DogeRift founder Marko Sinko recently joined the Neo Live AMA series to talk about his team’s upcoming 2D/3D Play-to-Earn game and NFTs. Participants in the AMA shared rewards from a prize pool comprising an equivalent in US $300 of DOGER tokens and 10 Bored Doge Club NFTs.

DogeRift will be a P2E game incorporating non-fungible, governance, and utility tokens into its 2D and 3D gaming universe. The DogeRift game will offer two types of gameplay, player-versus-environment and player-versus-player, each with its own P2E mechanics. Two of the GameFi platform’s tokens, DOGER and DOGEF, have already launched on N3 and are available via Flamingo’s reverse pools.

In the AMA, Sinko discussed the motivation behind building the DogeRift game, the team and its background in game development, the type of gameplay DogeRift will offer, how Bored Doge Club NFT holders can access the beta version of the game, and much more.

The full transcript can be found below:

John Ricci (Neo Telegram admin): EGamer Studio is a game development studio focused on developing games for PC and Mac for the past eight years and published those games mainly on the Steam platform. They have developed and published over 20 games to date. We are happy to have Marko Sinko from DogeRift here with us today. Marko, can you introduce yourself please?

Marko Sinko (DogeRift founder): My name is Marko Sinko, and I’m 32 years old. I was born in Varazdin, Croatia, and I grew up during the Croatian war of independence. So, it was a tough time back then.

Since my childhood, I have loved playing video games. I was always interested in exploring how the games work, including their mechanics and design. For me, it was set in stone that I wanted to become a programmer one day. So, I worked hard to achieve that.

I graduated from The Faculty of Organization and Informatics (FOI) with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.

During college, my brother Jurica and I opened a game development studio called Just1337. Since then, we have developed various games with many different teammates over the years. After five years of gaining experience in game development, we rebranded ourselves as EGamer. Since then, we have been working as EGamer Studio, and our main focus right now is the DogeRift GameFi built on the Neo blockchain.

Jurica is the CEO of our company, while I am the lead programmer. I love my job, and I love to help others and improve myself to make the best possible experience for players who play our games.

Q1: Can you introduce your team?

Marko: My name is Marko, and I am the lead Software Developer and Game Programmer for the DogeRift project. My brother Jurica is the CEO of EGamer Games. He is 28 years old and known as his online persona Zoxyi.

Then we have our lead artist who created the NFTs and designed the Doges and UI for DogeRift, Jelena. She is 27 and also known as Nobu online. Jan is our lead 3D model designer. He created many of the assets in DogeRift. He is 20 years old and also known as hayslis online.

Ines is our Communications lead. She oversees player communications and writes everything from press releases to player-facing web content. She is 21 years old. Lucija is our junior artist, designing some of the game characters and working with Jelena to create concept art for the game. She is 18 years old.

Dario is our Game Play Tester; his job is to ensure that the game functions correctly and that the game instructions and documentation are precise. He looks for glitches and bugs in the system and reports his findings to the designers and developers. He is 25 years old.

Q2: Can you tell us more about your company?

Marko: In 2015, I formed the Just1337 studio for game development, focusing on PC gaming through the Steam platform. In 2015 I had five full-time employees: programmers, artists, and game developers/testers. My team grew, and by 2017 there were eight full-time employees.

From 2015 to 2021, we released 19 successful games on Steam. In 2022 we will be releasing three more games. Two of our games have been sold to other companies (our first two games, Shiplord and Asteroid Bounty Hunter). Most of our games have very positive reviews, which is hard to accomplish on Steam. Our most successful games are the Slash It series (beat typing game). We have over 3 million activations on Steam, where 1,514,386 copies have been purchased directly on the Steam platform and the rest on various game key sell platforms like Kinguin.

Q3: What games are you proud of, and what are your best achievements in the industry?

Marko: Our best achievement is the Slash It series. It is our best-sold game so far, and the reviews are really positive. Slash It is a rhythm game in which you type letters, numbers, and words in a beat. Our inspiration for the game is PaRappa, the Rapper. It is a masterpiece in rhythm gaming. Very fun to play!

Q4: What software are you using?

Marko: For software development and programming, we use Unity and C#, the art department uses Photoshop and Illustrator, and for 3D modeling, we use Blender and Surface Painter.

Q5: What advice would you give someone who wants to develop games?

Marko: Pursue your dreams. You’ll need to learn a lot. Also, while learning, you will need to practice. Try to develop a small game, something that you like. Also, try to pursue a job as a junior developer to earn experience in the gaming industry. For artists, the most important thing is the fundamentals. Start with anatomy and color practice, and slowly but surely build up your portfolio.

The same goes for 3D design; the fundamentals are important. Also, learn to use the 3D development software, start small, and dream big.

Q6: Currently, DogeRift plans to offer two types of gameplay with play-to-earn capabilities: PVP and PVE. Does the DogeRift team have plans for additional gameplay, game plots, or storylines?

Marko: Yes, that is one of the most important parts of game development for us. Players should have fun playing, and we will try to accomplish that by dynamic daily/weekly content updates and changes. You will have different daily/weekly quests, and the maps and game modes will rotate. So basically, the game experience will be different each day you play.

