On 3/21/2024 at 7:00 p.m. (UTC), an AMA session was held on Avalaunch Telegram group with Jojo Meylaerts — Co-founder & CEO of Castle of Blackwater, to dive into one of the most highly-anticipated social experiences in Web3 gaming.
Below you can read our insightful AMA with Castle of Blackwater:
Avalaunch
Welcome to another AMA brought to you by the good people of Avalaunch, your home for all the Avalanche. Today we are fortunate to have the founder of Castle of Blackwater, JoJo, ready to drop science and share knowledge for our rambunctious one-love community.
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
Hello hello!
Thanks for having me on 🙂
Avalaunch
How are you doing today Jojo?
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
Doing very well! It’s been exceptionally busy recently, but times are exciting
How about you Kirbee, how’s your day been?
Avalaunch
Excited for this AMA! Yes sounds like you guys have been extremely busy. Let’s dive in with our first question!
Can you give us a brief intro of yourself and how you ended up building Castle of Blackwater?
Jojo | Casttle of Blackwater
Of course
My name is Jojo and I am the cofounder and CEO of Castle of Blackwater. I have a background in economics, business and entrepreneurship, and also spent a few years working as a technology recruiter, where I learned to find the right people and bring them together around a centralized vision.
My cofounder, Remo, is a close friend of mine. We started Castle of Blackwater together in late 2021, out of a frustration with the play to earn games at the time. We were convinced that blockchain games needed to be more fun and more sustainable in order to become mainstream accepted.
Avalaunch
Wow a smart team and great that you’ve been able to go on this journey with your close friend! Love to hear that. Could you tell us more about the rest of the team behind CoB?
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
What started out as a two man team, quickly blossomed into a thriving operation currently consisting of 15 hard working individuals. Besides my cofounder, who is an expert in UX/UI and complex mobile/app development, we now also have an experienced team of game developers, marketing support and blockchain knowledge in house as well. Our entire art production also happens in house with our own sound director, art director, artist and animator.
Everyone on our team is fully doxed, and you’ll be able to find their full names and faces in our whitepaper. Over the years, our team has grown to be incredibly close. We are all super passionate about the project and we really love spending time and working on this together.
Avalaunch
We can tell how much fun you are having building this game! It’s great to see. Can you give our audience an overview of the CoB gameplay? Especially for those who may not be familiar with the social deduction genre.
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
Sure thing! It’ll be a long one tho
So Castle of Blackwater is a social deduction game. For those of you who haven’t heard of that genre, you’ve probably heard of the game Among Us, for example, which was a strong inspiration for what we’re trying to create. However, after playing countless hours of among us, we really thought that it was lacking replayability and strategic complexity, and those are exactly the things that we’ve been trying to add back into the unique gameplay that we have today.
Castle of Blackwater is played with 7 to 15 players, in an online multiplayer environment. When the game starts, each player is given a unique character with a unique set of abilities which define its playstyle. Your character will belong to one of three factions, the Protectors, The Satanic, or The Forgotten.
The Protectors are the good guys, they are the majority of players and they have no idea who the other Protectors are. Their objective in the game is to run around the castle, completing tasks which are like mini games and filling up an XP bar in order to escape.
To prevent the protectors from escaping, you have the satanic players in the minority. The Satanic players will know of each other, and will be able — and are expected to — work together. They will walk around the castle pretending to do tasks, but secretly there will be eliminating the other protectors and trying to get away with the murders. If the Satanic are able to eliminate all of the other Protectors, they win the game.
And finally we have the Forgotten, and they are like a chaotic, neutral kind of role. The Forgotten players can win or lose independently of the game being played between the protectors and the satanic. They usually have an individualistic win objective and their goal is to spread chaos and confusion and slip between the cracks.
Beyond this, there are many more rules and mechanics and structure in the game that really add to the excitement and strategic depths, and they’ll keep you coming back for more. However, if you want a deeper insight into all of the mechanics that we have available, you should check out this youtube video or read our wiki.
Tutorial video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8HZx3gCjVw&t
Wiki: https://docs.castleofblackwater.com/game-wiki/introduction
Avalaunch
Awesome, sounds like a very immersive experience indeed. With lots of unexpected twists… 😈 What specific aspects of Web3 have enhanced the CoB player experience? What is the most important thing for you when integrating these features?
