AMA Recap: My Neighbor ALICE

Basic information
- Time: July 8th, 2021 at 5:00 PM GMT+8
- Project name: My Neighbor Alice
- Host: Luke from BSC Army
- Guest speakers:
- Speaker 1: Loraine Gauteul – Game Producer at My Neighbor Alice
- Speaker 2: Lenny Petterson – CMO at My Neighbor Alice
- Main content:
- Part 1: Project overview
- Part 2: Business plan
- Part 3: Marketing strategy
- Part 4: Community Q&A
Main Content
Part 1: Project Overview
Luke: Q1. What exactly is My Neighbor ALICE?
Loraine: The game My Neighbor ALICE is a multiplayer builder game where you are able to buy and own a virtual piece of land. You can collect, build exciting items and meet new friends. It’s inspired by the successful game “Animal Crossing,” released last year on Twitch.
My Neighbor ALICE combines the best of two worlds because you’re gonna be able to have a fun narrative that regular players can enjoy the gameplay experience and an ecosystem for players who want to collect and trade NFT. They don’t need to know about blockchain or have any idea of what NFT is to play the game.
Lenny: Our goal is to make My Neighbor ALICE not just a game for blockchain players but a game where we can introduce blockchain to millions of traditional players. That’s the goal, vision we have for the game, what we set out to do, and what we aim to succeed with.
Luke: Q2. Why did your team start this project?
Loraine: When we started with it, we didn’t see a game out there that already had a mass audience appeal. So we come from the gaming side, which’s a traditional gaming studio. And as I said, we do believe there’s a potential to build a blockchain game with mass audience appeal. I think the main reason we started is to introduce blockchain technology to millions of people without them actually knowing what blockchain is. They’re just experiencing a great game with great features.
Luke: Q3. How many members are there in My Neighbor ALICE? How have you been working together to bring this cool new project to the community?
Loraine: We currently have 17 members in our team, of which 13 people are developers. We are continuously adding to the team with key talents, so please check out our Antler Interactive LinkedIn page for an open position or contact us via email. We also have a strong network of strategic partners and advisors supporting this project, not to mention, for example, our parent company, ChromaWay.
Luke: Q4. Please share with us more information about your products and their future?
Loraine: The main product that we’re working on is the My Neighbor ALICE game currently in production. We also worked on the mobile companion app, which we will be releasing on Monday, and it’s called Alice’s Mysterious Seed. It’s a free-to-play game where you’re growing your NFTs, and these NFTs will be usable in-game. You can watch the following video to know more about the features.
In the game, you’re able to control these tiny characters of yours, and you’re entering the town. The town is the main hub where you’re gonna be able to buy your lands. As you can see, it’s inspired by the nordic environment like Scandinavia, Sweden, Norway. It’s recognizable with the red houses. We aim to have a gameplay experience where you can go fishing, be a beekeeper, catch bugs, and farm. Here is Alice – the main character, so you’re gonna be able to talk to her. These are some of the features of the game.
Of course, you can also see a chatbox. Because it’s a multiplayer game, you’re going to be able to interact with other players.
The NFT will, for example, be an object that you can place on your islands. There’re limited objects that you can place on your island, and you can also trade them.
Lenny: There will be an in-game marketplace for all of those things.
Luke: Q5. Can you name the three main functions you think would make My Neighbor ALICE stand out from similar games or products?
Lenny: We really want to create the accessibility of the game when it comes to everything from the art style, the ambiance of the game, and how we onboard people. This game will stand out by how accessible it’s gonna feel and be for players.
Loraine: The game’s main goal is to make it accessible to really show that blockchain is not that complicated and we can get great value from blockchain technology. That will make the game’s interesting gameplay.
Lenny: The Antler Interactive working together with ChromaWay and then Chromia, that’s definitely a competitive edge that we have. It will make this project stand out.
The third thing, we also aim at taking NFTs to the next level, and we have exciting news to share in the future about that too.
Luke: Q6. What are the features that you’re planning for the products?
Loraine: The gameplay features that I have announced are the ones that are for sure we plan to have. As mentioned, it’s a live game; you will have updates on the different other features that we can talk about in the future.
Lenny: Once we go live with the game next year, we will listen a lot to the feedback we get and what new features are in demand. There will be continuous updates to the game and very much do so based on the feedback that we see what people to interact with and how they will be.
