Hello, and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I'll be having conversations with brilliant game designers from across the industry. with a goal of finding universal principles that anyone can apply in their creative life. You can find episodes and more at thinklikeagamedesigner.com. In today's episode, I speak with Ali Straza.
Ellie is a longtime streamer and influencer in the trading card game space. She started off making a living as a hearthstone streamer for many many years before she's transitioned to both making her own game in play alchemy and starting to promote web 3 games like parallel we talk a lot about eight
ton of really interesting aspects in terms of what it takes to be a successful streamer, in terms of what it takes to grow a community, in terms of how you can build communities and the upsides and downsides of Web3 Gaming. Allie is just one of the most genuine people that I have been able to have on the podcast. We had not met before this, but I had heard great things about her, and she certainly delivered. There's a lot of really great insights, including some personal...
insights in terms of how you deal with criticism, how you can grow as someone who puts your work out there. Honestly, whether or not you care about TCGs or you care about Web3 at all, there's a lot of great insights in here that will 100% be applicable to you in your creative life.
life. And that's exactly why I made this podcast is to bring a variety of voices in to be able to help everyone contribute more, create more, grow more. And Ali really delivered here. So without any further ado, here is Ali Strasza. Hello and welcome. I'm here with Ali Estraza. Ali, it's awesome to finally get to chat with you.
I'm so happy to be here. I've heard amazing things about you. And yeah, let's get to it. Yeah, likewise, likewise. I've, you know, I've been following a lot of your presence online and, you know, you've kind of...
uh well in a sense like me we've made a living from our love of trading card games and being in this space uh we took a very different path or slightly different path so i'd love to just kind of give people a little bit of background on you how did you kind of get into gaming how did you get into making it more of a professional path? Take me to Wayback Machine, how we got going. Well, I've been a casual gamer my whole life, but it wasn't until...
my last semester of college that I got into card games. And so I would consider myself sort of a late bloomer because I wasn't playing card games when I, or magic and stuff like that when I was 10 years old. So I found them in. college with hearthstone and i was introduced to it to um through my husband now. And the story kind of goes that the first BlizzCon was on. He and his friends were watching it, and I just am kind of...
that person that doesn't like being in the room and not knowing what's going on. So I downloaded the game and basically just fell in love with it after that. And sort of the rest is history. Really, really loved dragons. So the lore of, you know, the dragon, Warcraft, Alexstrasza, you know, that really piqued my interest. And then slowly but surely just sort of, you know, wanted to make this whole persona out of it. And as I was graduating college.
I started to learn about Twitch and live streaming, never really wanted to do something that normal. I love entertaining people. And when I found out about this, you know. possibility of making live streaming a career i basically like made a powerpoint presentation to my parents and said look uh i'm gonna try to be a streamer for six months and if i see some success i'll keep going and if not then i'll work in marketing and advertising which is what i studied and it worked
So and here I am about nine years later. So almost a decade of content creation for card games. That's the short.
version there all right love it i'm gonna unpack a bunch here because there's a few key moments that i love to always just sort of learn more both more about you and learn more about the kind of like traits and and lessons and approaches that uh that tend to give people more chance of success here and and getting of the space one powerpoint presentation for your parents walk me walk me through this one a little bit because like i i'll and i'll give you some time because like for me
when i i mean i dropped out of law school to to make a living playing games and you know my parents were not happy right i mean literally my mom was like crying and was trying to do everything in her power to try to convince me to
to to go back to law school but i wasn't you know i had no powerpoint i just said hey i'm just doing this thing uh and uh and that was a tough spot so maybe i should have had a powerpoint maybe i wouldn't have had so many tears uh so so talk to me about what the relationship is like with your parents like what made you decide like
Did you was there like a giant like projection screen? Did you sit them down? Was it? Well, I wanted to know what this PowerPoint. Yeah. Walk me through this. I must have been in a studious mindset because I was, you know, graduating college. But. It basically was printed out articles from I think there was a Forbes article where it was like, you know, people are making a living off of video games now. Like one of those early articles. And this was probably I guess this was 20.
15 because I graduated in the fall of 2015. So when I say PowerPoint presentation, it's probably not as crazy as like projector on the screen and like. bullet points, but it was a little laser pointer, you know, it was just a collection of information of that was like, Hey, this is actually a real thing. People are doing this. And I would say that both my parents are. pretty supportive. My mom was maybe a little bit more like, hmm, I don't know. But my dad was actually a professional athlete.
you know, had a trajectory that was in a similar vein. It's a tennis player. And so when Mason and I, my husband kind of presented this idea to him, he was like, sure, you know, go for it. And they were both very supportive. So I was lucky to kind of have their support, but it was with a sort of time limit. Like if you can't see some success, then like, you know. You need to go figure something else out. And yeah, that's sort of the.
I graduated December of 2015 and my first stream was February 1st, 2016. So I took basically a month to go move out to California, get my rig all set up. And then February 1st hit nine to five, eight hours a day. you know, just treated it like a real full-time job and then eventually got signed to a gaming team and that one thing led to another. Blizzard discovered my stream and then, you know... I was able to join competitions that had a lot of visibility and that's how it started.
Yeah, I love this. And so there's a lot of like really key lessons here that I think I want to pull out. Right. One is, as you mentioned, like this, you know, you kind of glossed over with this. Oh, I worked for nine to five. I took this as a full time job. I spent all the hours putting it in. I put in a lot of work to build that.
A lot of people don't realize that that's what happens behind the scenes to make this come to life. And that's a really critical... critical piece that i think is worth underscoring and i love that you also built this with a kind of time horizon that says hey look i'm going to try and run this experiment and if it doesn't work within this time i have a backup plan and i'm going to do that and that's exactly how i've approached everything in my life as well right i took
I took a year off between college and law school to go play magic professionally. And that's when I had my most success and won the world championships and did everything. Because again, I took it like a nine to five job and then some. And then when I dropped out of law school, I already had a job.
lined up so i knew that i had something there when i quit that job to start my company i did exactly what you did whereas like i got myself at the point it was a year i had a year of savings and if i can't make it happen after a year then i'll go back and get another job and do the thing right a similar trajectory i would say there um and i and i want to point out that you know there when i started streaming there were
two viewers or one of my friends uh she would put my stream up on as many computers in her office so i could get me to like five six viewers and so i really you know started with no help from you know streamer that would host me and stuff like that it was very humble beginnings of streaming to you know three to five people for a couple weeks and then slowly got to 10 viewers to 15 when I hit 40 viewers it was like oh my gosh like it was a it was a big deal so uh yeah
Yeah. And so what, you know, you kind of caught this at a key moment, right, when streaming was just starting to get really big too, right? It was, it had, you know, maybe three or four years earlier than that. I think it really started to take off, right? And so what do you not just...