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
We are firm believers that Web3 features should enhance gameplay, not replace it. One area in which we are creatively using Web3 technologies is in the form of our cosmetic NFTS. Currently available on Sphere Marketplace, our cosmetic NFTS all get given a fixed supply whenever they get introduced into the ecosystem. This means that whenever we sell a collection of a certain cosmetic, whoever buys that cosmetic will know that no new NFT’s will ever be minted again, allowing them to lightly speculate on whether any specific cosmetic might appreciate in value over time due to increased demand and legacy status for example.
Furthermore, by offering early player incentives, such as in the form of the current Play to AirDrop campaign, we have been able to grow our early userbase and stress test our current beta build in ways that otherwise would have been very difficult for us to achieve the same amount of player liquidity, without a very large marketing spend. At the same time, we’ve been able to reward our most early fans and supporters, the people who have been with us since the early days, constantly helping us shape the game and making it become the amazing product that we have before us today.
Finally, and I do want to keep this a little bit high level, we have a very unique and innovative web3 game economy that we are pioneering in the space, that we think will go a long way towards solving the economical sustainability issues of the Plato earned movement.
Read more: https://docs.castleofblackwater.com/game-economy/introduction
Avalaunch
Thanks Jojo, you’ve certainly put a great deal of thought in the design. And it’s clear that the CoB community is really strong! Social deduction games are very popular, what is your approach in bringing over traditional players to Web3? How are you ensuring that they can be onboarded in the most seamless way?
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
So we are firm believers of not trying to force anyone into the Web3 movement. It has to be a choice. We’re also fully aware that the current sentiment among mainstream gamers about Web3 games is far from positive.
Therefore, we’ve decided to create 2 versions of Castle of Blackwater, a casual Web2 game as well as a ranked/competitive web3 game.
The casual version of Castle of Blackwater will be just like any other free to play game with microtransactions and off-chain cosmetics. This version will have no issues launching on Steam on mobile, it’ll be super accessible and it will serve as our main user acquisition vehicle.
Then, for people who really enjoy the gameplay experience and want to take it to a deeper level, we will offer a Web 3 version of the same game in the form of a competitive setting. In this version, users will need an NFT in order to play, thus increasing the barrier to entry and gatekeeping a certain level of commitment and quality of play. This version will also have the on chain cosmetics as well as the intricate Web 3 gaming economy where incentivized play will be possible.
We’ll never force users to play one or the other. However, we will constantly try to gently nudge and incentivize our Web 2 user base to evolve into the Web 3 by showing them the benefits that they can claim by simply clicking and following a few steps. We’ll also make sure to use all of the wallet abstraction features that the Beam blockchain provides, and most of the players playing ranked will not even need to understand blockchain technology in order to maximise their experience.
Avalaunch
Really excited for everyone to explore the world of CoB! Love how there is something for everyone. What has been the most surprising aspect of player behavior in CoB games, considering that trust and betrayal are central to the game? Observing player decisions must be pretty fascinating.
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
It has been really fun taking something that was initially in our heads that we then put onto paper and then finally releasing it into a live environment and watching actual people play the game. It really surprised us just how wrong some of our gaming hypotheses were, and how often we’ve had to be humbled and corrected in trying to understand real player engagement with our game. The first version of the game was unnecessarily even more complicated than what it is today, and we’ve definitely benefited a lot from removing some of this complexity.
For this current beta test that is ongoing, we have found out that players are much less willing to use the voice chat features that we have created that we had initially expected. This is now leading us to once again pivot on our voice chat focus strategy and currently building new systems to allow for a more smooth text and emoji chat experience for those who don’t feel comfortable speaking on voice.
One thing that I really enjoy about our game, and something that we’re always trying to double down on, is the concept of plausible deniability. Basically, this involves giving the satanic, the evil players, as many avenues as possible to construct these intricate lies by allowing them to manipulate game mechanics to create that layer of plausibility in their narratives.
Avalaunch
So you really never know who to trust.. Also emojis are pretty powerful stuff 😈🔪 There are 3 factions a player can be put into for each game. Can you share with us about the motives and characteristics of each faction?
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
I’ve already talked a little bit about the facts in general, so instead allow me to demonstrate the actual characters that belong to them in the form of explaining their abilities and play styles.
