Yuga Labs Executive Talks Dookey Dash, Hacks and What’s Next
You could say that Yuga Labs’ Dookey Dash was a success. At least that’s what the hundreds of thousands of hours people spent playing the game and the nearly 37,000 ETH in Sewer Pass trading volume on the secondary market would indicate.
When the game’s two-week run ended on February 16, few in the Web3 community were particularly surprised by the performance of this latest gamified imprint of the Bored Ape Yacht Club ecosystem. But the almost blasé response to Dookey Dash’s smooth execution is compelling evidence of Yuga’s growing ability to pivot to the play-to-earn (P2E) gaming sector via its projects. It also hints at what’s to come for the company.
Yuga has been heading in this direction for a while now. When the company announced late last year that Activision Blizzard president Daniel Alegre would succeed Nicole Muniz as CEO of Yuga Labs, it indicated that they were fighting for the P2E world in a big way. Just a few months before, the team had announced Spencer Tucker as its new Chief Gaming Officer to help with this push.
It was a telling move; Tucker – who previously served as president of games at Scopely – specializes in game development, design and, most crucially, Web3. Now that Dookey Dash has concluded, nft spoke with Tucker about the game’s results, the lessons Yuga learned from its run, and how the company is positioning itself to bring Web3 games to the world.
Dookey Dash, by the numbers
On February 16 Yuga announced the winner of Dookey Dash and the recipient of the coveted award, The Key: Kyle Jackson, a Fortnite player who goes by the name “Mongraal” in the eSports world. Jackson achieved a high score of 928,522 after more than ten minutes of play and has since listed his Sewer Pass for a healthy 2,222 ETH on OpenSea.
Rounding out the top three spots on the Dookey Dash leaderboard are runners-up at 876,679 (also Jackson) and 875,242, courtesy of Web3 denizen ohhjar_warm. Of course, the fervor surrounding the attempts to land on the leaderboard was closely tied to BAYC’s new and ongoing minting mechanic, where higher-scoring sewer card holders will be more advantageously placed as it continues to unfold.
“The concept of a skill-based coin is just the beginning of how we innovate blockchain technology,” Tucker explained to nft now. “Coin mechanics are ripe for disruption. The methods of getting NFTs into the wallets of the burgeoning Web3 industry cannot remain predictable, in our view. […] It has to be exciting and strange and get people’s attention.”
Dookey Dash grabbed and held that attention for two solid weeks. The numbers the Yuga team has accumulated since the game’s end are worth appreciating: 25,525 Sewer Pass holders amassed 7.5 million Dookey Dash runs (which equates to roughly 80 years of game time), averaging nearly 28 hours per Sewer Pass. The game helped expand the BAYC universe significantly, growing the ecosystem by 40 percent, according to Yuga’s estimates. The game’s ApeCoin incentivization worked a charm, too: About a third (9,026) of the game’s active players used the token (a total of $424,566 $APE) to buy boosts to help them achieve a higher score.
The boring monkey in the room
However, Dookey Dash was not without its fair share of controversy. In response to concerns that bad actors might try to cheat the game, Yuga co-founder Greg Solano notify the Web3 community when he explained that the team collected a ton of data on Dookey Dash races and that foul play would have their scores disqualified. This did not satisfy a number of Web3 observers who claimed that there was a possibility that the game could be vulnerable to bots in a way that Yuga had not accounted for. Such robots, they claimed, could use code to “look ahead” in the race and automatically move the player to a safe position to avoid obstacles.
Yuga denies the presence of meaningful levels of cheating in this form, but says that “common client-side cheating” did not represent a significant problem for its detection systems. In response to the allegations, Tucker noted that only two percent of all scores were associated with such behavior and removed from the Dookey Dash leaderboard.
“Hacking is always top of mind for game developers, whether it’s competitive eSports or browser-based games,” Tucker elaborated. “Hacking prevention is a game of cat and mouse. We’ve implemented a ton of cheat detection software designed to ensure fair play. While people may post about potential hacks, they often also fish for information about our cheat detection.”
Where does Yuga go from here?
The blockchain gaming world has been a notoriously difficult industry to really get into. While entries like Axie Infinity have certainly made their mark, no one has yet been able to build a sustainable and far-reaching Web3 gaming business, much less one with mainstream appeal. Tucker and Yuga Labs are working to change that.
“Yuga Labs is uniquely positioned to be one of the first Web3 game companies to crack the code,” asserted Tucker, “bridging traditional gaming and the Web3 ethos. We’re leveraging our unique blend of storytelling, community, and technology. So, yes, free-to-play should pay attention because Yuga is positioned to be a disruptive force and is already producing exciting results.”
“Gamification is a core part of the future for Yuga.”
Spencer Tucker, Yuga Labs CGO
That ambition is made bolder by the fact that Yuga currently lacks the game pedigree and development capabilities of traditional developers. Despite this, the team is eager to expand its internal capabilities while partnering with leaders in the gaming space to expand this capability. The difference, says Tucker, lies in the “core competencies” of the businesses they go up against.
“We’re doing something completely new in the gaming sector,” Tucker said. “Bringing the strengths of these industries together is a challenge I’m excited to take on.”
Tucker remained tight-lipped about the details of Yuga’s plans, but said he was looking forward to what the team has in store for the BAYC ecosystem this year.
“Gamification is a core part of the future of Yuga,” Tucker said, hinting that the upcoming return trip to the Otherside in late March will showcase new functionality and “special surprises” for users. Tucker also highlighted Yuga’s continued plans to explore the mobile and minigame sectors while building an interoperable metaverse with their community.
For now, those suffering from Dookey Dash withdrawal (and those who missed the game entirely) can look forward to February 22nd, when Sewer Pass holders can re-enter the game to earn a companion for their power-ups in a Dookey Dash bonus round called Toad Mode which will produce its own leaderboard. Sewer pass holders will then have the chance to participate in the “call” to transform their passes on March 8, a process where power sources will be critical.
