Podcast: Web3 Gaming Decoded: Analyzing Zebedee’s Player Trends

SuperScale
All right? hello everybody
My name is Milan I’m a head of growth marketing at Superscale and we have right with us.
Um, please if you could introduce yourself?

Jure Grahek
Of course
Thanks, Milan I’m Jure from ZEBEDEE a Head of Strategic Initiatives and marketing which means that I kind of work across marketing. But then also some special business development projects like the superscale project. Which for us is not really strictly a marketing thing.

SuperScale
Yeah, all right? cool? Um, so you are kind of focused on marketing. Um, that’s great because I’m also focused on marketing. But you have this product that we kind of together their work on Concerto could you also talk a little about that?

Jure Grahek
Yeah, sure. So the way this relationship kind of started is in last spring I was going around to conferences and talking about the thing we do at ZEBEDEE to large gaming studios and well might as well mention what that is so we have like a payments platform. Um, that people use to put money into their games. So for example, if you’re playing a super mario game and you pick up a coin the game developer would use ZEBEDEE to make that coin worth actual money that the player gets instantly and to make that work. Technically we built on top of bitcoin. But we’re not we don’t see ourselves as a bitcoin company. We really see ourselves as a fintech or a payments platform. But nevertheless, you know the wider industry does see us as like this block train web 3 thing so when I started talking to big studios. Everyone said. Well, the networks don’t like crypto gaming. So this isn’t going to scale and I was like ah bullshit. You know I’ll show you. It’s going to scale great and then I met your guys at the dice conference in Las Vegas and you know we started talking and we’re like yeah let’s do this together. Let’s um. Treat it as like an experimental project and figure out this whole situation and this kind of landscape that we’re playing in when it comes to scaling bitcoin-powered games.

SuperScale
Cool. Um, so you mentioned you know it’s a game even though it’s played to earn name slash creep or game um are your gamer your self-first question?

Jure Grahek
Um, well I used to be more you know more of a gamer when I was younger I love games. But yeah, unfortunately, don’t currently have much time for it. Um.

SuperScale
Before we deep dive more into the business you know and the product. So what’s your game favourite game of all time?

Jure Grahek
Tough question I’m gonna have to go pick 2 games, all right cool I’ll go with guildworth one that I played Competitively was very fun and.

SuperScale
Yes.

Jure Grahek
War hammer 40 k dawn of war yeah, used to be that’s why I’m saying I don’t have time anymore right now I just play ze mobile games earn a little bitcoin get a little dopamine hit here and there but more or less it.

SuperScale
All right? So a hardcore Rpg player.

Ah, cool. All right? So back to the product so play to earn crypto and tough stuff we you know marketing in and the first challenge was can we find ua channels that will not ban. Basically, that was also the first question that we have and how we try to you know. Try to solve it and figure it out what we can use and what we cannot We’re also worried that everything is going to be you know banned or you will be not ah able to do the right messaging. Actually, it worked well so what is your current state of the product and what is perhaps the vision? For the next couple of months or you know even years.

Jure Grahek
So now I assume you’re asking me specifically about this game. We’re you know, trying to scale with a super skill right? which is this is kind of a little bit outside. You know the main business of ZEBEDEE which is providing tooling for game devs. But.

SuperScale
Um, yeah.

Jure Grahek
But supers scale. We’re currently just working on 1 hyper casual mobile game that we own it’s called Cyrotobe as you said earlier. Um, and yeah, like you said the first challenge we had to solve was which networks can we actually advertise on but it was much easier than we thought it would be because the only one.

That kind of you know gave us a Hardband was Facebook so we could not really get any sort of scale going on Facebook we could get live on it. But then you know just as we started to scale it up a little bit. Um they would ban us and we just gave up. It wasn’t worth going through all the approvals because there are. Other networks out there right and Tiktok. That’s the other one Tiktok has like a hard ban on anything that touches crypto for now. So but outside of those 2 really are no issues. We’ve now tested several Ua Networks um you know pros and cons to all of them but nothing like a ban or anything I feel like if anything some you know, slightly smaller players in the market. Saw the potential in enabling crypto games you know on their networks. And now see that as kind of a competitive advantage right?

