<p>Apeiron is one of the most highly anticipated blockchain game projects out there, CARV community is thrilled to have an in-depth conversation with Frank, Co-Founder of Apeiron. To understand the philosophy of developing Apeiron and why took it 6 years to finally hit the bullseye!</p>
<h3 id="strong-do-you-mind-introducing-yourself-to-our-community-strong"><strong>😁 Do you mind introducing yourself to our community?</strong></h3>
<p>I’m the co-founder of Apeiron Foonie Magus, I entered the gaming industry only 6 years ago. Before that, I was a private equity investor and management consultant. I chose the gaming industry because I’ve been playing games all my life. When I was young, I played Nintendo games like Mario. Then I moved to PC games like Blizzard Games and Westwood Games. As I began to work, I didn’t have much time to play online games, mostly mobile games, and also witnessed the boom of the mobile gaming business. So I really wanted to give it a try. I scribbled Apeiron on a notebook 7 years ago but it took 6 years to get it ready. I really underestimated the time required for a game to be developed. Anyway, here we are from mobile to blockchain.</p>
<h3 id="strong-why-does-it-take-you-6-years-to-develop-the-game-strong"><strong>🙂 Why does it take you 6 years to develop the game?</strong></h3>
<p>I can talk about the stories for 3 hours (laugh). Usually, 1 or 2 years should be enough to develop a game if it’s a game that you copy off someone with an existing model or just redo the artwork. But we want to try something unique. This is tough. Going forward with new gameplay, mechanics and unique designs is actually very risky. The time and costs to develop quadrupled. We need to build prototypes for the story and artwork for almost 3 years. And now we’re focused on the God game which we are comfortable with. You can see the gameplay trailers on Youtube now.</p>
<p>We were also struggling to find the balance between monetization and longevity. So we figured out 2 very new mechanics that are specifically designed for blockchain to extend the longevity of the game.</p>
<p>Additionally, we went through fundraising and created a community before the market crashed. It’s lucky.Now we have a team of 30 people. It’s very encouraging to finally get some recognition for our product. If you want to create something new, it’s going to take a lot of time and resources.</p>
<h3 id="strong-where-did-you-draw-inspiration-from-strong"><strong>😋 Where did you draw inspiration from?</strong></h3>
<p>In the very beginning, the inspiration comes from <em>Black&amp;White</em> and <em>Populous. </em>What’s followed by the same team are Peter Molyneux, Bullfrog Games, and Lionhead Studios which later went into EA. They are the ones that came up with the first God Game genre. It’s the genre that out of the many games that I can’t find nowadays. I love real-time strategy and we originally targeted mobile markets, so we settled with God Game. It consists of real-time strategy, artificial life, and role-playing.</p>
<p>As we are based in Hong Kong, most developers and artists actually grew up watching Japanese anime. That’s what we draw inspiration from. All of the team members are very accustomed to the Japanese game design structure. They grew up playing PlayStation and Nintendo. As a result, you can see the merge between classic Japanese games and the concept of Western games.</p>
<p>If you have played games long enough, you’ll recognize bits and pieces that are from many great games hidden here, just like Easter eggs.</p>
<h3 id="strong-how-to-become-a-good-god-in-the-game-strong"><strong>😜 How to become a good God in the game?</strong></h3>
<p>In Apeiron, you’ll be taking care of those citizens. To start with, you need one planet NFT on which the citizens will populate. You’ll see them everywhere and will sometimes pray to you or just walk around.To be a good God, it follows the same game design as the original Black&amp;White. As long as you don’t injure them, you’ll be good. You can help them grow food and answer their prayers. You also can treat them like crap, throwing fireballs at them every day and slapping them around. Still they will worship you and believe in you. Ultimately to be a powerful God, you need more followers. There will always be a choice between good and evil.</p>
<p>A word of warning, if you treat them nice all the time, they will be very naughty and become obese. But that may not be the ideal gameplay.</p>
<p>There will also be challenges against players. I think a good artificial life game entails some sort of elements against players no matter how you play. Sometimes citizens will be spoiled and not respond to you any more. Sometimes they just wait for you to drop food with ungrateful reactions.You need to find ways to grow your civilization to maximize the amount of deaths.</p>
<h3 id="strong-could-you-talk-about-the-4-elements-and-the-gameplay-strong"><strong>😎 Could you talk about the 4 elements and the gameplay?</strong></h3>
