On 6/1/2023 at 6:00 a.m. (UTC), an AMA session was held in the Avalaunch Telegram Group with Heroes Chained co-founder and CTO, Ersin Taskin, to cover the recent Heroes Chained game progress as well as Fortunes of Ventuna (FoV), their idle mini game that shares many of the same NFTs (characters, weapons, etc.) with Heroes Chained.
Below we present to you an excerpt from AMA with questions and answers.
Dave | Avalaunch
Welcome all to another AMA brought to you by Avalaunch. It is indeed a special occasion because we have a follow up with a previously launched project in Heroes Chained. Heroes, for those of us still in the game, assembled an all-star cast and launched their IDO about 17 months ago and have done their very best to build and deliver. It is the first time we’ve had a follow on with a team and today I am happy to be joined by @ersintaskin , their CTO and one of the people bringing cutting edge gaming to Web3. Welcome. How are you today?
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
Thanks bro, feeling great as things get released 🙂
Dave | Avalaunch
Well it’s good to have you. Let’s get right into for those familiar and those just getting acquainted with Heroes Chained.
A lot has happened since you were last a guest and it’s encouraging to see you all still building. How is the team and for those not familiar, maybe you can give us a high level overview about this star studded cast?
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
Thank you for your kind words. We advocate game-first and hence team-first. We have doxed our core team members on our website, extensively. I suggest people check the team section of our website to see that it is the best doxed team, with links to evidence.
The founders are also the founders of the two top software companies of the country, namely KodA and CBKSoft, with exceptional track record. KodA is a top-ten software company in Turkey and market leader in its domain. CBKSoft develops the highly reputable enVision BPM. It is the market leader in 20 countries. It was acquired by Infofort and then Iron Mountain eventually.
Mev Dinc, co-founder has developed award winning games for his studio, and giants like Activision, Ubisoft, Nintendo, etc.
Onur Cayli has taken part in the creation of the White Walkers race for Game Of Thrones, and did the same for The Amazing Spider Man, Terminator Genisys, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Antman, Man in Black 3, Marvel vs Capcom, Sonic, etc. He has created our Mayinhara race and our world concept.
An finally, we worked with a great blockchain team and won the first ever Avalanche Hackathon together. So, we are equally strong there.
Dave | Avalaunch
Yes Sir. The team needs no introduction in gaming circles that is for sure and for the true fans, Mev’s autobiography is a good read.
How are things going with Heroes Chained? At last turn, it looks like you’ve doubled down on development but before we get to the newest, “idle” iteration, how are things going with Heroes Chained?
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
HC is both PC & mobile. As you know, we released our PC version open beta in 22Q3. We received a great deal of feedback and compliments, then. We have been working on the mobile version in parallel. We decided to release both versions at the same time. Last week we had our mobile version battle mode closed beta test. That was very successful as well.
Dave | Avalaunch
Well done. That of course will bring us to something I’m sure you’re excited to talk about.
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
I personally found it difficult to get through the dungeons. Then our CEO Erhan, who is an avid gamer, taught me some tactics. Wow, you really need to do some reading and learning about the classes, races, and skill/spell cards. The gameplay is easy to learn but deep to master. Can’t wait for the PvP mode. It will most probably evolve to tournaments and e-sports. I imagine a cult like Magic the Gathering evolving here.
Dave | Avalaunch
The depth that top tier games go to and you poring over this stuff is impressive.
In that vein, please tell us about Fortunes of Ventuna.
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
Thank you 🙂
The idle game was not on the roadmap, and technically it is a challenge. However, we have decided that the Mayinhara NFT holders would benefit of their NFTS before the main game release and we added FoV, the idle game, on the roadmap. We now have FoV 2.0, and added the Defiance release. FoV is very active and we got very positive feedback so far from our community.
We, also were able to test our non-custodial/off-chain technology on FoV before HC. We always listen to our community and take their suggestions into account. So, we can say that the community gets involved with the game development with their NFT Mayinharas. FoV became one of the highest traffic games on Avalanche, and an organic use case where Web3 is the better option for game development.
