Q&A Interview with Alex McConnell, CEO (Chief Executive Outlaw) of Vendetta Games
Web3 gaming is one of the biggest narratives in crypto, and it’s proving to be a tipping point for players in more ways than one. Though still relatively early, a diverse landscape of Web3 games is already thriving, each offering a unique blend of genres and mechanics with the added benefits of the crypto economy.
Vendetta Games is one outstanding Web3 game in the Wild West genre, with a gaming ecosystem that empowers players to have more control, ownership, and potential earning opportunities.
Cryptopolitan spoke with Alex McConnell, the CEO of Vendetta Games, to share more insight about the project, future roadmap, and the Web3 gaming industry at large.
Can you tell us about yourself and your role at Vendetta Games?
I am a lifelong gamer and entrepreneur. I am from Canada, originally a very small town by the name of Chalk River (hence the name of our metaverse). I came to Asia over two decades ago for what was originally planned as a one-year trip to learn Chinese and ended up being home. I have been doing business in Asia, I have two successful companies in China, a Trade Company (specializing in flooring) and an ISO-certified laboratory that does quality control and testing for products that we sell out of Asia (China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand).
I founded and still operate a Web 3 tag and trace company (that does not have a token) and marries perfectly with my Trade and QC businesses, tagging flooring from raw material to the end consumer. I have been an investor in Crypto since 2015 and am a co-founder of a small decentralized investment group “OG Ventures”. My investments and success in crypto led me to create a Wild West-themed guild, VendettaDAO, which eventually led me to found and create Vendetta Games and my passion project, the Wild West metaverse Chalk River, together with 7 Wild West-themed side games.
What made you decide to get into Web3 gaming?
As an avid gamer, I was a very early investor in Web 3 games and metaverses. Having very large holdings of assets in multiple Web 3 gaming projects led me to create a Guild, and in an attempt to keep our large group of scholars busy, as many of the Web 3 projects of the last cycle were still not fully ready, I started building Wild West themed games that I wanted to play and used them as a tool to keep our scholars active and engaged in our guild. This passion grew into what is now Vendetta Games.
If you were to pitch Vendetta Games, what would be the most compelling message?
Vendetta Games is a passion project that focuses on Fun First. It follows traditional Web 2 gaming and economies plus has the added benefits of Web 3 ownership, and crypto economy. It is a very competitive, risk-based (Riskfi) and gamified-staking-based economy, leading the VDT token to be deflationary on the market as opposed to past Web 3 games, which have inflationary play to earn economies.
Tell us about Chalk River and the other ecosystem games that make up Vendetta Games. Will there be more side games in the future?
The open metaverse of Chalk River is similar in look and feel to Red Dead. It capitalizes on the social-fi aspect of gaming, risk-fi, gambling and gamified staking. It is a beautiful, expansive Wild West frontier. Players can socialize in Chalk River, engage in shootouts, and battle NPCs. Players can cultivate, breed horses & sell horses, stake businesses and entire towns, earning revenue from all the in-game items and services provided by the business/town that they stake. Players can also enter various character-based storyline chapter quests as they explore and participate in the metaverse. Players can access seven different multiplayer (or single-player) side games from the metaverse, including:
- Shoot Out on Mainstreet – A classic 1 vs1 or 5 vs 5 standoff, shoot-out game.
- Canyon Run – A challenging, fast-paced, multiplayer racing game where players ride and race their horses through the treacherous Barron Canyon. Avoiding obstacles, venomous snakes and scorpions, Outlaw bandits, and attacks from their racing competition.
- Defend the Town – In this multiplayer game, A small team of 3-5 defend a Frontier town from a larger invading posse of 5 – 10 outlaws. Players can choose to be on the defending team or the team of invading Outlaws.
- Cowboys vs Zombies – A single player or a group of friends can join the battle to save a haunted town from invading hordes of NPC zombies.
- Last Man Standing – This multiplayer battle royal pits players against one another in a battle to see who will be the last man standing. As the game progresses, the battle area slowly shrinks, forcing players to continuously battle each other in close proximity until there is just one player left standing in the middle of town.
This Wild West metaverse and suite of games is just the first stage of Vendetta Games. Upcoming Web 3 games include the Pirate Metaverse and a Romance of the 3 Kingdoms (based on the Chinese historical novels) metaverse. Both of which land very well within the Vendetta Games theme and culture.
Graphics and audio are some of the components that intrigue players. How far has Vendetta Games gone in that regard?
Vendetta focuses heavily on the audio and graphics experience, creating an AAA-looking project. As with Wild West-themed movies, the look and sound of the environment is a massive part of the genre. We are avid lovers of this genre, and we have stayed true to this. We spend a great deal of time and energy focusing on ensuring the beauty of the landscapes, giant skyline and, of course, even the beauty of starry night skies.
What rewards and achievements does Vendetta Games have for players?
Vendetta players can earn the off-chain in-game currency Gold Dust by participating in the game and completing various achievements. Players can earn the blockchain token VDT as well as NFTs via Risk-Fi aspects, gamified staking, and participating in the in-game economy of horse breeding, as well as through completing major milestones within the game.
Our IDO will take place on 4-5 different launchpads throughout the week of Feb 22nd, and our TGE will take place on a soon-to-be-announced CEX on Feb 28th.
Vendetta Frontier Pass crossed 550 ETH volume on Opensea in one month. How does this milestone compare to your initial expectations for the game?
We are very happy to reach such a milestone. As this is a passion project of mine and is very much a metaverse and game that I started out building for myself, it feels extremely rewarding to see that others are also excited and interested in the project as much as I am.
Do you play games? What are some of your favourites outside of Vendetta Games?
Yes, I am a lifelong gamer. I started playing on a Commador 64 and then more heavily on Nintendo and Sega; at the time, I loved playing Mario, Sonic, Mike Tyson Punch out, Contra, Excitabike and Zelda. I also spent hours playing all the NHLPA games. In more recent years, I played Red Dead, GTA, and Runescapes. Frankly, now I just want to keep building and playing Chalk River and the side games because these are games that I can build that include exactly what I enjoy about games and the Wild West genre.
From a player’s perspective, what’s the primary barrier that makes web3 gaming feel complex or unwelcoming?
Wallets and understanding different blockchains. I guess also if you are not familiar with crypto then also the fast-paced price changes (ups and downs) of tokens. Having said that, I see that there has been a lot of building going on in this past bear market, and there are so many seamless solutions now with wallets and signing in with socials that I feel that the main pain points of Web 3 gaming have been solved and in this cycle, the new ease of signing up, playing and seamlessly interacting with the blockchain will result in seeing more and more web 2 gamers and web 2 companies coming over to Web 3
What are your top predictions for Web3 gaming?
I predict that we will stop calling it Web 3. I predict that “Web 3” will be massive in this new bull run and that Web 3 gaming will become the norm. It is becoming seamless; the issues with the pump-and-dump economies are benign and figured out, and we are going back to the basic mantra that a game needs to be fun first. If a game is fun, plus you can add the ownership and monetary benefits of Web 3, then it becomes a no-brainer that people will choose “Web 3” games over traditional games.
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