<p>The 4 classical elements are from Greek philosophy, Air, Earth, Fire, and Water. The entire world and gameplay revolve around these 4 elements. There are two types of NFTs in Apeiron now, the planets and the stars. The stars are the lands which I will talk about later. But to play Apeiron you only need a planet, available on OpenSea and our own marketplace. The main difference and characteristics of the planets are the mixture of the 4 elements. There are 15 base types with different combinations of elements. Each combination is a world with its own set of gameplay. And there are 3 classes, making it 45 battle types. The fewer elements in the combination the more powerful the planet is, just like bloodline purification. For a normal planet with an equal mixture of 4 elements, you can adjust the distribution of the elements through gameplay. The fewer elements in the mixture, the harder it is to manage, but also the more powerful the planet is. This design doesn’t now make purer planets over-power, it’s like an FPS game, some weapons are powerful but always the best fit for certain missions. Sometimes pistols can beat a game much easier than a rocket launch.</p>
<p>The 4 elements are how you interact with the world by manipulating them into different materializations and it’s entirely up to the players’ experimentations. On the battling aspect, each element and class has its own playstyle, you build your own combination with them as if you are building a core deck in a card simulation game. And there are 4 apostles that have their own unique powers, and classes and you need to formulate your strategy with them when going into battles.</p>
<p>You may find all these mind-boggling. But we have spent a lot of time making it intuitive and designed the UX controls with tutorials to make everything easy to chew and digits. Players can swim through the first stages and get to the hangar of the game quickly.</p>
<h3 id="strong-what-s-the-requirement-of-entry-for-apeiron-strong"><strong>😝 What’s the requirement of entry for Apeiron?</strong></h3>
<p>You need one planet NFT to begin the game. We know these NFTs are expensive because we pressed on the breeding rate of the planet to protect our early investors in the bear market. Although we don’t promote free-to-play, in order to be listed on Google Play or IOS App Store, we are required to have at least 30 to 40 minutes of free gameplay content. You can also rent an NFT to play through a scholarship program run by our guild partners.</p>
<h3 id="strong-can-you-talk-about-the-tri-token-model-strong"><strong>🥸 Can you talk about the tri-token model?</strong></h3>
<p>Initially we were inspired by Axie Infinity’s two-token model and built ours off it with our breeding system. But when we simulated the model it didn’t play out, especially when there was huge turbulence in the market or a massive influx of players. So we started to design the third token to cater to end-game content and multiplayer dynamics. These 3 tokens are</p>
<ol>
 <li>$APRS, our governance token</li>
 <li>$ANIMA, a play-to-earn token for a single player. But we emphasize heavily on win-to-earn instead of play-to-earn, so it comes</li>
 <li>Ringulartiy ($RNGU), related to world bosses, dungeon raids, battlegrounds, and esports. It will take a lot of effort, teamwork, skills, and dedication in order to mint. It’s not easy to get but it will unlock the best stuff in the game</li>
</ol>
<p>This tri-tokenmics model, along with 4 different NFT types, aims to cater to different stakeholders of Apeiron( investors, gamers, guilds, scholars, grinders, etc) with different gameplay and earning mechanisms, in order to create a stable and sustainable in-game economy.</p>
<p>The more currencies and items (NFT types) there are in the game, the more tools there are for programmers and designers to tweak and filter different types of user engagements and activities for a better economy.</p>
<h3 id="strong-what-milestones-are-we-hitting-now-and-what-is-our-near-future-roadmap-strong"><strong>🤩 What milestones are we hitting now and what is our near future roadmap?</strong></h3>
<p>First it will be a land sale going on Oct. 18th, followed by a game demo and battle testing in late November or early December. After that, we plan to run a limited launch with battle gameplay, tournaments, and other esports events to slowly attract and onboard core gamers from Web 2. It will also give us time to fix bugs, fine-tune the game and gain more experience in digitizing assets and marketing tactics on the blockchain. By the time the market corrects itself and is ready for the next bull run, which we expect to be Q2 next year, we will be ready for the full launch with Godgame mode and everything else at maximum capacity when we see the market rebounce.</p>
<p>In addition, we will be hosting physical tournaments in Korea and Hong Kong, hopefully in December or Q1 2023. We are also in talks with some Japanese anime studios to make our animation series and build our IP and ecosystem, with digital and physical, around Apeiron</p>
<p>In terms of token listings, we will go for a humble launch instead of an ICO/IEO hype, as we see the floor price of NFTs and token prices as a marketing tool to attract more gamers than as a fundraising tool.</p>
<h3 id="strong-i-see-apeiron-as-more-of-a-strategy-game-with-many-mini-games-why-did-you-brand-it-as-a-god-game-strong"><strong>I see Apeiron as more of a strategy game with many mini-games. Why did you brand it as a God Game?</strong></h3>
