Selected questions and answers from the AMA
1. Please introduce yourself and your project. What is GOB? Why did you choose that name? Is there a story behind it?
Hello all! I’m Mark, a co-founder of Goons of Balatroon. We started brainstorming the project in May 2021 and our goal from day one was to drive some utility into animal avatar PFPs (profile pics). At that time, many projects were coming out to attempt to emulate BAYC but we felt utility is the one thing really missing, most important for us. Being hardcore gamers for a long time, and crypto investors since 2017, we opted for a collection of Bulls and Bears that will fight each other in a trading card game. After successfully raising $2.2 million USD in the NFT launch in August 2021, we got to work and have been building our world since then. A lot of things have been added to the roadmap and it’ll take me hours to explain it all! In terms of the name, that was a wild couple weeks. We pretty much did nothing but think of names… some will really stupid, others were hilarious but Goons of Balatroon really spoke to us!
2. How will your project stand out with so many GameFi and metaverse projects launching at the same time? What makes your project different from other competitors?
We have expanded our roadmap from just a trading card game to an entire metaverse, getting this spark after our partnership announcement with Vulcan Forged. They will help us build out a full 3D metaverse experience by end of year/Q1 2023.
But why are we different? That’s a good question. First of all, our flagship game, the trading card game, is focused on being fun-first, play-to-earn second. We aim to onboard the larger market of global gamers who have been craving a game like Hearthstone with unique gameplay features and wacky characters. This brings me to the second point, which is our world – it is fun, crazy, more adult-oriented than the competition. People love our core NFTs, the Goons, and our card art is pretty awesome! Once you experience opening up a pack of cards, this question will answer itself.
3. Let’s get to know more about not only the project but the great team behind it. Tell us more about your team. How many members and what are their backgrounds?
We started off as 3 co-founders and 1 NFT artist, but have now grown to over 20 people of developers, artists, analysts and more! It’ll take too long to dive into each member so I’ll stick to the co-founders for now.
I come from a software development background having worked as an Analyst/PM at Pokerstars, a premier online casino. I know the software cycle process inside out, from start to finish. We are using everything I learned there on a daily basis to build our website tools and the game as well.
Evgeni, known as Mr. Z in our Discord, comes from a Data Science background, having started his career as an analyst and then moved on to become a leader in the data science department of a big digital marketing firm. His experience with data, critical thinking and leadership is key to our success; without data, you can’t make smart decisions.
Alex, known as iam516 in our Discord, is a business development machine. He started his career as an analyst at IBM before quickly moving onto building tech teams for start-ups. He’s been at it for over a decade and that experience has been instrumental in us expanding our ecosystem and growing massively!
4. Can you share some details about the recent major achievements made by your project? Also, what is your future project roadmap & targets?
We’ve just concluded a fundraising campaign, raising $2.46 million from big names like Merit Circle, Jun Capital and Vulcan Forged! Their network and experience is going to be instrumental in the growth of our $GOB token, which is set to launch soon.
In terms of roadmap, we are almost at the finish line with our game beta and that’s a massive launch for us, very exciting. Then, we focus on our land sales of Balatroon (our metaverse) and another faction is coming sometime in the near future. Additionally, we are building a land battler game that will give utility to the land and that’s one of the newest additions to the roadmap which we didn’t expect but will play a massive role in our world! The 3D metaverse experience will come closer to end of year and more games are being thought of already!
5. I’m wondering, does the game require a lot of capital to start? Can you give us an estimate of how much capital a gamer should put up to start your game?
The game is free-2-play. Any player can join and receive the base 40 cards to play with, and earn. However, if you wish to expand your earning potential, you can purchase any of our partner NFTs for a multiplier on rewards, or get a Goon for the maximum 10x rewards! Therefore, you don’t need much capital to play. The way the cards are constructed, a free player can take on a whale and win if their strategy is superior!
