The Color of Creativity: An Interview with Apeiron COO Orange See

Greetings and salutations, Apeiron readers! For this article introducing Apeiron — the world’s first god-game on the blockchain — we have…

Greetings and salutations, Apeiron readers! For this article introducing Apeiron — the world’s first god-game on the blockchain — we have a special New Year’s treat: a behind-the-scenes interview with Foonie Magus’ very own COO Orange See. We sat down with the man himself to find out what’s got him excited about this grand new project. So let’s jump right in!

Foonie Magus: Hi Orange! Could you introduce yourself to our readers?

Sure. Hello everyone! I’m Orange. I’ve been in the game industry for 16 years — although I’ve been making games for way longer than that: I made my first game with some friends in secondary school. I guess I’ve kind of been making games my whole life haha. After I graduated from university, I formed my own company, and since then I’ve overseen the production and publication of over 60 games.

Woah! That’s a lot of games. What do you usually do during the game development process?

Yeah! So in my experience, game development is something that involves a lot of different people. Artists, graphic designers, gameplay designers, writers…there’s a lot of talent. And they all might have different standards, different ideas about how to put together the game or the prototype or whatever. So I’m the guy who talks to them all and gets everyone working together.

So you’re like the glue that holds everyone together?

Something like that haha.

Awesome! So from your perspective — and you certainly have a lot of experience — what makes Apeiron different from the games you’ve built in the past?

You know, one of the challenges about the game industry is staying creative. A lot of people just want to copy or replicate successful products that they’ve seen before. Why take the risk? But the problem with that approach is that it doesn’t always work: just because one game got popular, doesn’t mean the market necessarily needs or wants another one. A lot of times, you often miss the trend.

You need to stay ahead of the curve?

Right. But on top of that, you need to have a business model. You can’t just go to a potential investor and not have a plan. With Apeiron, at first, as a god-game it’s reviving a classic genre, and that’s bringing something new to the table. But I couldn’t find a business model that would match it. Then I heard about the blockchain and I thought: this could work. This matches with the god-game perfectly.

Let’s talk a little bit more about that. Why do you think it’s important that we build this game on the blockchain?

The blockchain brings back player ownership. Rather than just asking players to invest their time in the game, we’re actually giving the players the opportunity to essentially create content themselves. The value of a planet in Apeiron is determined by the community, and so the community will have an incentive to play the game to develop their planet because then they could sell it and actually make a profit. So the focus is not on getting players to just spend their time, but instead getting them to grow the game itself: to make new and interesting planets. And that puts them in the same boat as us — the developers. Our interests are aligned.

When you talk about spending time rather than developing content, what does that mean?

So let’s compare the blockchain with other models. The F2P model, for instance, focuses on schedules and operations and getting the player to spend their time and money rather than focusing on the content itself. Like by asking them to do the same task on a daily basis, or running the same battle or dungeon over and over. Or look at the traditional game business model — 60USD for something like 50hrs of content and that’s it: it’s related to a certain amount of time to squeeze from the game. But there won’t be any new content.

So the blockchain let’s us return to a focus on developing new content for the game, and that’s what the players will want as well, because they’ll be invested in developing new content through their NFT planets, which they could eventually sell.

Exactly.

It sounds pretty exciting!

It is! In blockchain games, there are a lot of unknowns. No one knows what’s going to sink and what’s going to swim. So this makes it the perfect time to try something new, to really swing for the hills and go for something innovative. We don’t have to follow the role model, we can be the role model.

Right. So given that the community is so important to this game, how are you designing the game to help build a better community?

It’s a big topic! There’s a lot to talk about, but I want to start by saying that the most important thing about community is clear communication and being open to listen. You know, it can be hard sometimes to be open — especially when it comes to criticism.

Gamers can sometimes be pretty critical haha.

Haha they can. And it’s understandable, people put a lot of time and energy into these games. Still, we want to do our best to stay open and available and receptive, no matter how harsh the criticism is. As long as it’s constructive, we want to hear it. I think Frank [Foonie Magus CEO] sets a good example for us — he’s always ready to listen to other people’s ideas and change, and that’s what we’re going to try to do with our playerbase.

Great! How about in-game: what are the plans to get players interacting?

For Apeiron, we’re developing an Alliance system. It’s something a lot of grand strategy games have. It keeps players talking with each other and it gets them invested in something greater than just themselves. That being said, there’s a lot to manage about it. We want to make sure the players who spend a lot vs the players who spend less are still able to work together effectively. And we also want to make sure that when your Alliance loses, that it doesn’t discourage you too much. It’s about managing player norms and expectations, and constantly shifting things up with new short and long term goals to keep people thinking, to keep the gameplay dynamic and fresh.

It sounds challenging but also fun!

We have experience with Alliance gameplay so I’m confident we can nail it. And of course, if we don’t get it exactly right, we’re open to listen to players and fix things when necessary.

I understand the game is going to launch in multiple phases with community involvement. Could you talk a little about what to expect at first?

The first thing we’ll be doing is developing planets. We’ll be producing a few seed planets for our first batch of players, but the rest of the planets in the universe will be player-produced. And as that’s the case, we want to make sure that there are incentives for those first players to start making new planets so that other players can join the game as well. We’ll be working closely with our initial community to set the standards — together — for how the Apeiron universe will grow.

Just like you said earlier — players and developers with interests aligned. So we’re pretty much done now, but I just want to ask — any cheeky spoilers for our faithful followers?

Haha I’m not sure exactly what I’m allowed to say and what I’m not allowed to say. But I guess…I’ve reached out to a lot of external developers. We’ve got new cool designs for our battle system, we’ve got a special advisor for the simulation aspects: a lot of experienced talent coming together to make something new and exciting. So I think with Apeiron, you can expect something really new, something you’ve never seen before.

It sounds like with Apeiron you’re doing what you do best — being the glue that brings people together.

Something like that haha. But yeah, we’re trying not to take ourselves too seriously either, trying to add some humor into the game, and to have fun with it.

Perfect. That about wraps it up. Thanks so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to us!

My pleasure. Talk to you soon!

So…it’s us again (not Orange). What did you think of this interview? How excited are you for Apeiron — and what would you like the game to look like in the future? Let us know your thoughts and comments here or on social media — and make sure especially to follow our Twitter so you don’t miss any of our updates. This will be the last article published in the year 2021, so from all of us here at Foonie Magus: Happy New Year!