for the early people that are already showing up here at the spaces.
I'm just casually waiting for Fetch to come here in the room,
and then we're going to get started.
But yeah, he's not here yet,
so I would say give it a minute, maybe pour some tea,
pour some coffee, wait one or two minutes,
and then I'm going to get started.
So yeah, for the time being, just casually waiting.
How's it going? Yeah, good to be here.
Good. How's your day so far?
Just I'm going to retweet this and put it in some groups, and yeah.
Sounds good. Let me do the same thing,
and then we're just going to slowly get into it.
The introduction is going to take a couple of minutes between us.
Anyways, ask people slowly crawl in,
but yeah, eager to get the space filled up.
So if you're already listening and you typically like the Twitter spaces,
we'd really appreciate it if you could give the Twitter spaces a like,
maybe a repost, and of course,
if you already have questions for Fetch during the spaces,
please comment your questions and I'll see to get through them throughout the show.
Let me post this in some groups too.
I think we're just going to get casually started.
I'm going to do things a bit differently than I usually do.
So I'm going to ask you a bunch of different introduction questions
than how I usually do the introduction,
just because I feel like maybe we get to know the gamer behind you,
a little bit more than the questions that I used to ask,
but yeah, I think to get started, hello, hello, gamers.
Welcome back to a new episode of our series called High Gamers Meet X.
Basically, in this biweekly series,
I take a founder or a key person from a game studio for one hour,
and we're just going to do a full deep dive.
So we're going to learn today about parallels gameplay.
We're going to learn about the ecosystem,
but also about what inspired parallel,
how is the game to existence and what are the long-term goals.
So super excited about that.
Yeah, today I have introduced, sorry,
I have welcomed Fitch from parallel,
and I think those of you that are active in web-free gaming
must have heard by parallel by now.
I would be surprised if you've not.
I mean, parallel won three awards during the games awards,
namely the game of the year,
which was the biggest one, I think.
We have the best strategy game and the best guard game.
So three prizes, I think that's honestly an amazing accomplishment to take home.
But yeah, I'm very curious to see at the end of this space
if you really know already what the game is about,
who's behind the game, and what's cooking behind the scenes.
So yeah, I think that being said,
we're just going to get slowly started,
ask more and more people will tune in.
And yeah, let's get started with you, Fitch.
Say a brief hi to the audience,
and then like I said, we're going to do some fireside questions.
Yeah, great to be here with you guys.
You know, big fan of yourself and Nico, of course.
And yeah, looking forward to having a great discussion,
and hopefully we can make sure people have a comprehensive scope of knowledge
about parallel and what we're doing
as we start to see this web-free gaming
narrative really heat up just many opportunities,
I love it. Yeah, I think, you know, last summer I had you on the panel.
I think it was back right before the holidays, probably in December.
That was a very, very high level scope of, you know,
what you were working on and who you were.
But yeah, I'm super excited to do the deep dive today.
And because this is called High Gamers Meet Parallel,
but actually just High Gamers Meet X,
I also want to get started with just getting to know you a little bit.
And I figure, you know, I'm just going to ask you about,
I think, five to ten fireside questions.
And what I would love for you to do is just answer it
with the first thought that comes to mind.
It's the most unfiltered way to get to know, you know, your proper thoughts.
So the first thing I want to start with is what's your favorite game of all time?
Oh, easy. Elder Scrolls Oblivion.
I am obsessed with that game.
I am obsessed with Elder Scrolls as a franchise.
Obviously, we all know Skyrim, right?
You know, I played Elder Scrolls online for a number of years.
Just a huge, huge fan of the the narrative universe.
And that is the game that impacted my life the most.
Like I remember being 15 years old or whatever,
just wide eyed in amazement playing in my buddy's basement
that at the time, like it's funny, you look back and the graphics are a little dated.
But at the time, it looked like an entirely new universe to me.
And I still think the game holds up so well in so many different regards.
So, yeah, absolutely obsessed with that game.
Easily my favorite game all the time.