Obviously, hard work is a big part of it, but what would you credit that success or growth with? Or how would you potentially distill those principles for somebody who was trying to say, hey, I would like to get this to try. I wouldn't mind streaming for a living. That sounds awesome. What do you think? determines kind of successor
or likelihood of success here? Yeah, I think it's very different now. And it's funny, you know, you mentioned like I got into streaming pretty early, but at the time it felt like I was getting into it super late, which obviously now I can see I was not. true but in that time consistency I mean again it was just every day nine to five eventually um you know and what I did
was I posted a picture of myself playing Hearthstone on a plane and tagged Blizzard and did all the things. And that's actually the post that... the community manager at the time discovered me. So I was at TwitchCon and Molly, community manager at the time, Parstone, came up to me and she was like, hey, are you Allie? And so...
It just one thing sort of led to another. It's consistency, but it's also making sure that you put yourself in as many places as possible to be discovered by the right people. I think nowadays, you know, I don't think that you can just turn on the camera and. stream a crazy amount of hours and necessarily see the same success. The discoverability of Twitch is not great, and you really need to lean more into short-form content.
that your videos and short stuff like as many places as possible. I'm a little not I don't know what the word is, but my faith in just live streaming. is gone down just with the times like TikTok and YouTube shorts and that type of stuff is so crucial that you really need to expand your horizons just then turning the camera on at this point.
yeah i think this is true it feels like across the board right in a sense not just for for streaming but for game creation and any kind of content creation and at all like it's easier than ever to make the things and it's harder than ever to get like discovered and like get the attention onto things it it is it i think there's it is harder but it's also easier in some capacity like i you know do some research on discoverability and stuff like that and you know focusing in on like
The content is now less about the individual and it's more about like the subject matter itself. So if you are a small creator trying to grow, like you really can see success by like focusing in on a niche and just like understanding what that audience wants. And platforms like TikTok, maybe it's changing a little bit, but I do think that the discoverability is...
Some of the best it has ever been because of the short form content. And then that, you know, you take and tell your audience about like your stream and your actual YouTube channel with longer form content. But yeah, it's. We all have to adjust to the changes of social media and, you know, with VR and all the AI and all the things that are coming, like who really knows what's happening next? I guess that's how I feel.
Yeah, well, so there's a couple of principles that I'll take. Maybe I'll reflect back from what I hear from you and then I'm going to push back with some other ideas and see what you think. So on the one hand, there's this idea of like there are some.
uh there's there's always going to be some new frontier right of like what the the the open spaces right and where you can most make an impact so finding a niche game like maybe there's a new smaller game community and you could be one of the first people streaming it and it's going to start slow just like
everybody does but then as that game grows as that community grows you're well positioned to grow with it and so that's like one opportunity if it's not you know short form content on tiktok maybe just the hot thing right now but maybe there's another version of that that shows up you know whatever the next thing is the you know, AI implanted into your brain chip versions. I don't know, whatever, whatever it is. Right. So just keeping an eye on the trends on that space. That's kind of.
opportunities for people. And of course, just creating good content and getting good at creating good content for these different formats is a skill that you'll just continue to work on as you explore.
One thing I'll push back on, or I don't know if it's a pushback, but just kind of like from my experience, one of the most important things that I have found is to find a format that you actually enjoy, right? Like this podcast, for example, right? Like I've been doing this now for like... five six years something like that and i couldn't even imagine like if i were trying to make something like like i don't know to me like trying to do like a you know short form little posts is a lot more
like painful in a sense but here like having a deep dive conversation with somebody else in the industry about cool stuff about making games and content and all that like i love this stuff so to me i would do this even if i
you know, had no revenue from it. In fact, this podcast doesn't really make direct revenue. So I basically do, but it's something I enjoy. And I think that that makes a big impact because you can stick with something over time, even if it's a crowded format, right? Starting a podcast in 2018 also. super late. It's already maybe too saturated, but it's something that I can do and post.
It started off once a month, became every other week. And it just was something I just enjoyed and we grew over time. And that ability to have that slow growth and be okay with that because you enjoy what you're doing, I feel like is a pretty key recipe for success.
Absolutely. I'm super happy you mentioned that. I've always said to people when they've asked me for advice on streaming, like if you're having a good time, your audience can see that you're having a good time. It's so important to actually love what you're doing. Because that'll keep you going. So I think, you know, even in that case, though, like, I think the ideal version is we'll use the podcast, for example.
You love this. This is your type of medium that you feel fulfilled doing. I think still. you know if you had an editor or something and took the best clips like maybe you aren't necessarily in control of making the short form content but you take your uh preferred whether it's making youtube videos or podcasts and then you still somehow find a way to you know clip up the best moments and then that is sort of the promotion for the podcast that's if you're like really trying to
get as much growth as possible but i absolutely agree with you like you have to do what you love and you know and consistency and passion right that's the the winning combo 100%. And then being able to repurpose the same content in multiple channels and multiple ways to reach multiple different audiences is absolutely a path to success. And we do that with this podcast. We have video clips and various other things that I don't.
make but i'm glad that they exist and then you know we talked about ai like so you know ai is going to get better and better at this sort of thing like it already is pretty impressive where you can not like not use the ai to generate the core content but use the ai to create the clips and help bring things apart you know create that
many faceted approach i think it makes it again easier to create this kind of content than ever Yeah, I'm definitely someone that maybe this is a little controversial, but when it comes to things like new technology, like AI or blockchain. I'm very much in the camp of let's figure out how to use it ethically like in the best way rather than pretending like it's not happening or it doesn't exist. And so.