Luke: Q7. How are you gonna generate revenue with your projects?
Lenny: The game has a free-to-play model where the main monetization will come from in-game purchases from the marketplace, and there you can buy things such as tools, construction materials, exclusive buildings, clothes, and customization for your avatar in the game. We’ve chosen this because it’s a proven business model within gaming, and we believe it’s best suited for the mass adoption of My Neighbor ALICE.
Then obviously, we have our marketplace, and we also just recently concluded our very first land sale. We will very shortly announce the next one as well. So that’s also an additional revenue stream.
Luke: Q8. Please share about your tokenomics!
Lenny: You can check out our tokenomics published on our website and whitepaper. When it comes to the max supply, that’s 100 million tokens, and when it comes to the team and advisors, we have 50% of that locked for that.
Luke: Q9. If you were speaking to a community of investors, what would be the three main reasons investors should invest in your projects?
Lenny: Thanks. That’s a good question! In general, we don’t give investment advice but what we can share with you is why we believe in this project.
Our biggest advantage is the team’s experience in making quality and celebrated games on multiple platforms. In combination with the partnership, we are secured with the crypto blockchain side. I think that gives us a very good foundation to stand on.
Secondly, we as a team, as a company, and also our advisors we’re all in it for the long term, and the first main launch of the game already mentioned will be in Quarter 1 next year, and that’s I mean that’s just the beginning of the journey.
After that, My Neighbor ALICE will be a live game with continuous features and events added to keep both players and our overall community engaged.
Loraine: We strongly believe that the game we’re developing will be fun and keep engaging players whether they’re playing it or watching it. Because as mentioned before, we are making a game that is about the blockchain and how we can design a blockchain together with the gameplay. It is a key to long-term success.
Part 2: Business Plan
Luke: Q10. What have you got so far on your roadmap?
Lenny: On the roadmap side, it’s going well, and we work hard to be in line with the roadmap. However, blockchain is still a new technology that we’re experimenting with, and when you build something so new, it’s difficult to make an early estimation. There’s really none or very least few existing benchmarks. We spent time researching how we can place our milestones and so on in order to make the best game possible.
We recently concluded our very first land sale. We will shortly announce the next one, and we’re also planning on our first open playtest of My Neighbor ALICE which will be a pre-alpha version of the game. We aim to have it in late August.
Luke: Q11. After the playtest, what would be the remaining steps to your planned roadmap this year?
Lenny: Our main focus for this year is to develop the main game. One goal is also to run an open playtest, as we mentioned. We will gather important feedback from the users. Ultimately, the community will play the game, so we want to listen to what they have to say about the game to implement it in the best way. Another goal is to roll out more landscapes and add more landowners in the neighborhood of My Neighbor ALICE.
Luke: Q12. How are you choosing the current tech partners?
Loraine: The main partnership has been with our parent company, ChromaWay, and their blockchain Chromia. It is quite an easy choice and a natural fit, so to speak.
Luke: Q13. Let’s talk a little bit about Chromia. Are they handling the blockchain foundation that you are using to develop your games because I can see that you mentioned them quite sometimes in our session today?
Loraine: Chromia is letting us use technology that is suitable for the My neighbor ALICE game. For example, the NFT protocol in which we can create NFT gaming assets.
Lenny: Another benefit is the speed of the Chromia blockchain, which is very suitable for gaming. It’s much faster. It allows us to put so much of the game logic on the blockchain. It’s much more for the tech people in our team.
Luke: Q14. Are you facing any challenges during the operations of your project?
Lenny: When you build and create something new, there are always challenges because it hasn’t been done before, but I think we’re overcoming them really well and finding consensus on what needs to be done. It’s going really well, and I can’t say enough good things about the partnerships.
It’s that partnership that has, I mean always when you build something technologically advanced, it’s hard to find the right key talent, but with the help of ChromaWay, we managed to do that quite early in the project that’s been a huge benefit.
Luke: Q15. Can you also give us one example of the obstacle that you have faced during your operation and the story about how you overcome it?
Lenny: It’s finding the right talent. It’s especially when there’s high competition for a really good developer, for example. Again, We overcame that by working together with ChromaWay and Chromia and their strong network.
Part 3: Marketing Strategy
Luke: Q16. How have you been able to gather and create your own supporting community, and how has your community grown so far?