You know, this is the funny thing.
I've watched probably a lot of gameplay for Elder Scrolls.
I've just never played it myself.
So it's one of those games similar to the Hogwarts game where I'm like,
you know, I really enjoy watching it, but I think if I start playing it myself,
I'm just going to lose myself into the game and just keep playing.
There's you know, there's an opportunity coming up for you.
I think they're going to launch it in the beginning of 2025.
But Sky Oblivion, so they basically remastered.
There's like a random modding group that is remastering the entire game
some new little bits in and it's like easily the most anticipated thing
related to Oblivion since it came out.
So if you want to get back, you know, to experiencing
what I think is kind of perfection in the RPG genre, then that's a great time to do it.
Cool. I've noted it down. I'm going to check that out. Cool.
What's the game you thought you'd really like, but you actually hated it?
Wow, that's a good a good question.
What is a game I really thought I would like?
I mean, I don't know, I guess like Diablo at a certain point.
Like, I really like Diablo at the beginning.
I thought that, you know, the the cinematics were amazing in the game
and the storytelling was really good.
And then it kind of just got to a point where it was like, why am I playing this?
You know, like the end game state was was pretty pretty poor.
You know, it felt very repetitive.
So I don't know if that's like exactly the best answer for that question,
but I struggled to think of anything else.
So I'm going to go with, you know, D4 just because it really did seem to fall off a cliff.
I mean, I think they were this is pretty well known for people who pay attention to gaming,
but they got roasted by the community for a number of different decisions that they made
leading up to their their sort of first, you know, season
and the player base dropped off a cliff.
And so it was a game that I guess I did enjoy and then sort of very quickly didn't at all.
I know I know we have a bunch of Diablo players in the community
that typically tend to talk about the telegram.
So I'm curious if they were to agree with you or if they're going to go,
you know, fully against this in the comments or in the telegram.
Let's see. Yeah, I'm curious.
And just to be clear, I did enjoy it up until the end.
And then it sort of, you know, it was fun in the end at the beginning.
You're doing like the helltides and stuff.
And then it kind of just I don't know, it felt very repetitive.
And it felt like some of the class balancing was stale.
You know, I will say like I love to play casters and, you know, the class,
the casters were like the most class of glass cannons that you could ever imagine.
Like, you know, death was constant.
It was like I was getting one shot if I pulled any random mob.
Yeah, I would stop at that point as well.
What what game have you spent the most number of hours on throughout your game journey?
Wow. It's probably Oblivion or Skyrim.
It could also be RuneScape or World of Warcraft.
I would actually be curious to see which of those things it is.
It felt like probably Skyrim or Oblivion were the games I played the most.
Or like Fallout New Vegas.
I actually played so much Fallout New Vegas.
The other the other things would be like MMOs like RuneScape,
which I played on and off over over a number of years.
Right. And then you never fully quit, do you?
No, I mean, RuneScape is one of those games that you really don't ever truly quit.
And then I'm playing I'm playing World of Warcraft Classic again now.
And so that's that's a game that, like, again, over the years,
I've probably put quite a bit of time into.
So I think, you know, I never want to see how much time I've actually put into gaming.
And I think hearing you speak right now, I think the same comes for you.
You don't want to know how many hours have been devoted to your game.
Oh, yeah, you type like slash played in the chat and you're like,
That's a little bit frightening.
But no, at the end of the day, like,
like gaming is a huge part of my life and I just enjoy it so much.
So it's as scary as it is.
It's, you know, what would I be doing other than that?
What was the first game you ever remember playing?
Oh, wow. That's a really interesting question.
Was probably something on the N64.
I'm trying to think of all the games on the N64, which was kind of the first.
I mean, you know, the one that stands out to me is Super Mario 64,
just because that was such a mind blowing game.
And it like really made such an impact on your imagination and view of what games could be.
So like the one that kind of rose to the top for me out of the first games that I played,
I'm sure it's not the actual first game I played nor even.
Actually, no, you know what?
