Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Our goal is to help studios focus on building great games while we handle the Web3 complexity behind the scenes. Flockus is a partner for teams serious about delivering high quality games to the market.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: And we never show NFT kinda words or blockchain kinda awards in players face it felt like flipping a CSGO's game. Just it, nothing more. I think Blockast handles the Invisible wallet magic.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: And web3 transparent ownership will give players more agency over the systems. And I think the last one is community driven economies. Player won't just like participate, they will help the game govern bond and shape the game ecosystem through creator tools and UGC.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: I think games are still the best on ROP for Web3 because like virtual assets and on chain finance are the match made in heaven. So it's really help like AA wallet really helps the experience of web3 gaming so players can not even notice about any blockchain, any onchain stuff so they will have like better gaming experience.
[00:01:42] Speaker C: Hi everyone. Welcome to today's AMA event with Blokus. My name is Andrew and I'll be your host for today as we dive into the world of web3 gaming. Blockus is your all in one empowering game studios to build faster, reduce costs and focus entirely on delivering exceptional gameplay. This is the sixth in a series of AMAs where we'll connect with key players in the gaming industry. Whether you're a developer, gamer or Just curious about Web3, we're glad you're here. We're especially excited to have Tarta Games, the studio behind Spot Zero, with us here today. Known for its roguelike mechanics and deeply immersive lore. Sorry, Spot Zero continues to push boundaries and we're eager to hear what's next in store. Before we dive in, please make sure to follow us on X which is lockus and LinkedIn blockusgg for future events, industry news and updates on what we're building. Feel free to share the space link during the event and if you have questions for Bowen, please drop them in the chat. Now let's kick things off. Freya and Bowen, could you maybe perhaps share a bit about yourself and the projects you're currently working with?
[00:02:41] Speaker D: Okay, so hello everyone, thanks for having me today. Hi, I'm Freya, co founder of Tata Labs and leading our marketing. So super excited to dive into SpotZero, our AI products and how we teaming up with Blockast. Today at Tata Labs we build anime.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Driven world plus like Emotion AI tech.
[00:03:08] Speaker D: Our flagship game is Spotzero and and our companion stack is called Amy. So we just Finished our first alpha test in our discord about our partner Sync out Block us as Steam meet battle pass for web3 I think players log in with email or other social media accounts, Block ads outspin a wall wallet and players gear shows up in one just one passport for us I think that means no wallet drop offs, instant quest airdrops tools. So very friendly for all the players and developers. And thanks again like block us in red Spot zero joining today's space.
[00:04:04] Speaker C: Amazing.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Hi Andrew, thank you for inviting me to this online AMA and huge thanks to Priya to joining in. I'm Owen, API PE of Blockus. Blockus is building the infra layer powering Exchange Webster Games. We bring a complete onboarding and infrastructure solution to Webster Gaming designed to support both developers and players.
We offer Progressive onboarding with Web2 logins and optional wallet linking SDKs for Unity and Unreal making integration smooth for devs, seamless wallet and account management with support for both fiat and crypto payments and a built in quest platform to boost player engagement and retention and also an NFT marketplace for in game assets. We're also building a gaming dedicated layer three. Our goal is to help studios focus on building great games while we handle the website complexity behind the scenes. Blockus is a partner for teams serious about delivering high quality games to the market. What excited us most about SPA zero is how it blends a fast paced ARPG core gameplay loops that speaks to both traditional and Web three native gamers. The team's pedigree with talent from Mihoyo, Tencent and Hypergraph shows the polish and ambition of the project and their AI integration. Letting players shape companions with evolving personalities brings a new level of depth and emotional connecting to the experience.
It's called IMI. IMI's first iOS test just over but I tried it personally. Please definitely check their Twitter and see the use case of it. It's really fascinating.
[00:05:54] Speaker C: Amazing. Yeah, definitely check that out. So I have here a few questions for you actually Freya, Tarta Games and Spot zero specifically what is the core goal and vision of Tarta?
[00:06:06] Speaker B: Okay, so we've got two big goals. So first with Spot zero we are building a fully immersive anime game universe you can live in.
Second with Amy we are building the emotion layer, the doorway every future AGI will need to actually understand human.
So put those together and endgame is simple. Turn Tata into go to emotion driving anime IP universe. So that's our goal.