SuperScale
Yup, so and thereto bit is almost like ah it’s not really the main focus I understand the main focus. Basically, this financial platform or I know if I call it correctly. Ah, could you tell a little bit more about what you know about how it was developed and what is also the vision for you know these? Blockchain fintech that you have ah behind Sarah Toby actually

Jure Grahek
It’s essentially really just a payments platform. Um, you know it’s what we do is closer to someone like stripe or PayPal than to you know the web 3 stuff. Like forte on or anchor or things like that. Um, what I mean by that is really we process payments. That’s our thing money in games and other apps. Um, so the way it looks for a developer is you get access to the ZEBEDEE developer dashboard. Inside you create separate wallets for all your games. The wallets have API keys in them. Um, and then you know from their perspective. They’re not really touching the blockchain and not doing any really crypto stuff all they have to do is make pretty simple arrests API calls that. You know to developers will be familiar and make sure there’s enough bitcoin in the wallets and yeah, that’s it from there it just works right? and the beauty or like the whole magic of it is that you can process extremely tiny payments and it’s instant and very cheap and inherently global. And that is why we use bitcoin or more specifically bitcoin on the lightning network. It’s really not about bitcoin. It’s just money in games that can be global but bitcoin is that money, right? It’s the best form of money for the job. What we do is not technically possible with dollars. It’s just.

Does not work because, for example, you could have like we have a counter-strike integration right? So you can play counter strike for bitcoin using Zebaityek and then in 1 server you could potentially have I don’t know the 2 of us in Europe. And then a player from India and a player from Brazil and the player from the United States and let’s say we were all being super cheap and we’re playing around for like each of us paid in ¢10 so I could be earning. Maybe not even ¢1 if I kind of suck at the game. Maybe I’ll earn. Like 1 ne-tenth of a dollar cent but it’ll be transferred to me in real-time instantly and then maybe you are in ¢50 you get it instantly and the guy in India and in Brazil and in the states does not work in the traditional financial system like never ever. There’s so many reasons why it is just impossible. And that is really the core value proposition behind our platform. It’s money. That’s native to digital online experiences and it moves just as seamlessly as information.

SuperScale
It sounds like magic almost but it sounds really cool and you mentioned bitcoin is it. The only currency that you currently know work with and is there any vision to use, for example, Ethereum or any other cryptocurrency?

Jure Grahek
To us. It’s just money as I’m kind of saying so yes, it’s only bitcoin on the platform. The platform will remain bitcoin only in the sense that bitcoin is the payment rail that powers it. Everything. However, we do want to be kind of agnostic to the currency. So a big goal for us next year is to introduce um fiat better fiat coverage we have fiat coverage now but we want to improve that and then over time possibly also introduce other cryptocurrencies. But the way we would do it is do a swap at the entry and exit point. From the zety platform. So I can deposit dollars even now I can go into ZEBEDEE and use my credit card to deposit dollars and I’ll receive bitcoin over time we want that to be any currency. So maybe you want? Maybe you have a bunch of eth. No problem deposit eth into zebadi. But you’re going to receive bitcoin and then when you want to cash out. We want to empower you to cash out to whatever you want because it’s about utility right? is it just money? Um, but internally it’s going to remain bitcoin because why not right? it’s. Absolutely a fantastic tool for what we want to use it for bitcoin does not do much more than just be money. But as money. It’s really really excellent in a way that other cryptocurrencies just are not even though they may do other things much better.

SuperScale
Yep, thanks and question about cryptocurrency in general. You know we know these are crypto winter 2.0 almost or even 3.0 how did this affect you?

Jure Grahek
Well outside of that We’re all a little worried because we’re all kind of you know invested personally not really for our business. It doesn’t it doesn’t matter. Um, if the price of bitcoin goes down.

The only immediate effect on our business is everything gets a little bit cheaper for us because we denominate stuff in bitcoin. So if you’re sending out rewards to players and you’re denominating that in bitcoin or more strictly in Satoshi’s which is like a tiny tiny unit of bitcoin. Then you’re just spending less money on your activities, right? We’re still going to send out 1000 satoshis to a player. It’s just going to cost less to acquire that bitcoin at some point.

SuperScale
Yeah and it still. It seems like the future of it is going to be more or less actually decentralized. And there is like institutions trying to you know, be involved in ah creating these Legal Frameworks or you know with financing and moving the cryptocurrencies around. Do you see this as a threat to your you know vision or how your fintech works.

