Web3 Gaming with Pixel Cab Games

In this conversation, Peter and Paul discuss the innovative landscape of Web3 gaming, focusing on PixelCab Games' approach to building engaging mini-games for blockchain communities. They explore the integration of blockchain technology in gaming, the mechanics behind their upcoming NFT project, the Arcadians, and the unique Recycler feature designed to enhance liquidity and user experience. Paul shares his journey from accounting to game development, emphasizing the importance of accessibility and simplicity in onboarding new users to the Web3 space.

Takeaways

• Web3 gaming is a promising application of blockchain technology.
• PixelCab Games focuses on creating mini-games for community engagement.
• The studio has built numerous games for various blockchain projects.
• Their games are designed to be mobile-friendly and browser-based.
• Blockchain integration is aimed at enhancing user experience, not complicating it.
• The Arcadians project includes a treasury managed for capital protection and income generation.
• Innovative features like the Recycler aim to provide liquidity for NFT holders.
• Paul transitioned from accounting to game development driven by a passion for gaming.
• Accessibility and simplicity are key to onboarding users into Web3 gaming.
• The future of gaming lies in small, highly replayable games rather than AAA titles.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Web3 Gaming and PixelCab Games
02:49 Building Mini Games for the Community
06:09 Blockchain Integration in Gaming
09:01 The Arcadians: Mechanics and Treasury Management
11:55 Innovative NFT Solutions: The Recycler
15:04 Transitioning from Accounting to Game Development
18:07 The Future of Web3 Gaming

DISCLAIMER: This content is for informational and educational purposes only and is not financial, investment, or legal advice. I am not affiliated with, nor compensated by, the project discussed—no tokens, payments, or incentives received. I do not hold a stake in the project, including private or future allocations. All views are my own, based on public information. Always do your own research and consult a licensed advisor before investing. Crypto investments carry high risk, and past performance is no guarantee of future results. I am not responsible for any decisions you make based on this content.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Web three gaming, I think is a perfect use case
for blockchain. And I have Paul or piasapp here joining
me from Pixel Cab Games. We're going to look into
what they're building in the web three space in terms
of gaming. And I love this type of gaming because
you know, I grew up with it, so this is
kind of really cool. So Paul, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Thanks Mape, thanks for having me. Long time listener, big
time fans. So it's good to be on here and
having a chat with you guys.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
And it's good to put a face to the voice.
You know, we've been on X spaces and talking on
X for a really long time, so good to finally
meet you virtually, and hopefully we can meet in a
real event somewhere in Australia so.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
I can get over hopefully, if I can get over race,
we don't have ton any down.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Let's get into what you guys are actually building now.
You guys have been working on this for quite a while.
You've built a lot of mini games that I've seen
in the past. Can we talk about what you guys
are doing in the crypto space at the moment.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Sure. So we're a small indie game studio. We're kind
of a bespoke solution for other projects, so they've over
the last two years, we've been contracted to build i
think ten or twelve games for other small only card
Arnot this stage Cardano projects, So we build mini games,
little arcade games stuff for them to engage their community

(01:17):
where extremely quick. We build quality, quality with high replayability,
and a major focus on cross compatibility. So everything's browser
based unless the project that we're building the game four
doesn't specifically want it. Everything is targeted towards mobile. We
think like Web three gaming as a whole has kind

(01:37):
of failed, mostly because most Web three gaming projects are
aiming to compete with app Division and Blizzard and trying
to build these big, expansive triple A titles. That's not
really where you're going to get tracks at first. Like,
I'm an eighties nineties kid, I grew up playing with
Super Nintendo. I love pixelar, I love Pixlark games and
just the simple fun replayability of arcades stuff. So that's

(02:01):
kind of what we build today. We've built about ten
games for other projects, and yeah, we're building a couple
for ourselves, and then yeah, can you give.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Me some examples of what projects you've worked with, what
games you've actually put out there, and yeah, anything that
people can play at the moment that's live, Yeah for sure.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
So currently we're building a game for friend point a
top pos at pre alpha, so it's public, public beta test,
public testing. Now you can go in, jump in. There's
lots of bugs, lots of other stuff, but it's still
like highly playable. So right now we're gathering information what
gameplay works or gameplay doesn't. So that's with friend Coin.

