like initially.
After which as soon as we do the cellular launch [of Mighty Action Heroes], which might be round August/September, how effectively are we doing on attracting non-crypto-native individuals into the sport as effectively? That might be very attention-grabbing, and to see how they play collectively. It’s a special angle, nevertheless it’s one which I’m fairly bullish on.
What are some concepts or tech upgrades that would assist blockchain gaming?
ERC-6551 tokens.
Primarily, they provide a wise contract account or a wise contract pockets to a 721 [token]. So, you understand, a conventional NFT could be a JPG with some metadata connected. However basically, the JPG or the asset, no matter that’s, is then certain to a wise contract.
And that is fairly cool as a result of it implies that property can talk immediately with one another. So NFT to NFT, with out utilizing MetaMask. And it is also suitable with different sensible contract wallets.
I feel the actually cool factor is that, basically, your asset turns into a pockets and may have its personal logic as effectively. So you might have a base character in a recreation because the 6551 token, after which all the garments or the objects or the whole lot that that character has, the form of sub-assets, can change inside, every with its personal logic.
As a recreation developer, you begin considering of how your characters might evolve and how one can connect new property with out updating the core.
Then as a dev, I feel it’s actually good for status administration as effectively. Like, for those who did a soulbound model, you might have achievements, proof-of-work, proof-of-play, social identification. I feel it’s fairly cool. […] It’s safer as a result of it’s not simply an asset inside a pockets like it’s on sensible contracts with its personal personal key.
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