So the Protector characters are all about grinding XP and solving murders. This is really reflected in some of their abilities, which usually help them in these two manners. On the one hand, for example, you have the Lumberjack and his ability revolves around getting bonus XP and completing tasks a lot faster. Another character, the Sheriff for example, is able to passively see bloody footsteps left by the killer of any player, as well as use an active ability which will direct him to any dead bodies that may be around the castle.
On the Satanic side, you have a lot of abilities that allow you to create chaos and confusion. For example, we have the silencer and as his name suggests, he is literally able to silence another player of his choice and that player will not be able to talk in voice or in chat for the rest of the active round. This allows him to silence one of his targets and then accuse him of something, and with that player not being able to defend themselves, that’s a pretty powerful ability.
And finally, for The Forgotten, we currently only have the werewolf character. The werewolf has his individual win objective that he has to both complete some tasks and he also has to kill 1 protector and 1 satanic character. He does this by staying out in the castle at night time and letting the moonlight hit his skin, turning him into the werewolf, and at this point he can run around and go on a rampage basically.
Avalaunch
So a lot of character strategies for players to develop, exciting! Registration for the CoB IDO is now open, users can get their hands on COBE — the game’s value accrual token. You’ve put a lot of thought into creating a balanced economy, having learned from the pitfalls of P2E. Can you break down the economic model and your process on how you came to this final design?
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
Ooft that’s a loaded question!
Without copy pasting the entire 5,000 word manuscript of our economic thesis, I’ll try to give a high level overview. Essentially what it comes down to is finding a balance between value injectors and value extractors.
Value injectors are players who are willing to pay money to increase their enjoyment of their game experience. On the other hand, value extractors are those who play web three games with the sole objective of maximizing their returns and earning potential.
The Castle of Blackwater payout system will be based on the equilibrium that exists between these two player bases. Keeping the balance between them is a liquidity pool that is funded by the COBS token, which is our medium of exchange currency. Whenever one of the two player bases starts becoming disproportionately larger than the other, the economy will pull certain levers in order to disincentivize that player base in their economic activity. For example, by reducing game payouts or by increasing the circulating COBS token supply, we can control certain player groups behaviours, until an equilibrium is once again found.
Read more: https://fairplaycollective.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Using-an-AMM-to-balance-a-Web3-economy.pdf
Avalaunch
Wow that’s a lot to take in! Appreciate the insight Jojo!! Just one final question from us before we move to the community section. Which faction do you enjoy playing the most? Do you have a favorite character?
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
This might surprise you, but I actually enjoy playing protectors the most. As much as people say that, I play a good Satanic, and this is mostly because I’ve played it so much and you know, over time you’ve really learned how it works, but it’s stressful.
I’m not the best liar out there and it takes a lot of energy to lie to people and especially to your friends. And I really hate that feeling of when somebody catches you in a lie and you know you have nowhere to go and that’s exhausting. Instead, I much prefer playing a protector and actually being the one to catch people. To try and, you know, put together the pieces of the puzzle. Yeah, that’s my much preferred role.
I think one of my favorite characters to play is The Vigilante. So he is a protector. He has the unique power to once per game shoot another player. However, if he accidentally tries to kill another protector, he actually ends up killing himself. So super high risk, but super high reward. And the tactic with this character is really to try to stay alive and remain until the end. And don’t shoot someone unless you are like 99% sure that the person is satanic.
Avalaunch
Very interesting! Now we move onto the the section where we’ve selected 10 community questions! First up we have @Dalila_Gough who asks — Can you explain the role of Merit Circle and the Beam gaming chain in the development of Castle of Blackwater, and how their involvement enhances the game’s potential?
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
Merit Circle has been one of our biggest and earliest supporters in this whole adventure. We first got in touch with them in like April 2022 and we basically pitched them the game without knowing who they really were because we were new to the space. Not only did we pitch them on the game, but we pitched them on the vision of how blockchain gaming should be a lot better than it was at the time, where the focus on fun, gameplay mechanics and sustainable economics. This concept resonated so hard with their team that they decided to incubate us and really make sure that we get to a certain level of progress.
Since then, they have financially funded us through the entire bear market, making sure that our Lean Small team was able to keep building and keep iterating on our project. And now that we have entered this new phase in the market, they have supported us in additional fundraising support from other investors and are fully supporting us on marketing, on legal, on infrastructure support. It’s absolutely unexplainable just how much support they’ve given us, and they really see us as one of their own projects.