[00:06:43] Speaker C: Great. Maybe talk a little bit more about what inspired the creation of Spot zero. What is the story and specifically the concept and the aesthetic behind the game.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: So Spot Zero is the first big universe out of Tata Games. Kind of like how Genshin Impact came out of Mihoyo.
And like for our whole team, we are basically bunch of enemy gamers who said create let's just make a action RPG we've always wanted. But we didn't start with like hundred pages like game design Doc. Well our co founder Grandia is a pretty famous anime artist. So he sketched some crazy cool characters with little animal webs and with love them so built the whole lore around them and some of characters became yokai. So Spozero is a world where human and yokai coexist.
Actually sometimes not so peaceful.
And then players can jump in as an investigator. They can exploring the continent to uncover like its hidden secrets.
So that's the story behind Tata Lives and also Spotzero.
[00:08:15] Speaker C: Really cool humans and yokai living. Yeah, I think personally I've already played Genshin. I've played a bunch of other ARPGs and gacha games as well. But definitely interested more about Spot Zero. You maybe perhaps explain a little more about the game mechanics or the gameplay itself as well. What sort of makes Spot Zero stand out from other similar ARPG games?
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Okay, sure.
So we packed a lot in Spot Zero, but the heart of it breaks down into three buckets. So first combat. We gave players two ways to throw down. If you just want to farm, pick three characters, hit, hit, outrun and let them grant resources while you sleep. Or you just doing other things.
If you are a three lord, jump into full hand mode sim three characters, squad bots. But now you have to like to do the dodging, changing combos, popping team supers. During our first test our CBT1 a lot of users went nuts for for the both fight leaderboard. I remember one dude run over thousand rounds. Just try to achieve no hit for get to the top. And the second part pets. The CBT2 version we will add our pet system. So as you know most anime games they don't have real player to player trading in. Especially in the Web2 game. So we are going for it. Players can just grab eggs from the dungeons or our storyline.
Either just random pet out or they can buy the hatch item. Each pet shows different states and skills and leaving its own little home. If players they don't like the scale but love the art, love the outfit, then they can smash two pets together, reload skill or just hit the marketplace and buy the one you want. And all the trading happens on chain but the backend is AA wallet and we never show NFT kind of words or blockchain kind of words in players face.
It felt like flipping CSGO's game just it nothing more. I think Blockast handles the invisible wallet magic pretty much you get superpower and the third part AI. We wired our aiming emotional model right into Unreal Engine because like Spotzero we built on Unreal Engine 5. So in CBT two players like your favorite character can actually talk back. They read your tongue, your face even when you are looking they will respond you with the right line or emote over time. They remember what page you are on, how you fight and can even jump in as co op body when learn your combo style so they can fight with you, they can team up with you, they can help you to find both that is already running in depth. So like right now we are focusing integrate our AI model into the supposable game and players will get the taste in the next beta like our CBT2. So stay tuned.
[00:12:19] Speaker C: I think my next question is more so regarding the community itself. How is the Spotzer community being built and do you have specific strategies for attracting and retaining players?
[00:12:30] Speaker B: We keep it super simple. We just shared awesome art and let fans show up.
So I think like most of our followers they came out because our art style so we just keep doing it. We started posting characters, posters and little making of clips on Twitter since last May, then opened our discord later in the air.
Our biggest selling point is art style and overall polish so we really focused on that. It attracted lots of Web2 gamers, especially high spending players from Japan before we even mentioned web3.
Next we added more ways for users to join in so you can say our most of our characters names the community to them we run like name the yokai context and pick out and that everyone vote.
So players love it and players love watching the project grow and having a hand in it. So kind of like raising a Tamagotchi.
I think some failings like keep users just coming back.
I think the failing is I helped build this so I think our users maybe have that feeling so they will think oh I helped Spotzero build this world, build the whole game. I can see how they from 0 to 1.
So I think it's a good idea for the community, especially for the gaming.
[00:14:32] Speaker C: Project in terms of attracting players. This goes along.
How do you collect and process feedback from players and do you plan on incorporating or improving the gaming experience from this feedback in future updates?
[00:14:51] Speaker B: We mostly grab feedback on Discord I think most like projects and especially web3projects do that way.
So players just open tickets or leave notes in our channel and our community team source it and send it to the right person.
So yeah, it's kind of like old school right now. So we are looking into an AI workflow to tag and route stuff way faster so should make things easier for everyone. So on the updates we are busy building content for CBT2 and already fixing the issue from CPT1 so top fixes like smoother device support, cleaner map layouts and better combat feel amazing.