Jure Grahek
I don’t think anyone’s going to regulate bitcoin to the point where it would really affect us. What’s probably going to happen is there’s going to be more regulation in terms of you know trading. We saw what happened now with fix. That’s an absolute catastrophe like that. Would not have happened in a truly regulated market. Um, so we completely welcome that right? Yes, please you know let’s solve this wild west situation. But if you look at our our business right now. Um, we mostly process not even micropayments. But. Nano payment meets of a fraction of a cent. Um, that is not going to be massively affected by any sort of legislature because we’re just going to fly underneath all the thresholds and then even for larger payouts like we’re now looking at powering esports tournaments where we can basically do an instant payout. After every match or at the end of the tournament even that is not going to be such massive amounts right? It’s not going to be millions of dollars sent to someone whereas in the trading and investment world. It is millions of dollars and that’s what regulators are focused on.

SuperScale
So you mentioned you’re working with a sense even now that is’ not going to be million dollars um what is like the largest sum of the money that you are actually moving through your systems at this 1 time.

Jure Grahek
I don’t know what the single largest transaction we ever did was um, our consumer wallet has pretty low limits intentionally because it’s not intended to be an investment or savings. Product. You’re not supposed to have $10000 in your ZEBEDEE account. That that you know just know what it is right? You’re supposed to have a little spending money in there. You can use it to buy stuff. It’s like the wallet that you carry around in your pocket. You’re not going to carry you know all your wealth in there wouldn’t make sense in terms of the largest payment I don’t know like a couple of thousand dollars maybe um the biggest transactions we see are when game developers put bitcoin onto the platform to then distribute it out. But I guess that doesn’t really count right? I don’t think that’s really your question.

SuperScale
My it’s like a more real-life implication for you know player how much money he can or he kind of she can expect you know moving around and you know the first question from every player when it comes to Plato earn is like can I get. Rich, can I earn money you know, obviously it’s more important for people from other countries like South East Asia you know not specifically Europe so the real question is can somebody get rich or do you think this is the vision in the future?

Jure Grahek
No, you’re not going to get rich on ZEBEDEE and that’s one of the to me wonderful things really about this being a bitcoin play and not a crypto play just very very different for this exact reason. This is not a situation where you would get a token and then expect it to explode in value. That’s how people got you know rich I don’t think many people got rich on plaY TO earn. But that’s how some people made significant money. That’s not going to happen here right? No single game has the power to move bitcoin. The price is that much in the way that it can happen when you have a token that just belongs to a single game and then you can have you know a relatively small amount of people. It’s a couple thousand really affect the price and it explodes and you cash out. Great. But then in that situation. There’s always also someone getting screwed. You can’t have asset appreciation. You know prices going up up up up up without someone paying for that. That’s not how economics works and that’s not what we want to do at ZEBEDEE. That’s why we say we’re not a crypto business. We’re not an investment thing. We are a fintech. Power utility. But for all intents and purposes, you earn what you get in that one moment people can earn so some that are significant to them for example in our counter-strike integration. We had people from Brazil you know, earning. Let’s say $100 a week.

By playing a lot and being really really good and for them that was enough to like pay the rent on their house and stuff because they live in Brazil in maybe a smaller town but there was even from those guys there was never any expectation. Oh, I’m getting rich. It’s more like I’m doing something I’d be doing anyway playing games. And I get something extra in return for my time and it’s more rewarding and maybe you can buy something from it and definitely we see people buying tons and tons of stuff you know with their sets from ZEBEDEE they actually like to spend their bitcoin. They don’t you know, really. Keep it as an investment or send it to exchanges more commonly they would buy stuff online and I think you know that’s why we’re a fintech and not and not a crypto business.

SuperScale
Yeah, it sounds very cool that you know you’re actually not saying that everybody will get rich but actually seeing the money or you know the cryptocurrency being in use you know I’ll be very happy when I was 15 years old playing counter strike or world warcraft you know and just. Earning some small amount of money for the thousands of hours that I spend there you know and just getting whatever some small amount you know tens of bucks. It will be still very useful and I’ll be happy. You know that I got some exchange from the time.