I do think that AI is going to absolutely change the game. I mean, it already has with content creation. And so I'm, yeah, I'm of the opinion. Let's not shun it. Let's figure out the best way to use it. And hopefully that will... give more people an opportunity to create content because not everybody is an amazing artist or an editor or whatever it may be. But there's a fine line, of course.
Yeah, yeah, of course. And for anybody that wants a deeper dive into this, I have a podcast with Ethan Mollick, who's one of the top experts on AI. We talked very deeply about that process and like what the goods, the bads and the ways to approach this. And because I'm like you.
I think that the potential of this technology is amazing. Even what's happening today is amazing. The risks are real. The costs to artists and creators are real. Making sure it's done ethically and that we find a way to kind of integrate this into society that doesn't destroy.
the the things we love right if it takes away the things we don't love like my clipping this into smaller bite-sized chunks and that can be done fantastic but if it's taking away the things of like you know actually people's ability to create and make a living from doing things that they enjoy then that's something we want to pay attention to but um but that doesn't mean we should ignore it and in fact as a creator
it allows you and empowers you to do so much more if you're using it in the right sort of way. So I agree with you there. I would love to listen to that podcast. So I'm going to get the episode number after this and listen myself.
Yeah, I'll be happy to share it. I think, yeah, I've just, I love, I mean, and I think you are similar, I'm getting the vibe similar to me, like just geek out on the new technologies, right? Like we both have gotten involved in like web three gaming and we'll talk some about that for sure. But like this idea of like, what does that.
bring to the table and even though there's a lot of people who are scared of it or a lot of scammy things or a lot of people that don't like it in fact there's a ton of value to the technology and tons of like new frontiers to explore as a designer as a creator as a player as just somebody who just enjoys these things like i
I think that I've always just had a bias towards like, okay, what's the cool thing and how do we interact with it? I'm right there with you. I think humans and technology have been evolving alongside each other, you know, since the history of time. You know, it's not to say that the evolution could go wrong in some ways, but it's like it's up to humanity to sort of decide what happens with the tech. Right. So.
Yeah, absolutely. And I've spent some time studying the history of technology. And every single time there's a new revolution in technology, specifically when it comes to communication and our ability to collaborate together, there's always a crisis that comes with it, right?
Like if let's go back to obviously the social media crisis is very people are very, you know, intent on right now and increasing levels of depression and some problems that people have and, you know, kind of people getting isolated into echo chambers. And that's something we're now adapting to.
but like go back further, right? Television was a TV is going to rot your brain and it's going to have centralized authority sending propaganda and commercials. And yes, some of that happened, but also we adapted and we evolved and the same. And if you go back further, when, when radio came out, people. had the same things and newspapers and
Even books, there's records of people who are complaining that when books came out, it would take away our ability to tell stories and connect to each other and we'll lose that part of our skill set. So every single one of these revolutions has challenges. They're real challenges.
We have to wrestle with them. We have to understand them. But they also come with incredible opportunities. And thus far, humanity has proven unbelievably resilient at evolving together. And I think gaming is a huge part of that, right? The ability to have...
online gaming communities whether that be directly in an online game like world of warcraft where you're actually you know interacting deeply with it with other characters in the game or games like hearthstone and you know magic and soulforge and all these other games where it's like
where the interactions do happen in the game but then there's this like community that builds up around it with streamers and discord channels and everything like we build ourselves this community around things we love in a way that was like both impossible not that many years ago, and now actually can create real economic value and entire careers that nobody could have even dreamed. I mean, the idea of you being a professional streamer even 20 years ago, let alone 30 years ago or more is...
complete madness. The job didn't exist. So it's kind of cool to see that evolve. Well said. Amen. Completely agree. Yeah. Okay. So let's evolve now. So you started off as a Hearthstone streamer. You got hooked on the game. You got hooked on the art and the story. You ran your experiment. The experiment worked. You started getting discovered. You started getting some sponsorships.
uh what what happens next because you're not you know the hearthstone was only one part of the story and you've you've created your own games you're working with a bunch of other things so how did how did this evolve from there yeah i mean let's see i pretty much full-time Hearthstone for, I would say, eight and a half years. So it's really only been a recent thing that I've taken a step back from Hearthstone. And in that time, you know, I did...
Like Hearthstone was certainly my main game. I played TFT. I had a little magic saga, you know, for a while there when MTGA first came out. And yeah, I think... The next evolution in my career, I suppose, happened when I did find Web3 Gaming and blockchain. feel on the subject that we just had about technology. I really care about playing a role in making sure that this technology is going in the right direction for gamers because I definitely think that
There are a lot of people taking advantage of the space. And so I understand that it's a risk to sort of like be, you know, a person standing up for it. And that's certainly come with its challenges for sure. But that was sort of a preach. That sort of was a turning point. And I suppose that was in maybe 2021 that I started to get involved with. other groups that were promoting certain games and learning about the whole space. And then, yes, that did also lead to making a Discord game.
the team is small it's the four of us it's mason my husband and and joseph and alex some of our best friends and uh yeah we work to make this discord game this rpg and so my role is a little bit more on the lore side of things i am the Head of mysticism. So I was, you know, in charge of sort of like coming up with the characters and the world building and all that good stuff. And we are still working on that now. And, you know.
It is meant to be sort of a community building tool that anyone can play in Discord, play Alchemy. And so, yeah, that's sort of been the journey thus far. And also, you know, now I'm... a podcast host of the parallel league podcast. Cause I've gotten very into casting the tournaments more into the competitive scene. So. The majority of my career has been content creation and streamer, but I am trying to move a little bit more into hosting and being a sort of personality.
for web3 gaming and but of course still streaming and making content as well so sorry if that was a ramble but that's no no it's great i mean i love it because it gives me a tons of uh tons of fun threads to pull on here right so so you went from you know from streamer uh and for eight eight plus years to creator of like a of a game and that's not an easy jump. Talk to me about that decision. How has that gone? You said you've been doing that for about three years now.
you know it's a decent chunk of time to be investing into making games which obviously i'm passionate about also um and so i'm curious like what what was the motivation behind that what would you say, is the elevator pitch of Play Alchemy specifically? And maybe we'll dig into that process. Yeah, so we found that there was sort of a...
