196 | Turning Ultra into a unicorn

Jon Jordan talks to Ultra's new CEO Gus van Rijckevorsel about why the entrepreneur decided to invest in the company. He explains his ambition for Ultra, including competing with Steam and turning the platform into a unicorn that will shake up the entire games industry.[2:38] Gus van Rijckevorsel's previous career as a serial enterpreneur.[4:10] Why he created a French TV show to build his credibility.[9:02] Why Gus "fell in love" with Ultra and wanted to invest. [12:55] Previously Ultra had two co-CEOs, which wasn't the ideal structure for scaling. [16:24] Ultra's just raised $12 million in bridge finance with more funding due later in 2025.[19:29] Web2 gamers don't care about web3. They're here just to play games.[20:00] We are here to eat a chunk of Steam.[21:08] I am convinced we will make money by pleasing game developers.[22:20] We are the game distribution platform with the best technology.[23:55] Can any company compete with Steam when it's so dominant?[26:18] The three different types of gamer that Ultra will support - players, streamers and spectators.[28:52] What are the key things Ultra needs to do to drive its success in 2025?[31:35] We want people to open Ultra in the morning and have it open all day. It's the gaming OS.[32:58] Blockchain will completely change the next 50 years of the digital world. [34:50] We don't have the traffic yet, but one thing's for sure is that we will have the traffic. [35:12] As dollars are linked to the price of oil, so UOS needs to be linked to gaming.[38:15] Ultra needs to be all along the value chain. We need thousands of games on Ultra.[39:18] Ashes of Mankind is one of Ultra's exclusive titles. There will be more in future.[40:06] Call to action for the Ultra community - support us with constructive criticism.

Jon Jordan and BlockchainGamer.biz editor Jenny Jordan talk through the week's news including:[0:30] The Sandbox's Alpha 5 Season is now live with Jurassic World being the lead brand.[3:27] Ultra has raised $12 million, with more expected later in 2025.[3:57] Jon's been talking to the new CEO Gus van Rijckevorsel about his vision for the company. [7:05] How this funding will be used to generate momentum for the future funding.[9:38] Three tokens have launched this week. All of them are performing badly.[12:22] Immortal Rising 2's IMT token is down 74%. It ran a long airdrop campaign but lack utility.[13:09] At present, the only thing a token will do is drop in price, because of bad market sentiment. [14:15] Anyone who gets a free token, the only sensible thing is to sell it straight away.[15:17] GUN token was higher profile and more anticipated but is down 61%.[16:25] A controversy was GUN went live via Binance Launchpad so wasn't distributed to gamers.[18:30] RavenQuest's QUEST token also went live; down 25%.[19:35] How does this compared to February 2024 when the MAVIA token successfully went live?[24:52] 99.99% of blockchain games will fail because they can't get anyone to value their assets.[25:09] One strategy would be to only let people buy your game token from within the game.[25:44] Forgotten Runiverse will be adopting Pixels' PIXEL as its game token.[29:55] We need to educate gamers to spend tokens on in-game assets, not HODL them.[32:30] Jenny's Game of the Week is ONE Fight Arena.

Jon Jordan talks to Marco van den Heuvel, the co-founder and CEO of Beam about the formation of what was originally called Merit Circle as an Axie guild in 2021, then becoming a game investment DAO, and which rebranded as Beam in 2024 as it moved to focus on gaming infrastructure, something it will double down in 2025 with the launch of the Abu Dhabi-based Beam Ventures fund and accelerator. [2:15] Marco's journey in crypto starting with Bitcoin in 2017.[3:30] Started his first company around crypto community management.[3:45] Merit Circle started in 2021 when Axie Infinity blew up.[7:35] Merit Circle started as a guild breeding Axie but quickly expanded to other games.[9:26] It also moved from play-to-earn to become an investment DAO and now running Beam.[12:07] How much of this shift away from P2E was luck[12:44] The data showed that demand for Axies was dropping fast in fall 2021.[15:55] Did Merit Circle invest too widely? Would it have been better to put 200% into 50% of deals?[20:54] Why Merit Circle started making games like Edenhorde.[22:00] We're not a game developer. We intend to become a leading player for gaming infrastructure.[24:35] Why Merit Circle rebranded to Beam. [27:25] It also caused a strong upward valuation on the BEAM token.[28:55] How does Beam compete with Ronin, Immutable, Mythos etc?[30:27] Beam's tech stack can support multiple blockchains such as Immutable, Sophon etc.[31:58] What games should we check out? Trial Xtreme Freedom, Forgotten Playland, Rumble Arcade[34:20] Abu Dhabi-based Beam Ventures fund and accelerator is gearing up for launch in 2025.[37:56] How significant will AI agents be for blockchain gaming?

