Blockchain Game Company Lucid Sight Invests in Software Developers | CSQ

Randy Saaf, CEO, is used to being at the forefront of the industry. He founded and exited one of the first mobile gaming companies in 2008, Jirbo, long before Candy Crush and Angry Birds synonomized the iPhone as a casual gaming console.

You could say his pioneering mentality remains with his Los Angeles-based game studio, Lucid Sight. The launch of the first ever licensed sports NFT gave their team the energy and momentum to delve deeper into blockchain gaming opportunities.

In our Q&A session, Randy emphasizes multiplayer solutions and digital ownership as catalysts for growth in a $200 billion gaming market.

Tell us about your recent software acquisition, Colyseus, and why you wanted it in your portfolio.

Lucid Sight acquired Colyseus in 2021 because it was our favorite multiplayer server engine. Colyseus is 6 years old and is the largest open source JavaScript multiplayer framework in the world, with around 350,000 developer downloads. We launched a SaaS for Colyseus called Arena. The goal of Arena was to reduce the DevOps financial burden by bringing multiplayer to a game. An independent game studio can easily add a million dollars a year to a single player game by trying to make it multiplayer. Therefore, many games that would be better as multiplayer never become multiplayer.

In addition, JavaScript is the most accessible and common programming language in the world with an estimated 34 million global developers. Having a multiplayer solution built into JavaScript makes it incredibly accessible not just to Western developers, but to a growing global audience of independent game developers. We have seen enormous growth in countries like Vietnam and India, where game creation is exploding. Whatever the “metaverse” ends up being, it will be built on real-time data channels, so we decided that the Colyseus was a fundamental investment we should own.

In accordance Steamone of your most popular blockchain games, CSC, is in active development. What are the play-to-earn mechanics behind CSC and how will future developments affect gameplay?

Crypto Space Commander (CSC) was launched in 2018, and is the first massively multiplayer online game to earn space. CSC was created after EVE Online. Lucid Sight’s team are big fans of EVE Online and a central part of EVE experience is resource gathering and crafting. Crafting in video game terms is where a player searches for and discovers resources (iron, diamonds, etc.) and combines them to create new game items (lasers, shields, etc.). We thought these mechanics would be fantastic for a blockchain-based game, where the crafted components are NFTs that can be traded or sold.

Gameplay of ore processing in Crypto Space Commander. Image credit: Lucid Sight

A few games have experimented with real-money economies, and there have always been gray markets for in-game items, such as in World of Warcraftbut true digital ownership has always been a first principle for CSC. In addition, CSC got a license and sold the first officially licensed one Star Trek ship NFTs in 2019. We sold everything from Enterprises to Borg cubes. NFTs had not exploded then as now, but they Star Trek NFT ships are still actively traded. CSC is a live-ops game, which EVE or Fortnite, which means we have seasonal variations and events. We are not ready to announce the next events for CSCbut 2022 will be exciting for the player base.

Tell us about your interest in moving blockchain games to traditional platforms.

I’m not sure if blockchain games will come to traditional platforms. A few years ago, that was the goal – to be on the traditional platforms, but with digital ownership. Traditional platforms have been hostile to blockchain games, most likely because they protect their 30% platform rent. Cryptogaming has come so far and the audience is much more global, so I’m not sure it needs traditional platforms. The main ethos across crypto is to eliminate these “tenants”, so I’m not sure blockchain games will evolve around traditional platforms that charge rent. I think the traditional platforms will continue to be successful and I think blockchain games will also be successful.

Some of Saaf’s favorite games include: Wii SportSkyrim, Zelda BOTW, Resident Evil 4 and The Last of Us.

People forget, but the iPhone and Android app stores didn’t launch with in-app purchases, so F2P games didn’t come until 2009-2010. I was one of the founders of a small independent game studio called Jirbo that made iOS and Android games, so I remember that well. When in-app purchases were born, F2P became the main business model for mobile games. My mobile gaming company, Jirbo, actually transitioned to become an ad network called AdColony to take advantage of the new demand for installs. Game studios that had good conversion from free to paid knew exactly how much each install was worth and were willing to pay up to that amount for an install. The “whales” were often non-traditional players such as middle-aged women from the Midwest. Many traditional players wondered about in-app purchases and did not consider these match trees to be real games. Well, fast forward to 2022 and mobile gaming is not only respected, it’s a bigger industry than console gaming. It’s hard to say what the “in-app purchase” moment will be for blockchain gaming, but it probably won’t look like “traditional gaming” any more than an iPhone game in 2009 looked like a Nintendo Wii game.

Space travel in Crypto Space Commander. Image credit: Lucid Sight

In terms of ease of use, there is a balance. We definitely tried to make CSC accessible to those without deep crypto knowledge. However, the blockchain is the differentiator from a EVE Online or any other space MMO. The more you reduce the crypto knowledge required, the more you run the risk of hobble the metagame. The metagame is the satisfaction of acquiring general crypto knowledge that is not specific to a single game and the tight community that the knowledge group feels. We see the metagame unfolding around the explosion of profile picture NFT activity in 2022. I think cryptogaming is the next explosion in community, and some knowledge of how it all works will be necessary to appreciate belonging to that community. Digital ownership has proven to be one of the strongest community bonds we’ve ever seen, and that’s awesome for a multiplayer game!

What’s next for Lucid Sight?

Lucid Sight has a slogan “Get to Fun Faster.” We will continue to invest in open source and blockchain tools that help software developers create faster and with fewer resources. Software development is one of the only skills where someone in a developing market can be self-taught, develop from their own country and do something very valuable. We want to give the next 100 million game creators tools to “get fun faster”. Lucid Sight will also continue to push the boundaries of blockchain gaming and NFTs, as we have been doing since 2017.

Christopher Yang is a member of Tech Coast Angels; a not-for-profit organization consistently ranked as one of the top five angel investment groups in the United States. He is too VP of engineering at Away.