Lack in community building tools outside of people's main game. Like in my community, we would host like poker nights and stuff like that to sort of have this extra thing to, you know, hang out with your. audience or whatever and so with the concept of alchemy being a discord game it's like
embedded right into Discord. So it's already incredibly social, right? And so the concept was also to... sort of showcase an easy path to getting people into Web3 gaming because when people play, there's no requirement that you need to use any crypto elements, but we did make a custodial wallet on the back end. for people that if they wanted to go you know export their assets to their wallet that was
possible. And so, yeah, it's been a journey so far. It's been fun. We have a loyal community and we're still trying to grow it. I was just recently in... Manila for a parallel tournament and you know we got to meet one of our like longtime supporters of alchemy So that was amazing just to see him in person But we are continually you know working on
you know, making the game skinned for other communities. That's something that we do. And as well as our like idol staking game, Cosmic War, where basically... There are different territories and you're trying to take everybody down each week. And if you do, you earn our token spirit. And yeah, it's been fun. And definitely a cool decision to sort of move into the development process as opposed to just, you know, playing games myself.
yeah yeah it gives a different perspective on things and uh you know obviously the the skill sets feed into each other right having an audience and being able to broadcast game knowing the needs of uh of streamers and the opportunities to you know fill that niche is valuable. And then as you learn more about what goes into game development, you get maybe a little bit more sympathy for the games you might criticize on stream otherwise.
Absolutely. Again, I'm more on the world building and the lore, but the tech and the game design, I have witnessed a lot of back and forth. And man, game design is hard. I'll say that. That's something that I... I've gotten to see now. And so I actually have a little bit more sympathy for companies, game devs, where things take time. Yeah, it seems hard, which I'm sure you're very...
Very aware of. Very, very aware of. Yes. In fact, well, but again, that's part of why I have this podcast, right? Is to sort of demystify the process, to let people in behind the scenes as to like the challenges that come, right? I mean, Soulful Fusion, for example, you know, we're getting into the Web3 space, so Soulful Fusion.
We recently launched on Solana and our Web3 elements. Like you, we had all of the kind of classic hate from Web2 and our tabletop players because it's also a tabletop game that scans into the digital account. And all of the challenges that came from building... a new technology to
digitally print cards, new technology to run this web two version of the game, new technology to connect everything to web three. And every piece had challenges and bugs and hiccups and almost running out of cash and trying to manage the community and cater to everybody's interest. And it's just, it's a, it's.
enormous amount of work uh it's enormous amount of you know of challenges and uncertainties as you go through it um and again like we talked about with streaming it has to be something you really have a lot of passion about right so you clearly are passionate about the lore building and the world building you carry you love that stuff
willing to go through the challenge and heartache of working through all of this technical and marketing and every piece of it that comes together to build something that you really can be proud of at the end of the day. Absolutely.
So as we get into Web3, I realize we've dropped a few terms here that some of our audience won't understand because we have a lot of tabletop players and Web2 players. You mentioned kind of dropping the token and custodial wallets and a couple of things that we kind of dropped in. And so I want to talk about...
Web3 generally, you know, you work closely with the Parallels team, which is a TCG that's hosted. It's also on the Solana network, just like SoulForge Fusion. And so we have a lot of overlap there. And I would like to start with like what... you viewed as the kind of what brought you to web3 what you see the as the the upside and value premise for the players uh if you want to touch on some of the reasons why people might
feel otherwise and address those, you're welcome to. And then we can start to get into the specifics of both what you're doing with Parallels and maybe we'll just bounce around on the fun ideas of what the future looks like too. Sure. Well, I think...
The big pillar for Web3 is asset ownership. Forgive me if I sound like a broken record. I don't know how many people have come on your podcast here and talked about this concept, but I'll... go through it um you know when you played magic uh when you were a kid and it was you know or actually when you play now because people play paper magic but i'm so used to the digital mind okay you buy your packs and you actually own your cards right you can sell them you can trade them
whatever uh you want you you own them right but when we made the jump to something like hearthstone you i have put thousands of dollars into my Hearthstone account, which I can't even legally sell because that's against Blizzard's terms of service. And so essentially, I don't really I guess I own my account, but I can't sell or trade my cards if I wanted to. Not even from region to region, by the way, I will just.
point that out because that has always bothered me like i was not able to participate in a european tournament because all my cards were on my north american um you know uh account And so the concept is, you know, you actually get to own your assets now at this point. And I think that is something that we've lost in time with the changes to digital. And this is blockchain's.
you know solution to sort of get that back uh so that's really like the the big one but i think that it goes far beyond that um and you know i am not a technical wizard okay but i think The concept of interoperability is really important. So being able to like share your assets from like a game to game or there's a lot of.
these concepts that i think that will get expanded upon that we don't even know right now because it's still so new um but i think those are the the two big pillars of blockchain gaming and I guess, you know, the argument is made, you know, oh, well, you could have all of this without blockchain. And I'm like, well, who's doing that?
you know what i mean like that's sort of my my case like i don't think blizzard will do that um because it's not really in the best interest for them um they will make more money if people aren't able to trade their cards or sell them right and so I think that the move towards blockchain having sort of this systematic underlying tech where any of the games can build on top of and sort of share between.
the the chain is the next evolution of gaming and um it definitely comes with the challenges and i think that because it's the early stages there are people taking advantage of it and that really sucks and i am have gone through moments of time where I'm quite, you know, disheartened by what I've seen but I also at the same time have met so many incredible game developers that really do see the vision of the technology and are good people and are
working their hardest to you know implement it in the best way but the truth is is that you know making good games takes time and i think making bad games that are cash grabs or whatever like what some people have seen so far, that's much easier to do. And so the best games that are getting developed that are using blockchain tech are coming. And there are a few that are out now. And in time, there will be more and more.