(02:38):
We built the Sneckies Balls game, so they used They
gave us kind of three days. They said, we need
something for this jersey numbering thing. So it was like, okay,
how long do I have it? Like you've got three days,
all right? Three days. Built them a little mobile app.
It's got the Baller's Game, which is kind of like,
you know, like the Arcade basketball game where the balls

(02:59):
rolled down and you sort of got to flick them
in as quick as yam. So it's kind of like
I built based around that, and then I added in
another little mini game for them, which is kind of
a lot of fun, like just a little high score thing.
We're building for the DJN Duck Club. So we built
them one game and we're building them another that's going
to be a much bigger game that's like an arcade platformer. Honestly,

(03:19):
a bunch of the projects that we're built for a
rubbed and gone disappeared obviously because they're t projects. So
we built quite a large game for de gaff Coin. So,
I don't don't know if you remember the what was
the project Mage something Mage whatever? They blockchain major as
I think it was, and they sold out their thing.
They promised this game and they didn't deliver and just rubbed,

(03:42):
and I was like, well, I can build their game
in like a month, So to Gaff like that's funny.
Let's just build their game in a month and make
it to GAF theme. So we did that, and we're
built for Turtle coin. So Turtle syndicate Galacta Cats. If
you remember Galacta Cats, So I remember that, Yeah, so
built a game for them. I'm trying to think back now,
who else Adania we're built. That's a so if you've

(04:02):
ever played Super crate Box, I know that's like a
twenty ten game that was super popular. So we built
a kind of an advanced super crate box to them
and then and eight of Punks, so that those guys
absolute legends. They're just combined with two other projects to
have sort of a group. So we built them a
Bomberman wave defense game. So basically you run around, it's

(04:24):
like waves of enemies. You've got to try and survive
for as long as you can. So quick, quick replayability,
so quick replayability, high school. So that's that's that's why
we're looking. But yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
Okay, I'll grab some of those links so that anyone
that's watching can play, get into those communities and see
what they're like. So how does the blockchain side of
things connect in with what you're doing. Obviously you're building
for these NFT and blockchain communities, but what's the blockchain
experience in regards to the games.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
So we have one unified login system. You log in
your create the account with your email password, and then
you just supply raid or you don't need to connect it,
you don't need to do anything. You just put the
public word in there that links to your profile, and
then the back end searches for all the different NFTs
and your wallet and then applies to your account, which
NFTs you've got, depending on which game it is, whatever

(05:16):
you hold can unlock things like skins or all sorts
of different stuff. We haven't had too many people want
other kinds of integrations yet, so unlock special game modes,
unlock other stuff, and unlock leaderboard rewards. So each month
will generally run a competition on one of our games,
Like we'll have one leaderboard event. It'll be for say
the highest score on this level. If you hold one

(05:37):
of the collectibles from whatever project the games for, or
one of ours which we haven't launched yet, but one
of ours, it'll it will allow you to get your
score on that leaderboard, and then leaderboard payout prize is
always in aida. Like we don't have a coin. We're
not launching our own coin gaming projects and coins death
spirals generally, Yeah, the project is the stide to the coin.

(06:00):
The coin starts going down in value and then no
one plays the games because the coin swirls down and
that's the reason they play the game. So we're going
the other way. We're going for fun and yeah, blockchain
invisibility and only use it to enhance, don't focus the
fun on blockchain.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Basically, that's good I like that approach, and you're totally right.
A lot of these games out there with their own
tokens or whatever it is. What was that act? A
lot of game actually Infinity, Yeah, yeah, people played that
because they were trying to get as many actually tokens
as possible and then cash it out, you know, yeah,
made it into a job and stuff, and that's gone

(06:39):
pretty much downhill since you know it's highs. Yeah, so
what was that in here?