Dave | Avalaunch
I didn’t know it wasn’t on the roadmap. That’s a lot of work for an additional project that made it on to the main stage.
which brings me to my next question — How challenging is it to make what is essentially a separate game while incorporating the storylines, characters, weapons i.e. it seems like all the NFTs into this?
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
The lore, races, classes, NFT items are the same in both games. And you know HC has a great lore. FoV is a totally different game i.e. different genre, gameplay etc. It is for prolonged game-play by the early adopters and investors and its time scale is very large. One battle can take days in FoV and minutes in HC. FoV is a web game while HC is native PC and mobile. So FoV is basically a distinct game from a development perspective.
However, the core of creativity is the same. The lore, classes, races, items are the same. Therefore, we can use the same NFT ownership 1–1. All you need to do is an extra representation of the same item. You use the 3d model of your hero in HC and 2D model in FoV for example. It is an extra cost and challenge, but it is worth the effort. We have two independent teams for both games and we will continue to improve both.
Dave | Avalaunch
That is a lot. Kudos to you all and for listening to the community. It’s a lot to manage and balance.
That said, how do you strike the balance between dealing with speculators vs. gamers? It’s been an ongoing discussion for the metaverse as valuable assets, like great games, accrue their value from players while having to essentially *answer* to an investing audience.
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
That is the holly question. Remember that Heroes Chained has introduced the “Play-and-Earn”, challenging “Play-to-Earn”. It has started the “Game-First for GameFi” meme in 2021 when the p2e hype was rising. So, HC is designed and developed to be a fun game. That is why it took us a great deal of time and effort.
In free market economy or capitalism you have investors, speculators and users. It is natural. You have the same in web3 gaming. You have gamers as users and the ratio of individual investors and or speculators is higher, which we may call democratization of investment or speculation if you will. The best way to cope with both investors and users is easy to know and yet hard to implement. Develop the best product for the users and do the marketing well. So, web3 is no different in that sense. Some investors will get the earnings they deserve. Investment involves speculation, which is OK as long as you develop well.
Dave | Avalaunch
Well said and there is often something of an adversarial relationship between parties. Gamers are slowly starting to warm to web3 but it’s still ongoing.
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
Indeed.
Dave | Avalaunch
It’s always worth visiting what brought us here. How are you feeling about the technological advances on Avalanche and how does that bode for the Heroes Chained/FOV architecture?
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
Avalanche is a top tier blockchain with its speed and cost-effectiveness. The flexibility of subnet approach also makes it long term friendly. Now that we have AWM for seamless and secure communication among subnets we the technical people are more relaxed. WE also added off-chain option for those who dont want self custody. And ecosystem, ecosystem, ecosystem.
Dave | Avalaunch
Agreed. The horizontal scaling/subnet architecture is going to gather critical mass and come into its own. Or so I believe.
Let’s wrap up this part of the AMA with a final question before we move on to the community questions.
I recall from our early conversations that you were among the first to recognize that an NFT should be more than a profile picture. Following the launch of our NFT Marketplace “Peek,” we are always interested in hearing about the application of NFTs with utility. Can you remind us about how some of your NFTs truly go to work in the game?
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
We have a very special race called Mayinhara created by Onur Can Çaylı, uniquely, just like the White Walkers race he created for Game of Thrones. Mayinhara has passive income capabilities and in game advantages. Their holders have supported us at early phases of development. There will ever be 10.000 Mayinhara heroes ever. We sold more than 3.000 heroes until now. You cannot buy or earn Mayinhara when the game starts. Only available in NFT sales before the game release or you may buy secondary market. And we had a very high demand. We thank our community for their support and faith in the project. Mayinhara heroes can be traded on third party marketplaces. We will have all the five classes for Mayinhara Warrior, Tank, Mage, Archer, Healer. Mayinhara has many advantages both in and out of game such as being immortal, they don’t need breeding to reach next generation, getting extra income and bringing some stat boosts, early access rights etc.
We have two types of NFT’s 1. Utility 2. Artworks and collectibles. 1. Utility NFT’s are heroes, items like sword, spell cards, guilds, land etc. They all have utility in the game.