Yeah, yeah. And I'm going to underscore a lot of this because I agree. And like, I've had this, I'm actually working on a big kind of article about this, because I think it's really important that, you know, the business model that Magic the Gathering.
innovated and trading card games innovated was was revolutionary right it was the first time ever that you could participate in a gaming ecosystem and that you as a player would actually capture the majority of the value right i could buy a pack of cards for
you know, $3.99 or whatever it is, and then, you know, open up a Black Lotus from Alpha Magic that's now worth millions of dollars. Like Wizards of the Coast or Hasbro, they don't make any extra money off of that new sale. They just sold the initial packs, they brought the initial things, and the players...
actually were the ones that benefited the collectors were the ones that benefited i paid my way through college winning magic tournaments and playing and traveling around the world doing that right like like the players were able to grow in a way that had never been done before and then when these things started moving digital it's really interesting because the very first digital trading card game magic online
did allow you to trade cards they did allow you to say and then they they basically you know while it still sort of exists they moved to magic arena and they put all their efforts behind that where you can't sell your cards you can't trade just like hearthstone just like all these other games where all of a sudden they've just recaptured all the value back and so you're 100 right like i and i and we did this research all right like you can
in principle, offer a lot of the things that blockchain offers using private servers, using traditional Web2 mechanisms. But these big companies are not incentivized to do it. And it's very, very costly. So we internally looked at doing this for software fusion without having to use blockchain. And it would have cost us.
way more money to do, would have been way more regulatory infrastructure, would have been much more challenging. Whereas by leveraging the technology that Solana already had, we were able to build a system for players to trade.
and sell their decks where it, you know, we were able to build it in a few months instead of a few years. And it was like a really, really big difference for developers because so much of this stuff is, you know, open source because the blockchain, you know, all this stuff is there. So much can be built on. You can also leverage and connect to other communities and people.
that are already there. So as a developer, I've seen this firsthand, how much it can accelerate your process and how much you can add that value back to the community. And I think as a small... game studio that's the opportunity that we have to be able to say hey look we're not we don't have the marketing budget and you know polish of blizzard and hearthstone
But what we do have is an open gaming economy and a system that you can come join and we have a great game. And if you're a part of it, we all win together. And I think that's a really compelling argument for people. Absolutely. Like, you know, the salon of blockchain, the tech is already there. You know, why not? tap into it, right? That makes a ton of sense to me. But I think the important thing is not forcing people.
Especially in the early days, if they don't want to interact with the crypto stuff, that's okay. You should give them an option to just play it like an absolutely normal game. And then if you want to tap into the ownership type of stuff.
then you have that right and i i think that's the important thing and and i think you know we're going to see so many different games iterate on what the best model looks like and it's really just gonna take some time to figure it out yeah because you know i i understand the criticism of like play to earn gaming like a lot of people um
don't want that because they think they it will take the fun out of um gaming right if you're just concerned about you know earning a token and that type of stuff and so that might be true and not every game needs to necessarily be played to earn you know maybe it's just leaning in towards um
asset ownership right and like you can't which is kind of earning because you can sell obviously your cards or whatever it may be but um i've seen a project recently um take that structure where it's like you um Web 2 all the way through, and then you can eventually upgrade your card to B. um a digital collectible that you can sell but there isn't necessarily like a huge token earning aspect of the game and the truth is is that some people are going to want that like
You know, play to earn games are absolutely massive in Southeast Asia, like Manila. I was just there. That's huge. And then maybe some people don't want that as well. So I think. Everyone is going to implement this new tech in various ways. And the truth is, you'll just opt in to the games that like the system that they choose, I suppose. Yeah.
Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, this ability of letting people opt in and creating a better, like smoother onboarding is a big part of what we focus on here too, right? So Soulforce Fusion, we talk about it being three different pillars. You can play the tabletop game and never touch a computer.
and enjoy the whole experience as it is. Or you could scan those decks into your digital account and play it as a Web 2 game and never touch the blockchain, never care about the blockchain. Or you can connect to the blockchain and you can now have decks that are tradable as NFTs and earn the tokens and all the things.
piece stands on its own but the same collection same cards same core game mechanic crosses over all of them um as a way to kind of make this easier for people to come into but i think the more important thing is i'm keying in on something else that you said which is like a lot of these were you know
it was easier to make not great games that just, you know, kind of promised tokens and had all of these like big pipe dreams and then they didn't work out. Whereas I think only recently have you seen.
more real game developers who it again it takes time to make these games i actually i've been working on software fusion for 13 years we had over four years of development to get this version out i don't think i knew that 13 years oh my gosh wow yeah so so the original just to to brief backstory i'm sure a lot of our audience are listening already knows this but the brief backstory is richard garfield you know creator mass gathering and i met
back in 2011 at a pax dev conference and we started talking about what game we wanted to make next and it was the original version of soulforge which came out before hearthstone designed specifically for mobile was the very first digital card game that was designed for mobile that launched uh we ran it for like five years and then eventually we had to sunset that and then as soon as that was over i really wanted to find a way to bring it back and and it was very acute for me
because the the you know every other game i've made was mostly tabletop games right like where or or or you know its own downloadable game where like once you have it you own it forever and doesn't matter if i stop making the game you own it but when soul force
the original version of soulforge we shut down the servers everybody's collection was gone like the next day so people who had spent thousands of dollars or thousands of hours or like built their whole life and communities around this games as we have right you did it with hearthstone i did it with magic you know all of a sudden that was gone and it was like
heartbreaking like heartbreaking like one of the worst things that's ever happened to me in my whole career and i was like well okay i never want to see that happen again and so when i started getting into blockchain and still understanding oh wait there's a way to make this actually permanent and live on beyond my company
beyond me, beyond anything that we can do. Like that was really exciting to me. And so that's part of why we started building Soul Fortusion the way we did. I love that. That's the...
That's the story right there. You know, like that's the perfect implementation of like learning about the technology, having the background story and like and moving forward with it. I love that. Thanks for I did know a little bit of the background, but I didn't know the whole thing there. So I appreciate you telling me that.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's fun to share. It's wild to think about. Sorry, going back. But I think it's like, you know, to key in on another point that you brought up, like, I think there's the, you know, we don't know where the future is going for this. I think TCGs are the perfect analog, right?