Also, a lot of new content will be added in the following weeks and months, including many different doge models and skins, sports game modes, and one big adventure mode with varying exploration mechanics. Each of those game modes will be updated depending on what the users want in them.

So players will decide how our game development will continue and what we should focus on more.

Q7: What do users need to prepare for the game? What kind of N3 wallet will DogeRift support? What is the minimum PC configuration to play the game?

Marko: To start playing the game, it’s straightforward. Users need to have a Neo wallet. We will try to support most of them (NeoLine, O3, Neon Wallet, and OneGate). You can go to our website, link your Neo wallet, and you will have an option to set a password for that wallet account.

After that, you can download the game launcher from our website. For the username, copy your Neo wallet and put the password you just set. That’s it. The game will automatically look into your Neo wallet and get all the data of your NFTs, and you will be able to play with them.

Only Bored Doge Club NFT owners will be able to play during the beta. After the beta is over, anyone with a Neo wallet can play with a basic Doge NFT, but Bored Doge Club NFTs will always be slightly better as they are our early game supporters. With NFTs, you will get slight advantages in various gameplay fields, but anything can be done without an NFT, so basically, anyone with a Neo wallet can start and play our game.

We are not 100% sure what the minimum configuration will be, but something around:

  • OS: Windows 10 or Later, Mac OS, (maybe Linux if players will want it)
  • Processor: 2.0 GHZ +
  • Memory: 2 GB RAM
  • Graphics: 512 MB or Higher
  • DirectX: Version 9.0c
  • Storage: 2GB available space

Q8: What are the NFT marketplaces that allow users to trade DogeRift NFTs? Will DogeRift have its own NFT Marketplace?

Marko: Definitely, we have our NFT marketplace in development, but it’s not a high priority at the moment. Our main goal is to release the beta version of the game first. Then after that, we will work to finish the marketplace. At some point in 2022, we will have our own marketplace.

For now, we have only one NFT collection called Bored Doge Club, which is currently sold out. You can buy them from other owners on GhostMarket and Sky Hut. We will release the beta version of the game very soon, and after that, we will have one more NFT sale ready, and we will inform everyone when the time comes.

Q9: Is DogeRift based on a traditional game? Can you explain how you got about the name DogeRift? Can I play it on my mobile, or do I need a web application? Apart from battling, what other ways can I get tokens?

Marko: The inspiration for DogeRift came from games like Genshin Impact, Fall Guys, Crash Bandicoot, and Rocket League. We liked the cartoonish 3D style and how fun these games are.

The name DogeRift came to us during a team meeting. We discussed our game’s details, and we wanted to have a funny and weird story. So we went with Doges, who accidentally created a Rift and fell into it.

The game is planned for a PC and MacOS release, and after that, we plan to port the game for mobile users. You will be able to earn tokens by finishing various quests. Also, if you don’t like battles, you can play a Doge football match against a friend or another online player, and you can participate in parkour, a game mode similar to Fall Guys.

Q10: The game is both 2D and 3D. Will both versions be different or similar concerning quests, NFTs, and rewards? Per the roadmap, the team is planning a mobile version for only the 2D version, but will there be a 3D version for mobile as well?

Marko: We got a lot of questions about mobile game development. Yes, we are also working on the mobile version of the game! But for now, our top priority is to make a good PC version of it with nice graphics. We are building the game with the Unity 3D game engine, specially designed to port PC games to mobile and consoles.

We already made a couple of cross-platform games, and we found out it works best if you focus on the PC version first and make it with the best graphics possible. Then downgrading to the mobile is not a big problem. If we released the mobile version too soon, it would make things much more complicated to develop in parallel.

All our game mechanics, UI, and gameplay are carefully designed to be able to play with a mouse and keyboard, controller, or mobile touch screen. So we are actively working to have the game ready for any platform, just that we tend to focus on the PC version first, and after that, it won’t be a problem to port it to Mobile and even Consoles.

Also, the game’s mobile version will be exactly the same, just with heavy downgraded graphics. As we have a Unity 3D engine for game development, designed to build for all platforms, our backend supports a similar design, and we can cross-platform our games on any device.

From our experience, it’s best to give the best graphics gameplay with PC first to attract many players, and after that, we can port the game to other platforms (mobile, console) when the game meets its demand, and it’s polished on PC version first.

Q11: What is the most unique thing DogeRift brings to the blockchain community?

Marko: DogeRift will be the first Metaverse game built on top of many game mods and mechanics like soccer, parkour adventure, music, and more. So when you join our Metaverse game, you will have daily quests users need complete, and users will be rewarded with our tokens.

Inside the game, you can upgrade your characters by buying skins, land, and more.

All of the in-game transactions will be burned. We are building a unique crypto game and using the Doge meme as characters.

Most crypto games are just web browser games, and there are few real metaverse experience games. We plan to build a game that will be here for a long time, not just a quick cash-grab like most games seem.

Our goal is to have a metaverse experience where we can build the future of gaming together. We want DogeRift to be a long-term project on Neo, and we are developing the game with a lot of passion.

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/247756

Tags: , ,