Space Misfit CEO: you buy a blueprint to build ships, not a ship

Ashton Addison: What is Space Misfit, and what inspired you to build it?▶ 00:00

Samuel Stebbins: Space Misfit is a massively multiplayer play-to-earn blockchain game. We're creating a really fun space shooter. It's not a simulation, so you won't see realistic flight controls. We have procedurally generated worlds where players can immerse themselves, fight NPCs, fight each other and battle for resources out in space. I played a lot of EVE Online and Elite Dangerous, and I'm a big lover of space. I wanted to make a metaverse that has games inside it, including a first-person shooter, all wrapped up in the same storyline.

Ashton: How do you balance building a game with integrating blockchain, and how much have you prioritized gameplay?▶ 01:56

Samuel: Gameplay is key. A lot of play-to-earn games skip the play part, and they're more of a DeFi application than anything else. We want to be able to say that even if play to earn wasn't there, players would still play our game. The markets are all over the place, and a game that is only about earning does itself a disservice. We want to bring on the traditional gamer, because that's where mass adoption will come from. Players can come on and play without linking wallets. If they want to get deeper into play to earn, they can link their wallets, and the community helps them through that process.

Ashton: How will you keep players engaged for the long term, rather than a boom followed by a drop-off?▶ 09:48

Samuel: It all goes back to how fun your game is. Players might choose a game that earns them more, but those games aren't sustainable if they're not fun, and players end up treating them like a job. There will be plenty of opportunities to earn here too, but the focus should be on gameplay. We hold events with drops, and players spend hours upon hours in the game. The feedback we always get is that it's really fun to play.

Ashton: How do the NFTs work in the game, and how do they tie into the marketplace?▶ 05:54

Samuel: We're doing things differently from a lot of space games. When you buy an NFT from us, you're not buying a ship. You're buying a blueprint that lets you build as many ships as you want. As players get better at crafting, they can list those ships on the player-driven marketplace and sell them for our token to players who don't own blueprints. You're basically buying the rights to become a builder in our game.

Ashton: There are multiple tokens in the ecosystem. How do they fit together?▶ 06:34

Samuel: We have two tokens. The Crown token launches in January. It's a staking token and also a DAO token, and it's used in the marketplace. A new player picks up some tokens from an exchange and starts buying ships. Bits is an in-game currency that can only be earned in the game. It's used to buy fuel and services, and crafters need a lot of it to build ships. Crafters buy bits from grinders who earn them in the game, and crafters earn Crown tokens on the player-driven marketplace. That gives us a full circle between the two tokens.

Ashton: How long have you been building this, how big is the team, and where is the game now?▶ 04:07

Samuel: We started in 2019 with a small team. NFT pre-sales gave us some initial funding, but we've basically been bootstrapping the whole thing. Four or five of us built the game from 2019, and since the summer of 2021 we've grown to nearly 18 people. Our token launch will coincide with our player-driven marketplace. Players can use their tokens in the game right away to buy ships, items, modules and turrets, rather than us launching an IDO and having people wait to use their tokens.

Ashton: What's coming with the marketplace in 2022?▶ 11:16

Samuel: The marketplace is the backbone of our play to earn. It's in testing with our internal team now, and we should launch it in a few weeks. Players also earn drops we call telemetry, which work like experience points and make you a better crafter. So you need to own the blueprint, but you also need to put in a lot of work in the game. We're on the Harmony network, which has great technology and high transactions per second. It's a gasless network, so players can exchange tokens without paying a tremendous amount in fees.

Ashton: How can people get involved in the IDO, and what should they expect from the token?▶ 15:39

Samuel: We'll launch through launchpads, and we're talking to exchanges that will list our token after the IDO. We're very conservative on our token and price, and we're not being overly aggressive on valuation. These are game tokens. They aren't focused on speculation. They're focused on using them in the game to grow and progress.

Ashton: Looking three to five years out, where do you see Space Misfit in the game industry?▶ 13:21

Samuel: I want a metaverse of games inside, rather than our studio making multiple games with multiple tokens. I want to scale vertically, with players walking on planets, managing outposts and resources, and shipping those resources to stations that hit the marketplace. Players can take on different roles, like trader, grower, bounty hunter or pirate. We've stayed very lean and done a lot with very little, and the funding we're acquiring this year will give us years of runway. Our look is lower poly and not so serious, so there will be a lot of funny moments. It's my passion, it's my baby.