In exchange, Castle of Blackwater is building exclusively on the Beam ecosystem and in fact we have been right there alongside them as they have conceptualized and built that ecosystem to fit the needs of us as a developer on their platform. Merit Circle really understands where Web 3 gaming needs to go and they are very focused on creating the infrastructure to support that vision, and we’ll be using it to the maximum.
Avalaunch
We’re huge fans of the Merit Circle team, they are doing so much to push the space forward 🔥 now we hear from @LittleXiaYuann — About your NFTs, Can you explain further about the utilities of these NFTs within your platform? Are they meant to be held as simple collectibles or will they have additional benefits? Also, will you have your own marketplace to sell and buy your NFTs?
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
Thanks for the question @LittleXiaYuann
So the purpose of Castle of Blackwater character NFTs is to allow future players to have a little bit more control over which character they get to play in the games. In the Web 3 version, by owning one of the character NFTS, you’ll be able to set a loadout and bid a certain amount of COBS tokens to increase your chances of getting to play that character in your next game. Essence. By participating in this mechanic, you become part of the Value Injector playerbase as you “pay for fun”.
Other players that may want to try one of the characters but don’t want to instantly buy one could opt to rent a character from another player. So there’s another rental marketplace spinning around that economic activity.
Next we have the cosmetic NFTS ranging from hats and backpacks all the way to a really cool death animations and pets that you can wear. These are all things that you can wear in the game on your anonymous ghost character to give yourself a sense of unique identity as your player.
Right now the collectables are all available on merit circles Sphere Marketplace, which we think is absolutely awesome by the way, many times better than Opensea. However, in the future it is possible that we integrate Sphere even deeper into the game and offer a similar experience within the game build itself.
Avalaunch
That’s great, there’s so much for players to get involved with! Now @hauzf wants to know — What are the main enhancements included in the upcoming ‘Dead Ghost Experience’ upgrade, and how do they enhance the overall gameplay experience?
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
So the Ghost experience is something that we developed from the feedback that we’ve received during the alpha build last September, and it’s currently live in the beta build. It turns out that one of the biggest frustrations that players at the time had was being one of the first to die, basically. Because in many social deduction games, when you die, you end up becoming a ghost left to just spectate the game that goes on without you. You could still win the game if your team wins, therefore you don’t want to leave. But you know, just spectating just isn’t that engaging. So with this feedback in mind, we decided to start brainstorming on how we can create new mechanics that will allow dead players to still participate and engage with the alive game that’s being played. And it works like this.
As a dead player, or a dead ghost, as we call it in our game, will be able to catch souls. Souls are like a currency in Castle of Blackwater that can only be spent by dead players.
These souls allow players to buy powerful power ups in the dead ghost shop, such as writing anonymous notes to the alive players, or some of the more expensive power ups even allow you to cast votes as a dead player. This mechanic helps ensure that the dead players still play an active role in the game being played.
Avalaunch
Awesome to hear you’ve given ghosts another chance. Ghosts are people too!! 👻 kinda. So @JonieVoss asks — What sets Castle of Blackwater apart from other social deduction games in terms of gameplay mechanics, storytelling, and player immersion, and how does it aim to redefine the Web3 gaming experience?
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
Castle of Blackwater aims to take the best ideas from different social deduction games that exist today.
Our game has the freedom of movement and the exhilarating gameplay that among us provides, albeit with more fun and engaging mini games. And at the same time, we also have the strategic complexity, depth and replayability that games like Town of Salem and Deceit have, for example. At the same time, a large part of what makes Castle of Blackwater so special is the intricate back story and lore that lays the foundation of our gaming world. This really opens up a lot of future potential for us to explore different mediums of storytelling, perhaps through visual animated series, or through merchandising, etc…
Anyone that is interested in learning more about the back story of the Castle of Blackwater, and how this mystical structure came to be. Feel free to check out our Medium page, where most of it is written out:
https://medium.com/@Blackwater_Town
Avalaunch
Watch out Among Us, CoB is coming for you!! A question from @TradeCrypto_44 — Could you explain the role of character bidding in Castle of Blackwater and how it contributes to the game’s economy and player experience?