Because we can tell the story of like, I know what it's like to own and trade and sell a physical trading card game. NFTs and the Web3 ownership community is just like that. And there's some extra functionality thrown in. But that's kind of a classic.
you know, taking an analog of thing we know, bringing it to the new tech world, but, but every new form of tech then brings its own like more native thing. Right. So you mentioned the idea of having games be interoperable between, or, or items be interoperable between games, which is, you know, kind of a ready player one.
world metaverse type thing which does feel pretty far off right now but it's pretty exciting and compelling or are there other ways that like you know to me we talked about the challenges of discovery and i think this idea that you can have a community that already exists like on salon like for example parallels great game great community and one of the things we did when we started soul fortification was we airdropped our token to everybody
that played parallels and had a certain amount of NFTs in their collection. We did the same thing for a bunch of other communities. It's like, hey, come check us out and we can actually give you incentives and access an already excited, already engaged community, which there's not really a parallel for that.
so to speak uh in uh in the web 2 world that i can think of um and so it's a really interesting new way to like again just add value directly to players and you know use that as a kind of way to onboard and bring new people into a game that might not otherwise have that audience yeah i am i'm curious where you think the resistance is the the most and like i i have my theories because trading card games are such a perfect use case for this new technology right and um
Yeah, I have my thoughts, but I'm curious like where you think the biggest issue, like the blockage for their sort of acceptance of the technology is. Yeah, I think I definitely want to hear your side of this, too, but I'll start. I'll start because I think it is a lot of this came down to the fact that the initial entrance into the marketplace were.
by and large, bad games and bad actors. Not always, but it was at least one of those two for the first bunch of games that existed. And once you're in that world where you see... that it's a scam and people lose everything or it's just like the game is not fun, right? Like if you come over and you see that this is a not fun thing that I'm just grinding to try to make cash or other people are pyramid scheming to try to make cash for me.
that becomes a very negative experience. And then those stories become the... the front of mind and the, you know, that becomes the zeitgeist and people pull away and you see even companies like that just were like throwing NFTs into their game and made no sense or, you know, people that were that, you know, again, just were more. profit first, not gameplay first, not community first. And I think that became the story and the narrative. And so that I think is what pervaded and it takes.
work again i mean i'm i i'm consciously putting in this work like when we announced that we are doing a web3 element we got tons of hate mail we got tons of review bombs on our steam game we got tons of like you know lots of negativity but i put myself out there personally i did
spaces i did you know active in our discord i did amas i streamed and i answered everybody's questions directly and again i've been doing this for 25 years right i'm not here to do a rug pull i'm not here to scam anybody right and then richard is on this as well and he's been doing this
for 40 years right like so the ability to be up front and put a different story face reality behind this i think is how we transition um but it takes time it takes time to change the culture right and again i'm a student of of technology going back like the same thing happened when
uh blizzard started doing subscription models for world of warcraft people like oh my god this is the worst you can't just buy a game you gotta pay it's a scam same thing happened when freemium games came out and people started having the micropayments right oh my god it's a scam they're just pay to win blah blah blah and some again some case
Yes, but most cases, no. And in fact, the things that rose to the top gave you a ton of value and a ton of joy, and you could play for way less money and then invest more time and money as you saw fit. And I think the same thing is going to be true here. It's just a new technology we're still adapting to. Yeah. Amen. You hit so many points that I absolutely resonate with and agree with. And one of the things that I want to bring up is just the when you have developers or even.
content creators. I mean, I guess it's, it's tricky, but I was trying to say that, you know, when you put your reputation on the line, like you've been doing this for so long, Richard, for 40 years, you said like, Why? What would be the reason? You know what I mean? Like if there is a developer or someone that is putting their face out there, their reputation, doing all of these interviews, hopefully that should be some kind of. credibility in that, you know,
There are good people really trying and the scammers and the bad actors are probably more anonymous, you know, and they're hiding behind and a curtain or whatever it may be. But at the same time, like I. Obviously, there have been major creators and people that are a part of scams and they get away with it. So I think where I've... relinquished a little bit because you know I care so much about this industry and so it's been very easy for me to get
quite defensive when someone attacks your character and stuff like that for being a part of this. That's been hard, but... You know, recently this past year, I kind of sat back and I was like, you know what? The people that are coming after this technology or they're calling you a scammer, like they think that they're doing the right things. They're good people that don't want to see good people scammed. Right. And so having a little bit more of compassion for the naysayers who don't support it.
Just having the framework that they believe that they're doing the right thing has made me soften a little bit to being so defensive about it. You know, in time, you know, my hope is just that people like you and, you know, the best or the good people that are making good games will shine through and it will eventually show in time.
And then the other point was that there's this YouTube video, and I'll have to share it, but it basically, I think the title is like, What Went Wrong With Gaming? And you may have seen it, and it's a really great... encapsulation of the greed that got built through the industry with monetization tactics and particularly
with millennials, they saw the whole evolution of some of the things that you mentioned there, like freemium or microtransactions or whatever it may be. And while the truth, some of the technology was good. Greed also got built through those new tactics. And I think that the level of trust with gamers in our age group are... just very mistrusting of new monetization tactics because of what they saw the industry move towards. And so I think they have some
right and justification to be very, you know, sus of new tactics. So I'm trying to move into the direction of having more compassion and a little less defensiveness for something that I really care about. So that's sort of been my mentality.
Well, I think that's a great little, let me linger on this a little bit, because I think this is another thing, right? As a streamer, as a public personality, as someone who's like creating and building things and pushing at the frontier, you get a lot of hate. Like people, you know, are gonna.
are going to hate, right? And I have my own sort of philosophy on how I deal with this and how I've approached this, right? I mean, from my early days when I started working on the Marvel and DC versus system trading card game and had somebody posting an online forum that I should be killed for... this card design that I had done. I was like, okay. Okay.
it was it was it was really weird and i had to like learn how do i react to this like how do i like that there's someone in the world that thinks i should die because of my card designs um but uh but how do you how do you deal with this yeah um You know, I am that is a work in progress. I am continually, you know, learning how to manage that. I would say that, you know, YouTube comments in the beginning in the first five years of my career.
really got to me, you know, and they get to you when you are actually insecure about something, right? Like if someone makes a comment about you that you're like, I don't. That's dumb. I don't agree with that. You know, it can bounce off of you a little bit easier. But when the Internet can identify what you're insecure on and then they lean into that, that's where things get get tricky.