Speaker 2 (06:44):
It just doesn't work. Like the whole basing your whole
concept of your game around earning a token doesn't work
like it can go the other way. So if you've
got something like like World of Warcraft with the goal
if World of Warcraft were intimate to implement gold as
a crypto token, now that works because it's already got value.
It's already valuable to the people who played the game.

(07:06):
But going the other way, where let's launch this game,
we'll give it a token and that token has value
because we say it has value, just doesn't work. The
only value is inflation and sell pressure. That's yeah, that's
our thesis behind having a token v your gaming project.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
So now you've talked about all these things that you're
building in the web three space, and I know you've
also got some other things coming up. The Arcadians, and
you mentioned this to me before. I would love to
dig into this and how it will work. So I
know there's a lot to it. There's mechanics, there's a treasury,
there's all these other tournaments that you're going to have

(07:40):
with it as well. Can we talk about some of
the mechanics of what you're doing here.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, of course. So written down it looks like there's
a lot that looks really complex. In practice like it's
it's quite simple. So we've got a treasury that is
managed by me. I'm charing to account and financial advisor
by trade, like that's what I do. So the treasury
is managed by me. We're minting these Arcadians in three
to six months. We're not sure we're going to listen

(08:06):
to the market because it's NFTs and the NFT market
needs to have some traction if you're going to try
and launch something. All the funds from the mint are
going to go into the treasury. All the funds that
we've received over the last two years for contractor builds
have gone into the treasury. That treasury each month is
going to be well, the focus of the Treasury is
going to be eighter protection, so capital protection with income generation.

(08:31):
So looking at four to six simple positions say eight
A USD whatever LP to earn revenue. The revenue generated
by the treasury feeds the rest of the project. So
we'll have twenty five percent going to reinvestment. So twenty
five percent of the income generated each month goes to reinvestment.
Twenty percent will go to the Leaderboard prize poll. Like

(08:52):
I was saying before, we have a Leaderboard tournament every month,
so twenty percent go to the Leaderboard prize pool. Twenty
percent goes to a passing for price pass simple. We're
going to so do you know the angel coin angel
coin project essentially angels. Yeah, So we're going to have
an air drop style system like that. So if you
hold out token in your wallet, it's that prize pool.
Once that passive pool gets up to enough where you

(09:15):
going to air drop Papa. So that's that's YEA five
percent will go to a wraffing pool. So when that
reaches an amount between one hundred, one hundred and fifty
eight er, that will just get again air dropped to
a holder, we'll get air dropped to our holder, and
then five percent will just be for for incidentals essentially,
so okay, five percent aside for incidentals. That'll just get

(09:36):
stabled up every month and we'll just hold that there
as sort of extra funds and that treasury sort of
feeds feeds everything. Yeah, so that's how the treasury works.
There's not so much more to it. We'll have so
one of the other things that we're going to be
building that we think is innovative for this ArKade and
NFT drop is a recycler. So the first generation of NFTs,

(10:00):
they had issues like it was promise a lot, don't
have anything backing the promises, and fail to deliver rug
keeps in cash. That was kind of how it worked.
So the second generation, so an FT two point zero
has to be better, Like people are not going to
fall for the saying tricks again, it's not going to
be the same thing. You have to have a proper
business and a proper model behind it. Our thought process

(10:22):
is fix some of the major issues with the first generation,
which one is liquidity. Your own FTAs your digital collectibles
were just not liquid, Like they just weren't liquid. Once
they stopped, they were gone and they were non transferable.
So if you've got something you didn't like, you either
had to try and sell it or put it in
a dessert calllet like an FT dumpster wallet or whatever

(10:44):
and just have it be gone. So the recycling platform
we're building, so this is pending. The developer who we're
spoken to, I know who he is. He is very good.
He knows he'll be able to do it. It's just
the time frame of it. The recycle will allow you
to burn, essentially recycle your collector into a wallet and
get twenty five percent of its value. So every month

(11:05):
we rew the treasury. Every collectible that's in circulation, so
not in the recycle wall, not in an exchange, is
valued as one portion of that treasury. So say the
treasury is worth one hundred thousand, there's a thousand collectibles.
Each collectible is varied at one hundred eight. Pretty simple.
The recycler will allow you to swap yours for twenty
five eight instantly, just go on liquidity. They're ready to go.