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
Touched on this a little bit in a previous question, but character bidding really allows players to gain more control over their fun perception in the game in exchange for them acting as the Value Injector role in the player base. This creates this unique balance where players looking to buy this control contribute economically and other players that are willing to relinquish this control over their fun will be able to be more financially incentivized.
Avalaunch
How does Castle Of Blackwater involve the community in project development, and how is a strong global community built? from @VictoryBuiTR
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
We have been extremely community oriented from the very beginning. In fact, I would even say that this game has not been built for the community, but with the community. There is no one secret to building a strong global community, but if there was, it would be showing up, being there, being honest and being transparent.
What really sets the Castle of Blackwater community apart in the Web 3 gaming space is that you will find members of the core team, including myself and my cofounder, active on the Discord every day, responding to tickets, talking about suggestions and feedback, and I think that really makes a difference in making the community feel heard and involved.
Avalaunch
A standout trait of an excellent team 😎 @Rebbecacamp1993 wants to know — How has the creative process behind Castle of Blackwater evolved over time, and what challenges and breakthroughs have shaped its development?
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
I will say that in the beginning we were a lot more stubborn about our ideas and pushing our vision onto the players and just thinking they would understand what we were trying to do.
However, over time, as we started hearing feedback and realizing just how many of our game hypotheses were not actually correct, we’ve really adapted to allow ourselves to be more open minded and upfront about what we were thinking. This in turn motivated the community to be more communicative with us, and it really became a constant game of ping pong where we were pitching ideas, the community was shooting them down and the other way around.
So that realization of building it with a community and shaping the game to their pleasure… Once we accepted that as fact, we really started improving our turnaround speed and reducing the amount of wrong turns that we made along the way.
Avalaunch
Very interesting! Onto our next question from @MEHEDIIA — What inspired the theme of Castle of Blackwater, and how has it evolved since the inception of the game?
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
It was really simply just sitting down for a few hours and brainstorming ideas of what could make a great theme to build a game upon. Ever since I was young, I’ve loved storytelling. I’m a big fan of magic in any genre, so we knew that that was going to be a core theme within our game. And to add on to that, I really love the medieval era and anything to do with knights and sword fighting. So combine that with magic and you get the Castle of Blackwater.
Avalaunch
Nice! In what ways does Castle of Blackwater prioritize player enjoyment and provide opportunities for both casual and dedicated players to thrive within the game? from @VietphamV
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
I touched on this pretty extensively in a previous question, but the differentiation between the casual Web 2 experience and the ranked competitive Web 3 experience is really going to allow different types of players to enjoy different types of playing experiences.
In fact, I think one of the cool things about this approach is that some players of social deduction complain about the lack of quality in their games, often being in lobbies with children.
By creating this separate competitive environment, which requires an NFT to play, we’re kind of gating access to a more high level quality of gameplay where players will take the game more seriously because there are financial incentives potentially involved.
Avalaunch
A very thoughtful approach! Now we’re onto our final community question from @PhucNguyenu — What unique events and rewards does Castle of Blackwater offer through its Play2Airdrop Beta Campaign, and how do these initiatives aim to attract and retain players during the beta season?
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
Final one lets goo
So the main goal behind the Play2AirDrop campaign is really to attract an initial level of play liquidity. The goal being to stress test the systems that we have at scale, as well as get another huge round of feedback and improvements from a community outside of our own.
Of course, we are aware that a lot of people playing right now are doing so because of the incentives and not all of them will stay around. However, we are convinced and have been told by people coming in for these incentives that some of them are sticking around.
You’d be surprised at how many players came in looking for financial incentives but have now flipped around and bought one of our NFT’s because they’ve gotten involved in the project and they actually like the game. And I think that’s one of the interesting aspects of Web3 that is only barely being uncovered.
Avalaunch
And there’s still time to get involved with the P2A campaign! Now that’s a wrap, that was a jam-packed AMA from our friend Jojo — thanks so much for sharing your insights with the community! We learned a lot. Everyone — just under 3 more days to register for the Castle of Blackwater IDO! 📣
Thanks again Jojo, you deserve a rest now! 😀
Jojo | Castle of Blackwater
More than welcome. Thanks for having me on and listening to my rambles
If ya’ll don’t mind, I’m going to go put some ice on my fingers now 🥲
Avalaunch
Thanks Avalaunch community for tuning in. We’ll have a recap up on our blog for everyone to read tomorrow 🤩