[00:15:50] Speaker C: Yeah, great to hear that. I think you're incorporating AI both in the player side but also behind the scenes, which I think is very fascinating in terms of the gaming industry as a whole. What is Spotser's positioning in the current game accomplished with other similar ARPG games or games in general?
[00:16:09] Speaker B: Spot Zero is basically an anime 3D action RPG with pet trading and AI sidekick. I we cannot call us a web three game or web two game so that's just like web 2.5 in our book. So tech stack is on chain but we do not position this as a gamefi grinder.
We've all seen like two half cycle prove that play to earn alone isn't real game loop so just think cs go skins or dota atoms. Like people can flip stuff but fans call those titles great shooters or MMOs not gamefi. Right. So that's our strategy. Just make a legit fun ARPG and let the economy sit quietly underneath for competition. Sure always like but right now we don't see another game that makes enemy combat pet mark pace and emotion driving the way we do so in either web 2 or web 3 we haven't seen this kind of game in the market and our art stale and tech stock gives us our own corner of the playground. Yeah.
[00:17:48] Speaker C: What role does AI play other than, you know, just behind the scenes as you mentioned. And with the chat boss, is there any other use of AI in your game?
[00:18:00] Speaker B: So the our AI basically gives the character a real soul. You can picture this you've got an enemy companion who chats with you in real time, resume mode, flashback emotional reactions and swap game tips. Tells you which gear to step on, what upgrade path to take and even jumps in like a legitimate during both fat so you and your body level up together. Feels like playing with a real person except they they never log off. In sport 0 the AI function well like this. We will integrate to our characters so players can interact with them in our game like whenever, like anytime I I can say like when you play the mean storyline or you just find the both, you can always talk to your favorite AI companion.
[00:19:13] Speaker C: Well, it's really cool I think as well, you know game mechanics can also be very confusing for beginner players.
So I think incorporating AI to like give like helpful tool tips rather than basic or generic ones. Definitely. I think I personally want to try that out sometime in the future too. Yeah, very fascinating. What future plans would you have in maybe using AI version?
Are there any plans to use AI to change the specific gameplay of Spot Zero?
[00:19:46] Speaker B: As I mentioned earlier, we are already working working on combining AI with our game.
So our game company is actually a standalone product. We've already run a small alpha in our discord where people can talk to the company in real time and actually feel some emotion coming back.
So next up we'll drop AR scenes. Imagine players that staying connected with their AI companion outside the games through phone or video chat and then you get home, fire up your computer, your PC and she just pops right into the game to grant with you. Once we lock the tag we will ship an SDK so other studios can plug the emotion engine straight into their own titles. So that means any dev or IPs can give their character, mood rating, real time chat and helping them boost engagement and user retention.
[00:21:04] Speaker C: Amazing. Yeah great to hear that you're continuing to use AI in future updates and the development of Spot zero as well. I guess. Speaking to the future again, what position do you hope Spotzer will occupy in the game industry in the future?
[00:21:17] Speaker B: So we are shooting for SP to be the first we can say like first billion dollar IP at the intersection of enemy AI and Web three the one future team support two as a benchmark.
So we are hand barring emotion, AI and on chain assets into the very DNA of the story so the IP can be reused, upgraded and verified across content, tech and ownership. So in the future when people say Web3 anime powerhouse we want to Tata Labs and Sposuro to be the brand and so brand that pops into everyone's head. Yeah. So we really want to position us for today's and Tata to this definitely.
[00:22:15] Speaker C: I think I already see myself and five just saying oh I can't wait to come back on Spot Zero. I have a few questions that are more general speaking so Bowen feel free to as well chime in as whenever you can.
What specific AI technologies or algorithms were used in development and what advantages do these technologies bring to the game? Fred, you've mentioned a few anything on your great questions.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: Spot Zero integrates several cutting edge AI technology that we discussed before. They are aiming to bring its characters and the world to life. Well, the exact implementation details are the best answered by the Spouse Zero team from but from what we've seen, the biggest advantage of these technologies immersion. Instead of like static prescript NPCs player can engage with living evolving characters that respond to their choices and behaviors like deepens emotional connections, increases session time and makes every gameplay loop feel fresh and meaningful.
This is exactly the kind of innovation that makes Web3 Gaming stand out and we are very excited to see SPA zero push the boundaries with AI powered experiences.