(11:28):
Each month. It will also allow you to swap for
another random one in the pool. So you say there's
one hundred NFTs in that pool. You don't like the
one you've got, you can just go you can swap it,
you get a random one out and you can just
do that sp many times you want to pick which
you get each other one you want. That wallet will
be public, so you can always go to pool dot PM.
You can see all the ones in there and go,
oh that one and then have a crack at trying

(11:49):
to get Essentially, so that gives you liquidity, like instant liquidity,
a solid floor price and transferability. So there are two
things that you're going to get out of that you
won't be able to get any other way. Like, it's
just it's it's new, and like we're not letting you
swap for some other rand in token.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah that's awesome. I've got a massive en FT collection
these days that I've collected over the years. I don't
know what to do with some of them, and you know,
trying to sell them is impossible because you need to
buyer yeah someone that wants it as well. Yeah, So
this is a nice way of letting the community, the
holders of those NFTs be able to get out swap

(12:27):
things if they need to. So I absolutely love this
recycler idea.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, it's like, like I said, you need something new
with NFTs. They don't. They're not gonna survive in the
current the current form. You need to innovate. I think
this is an innovation. That's that's good. We will gamify
the process a little bit, but that's it's somatic. So
every month there'll be enough eighter in there for twenty
five swap twenty five at a time. That's mostly because

(12:51):
the Treasury would it's better for the Treasury to have
the funds to be earning it building, so twenty five
a month, and then each month will just add the
funds for another twenty five. If you want to swap
it out, you can. If you don't, then you don't.
And as the treasury goes up in value, hopefully should
up in value. If it's low risk, hey to value,
the swap amount goes up as well. So it's kind

(13:12):
of a twofold effect where if you can hold it,
you can still get what you want. Yeah, so yeah,
recycling mechanic. What else we've got the leaderboards, which we've
spoken about trying to think what are the features we've
got in there.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, you've spoken about the passive rewards for you holding
it and get the air drops. So that's absolutely awesome.
You've got active rewards, and I'm assuming there's other utilities
for this particular collection too.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah. So for the last three years, three and a
half years, every week, generally every week, I'll put out
a us an analysis post, like a long form content post.
I trap multiple news websites and have lots of Twitter
lists that I go through and search for just not alpha,
it's like news. So I'll take all that information, get

(14:00):
down into bite sized chunks and sort of cut through
marketing spin. We'll try and cut through marketing spin and
just give bite sized chunks of info to people in
news and news and analysis service. So that's currently free.
You can jump into our discord and have a look
back at the content. I mean it's I don't know,
there'd be three thousand hours probably put into it over
the last couple of years. Impressive. That will be gated

(14:24):
after after the mint. So after the Mint, that's not
going to be free anymore. You need to hold a
collectible to be able to access it. Yeah, So they'll
act as our sort of you know how like games
launcher game pass. This will be a perpetual game Pass.
It'll give your access to everything we do. So beyond that,
to be able to participate in the active competitions like

(14:47):
the active leader boards, all that sort of stuff, you'll
need you need to hold one and a need to
be in your linked wallet, so you're linked pixel Cab
Games account wallet. Yeah. What else is there?

Speaker 1 (15:01):
There's I just want to circle back to something that
you mentioned a little bit earlier before, just about yourself. Now,
I can tell you've put a lot of thought into
everything in the mechanics, the treasury, the rewarding of the users,
and everything about that. And I guess your accounting background

(15:22):
may have helped with a lot of these aspects. I
think that's a really key skill there. But what I
want to know is how to get from accounting to
game development. Where's a crossover there? There's no crossover.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah, there's not much crossover. So it was something I
always wanted to do, Like I've always been a big gamer,
and I've always liked retro games, Like I'm still a
big game where I still play heaps of different stuff
now and I don't really know how to code very well,
like I'm okay at it. And then I saw a
game engine called de Develop, which is an events low