Jon Jordan and BlockchainGamer.biz editor Jenny Jordan talk through the week's news including:[0:25] Ultra has appointed a new COO, on top of the new CEO added in December 2024. [2:00] Ultra is a Steam-on-blockchain distro platform. It's suffering from the cold start problem.[3:00] Ashes of Mankind is its first party shooter, going into early access in Q2.[4:30] The role of the CEO in modern business and why Ultra's co-CEO structure didn't work.[6:40] But the new CEO and COO don't have any previous game industry experience.[8:04] Gunzilla's GUN token is going live on Binance on 31st March. [10:50] Once the mainnet is live, we'll finally get an idea how many people are playing Off The Grid.[13:32] Gunzilla has also bought Game Informer for reasons no-one can understand.[16:10] The Sandbox Alpha Season 5 goes live on 31st March with dinosaurs.[20:43] There are moves to shut down Arbitrum's Gaming Catalyst Program - DAOs a mess! [27:56] Boomland has taken over MultiversX mobile shooter Cantina Royale.[34:09] Jon's been playing Immutable MMORPG RavenQuest and enjoying it -- it's our GotW.[36:00] RavenQuest's QUEST token is going live today in-game, with a proper TGE coming "soon".[41:28] Immortal Rising 2's IMT token is live, and Jon has staked his $3-worth of the airdrop.

Jon Jordan and BlockchainGamer.biz editor Jenny Jordan talk through the week's news including:[2:07] GDC 2025 was quiet and not just for web3 gaming.[4:06] Immutable's financials for the period FY22/23 were released. [5:13] It lost $50 million on revenue of $27 million.[6:20] This compared to a loss of $31 million on sales of $19 million in FY21/22.[8:35] It still has around $140 million in cash and liquid crypto in the bank.[15:05] Immutable's revenues are rising but clearly it also needs to cut costs and have a hit game. [17:43] At least six blockchain games are now developing for console.[26:17] Gabe Leydon was talking up Apptokens at GDC 2025. Jon loves Apptokens. [30:26] Other blockchain games are already using similar features to those in the Apptokens standard.[33:20] Gabe's view is that crypto has become web2-focused. It needs to be less focused on CEXs.[36:04] Jurassic Park dinos are coming to The Sandbox in Alpha Season 5. [40:24] YGG is launching a simple Pudgy Penguins-themed Monopoly Go-style game on Abstract.

Jon Jordan and BlockchainGamer.biz editor Jenny Jordan talk through the week's news including:[0:34] Much anticipated game Wildcard dropped its whitepaper.[1:09] CEO Paul Bettner worked on Age of Empires, created Words With Friends. Very smart.[3:00] This was the first time we got insight about how its blockchain works and it's not the game. [4:08] The blockchain bit is Thousands, an integrated Twitch-like spectator platform.[4:34] Wildcard is a F2P PC/console game with cosmetic IAPs. No NFTs. No crypto. [5:40] The WC token is 100% for the community. 20% has already been airdropped. [6:32] You can stake the token and also use it for prediction markets about the game's esport events.[7:55] There will also be Wildorgs, which will act as team franchises.[8:51] It looks like Wildcard will use blockchain for the things it's good for.[10:36] It's interesting that the developer and the investors aren't getting any tokens.[12:33] While Wildcard isn't using Apptokens, we see more games using Apptoken-style controls.[14:31] Pre-registrations for Axie Infinity: Atia's Legacy have passed 2.5 million.[24:44] For a successful web3 game, you need people spending fiat currency as well.[26:06] Even in this market, some games are growing - Alien Worlds, Nine Chronicles, Axie etc.[27:42] What's interesting are games that couldn't exist without using [35:47] "If EVE Online is Rome, EVE Frontier is the building of New York," says CCP Games' CEO.[38:46] EVE Frontier: it's like CCP Games building a specific sandbox platform for EVE games.[40:25] What's really interesting is what new sort of games can we build with blockchain.

Jon Jordan talks to CCP Games’ CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson about why its forthcoming game EVE Frontier is being built open source and fully decentralized. [0:57] How and why Hilmar got interested in blockchain, starting with storing spaceships on Bitcoin.[6:04] Back in 2017, the crypto community was like the early MMOG communities.[7:00] I got more interested after the 2018 crash and I went to my first blockchain game conference.[9:07] Many MMOGs focus on a player's inventory being persistence, not world persistence. [10:12] For a persistent game, we should use technology known for being good at persistence.[14:30] A lot of software has been created to help players run companies in EVE Online. [16:16] Ethereum is a very adversial PVP environment, just like EVE Online. [17:15] EVE Frontier was designed so CCP Games and thirdparty devs have the same level of authority.[19:02] To make a proveable sound system, you end up with a lot of blockchain-like [21:30] "I think about EVE Online as being a city. If EVE is Rome, Frontier is a new city, say New York".[24:35] EVE Frontier is more of a survival experience, a multiplayer single sharded survival experience.[25:43] "What sort of Daniel Day-Lewis film is EVE Frontier?"[27:21] What do the current EVE Online players think about EVE Frontier?[32:20] "We are going to provide the city-building tools but we are not going to build the city."[36:32] Why is CCP Online also open-sourcing its own Carbon game development tools?[38:50] "In a decade's time, the city will be inherent better because everything is open-sourced."