[00:23:34] Speaker C: Amazing. I know Freya already mentioned how you've used AI development as well, so I'll just move on to the next question then. What trends do you foresee for the development of Web3 games in the next few years? Maybe, maybe if you could find some insight first and then for AI as well.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Yeah, no problem. We are seeing some powerful trends shaping the future of Web3 gaming over the next few years. The first one is player first onboarding. The friction of wallets gas is being replaced by the seamless Web two style logins, embattled wallets and abstract UX games will onboard players without them. Like even even realizing it's like Web3 and real utility for NFTs. We're moving past speculative PFPs into NFTs with actual in game utility, custom characters, dynamic gears and evolving companions. Projects like Spell zero are leading this shift making gameplay meaningful, interactive and emotional and emotionally engaging. And I think another thing is modular, scalable infra like layer 2s and layer 3s. The rise of gaming dedicated layer 3s like what we are building at Blockist will allow studios to launch faster, scale cheaper and build games. That feels as smooth as web2 but with all the benefits of on chain ownership and also the AI powered game worlds. AI won't just support development, it will become the part of the gameplay dynamic. NPCs involving narratives and AI companions will redefine immersion and web3transparent ownership will give players more agency over the systems. And I think the last one is community driven economies. Player won't just like participate, they will help the game govern, fund and shape the game ecosystem through creator tools and ugc. This shift will blur the line between gamer and stakeholder. At blocktras we are already seeing these shifts happen. Our mission is to help studios to get ahead of these trends whether it's through SDKs, go to market support or our layer gaming layer three solutions.
[00:25:49] Speaker C: Amazing. Yeah, great to hear development as we've heard as well from Spotzer about AI and incorporating blockchain into game development. Freya, do you have any thoughts on web three games in the next few years?
[00:26:07] Speaker B: I think I can talk about our AI tech first.
So our cortex is our interactive system.
It combines our emotional AI with eye tracking and intent prediction.
Our main advantage is our emotional AI so it understands human emotions from facial express and movements allowing us to build real deep ongoing emotional connections. So our emotional model runs locally and we train 8 on almost 2 million expressions and 8 reactions. It reacts like in just 20 milliseconds which is 7% faster than average. And our head of AI holds two US patents in eye tracking and intent prediction. So we are pretty deep in the in that tech.
Dropping it into game means character can actually radio mode and react on the fly. So it totally flips the way players experience the whole Universe for the Web 3 games in the next few years. I think now a lot of people like they are keep saying web3 gaming is dead totally like disproved but I don't buy it. I think games are still the best on Rob for Web3 because like virtual assets and on chain finance are the match made in heaven. So long before the blockchains players trade gold in Legion of Mayor nobody hates making money and they just hate when the whole game is only about farming and flipping. So that's why those early play to earn titles burn out so fast. So what's coming next? We think game like web3 games will ditch the gamefi budget gold farm loops, roi chat and ponzi steel economies will fade into the background.
Blockchain will power the marketplace quietly just like CSGO skin will like with a better backend. So while the front end focuses on art style tech gameplay and new tech like AI or VR right so at the same time studios with hits that already have strong off chain economies well both web3 this kind of strong option economy where both web3 on like for global liquidity I think so we are seeing teams in that way but no one's nailed it yet. So I can see too many projects still lean on a token pop for quick cash but let fun of I think markets involved but I think the real win is when the chan stuff is invisible and trading just feel like a natural part of the great game.
So I think what block us doing is really help this kind of projects to achieve long term go.
So it really help like AA wallet really helps the experience of web3 gaming so players can not even notice about any blockchain any onchain stuff so they will have like better gaming experience.
[00:30:26] Speaker C: Well, thank you so much. So before we wrap up, a huge thank you to Frey and Bowen for joining us tonight and sharing their insights and feature of web3 gaming. From the origin story and gameplay in Spot Zero to target games, vision for community building, AI integration and feature in the web3 game market, we've explored how game studies are innovating at every level. To everyone who tuned in, thank you for being part of this conversation. And to stay updated, please follow us on X, which is locklist, and LinkedIn, which is blockless GG. More events and exciting updates are coming soon. As a quick reminder, we'll also release the full audio of this AMA as a podcast on our Twitter. So please make sure to follow us and follow our guests Freya and Boeing for more great content. Thank you, thank you.
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