Jure Grahek
Yeah, that’s the basic idea behind it, right? And then you know in some games like in the counter strike integration you can make like nice amounts of money you know, depending on the server depending on the level of competitive play.

SuperScale
That I put in a game.

Jure Grahek
But then most games that are life on ZEBEDEE right now including the one we’re working on with you guys are casual mobile games and that are going to pay you like a fraction of a cent at a time and you’re going to play quite a lot before you even get I don’t know $5 and in those situations.

SuperScale
Nope.

Jure Grahek
It’s really not about what am I going to do with this money. It’s just a better gaming experience because it’s ah such a nice little dopamine hit right? And even if you’re um, aware that it’s no money at all the psychology of it still works and the unit bias Also really really works in our favour because.

SuperScale
Um.

Jure Grahek
Satoshi’s are at such a tiny amount of money like 100000000 satoshis are one bitcoin this means one thousand satoshis is right now. Unfortunately, only about ¢16 nevertheless when you’re playing it doesn’t feel like I just got ¢16 it feels like I got 1000 of something and it’s about that experience you know and we’re not trying to bullshit anyone that it’s something it isn’t it’s that in the casual games. It’s that. But if someone thinks they’re going to play a fun little game on the bus and make a thousand dollars then maybe they should see a shrink or something that’s like just not going to happen. You know if someone says it will they’re scamming you probably.

SuperScale
Yeah, yeah, um, in terms of Target audience. Do you know what is the basic target audience for the casual game on mobile versus counter strike for example and are there any strict or huge differences? Between these 2 gaps that you see you know for your fintech platform.

Jure Grahek
Yeah, absolutely. But I think it’s not really related to the bitcoin component. It’s just the nature of the game so casual games attract you know, casual gamers. Lots of also people who are not super tech-savvy. Um. You know we know that these days like for example, match 3 games and puzzle games are played mostly by middle-aged women. Ah and I don’t think many middle-aged women play counters strike counter strike is a hardcore competitive game when you add money to it like instantly in the game for anyone that joins it just gets more competitive. So for example, when we released the counter strike integration I was able to play and be kind of okay in no middle of the pack today if I go on the servers I’m just getting Killedil instantly because you know some semipro-level kids out of Brazil figured out they can make little pocket money with this and they’re just like. Dominant as hell. So very different audiences. Um, but yeah, like I said it’s more on the game side and then in terms of ZEBEDEE and the bitcoin component. Our business is essential to build. Payments infrastructure and to build user experience on top of that. So if we do our job well enough it shouldn’t matter if you know anything about bitcoin or if you know anything about fintech or not because the experience of signing up with Zebody and connecting it to a game is so easy that.

Like anyone can figure it out. It’s similar to signing in with Google to a service.

SuperScale
Yeah, and you mentioned Brazil a couple of times is that your main market?

Jure Grahek
Well, not the main one is just that we were talking about counter strike a little bit and that is huge in Brazil however, it is a super significant market. Um, Brazil is only around 10% of our user base. But it’s like 25% of all payment volumes. Our platform is so highly engaged superfruit. They also have very good financial infrastructure in Brazil so they’re kind of taxed more chivvied than Americans and Europeans when it comes to things like instant payments and bitcoin.

SuperScale
All right? do think that is the reason why it is like the okay main market. The main transaction is because they have a better infrastructure.

Jure Grahek
now I think it’s a psychological thing. They’re just more accustomed to it. Um, so and also the like always emerging markets will be more into play and earn games for the very obvious reason that. To me, $10 is not a lot but to someone in a small Brazilian town or to someone in India or the Philippines that’s actually a significant amount.

SuperScale
Yeah, um, and in terms of casual game. The main market is also Brazil if not what is it then?

Jure Grahek
It’s hard to say what the main market is you know it’s always this question in casual gains scale versus you know, the value of the users. Um, so like our biggest market is actually the United States about 30% of all our users are there. But. If we want it now to kind of aggressively scale and just say oh let’s just get a bunch of users the markets we would probably go for would be India Philippines Indonesia you know those are markets with a lot of mobile phone penetration. And very high adoption of mobile gaining.

SuperScale
No, and in terms of like technology that you have and for example also the legal ramifications or anything like that do you have any preference for the ages or the market where you would like to see your user base grow?