Jon Jordan and BlockchainGamer.biz editor Jenny Jordan talk through the week's news including:[1:42] Parallel is the most successful web3 TGC partly through its esport prizes. Just awarded $100,000.[3:22] The second game in the universe is AI experiment Colony, but information is limited.[4:07] Sanctuary is their third game; an extraction shooter. A hard genre to pull-off.[7:20] WorldWide Agents' AI platform went live this week; first time to stake MOJO tokens.[11:03] Wemade's Night Crows game is about to hit its first anniversary: Jon's about to hit level 45. [15:41] Immutable's big hope RavenQuest goes live on 14th March.[21:00] Immortal Rising 2 has done 9 million app downloads but has less than 100,000 DAUs.[23:54] Sky Mavis has announced new MMOG Axie Infinity: Atia's Legacy.[26:36] It follows on from other experimental Axie games]Raylights and Homeland.[29:52[ It looks like it will be more PVE combat-focused with some farming and social elements.[34:20] EVE Frontier has a stark economic model and a new head of economy to test it.

Jon Jordan and BlockchainGamer.biz editor Jenny Jordan talk through the week's news including: [2:54] Yuga Labs has been struggling since 2023 but is now focused on its Otherside metaverse. [4:03] It's testing Project Dragon, a FPS which reach 2,197 concurrent players - a new world record. [5:40] It uses Improbable's MSquared networking tech to handle this in a cost effective manner. [7:05] Improbable has also launched a new blockchain called Somnia. [8:38] It claims to handle 1 million transactions per second. [9:48] Why do we need another blockchain? The dial-up vs broadband comparison. [11:37] Improbable's CEO thinks web3 gaming is too insular and focused on token price. [14:45] Wemade's latest web3 MMORPG Legends of Ymir is #1 on Google Play [17:30] Wemade has been successful with web3-gated MMORPG like Mir and Night Crows. [19:10] These games are grindy. Jon's played Night Crows for a year and not unlocked web3 stuff. [22:20] Overall, Night Crows has been successful with 250,000 web2 players and $200M revenues. [26:55] Netmarble has revealed the 7 games it's bringing to Immutable in 2025. [32:50] It's not clear (to Jon) Netmarble has worked out the best strategy for its web3 games. [37:02] What is Immutable's signature blockchain game? What title is bringing in new players? [41:09] It's unclear (to Jon) why Immutable isn't pushing highend games like Space Nation more. [42:50] The very strange case of TOKYO BEAST. [48:56] Social deduction game The Mystery Society is shutting down ... or will it be saved?

Jon Jordan talks to Improbable CEO Herman Narula about why the UK game tech company decided it had to build its own blockchain. Called Somnia, its testnet is now live. [2:32] The Improbable genesis story: from Cambridge Uni to building games technology. [3:39] Building economies for virtual worlds means you need a blockchain for ownership. [4:54] Improbable's first success was The Multiplayer Guys, who worked on CoD, GTA, Fall Guys etc. [5:27] The biggest thing Improbable has learned is "the tenacity to pursue the mission". [5:44] The Improbable co-founders have been sanctioned by Russia due to their defence work. [6:59] The key thing for Improbable's MSquared tech is making the cost of operations so low. [8:19] Narula describes Improbable as a "venture builder" - it's a "company of companies". [9:56] What does MSquared do? It's a software platform to build large scale virtual worlds. [13:32] "We've always bet on the need for human beings to feel relatedness, even in games." [14:56] Why did Improbable have to design its own blockchain. Do we need another one? [15:32] The crypto space is obsessed with its token price. That's all they optimize for. [16:00] Somnia can handle 1 million transactions per second, with sub-second latency. [17:19] Improbable has almost a quarter of a billion dollars of cash. [19:08] "Pirate Nation's network costs are astronomical. It would save millions of dollars on Somnia." [20:55] Our focus isn't getting existing web3 games to move to Somnia, but new games. [22:23] The current problem for games is cost of UA and cost of development. [23:34] "I couldn't care less what the Somnia token price is. That's not how we make money." [25:31] Blockchain games now is like The Hunger Games - people fighting over a small amount of value. [27:39] How big a deal will AI agents be in future? How is Improbable using AI for development? [28:34] AI agents aren't going to have bank accounts. They're going to have crypto wallets. [31:02] In an post-AGI world, "Games are going to become a critical industry for human health." [35:17] If you're an EVM app, you change one line of code and move to Somnia.