You craft gear, and materials from lower tier resources which you can sell as NFT. This helps buyers save time and effort. You can use your gear and resources yourself as well. For passive and semi-passive income, you explore outside the city walls and find chests, rare NFT items, and resources. You do dungeons for looting items, runes or resources. Battles against NPC enemies. We are working closely with Dexes for integrations. Compounding and yield farming. You can own land outside the city where you can get many benefit of it such as crafting, collecting resources and even getting fees from some activities on your land. In brief it is a metaverse mimicking the real economy. But since it is fun the economy is sustainable.
Dave | Avalaunch
Thank you for the comprehensive answer.
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
Thank you for the opportunity.
Community Questions
Dave | Avalaunch
The game sounds like it’s becoming a robust experience and congratulations on Fortunes. Sounds very promising. Now, moving on, our inquisitive community has a few questions.
First up is @verniadollar who asks an easy question — “are any of the fees generated by the game distributed back to holders/staker?”
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
Yes 🙂 you may do further reading in our Medium channel and follow us on Twitter, Telegram, Discord.
Dave | Avalaunch
Fair enough. 😁 Our sophmore effort is none than @BuckStern who wants to know- “Often — we see multiple tokens in games, why does Heroes Chained only use one?”
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
Simple is the best. You can get tokenomics wrong the more sophisticated it becomes. Remember we are a game and not DeFi. We achieve price stability via FIAT and volatile value via HeC. So HeC represents the censorship resistant, self custody option whose value is in correlation to the size of the game economy. HeC can be staked for governance as well. So we didnot need a separate token for stable price tags, they are pegged to USD.
Dave | Avalaunch
That makes sense. I’ve often wondered why so many games have two token economies where some of the chief utility seems lost in the uncapped “currency” token. Good for you all.
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
Indeed.
Dave | Avalaunch
None other than @Arleenclements inquires — Does Heroes Chained have a free to play version? How do you find a balance between attractive casual/free players while making it exciting for those who hope to earn?
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
Yes we have f2p option. Like all high quality mid-core games which are f2p and include high in app purchase market. We use their best practice. First we need to develop a fun to play game with rich content and gameplay experience involving high variety of experience and gamers. Then we must have a high enough in-app purchase market, which has been achieved many times in the sector.
HC is a normal game using the best practices of the real gaming industry.
Dave | Avalaunch
Right. Good reminder. And next up is our very own @charan_0318n who took a real interest in the project — What are the new features added to FOV 2.0? What are the main differences between using silver and gold bars for crafting weapons in FOV 2.0?
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
New features have arrived with FoV 2.0. Limited gas fee, new tier levels (6/7), sending and claiming heroes collectively, revamped new user interface are just some of these new features. We released FoV Defiance recently and World Boss Event which is a new game mode, crafting weapon, marketplace, inventory came as new features. Please follow us on our social media and especially read our medium articles on FoV 2.0.
Dave | Avalaunch
And our final question comes from @PatrickChan111 — There is a negative prejudice against local projects in our country. What are your plans to break these prejudices? Heroes Chained introduces the concept of “Play and Earn” vs. “Play To Earn” Can you tell us the real difference between the two?
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
HC is not the right project for quick buckers. It is a first class game project. Developing a good game is universal and the market is global. HC has an internationally renowned team, Mev Dinc has developed globally award winning games for example. Other founders have internationally respected startup experiences.
So far HC has been welcomed by the national and global community. Take a look at our backers, and community. And remember we have been rated high for a very long time, continuously. We have been able to keep this reputation for so long by building and releasing actual stuff. At the end of the day nobody cares where the good game they play is developed. And our country is a top country in game development. That is play&earn. It is game-first.
Dave | Avalaunch
That’s an appreciated answer and I thank you for being here today.
Good to hear of all this development as we wind our way through these bearish conditions.
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
Remember bear is when you can concentrate easier on building 🙂
Dave | Avalaunch
and a big congratulations on Fortunes. Amazing to see you all pivot and put together something that was not even on the roadmap. Takes a strong and accomplished team who has their ear to the street.
Ersin Taskin | Heroes Chained
Thank you very much. This summer will be fun. Cant wait to see how this game unfolds 🙂
Dave | Avalaunch
Likewise. Looking forward to it and again, nice to have you here today.