Look, I like I said, I'm in a process of dealing with all of that because, you know, the last year in particular was kind of tough because Parallel started to sign. um web to creators that are very known in in the tcg space and that brought a lot of attention and truly like i was kind of the first ambassador to go to my network of tcg creators and say hey like
try out this game and participate in this creator invitational tournament that we're putting on. And so that definitely directed a lot of hate towards me. Truly did make me scared and like want to run away at certain times. And, you know, having to like push through that and be okay with being seen is hard. And I think it.
probably just comes down to and this is applicable I think to every aspect of life is the judgment of others is what's actually important is the judgment of yourself right so if you have the confidence that you are doing the right thing. Are you doing something that you believe in? It makes it a lot easier to handle other people coming at you. And if you're insecure yourself on it, that's where the voices can really, you know.
be detrimental to your mental health and stuff like that so i'm still a work in progress handling those things but as time has gone on you know 10 years of twitch chat you know you get thicker skin as as it goes but the the tricky one is when it's actually your peers like if it's twitch chat or youtube comments that are you know whatever you know I always feel kind of bad because happy people don't usually go and leave terrible comments to people right you know you kind of
have the compassion and you feel bad that someone feels the need to do that. But when it's your peers that you've known for years and years that are calling you a grifter or whatever it may be, that's a lot harder. And that definitely takes its toll for sure.
you know it's yeah yeah i appreciate you sharing that i appreciate the vulnerability i think it's like really important for people to hear these things because you know it's one the insight and understanding what it takes to be a public persona in any of these cases and and that it's not all you know sunshine and roses and uh and and likes and follows uh it is uh and also that
i mean i think it's a really deep psychological truth that you just drop there right that's like this idea that like you know anything that's gonna that somebody can say against you if you are comfortable with yourself and comfortable with your your identity in that in that aspect
They can't hurt you. It rolls off your back, no problem. But when you do have a reaction, when it does hit a nerve, that that's actually an opportunity for you to look inward, right? Because it's say, hey, there's something now with me that I'm not okay. And I actually just posted an article about this.
like yesterday um called urgent revision needed uh which talks about a story that happened to me uh when i was working at upper deck and i got a one of those nasty emails from a co-worker that copied my boss and was like you know you mess this up kind of thing and i just like
tired and wrote my nasty email response i got so fired up and then i realized like wait a minute what's happening here like and i and i was able to kind of tell a better story like as you've been doing with your audience of saying hey look i could be compassionate that anybody that's going to take the time to write an angry you know twitch post or
you know youtube comment or email or whatever they really care about whatever it is that you're doing right and they and there's probably a lot more pain and suffering going on in their life that you could have compassion for and then you can take that opportunity to look inward okay wait is there any truth to this is there anything that i don't feel comfortable with and how do i resolve that for myself that's like a
very powerful way to show up in the world that, uh, you've, you know, identified on. And I think, uh, everybody can benefit from it. So I try anytime I get fired up, my rule is like, if I'm, if I get emotionally charged in something and somebody's like, physical not in physical danger then that says more about me than it does about anything going on in the world and that gives me an opportunity to reflect yeah and i i
I love the way that you phrased it. It's an opportunity to really look inside yourself and be like, why am I so triggered by this? And the truth is that some people are going to just say mean things and it is what it is. cultivating that like inner peace and dealing with emotional triggers like it is It is absolutely the opportunity for self-growth. Doing that in a public forum or public space is hard. But, you know, everyone has, it's not just content creators, you know.
people that have platforms like everybody is faced with these um issues and yeah no i i love the way i'm really i will look at that article too i'm i'm excited to read that as well Yeah, yeah. I think that the value of the ability for you to be able to put yourself out there, face criticism and rejection and failure in public.
is one of the most important skills you can cultivate to achieve your dreams like full stop right like i teach this i teach game design through this podcast through my book through a live course and it's the number one skill i try to impart people like you will try things and they are not
going to work and you need to take criticism and feedback and separate your ego from it and look at where you can learn and then be able to grow from that and if you can do that and you keep working and you can learn and grow from criticism you could accomplish anything And if you can't do that, you're always going to hit a wall and you're never going to get outside your comfort zone and you're going to be stuck wherever that discomfort or insecurity lies.
Amen. I think humility is also super important because the truth is, is like we're going to make mistakes. And I sort of had a moment. Earlier this year where I did have like on Twitter a defensive response to something and and the better. Avenue or.
course of action would have just been to be a little like show a little bit more humility and be like, okay, I was kind of wrong in this situation. Right. And that was actually sort of a catalyst point of like, you know what, I think that the world is also moving towards. authenticity like i don't know if you feel this but i feel like the traditional kind of kardashian type celebrity where it's all buttoned up is is getting less popular and you know People are really loving seeing.
real people on tiktok talking about their struggles and and whatever it may be so i think that you know just having the vulnerability and it's scary because when you are vulnerable with the internet then they can pick up what you're insecure on right but i do think it goes a long way because
Everyone struggles with these types of things. And if you're just like, hey, I made a mistake here and I'm going to work and be better and try to separate my ego from things, as you just said. So yeah, love that. Yeah. Yeah. Easier said than done, but definitely a work in progress for all of us and very important and powerful. And again, that vulnerability and admitting to your mistakes and being open about those experiences and the hardships helps make you more relatable, helps make them.
message more resonant right like if you're just like oh yeah i'm right all the time everything goes great i'm super awesome you know like okay cool thanks but like that's not i can't relate to that
But if you could tell me like, hey, actually, I really struggled here. I really messed up here. We almost went bankrupt here. I had this relationship filled here. I did this other thing. Like, oh, okay, cool. Like now I get it. Now maybe you've got something that you can teach me that I can relate to because it's not all sunshine and roses. Exactly.
Even with game developers, with making changes to a card, nerfing it or whatever it may be, if the messaging to the community is, hey, we tried this and... We made a mistake. I feel like the community is way more like, oh, OK, thanks for letting us know. But if you're just like doubling down, like, you know, no, this is great. It doesn't sit right with the gamers in the community. So, yeah, it's applicable to all.