6. Can we know about GOB game levels and its difficulty and what are the requirements i should have to play the game ?
There are no game levels, per se. Free-2-play users get the standard 40 cards deck and can expand it by purchasing NFT cards, of which there are 260 to choose from. You can play the game without any NFTs but more cards will enable better chances to win and partner/Goon NFTs unlock your maximum $GOB token earning potential. There is a ranking system to ensure similar-skill players get matched and that will be explained more in the coming month.
7. Could you kindly share how you plan to bring gamers and non-gamers alike to invest in this project? (Mark Web2 vs Web3 approach)
This is one of the most important questions for us, and something we’ve been planning since the beginning. The game is intended to be web2, with a web3 earnings layer on top. This means we target the global gamer crowd by giving them some familiar feels of existing card games but add more chaos, more craziness and they’re sure to love it. Being a web2 game makes it easier to onboard guilds and expand the userbase significantly. It also helps us get on the Apple and Google app stores much quicker, with no mention of crypto/NFTs anywhere. However, being a blockchain-based game, we absolutely feature the web3 layer as well, where players can earn while playing the game. This layer also includes NFT leasing which is where non-gamers can earn while sharing access to their gaming assets.
8. The Play2Earn concept has become popular in the crypto space with the emergence of very attractive games that offer the opportunity to generate profits by playing. But what makes #GOB stand out and be better than all the others? Why should we access their gaming platform?
Our game strives to be fun-first, p2e second. This is a simple yet incredibly important distinction. For a p2e game to succeed, the token must be healthy as it is th driving force for new users to join. However, what happens when the game isn’t fun? Why would players pay for in-game assets when they could just farm tokens? We solve this problem by making the game fun to play, something the p2e space desperately needs. This enables the ecosystem to grow with gamers who spend tokens on in-game assets and help to balance the p2e economy. The result of a growing network of gamers is higher volumes, more earnings for GOB and faster development of new and exciting expansions/games. This all helps to have a balanced economy, which is what we intend to have.
9. Could you kindly share how you plan to bring gamers and non-gamers alike to invest in this project?
This is one of the most important questions for us, and something we’ve been planning since the beginning. The game is intended to be web2, with a web3 earnings layer on top. This means we target the global gamer crowd by giving them some familiar feels of existing card games but add more chaos, more craziness and they’re sure to love it. Being a web2 game makes it easier to onboard guilds and expand the userbase significantly. It also helps us get on the Apple and Google app stores much quicker, with no mention of crypto/NFTs anywhere. However, being a blockchain-based game, we absolutely feature the web3 layer as well, where players can earn while playing the game. This layer also includes NFT leasing which is where non-gamers can earn while sharing access to their gaming assets.
10. The Play2Earn concept has become popular in the crypto space with the emergence of very attractive games that offer the opportunity to generate profits by playing. But what makes #GOB stand out and be better than all the others? Why should we access their gaming platform?
Our game strives to be fun-first, p2e second. This is a simple yet incredibly important distinction. For a p2e game to succeed, the token must be healthy as it is th driving force for new users to join. However, what happens when the game isn’t fun? Why would players pay for in-game assets when they could just farm tokens? We solve this problem by making the game fun to play, something the p2e space desperately needs. This enables the ecosystem to grow with gamers who spend tokens on in-game assets and help to balance the p2e economy. The result of a growing network of gamers is higher volumes, more earnings for GOB and faster development of new and exciting expansions/games. This all helps to have a balanced economy, which is what we intend to have.
11. In these NFT games for making money, earning tokens is important. However, when there is too much, the value of your token can drop and then inflation occurs. How does #GOB work to avoid in-game inflation to maintain a relatively stable economy?
Critical question, answered partly in the previous question. One thing I can definitely add is we are developing an achievements (collect-2-earn) system, a land battler game and other tools to create a more-buzzing ecosystem. This will enable trading, engaging, which all help to create the necessary inflows to balance out the token emissions. It is the most complicated question in p2e but we feel we have a good grasp on what to do.