<p>The god game has a lot of nostalgic value to me. If you look into Reddit posts and search for God game. You’ll see that people are asking questions like: “Why do we not see Black and White anymore?”, “Why are there no God games anymore?”. And one of the best answers out there is from a God game developer themselves and they explain that God games have been a nightmare to get across. If you talk to investors about God games, they will be absolutely lost and don’t want to invest in it. The gameplay is both hard to get across and hard to develop.</p>
<p>I market our game as a God game because as a gamer myself, this is actually the game I’ve longed for and the same goes for a lot of people. And this is actually market-proven. After all these years, at the moment we publicize the game, the responses we got from funding, gamers, and other developers are amazing, people are missing it.</p>
<p>In the year 2000. The development is extremely difficult. With a lot of technology and game design, game technologies available right now, it’s a bit easier. With the monetization tools available nowadays, mobile game payment gateways, and Blockchain Fundraising, these are great tools and assets with which these games can get. Back then there were great games, but none of them made a lot of money because the cost to develop has been high. However, the user base is there, anyone who played the God game in 2002 has been waiting for this genre. This is how we raised 20M and received so much support.</p>
<p>If we stick with ARPG card games, real-time strategy, or simulation, there are Web 2 giants already doing great games. But we are the only ones working on God game. Our product is nowhere to be found, neither in Web 3 or Web 2, players must come to us.</p>
<p>We are doing everything to onboard gamers. With the help from CARV and other gaming guilds and communities, we can definitely do great work.</p>
<h3 id="strong-i-have-played-a-lot-of-simcity-and-city-skyline-it-seems-to-me-they-can-be-qualified-as-god-games-as-well-strong"><strong>I have played a lot of SimCity and City: Skyline. It seems to me, they can be qualified as God games as well.</strong></h3>
<p>God games are born from city-building games. The difference is that you are building houses, and towers in cIty-building games, but trees and mountains in God games. In city-building games, you can only do volcanoes and disasters, but you can also opt to help your people in God games. There are some similarities, but still a lot of differences.</p>
<h3 id="strong-i-minted-a-genesis-planet-in-march-and-purchased-another-one-in-july-but-i-missed-the-snapshot-where-if-you-have-two-planets-you-get-one-free-mint-i-wonder-if-i-can-get-a-free-mint-or-do-i-need-to-buy-from-the-secondary-market-strong"><strong>I minted a genesis planet in March and purchased another one in July. But I missed the snapshot where if you have two planets you get one free mint. I wonder if I can get a free mint? Or do I need to buy from the secondary market?</strong></h3>
<p>I think you are referring to the Mini-Blackhole airdrop in July. The rule was, if you have one planet you can breed; if you have two planets you can use mini-blackholes to breed a new one. It is almost impossible to miss since the airdrop was done automatically to your wallet. You can get mini-blackholes from the markets or points and emblems from participating events. After the Star sale, you will be able to breed again, and planet holders are eligible for a massive mini-blackhole poll. They can receive a good number of blackholes from it and hence breed a lot of planets.</p>
<h3 id="strong-i-want-to-participate-in-the-game-but-i-do-not-have-a-lot-of-time-what-is-the-solution-for-me-strong"><strong>I want to participate in the game but I do not have a lot of time. What is the solution for me?</strong></h3>
<p>If you do not have much time, I recommend that you rent it to a scholar to play for you. If you want to do it personally, you can log in for 5–10 minutes every day and complete most of the daily quests, which can get you leveled up as well. If you really do not have time to play the game, I highly recommend Star NFT for you. For planets, you can earn NFTs, props, and tokens, but it requires time and teamwork. However, Star does not require much control. You can rent one of the many orbital tracks and players must orbit around you to grow faster. And players have to orbit around Stars to generate the third token.</p>
<p>Stars are rarer as well. We will have 10,000 in total and are only minting 400 at the moment. These Stars have amazing annual returns from 108% to 1243%.</p>
<h3 id="about-carv">About CARV</h3>
<p><strong>All Your Gaming Moments in One Place. </strong>CARV is building an ID infrastructure focused on gaming, enabling players with achievement display, semantic social, and access to gaming premiums.</p>
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How Apeiron find the balance between monetization and longevity - Exclusive conversation with Frank, Co-Founder of Apeiron, god game in action-RPG genre

How Apeiron find the balance between monetization and longevity - Exclusive conversation with Frank, Co-Founder of Apeiron, god game in action-RPG genre

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