So I want to use this as a jumping off point because you mentioned this importance of being able to be vulnerable and, you know, let your audience know when you've messed up. And I think that listening to your community is such a critical part of it.
uh being able to build a good community and build a game um i don't think always agreeing with the community is right but i do think making sure that they feel heard and you know they understand your reasoning when you're when you're making things happen How do you think about community building and what best practices do you think make the most sense and you can use?
Either your streaming community, you can use, let's say, something like Parallels, which has been working to build a community in Web3 and bring other people over. Or you can even use it if you'd like as advice you'd give to me as building now a new nascent Web3 community for Salesforce Fusion. Yeah, I mean, I think community is the lifeblood of any game. And I guess I can go over a few examples. So I think that...
Parallel does this well. And I'm going to also use TFT, Teamfight Tactics, as an example with Mort Dog. When it comes from the game side of things, I think having a... Having your devs sort of be a personality. I just think Mortdog does this so, so well in TFT. He streams himself, but he's very communicative on Twitter. He'll respond to people. I think having...
The dev team, not everybody needs to be a public person, but the dev team being on Twitter, responding to people like there being that personal element is so important, in my opinion. And so I think like parallel with Koji, you know, the kind of Fitch, having personalities that interact with the community is really crucial. So that would definitely be advice that I've seen that has worked really well.
And when it comes to a content creator, I mean, I guess you can create community in any way. There's so many different ways to do it. I mean, I... Recently just watched all three Back to the Futures for the first time. And I did movie nights in my Discord. And, you know, there's probably only like 20, 25 people in there. But it was always a meme that I hadn't seen Back to the Future. And so we all watched it.
I think that live streaming builds a sense of connection that you don't quite get in any other format.
you know your regulars coming to your stream and communicating with them saying hey blah blah blah like oh how was your thing that you you know told me about like trying to remember obviously that falls off if you have 50 000 people watching you um but you know it's those types of things that really build a connection to the individual and people keep coming back and you know i'm sure many of you have heard of the thousand true fans you know that type of um that's the
what you should be going for. But yes, I think... There's many different ways to do it. Like I said, that was sort of the logic for building alchemy, was giving people a way to interact with each other and have fun beyond just the main game that they're playing. the NFT community that they were in or whatever it may be. So I think Discord.
Having a Discord, making sure you're active in there, super important. Just a place where people can ask questions. Having key figures that are very communicative with the community. Yeah, just just creating fun events for people to join in to. I think those are those three things that are coming to mind right now. And if I think of any else, I'll let you know. That's great. And I love this.
this yeah there's other a thousand true fans is the article by kevin kelly highly recommend everybody read it if they haven't already it's a great great you know innovation that you know in the internet world you could really just like build super fans and build a very powerful niche community um the idea that there's that building personal relationships and events and things that don't even necessarily scale to you know if i want to have a million
viewers or whatever but it's like those core fans become the seeds for those later things they're the ones that will tell their friends they're the ones that will be there all the time and support you when you jump from one new venture to another or you know and you know so for you know when i've you know went from doing tabletop games to digital games or digital games to the web3 games or you know trying to write a
book and teach design or now I have a new book that I just sent off to the editor that takes the principles of games and apply them to like business and life and like how do you use those things there which is you know it's a jump right but there i know that i've you know invested in a core group of fans and people who've found value in my work that are willing to come along for the ride and hopefully will find value
the new thing and so i think no matter how big your audience gets or how long you've been doing this i think it never you know not losing sight of that like you know personal touch and fun little events and quirky ways to just kind of be you and do the things that you know only you can do because that's just who you are right i think it's such a it's such a key part whether it be a dev that's in the public forums and your own personality i think
you know in a in a sense you're you're not just selling whatever the product is you're selling you're selling like who you are like whenever you create something part of you has to be involved in that to make it feel authentic to make it resonate with people and i think that's
comes through in a lot of your work personally. And one of the reasons I was excited to get to talk to you and, and in the, in the many great tips you've given here. So thank you. Authenticity is, is peak right now. And yeah, I think that. There are some games in the space that, I mean, I won't name names, but it feels colder. Like I don't see as much interaction or it just, it feels like a company behind.
a thing and or you know a curtain and the accessibility you know the gamers you know the community being heard is just so so important so uh yeah i i think that's all very important I love it. All right. Well, I think we're low on time today, although I'm quite confident this will not be the last time we have a conversation like this.
but for those that want to follow your stuff and see all the cool things you're doing what's the best place for them to come find you or find your cool projects and streams etc Sounds good. My ex, are we Twitter? I don't know what we're calling it. Whatever you want to call it. Pretty much all of my. stuff is at Ali Straza. So A-L-L-I-E-S-T-R-A-S-Z-A. So that'd be my Twitter, my YouTube, my Twitch stream. If you...
Put that into the search functionality, you will definitely find me. And yes, I am incredibly enthusiastic to come back on and probably talk a little bit more about Soulforge Fusion because I've only just started playing it, doing the...
campaign and that type of thing and i just want to say before i'll be on this podcast that i really like it there's so many things about the game that are awesome and i'm looking forward to getting more into it being more competitive so i just wanted to throw that in there I think you've made a really cool game thus far. Well...
I appreciate that very much. I'll tell you what, I would love to just do a dedicated episode or interaction or something around Soulforce Fusion because it means a lot to me, especially with your background and you're exactly the kind of person I'm trying to appeal to with this game.
if we're hitting the target that's fantastic and since you're plugging your stuff i'll plug mine for anybody that wants to soul ford fusion free to download you can go find it on steam uh s-o-l-f-o-r-g-e-f-u-s-i-o-n uh dot com also finds all the cool stuff so Here we are all promoting the cool things we're making. But yeah, this is so much fun, Ali. I knew I was going to enjoy this conversation. I absolutely did. And I can't wait till next time. Thank you for having me on. Bye.
Thank you so much. Listen to reviews and shares make a huge difference and help us grow this community and allow me to bring more amazing guests and insights to you. I've taken the insights from these interviews along with my 20 years of experience in the game industry and compressed it all into a book with the same title as this podcast Think Like a Game Designer.
In it, I give step-by-step instructions on how to apply the lessons from these great designers and bring your own games to life. If you think you might be interested, you can check out the book at thinklikeagamedesigner.com or wherever fine books are sold.