Lenny: The interest has been really, really high especially considering we’re still in production, but now it’s gone really, really great, and currently, we have over 100 000 followers across Telegram and Twitter. It just continues to grow, and I really can’t thank our community enough. They expect and demand a lot from us as they should, but their support and feedback are really of great value to us and something we really appreciate. Our other social media channels such as youtube and medium are growing as well and going forward.
We’re definitely going to be publishing more game development content for our community to watch, especially after the pre-alpha’s open testing in late August.
Luke: Q17. How did you maintain such a general connection between you and your community?
Lenny: First, it is to set up the right team to work with the community. Our community management team is doing very well. We’re also identifying key opinion leaders within crypto that we wanted to work with. It was definitely a key success factor in the beginning. Furthermore, we are supported by the existing community that Chromia already had as well. Another thing is three initiatives we’ve rolled out to expand our local communities. Now we also have an official Telegram group in both Russian and Turkish languages, and we’re going to keep adding localized communities going forward.
We’ve also had a lot of community events that are fun with good rewards. It has also been a way for us to introduce characters in the game before the game is actually launched.
We’re going to work to grow the community globally and launch new initiatives. I’d really like to shout out to our community management team for the great work they are doing.
Luke: Q18. Before we wrap this session up, would there be anything you want to share with the fellow project developers who are also purchasing their dreams to do a new project?
Lenny: I guess just go out and do it. I mean, there are so many opportunities out there right now. If you have a dream and something you want to fulfill, just bring it out there to the community and work together with them to envision that or realize that vision together.
Part 4: Q&A
(In this part, we collect five most interesting questions from the community to task My Neighbor Alice’s speakers)
Question 19: Since we can exchange in the games, are there any risks that our tokens in the game might be stolen?
Loraine: It’s not more or less secure than any other fully decentralized app. We don’t touch the player money or the player token as everything will be decentralized.
Question 20: Today, users are increasingly concerned about privacy issues when there are many user data leaks in the world. So how do you solve this problem?
Lenny: We don’t get any sensitive data. However, the game is on the blockchain, so it is public. That’s my short answer to that.
Question 21: Is there any plan to expand your business into other communities like Polygon Ecosystems, HECO, Kucoin Chain, etc.?
Loraine: Chromia is planning to add multi-chain support. At the moment, Chromia is issuing NFT on BSC and Ethereum, so we will partner with these chains first.
Question 22: What are the main innovations that the game offers that differentiate it from other games that use blockchain technology and that, in turn, involve NFTs?
Loraine: It’s a decentralized metadata on-chain, and it allows advanced on-chain logic. Other traditional games might be creating complex mechanisms for the gamers. However, with blockchain technology, we can implement this logic simply. For example, giving rarity to objects is not something that you can do in traditional gaming. You can do it, but you’re not giving it a real value, and here you’re gonna be able to do this. I guess that’s what I can give as an example.
Question 23: Since Alice is focusing on Game and NFT development, I would like to ask about your intentions if you want to partner with any streamers or KOLs to promote the project?
Lenny: The short answer is yes. As we said before, this game we believe is both fun to play and fun to watch, so it’s definitely very suitable for that type of partnership. We definitely plan to partner up with many streamers around the world when we launch the full game. I am really excited about that, and if someone out there is really interested in being a partner, please feel free to reach out to us on Telegram, and we’ll have a look if there’s a good fit.
Luke: Q24. It’s been really informative, and I really enjoyed spending time with you. Before we end this session and wrap this up, could there be anything that you want to share with our viewers today?
Lenny: Please have a lookout for Alice’s Mysterious Seed, which is a mobile and browser companion mini-game. It’s going to be live on Monday, July 13th, so I’m really excited about that.
Secondly, please have a lookout when our exclusive NFT collection launches on the finance marketplace, and thirdly our open playtest that we’re gonna have in late August.
Loraine: I think it was really great to be able to talk about the game here. And I mean, as being a gamer, it’s really great to be in this experiment with blockchain, and we’re gamers, of course, so it’s great to be able to add this layer to the blockchain environment. It’s really exciting.
CONCLUSION
Up to now, My neighbor ALICE has had outstanding growth with an ever-expanding ecosystem, promising to thrive in the near future.
Disclaimers: Writers’ opinions are solely their own and do not constitute any financial advice, investment advice, or trading advice.
BSC Army strongly recommends that you do your own research and seek professional advice from a financial advisor where appropriate.