(15:58):
code game engine, and I started playing around with it,
started playing around with it, and then just got better
and better and better. And I'm what four years in now,
four or five years in now, and yeah, it's just
one of those things that I know. I've always been
a tinkerer, So it's like I like tinkering with stuff,
like I'll get raspberry pies and like build stuff with
Raspberry piles. It's always something that I've enjoyed doing. Like, like,

(16:21):
I guess accounting helps because you need to think analytically
and like process and step based, so I guess that
sort of helps with that part of the brain. And yeah,
so it's just something I enjoy doing, tinkering and trying
to get something to work and then all of a
sudden it just works. You're like, that's I don't know,
it's cool. I like it thoroughly.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
Okay, as a thought process, the analytical side of the
brain that led you down this path. Okay, all right,
so the mint we don't have a concrete date yet,
but people can still join your community joint discord, follow
you on socials as well.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
So where should we go at the moment? To get
all those So best best play is probably Discord. That's
where we post everything. Twitter is good, except it's hard
to get trapped on Twitter these days, like cryblow. Twitter
these days is hard to get get people in Discord.
Everything's there. It's easy to go back and have a
look at all of our thought process. We've got I
generally try and post some game development stuff regularly. What

(17:18):
I'm doing leads to the to the current builds, so
you can come in, you can test the mechanics that
I'm building, you can give insight and tell me what
you think about the way a game is developing. It's
got our Treasury updates, so we've had the treasury for
a couple of years. You can go back and have
a look at the treasury posts. They're fully transparent wallets there.

(17:39):
You can have a look at all the updates to
see what we're doing in the treasury, where we're invested,
what sort of income it's generating now. And then we've
got yeah, just our news and analysis there, which is yeah,
a lot, there's a there's a lot of content there.
You can go back and have a look and see
the sort of stuff and if it interests you, it
interests you. If it doesn't, doesn't, that's all good, that's

(17:59):
all good. So yeah, not want to.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
Discord, Okay, I'll make sure I grab that link for
everyone to join that Discord server and put up your
socials for x as well. But this is really cool
what you guys building. I really think web three gaming
is the key to unlocking the onboarding process of users
into Crypto and web three. It's like game, so easy
to understand. Just load up a game, join the community,

(18:21):
and bam you're in. And these passive ways of actually
earning Crypto when you're in these game communities as well,
I think is really cool. So just those awesome air
drops and then not needing to do much more other
than just play the game is really key.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
You don't want people to have to be super president
active like that's another thing like staking. Staking is great,
except you need to be active. You need to actively
go somewhere, you need to actively stake your stuff. Passive, passive,
simplest thing for holders is the best, and we fully
embrace simplicity with our stuff. So you can go to
our pixel Kade now which is on our website, jump

(18:57):
in one click. You're playing a game that's it, super simple.
We want accessibility, so small indie games and the games
we're building work best on mobile. So the best product
market fit is to go for mobile, and that's that's
where we're going. So, like we know that we're not
going to compete with again, not going to copepe with Thattivisional,
Blizzard or anything like that, but games like Blapteral and

(19:18):
games like Slave a Spire, all these small, highly replayable,
super simple games that just work well on mobile. That's
that's what we think is going to be the best
way to onboard people. So if you're going to come
into gaming gaming in Web three, something simple like that,
that's sort of a trojan horse to get people in,
and we'll do it. All of the crypto stuff for

(19:38):
us is optional, so you can come in play our games.
You don't need a wallet, you don't need to hold
any anything, but if you do, there's benefits. So that's
the way we look at it.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
Yeah, there's hidden Web three features that you can turn
on if you really want. All right, Paul, awesome, this
has been a great interview. Thank you so much for
joining me on the podcast and talking through everything that
you guys are building. Looking forward to the mint and
if you're watching this in the future, make sure you
check out the links down below you may be able
to mint it.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
If you're watching this entire ye awesome. Thank you, thank
thanks for having me on absolute pleasure.