Jure Grahek
Well, compliance is a big part of what we do and unfortunately that sometimes means we can do everything we wanted to right? So there are still some markets where we’re not present. ZEBEDEE is mostly global but not completely. Um. A big one that I would personally love to see us in and we’re not right now is Vietnam um, and also some african countries but we are slowly working through that establishing strategic partnerships in those locations with players like you know, exchanges that hold certain licenses. And that will over time enable us to just be everywhere in terms of preference at the end of the day we’re a service provider and why we have a strong consumer component in the sense that we have a thing called a ZEBEDEE of the app where you can discover games that are powered by us. And it’s also like a wallet we are not in the business of acquiring retail users the games do that for us. So what I’m trying to say is it kind of doesn’t matter what we want in terms of geography and audiences and stuff it matters what our partners want. We just have to make sure we understand those needs and that we’re supporting them.

SuperScale
Yeah, and do you have any plans for integrating more partners? Do you have any partnerships coming in.

Jure Grahek
Yes, and yes, we have a lot in the pipeline. We’ve recently expanded our ah bd team quite a bit so going out there quite aggressively into the market because we feel the platforms are ready and the tools are there. Um. Just announced a new app like the significant app. An update yesterday where now you have the option to buy gift cards in the ZEBEDEE the app I think that was a significant upgrade. Um. You know, paired with the fact that we have credit card purchases in the app as well or like top-ups why that’s significant to bring in more partners is a problem that we used to have is people would say yeah great. Our players are going to earn bitcoin. But what are they going to do with it right? What’s the value proposition here? Really. Outside of just this dopamine hit you get from it and now we can say well just open the ZEBEDEE app you can buy literally anything right in this roundabout way through gift cards. So maybe Amazon won’t let you buy stuff with bitcoin but the bitcoin you earn. Zebadi you can use our app without ever leaving it to buy an Amazon gift card and here you go spend it right? Or maybe you’re playing cs go and you made some money and you want a new skin for your gun just buy a steam gift card. So I’m very excited about that because it was literally yesterday.

SuperScale
Um, yeah.

Jure Grahek
And I do think it’ll unlock Um, you know a lot for us also on the partnerships front and then it’s just about us going out there and being patient and educating the gaming industry about what we’re doing because it is a pretty novel concept and it is a little hard to grasp why this is. Like a fintech play Why this is a payments Thing. You’re putting in your app where we’re not shilling you a token or any crypto stuff. Whatsoever. Um, So yeah, it’s both opened some doors and been a challenge at the same time right? depending on. The attitude of the partner. You’re talking to.

SuperScale
And in terms of platform. Um, any preferable platform is going to be mobile phones is going to console Pc Vr or you know what’s your vision.

Jure Grahek
In this Regard. We are a little bit limited by the market out there. So steam will right now not allow any sort of games that have crypto in it on their platform This probably going to change over time. But for now that’s definitely a limiting factor right? So any. Ah Pc game or any game really that’s markets primarily through steam that company is not going to want to integrate with us. Um, so that’s definitely a consideration but outside of that. We just want to be agnostic. We’re open to anything right now we really figured out our value propositions and product market fit in the mobile gaming sector so probably over the next six months we’re going to retain our focus on that primarily but over time. Definitely want to expand into more hardcore pc games into the console and then the holy grail of it. All would be a mmo with like full real money in the game economy I think that would be truly revolutionary right?

SuperScale
It feels like it goes back to your guild war times you know having something like fin tank that where you could I talked about the same thing if I could you know pull put back the value that I put in in terms of time and having some amount of money you know that would be Amazing. So. Yeah, but we’ll see where the future of and Mmos in general. Go You know it’s so I mean there’s still going to be market. But we see a lot of and Mmos going to be released on mobile so who knows where that goes.

Jure Grahek
Yeah, yeah.
And cross-platform right? So maybe you know the platform we want to be on is not even the main question it’s more like which mechanics are best suited for this technology in multiplayer games where you have player-to-player interactions and trade. Um, it’s quite obvious, right? You can just use bitcoin as your in-game currency in casual mobile games. It’s also obvious you basically make a revenue share with the player you pay some of the ad revenue or in purchase revenue back to them. You know, not instantly directly. But that’s really what it is right at the end of the day. The game dev is sharing their revenue with the player in exchange they get much better user retention and they can monetize that player more. Um, but outside of those you know segments where it’s super obvious. There’s a lot of like. Mystery land and a lot of games where bitcoin does not make sense right? Like if you have a very narrative-driven single-player game like an adventure game. How do you plug bitcoin into that I’m not sure. There’s a solution or we haven’t figured it out but the beauty of being a service provider. And like a b two b company is we do not necessarily have to figure it out. We have to create these tools that are flexible enough and easy to use enough and someone else is going to come up with a solution that we wouldn’t have thought of in 1000000 years there’s super creative people out there in the gaming industry.

