METAFORRA COO Arthur Issabayev joined the Neo Live AMA series to discuss the team’s GameFi and EdTech platform. Five participants shared rewards from a prize pool with an equivalent of US $150 in METTA tokens.
METAFORRA is a GameFi ecosystem that focuses on mobile and cross-platform games. Additionally, the platform offers an NFT marketplace and education technology components. METAFORRA aims to address issues associated with Web3-integrated games, such as listing in the Apple Store and Google Play, improving the onboarding experience, and building a solid gameplay and player experience.
In the AMA, Arthur discussed the motivation for the METAFORRA team, the differences between play-to-earn and play-and-earn, METAFORRA’s unique fundraising method, plans for integrating NFTs into the gaming platform, and more.
The full transcript is below.
Sam Wang (NGD marketing): Hi Arthur, thank you for joining us today, would you please introduce yourself and share a quick overview about METTAFORRA?
Arthur Issabayev (METAFORRA COO): Hi everyone! I’m Arthur, thanks for having me here today. Many of us at METAFORRA still wear many hats because we’re used to this startup environment. But now we are forcing ourselves to split roles, so I’m the COO at METAFORRA.
Briefly speaking METAFORRA is a Web3 game development studio that is building an ecosystem.
Q1: What is the METAFORRA project all about?
Arthur: METAFORRA is a play-and-earn ecosystem comprising several mobile and cross-platform games, an NFT marketplace, and an EdTech platform. The ecosystem aims to give access to high-quality play-and-earn games and solve major Web3 gaming problems.
Q2: Can you expand further on the current problems of the Web3 gaming space that METAFORRA specifically solves?
Arthur: Before jumping into the Web3 gaming space from traditional web development, we checked out many Web3 titles and noticed some major problems.
Firstly, almost none of the Web3 games are listed on popular application marketplaces, like AppStore and Google Play, meaning they are missing out on a huge potential audience.
Secondly, most Web3 games offer problematic user onboarding process that includes the connection of players’ external wallets, which rarely goes smoothly.
Thirdly, Web3 games, in general, tend to be poorly made in terms of game design.
Our first Web3 title, “Futuructa,” proves a solution for all these issues: the game is listed on AppStore and Google Play, it is play-ready upon download, and it is built with a focus on game mechanics, design, and user experience.
Q3: What is the difference between play-and-earn and play-to-earn?
Arthur: Yes, there is a significant difference. P2E typically implies a high entry barrier and a promise that players will be generously paid for the mere fact of playing the game. But such a scheme has a fatal flaw – when the user acquisition curve plateaus, the project can no longer make payouts because payouts to the current players are made from the funds brought by the new players.
Other P2E projects may not charge high entry fees, but the inflation component kills them even faster because they distribute tokens to players at every turn.
When we say that we make P&E games, we are primarily focused on giving players an exciting game, and the opportunity to earn money is secondary here. Plus, we don’t charge entry fees, but we don’t scatter tokens left and right either.
Q4: What are METAFORRA’s long-term goals, and how is the team fundraising in a down-trending crypto market?
Arthur: Despite the market situation, we have secured investments from several private investors and grants during the Seed Round.
As for the Private and Public rounds – we’ll conduct an Initial Locked Offering (ILO, aka SAFT wNFT) with DAO ENVELOP, the same organization that Animoca Brands ran their ILO with.
Put simply, SAFT wNFT allows wrapping different assets into an NFT with extended functionality in the form of time locks, collateral, and royalties. Thus, the ILO will facilitate our token sale through the sale of NFTs that give holders access to our token when unwrapped.
Q5: What is your vision of a partnership with Neo? How will it affect the growth of METAFORRA as a project?
Arthur: We are thrilled to work with Neo – an established network with a large community and exceptional technology. This partnership is set to propel our company to much greater heights as it enables us to tap into Neo’s extensive network of users and industry experts, which provides us with invaluable resources for expanding our reach and delivering even more innovative solutions to our customers.
Q6: What measures do you have in play for newcomers to help reduce the complexity of understanding how to play-and-earn while playing the game? Does METAFORRA have any unique features?
Arthur: Absolutely. We are building a hybrid Web2 / Web3 ecosystem, and one of the goals is to seamlessly introduce the traditional gaming community to the Web3 world. We eliminated any need to connect external wallets. Moreover, newcomers won’t notice the Web3 component in the game until a particular time.
Q7: Are METTA tokens available on the secondary market?
Arthur: Follow us on our social media channels, and we’ll keep you updated on the ILO (alternative of IDO) start date.
Q8: Do you have a whitepaper? Where can we find more information about the pre-sale?
Arthur: Yes, we have the white paper on our website https://metaforra.com/, and we have plans for pre-sale this coming March. We’ll announce the start of pre-sale on our social media.
Q9: Are there any plans to integrate NFTs into METAFORRA?
Arthur: All of our games will have a vital NFT component. Futuructa will introduce it soon (NFTs will act as boosts and skins to customize the experience), and Quantum War will go even further since it’s a card strategy game – each card will be a unique NFT.
Q10: How did you get the community involved in developing the project? And how do you build a solid community to grow globally?
Arthur: To date, we have built a small but helpful community (20,000 downloads), and we have received much help from the community during the bounty campaign with all kinds of testing, translation of game content to different languages, and bug reports. We pay a lot of attention to the community’s requests, and we are trying to be very open to suggestions
Note: Some edits have been made for formatting and readability.
The full AMA can be found at the link below:
https://t.me/NEO_EN/260199
About The Author: Dylan Grabowski
Dylan is a reformed urban planner with a passion for covering the Neo ecosystem. His objective as a writer for Neo News Today is to report news in an objective, fact-based, non-sensational manner. When not behind a computer screen, he can be found in the mountains rock climbing. Find Dylan on Twitter (@GrabowskiDylan).
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