Jure Grahek
And our hope is you know someone’s going to figure out how to stick bitcoin into every single genre.

SuperScale
No and have you seen any kind of ah abuse you know of the system or you know the service that you brought in a game that you have to somehow tackle and you know fix it?

Jure Grahek
Oh yes, big time. Of course, anytime you put money into a game people are going to try to exploit it. Um so Bot Mitigation is a big part of what we do and of our offering. Um.

And this goes back to our earlier talk when I was saying this is not a token that’ll appreciate in value for some of these web 3 games Bots are not necessarily a bad thing right? Maybe they can drive some activity. Maybe it helps you know with some hype and it pumps the value of the token for us where this is literally just money. And people are just buying it and distributing it buying bitcoin contributing it kind of immediately Bots are a very very big problem. But if you see it as such and you address it as such there are solutions in the same way that cheating is a problem. In competitive games and that’s mostly been solved right? Um, So we’re solving that but it’s definitely an arms Race. You come up with a solution to block Bots and farmers. They come up with a way around it. You come up with a better solution and so on and so forth. But we’re already quite far along on that journey and it’s definitely a service. We also provide for our gaming partners.

SuperScale
Yeah, awesome. Um, That’s one of the challenges obviously and it’s always going to be there I Guess um, but overall business challenges. Could you say something? What are the most? Relevant or important that super scale perhaps help you understand either product data Marketing. What do? What do you see as the biggest topic that we help you with.

Jure Grahek
For me. Super scale. The relationship is about getting access to this really wide array of knowledge and expertise that you guys have on your team. Um, primarily we needed some help figuring out the Ua aspect. We just did not have the internal resources to go out and test how these different Networks behave you know with a crypto game. So Just you know, understanding that landscape on the Ua side and being able to work with those Networks. You know. Independently quite on your side where I was just saying. Let’s try this. Let’s try this. Let’s try that and then your guys kind of made it happen and then also on the other side making sure those data pipelines are set up really properly which is a bit of a challenge when you’re introducing bitcoin rewards. Because now you have to account for that as part of your spending and that’s not necessarily as easy as it sounds when you’re maybe doing stuff like adjusting the size of the bitcoin payout based on the value of the user. So to make sure you’re really doing a revenue share where you’re not you know, spending more bitcoin on the user than they’re making money that gets kind of complex so that was the other side of the value prop here for me specifically as it relates to Superscale. So the Ua side and then.

Jure Grahek
Really tight data setup where we can have this super sweet Dashboard You guys made for us and we can you know have a very simplified view of what’s going on in the game profit and loss retention Um, and that really did not require it. Much expertise is in guidance from us which us would have been very hard because we are not a game studio but here with you. We’re working with a game right? So give that whole combo.

SuperScale
Yep, great Thanks for your answer I mean I believe we can wrap it up here. Um, I would like to say thank you very much It was super interesting to hear about you know your idea about the future and you know where the. Even with the crypto winter and the whole fin tank and crypto stands and where you believe it will go I see still big potential no matter what? how happens in a world of crypto gaming or crypto in general? Um again, every player should be happy that they can get something back. Out of the time they spend in the game. So again, thank you very much for coming. We appreciate it and we hope we will work together for many many months and years you know and expand our partnership in the future.

Jure Grahek
Yeah, same here. So thank you for having me I would do my best to bring more games into this system that we now kind of set up with your guys because that’s really the goal for me right? It’s not for us to scale this shitty little game that we have called Seratobin. The goal is to bring in lots and lots and lots of games and scale the entire ZEBEDEE  ecosystem in a way. So I hope we can work together on that and just you know if you need anything else for me I’m here you know where to reach me available.

SuperScale
Awesome Jure! Thank you very much um, have a great day and take care bye bye.