Pokemon on the Game Boy is the correct answer.
I'm revising that answer completely.
It's Pokemon on the Game Boy.
I'm sure that was actually the case for a lot of the people in the audience, too.
That just takes me straight back to my childhood experience.
And when you mentioned Super Mario 64,
I, you know, a couple of months ago, I bought this Nintendo 64 from secondhand, you know,
and I bought a bunch of games with it.
Super Mario 64 is one of them.
I booted it up on my TV and it's a smart TV.
I remember counting the pixels back in the day, but on this big screen, I was like,
oh my God, what does this game look like?
But then what do you get playing?
It's just the same immediate nostalgic feeling of just getting right back into it.
It's just such a good game.
I truly like foundational game in the RPG genre.
Years ago, when I lived in Chicago and I first moved there, I went to like a bar down the street
and they actually had an N64 set up with Super Mario on it.
And this guy was like struggling and I was like, pass me the sticks.
Like, let me get the sticks.
And I got like 30 stars in like no time at all.
I was like, I still got it, baby.
And he was just looking at me like, how are you doing this?
I was like, I don't know, man.
This was a game I played so, so much as a kid.
So yeah, three more questions before we go into a little bit of the team.
But do you ever watch Twitch streamers?
Yeah, so I actually am a YouTube maxi.
So what I end up doing is I watch like a lot of cut clips from Twitch.
I watch a shit ton of Asmin Gold.
I don't know why he's just hilarious to me.
He's like the ultimate sort of neckbeard gamer.
And it's like so funny to me, just seeing him riff on various topics and watching the let's plays.
And I watched some other like World of Warcraft guys like Zaryu.
And now kind of working in the TCG space, I end up sort of watching some TCG streamers.
And that's pretty much it.
Yeah, I'd say those are probably the main ones.
By the way, I got a comment in the telegram and they were saying,
he's so on point with Diablo 4, 100% agree.
I had hopes for season three, but unfortunately not.
So yeah, you're not linked here.
You're on point, apparently.
So yeah, two more questions to just go in the gaming side of you.
Do you prefer multiplayer games or do you like solo games better?
I guess I would say that I like solo games better because I like RPGs as a genre.
But then MMORPGs are kind of like that plus, potentially.
So the degree to which you balance in an MMO like solo questing versus group play
is I think one of the defining characteristics of a great RPG versus a mediocre one.
And again, that's actually why I would say Elder Scrolls Online kind of failed in many ways.
Not failed, I think they've come back in a substantial way.
But that was one of the things that they didn't get right at first.
And they were kind of saying like, hey, this is one of the things that we think we've got right.
And I just never felt that they did.
So yeah, I mean, I guess the core answer would be single player games,
because even multiplayer games that you can play single player are also the other games
Not to say I don't do group content like raids and stuff I do.
But the ability to go just do some questing and kind of get lost in the world
is what I really look for in a game.
Nice. And you know, when you mentioned like multiplayer RPGs,
I was like thinking of or MMOs, I was thinking of RuneScape.
I saw this article that was talking about AI and gaming and how basically
RuneScape is basically this world where you do lost single player stuff, right?
Like questing and whatnot.
And they were saying that the player base was initially declining,
but it started appreciating again where or, yeah, increasing again,
when a lot of AI bots were added to the world.
So these bots would basically just play the game kind of solo player,
but they would talk back to you or say hi to you when you were passing by.
And to me, that was like, wow, it's just back to what you kind of talked about.
The solo single player aspects of the game are amazing.
But then the social components.
It's yeah, what you're describing to has some interesting implications for colony.
The other sort of thing, I guess you could say that that parallel is building right now,
which I'm sure many people are curious about.
I'm sorry, I don't have too much to say on that subject
because there will be more information relatively soon anyway.
So but yeah, I mean, the kind of essence of colony is like that, like almost pseudo social
like but it seems real, you know, and like the example that I often give
is like the radiant AI and oblivion at the time was like amazing, you know,
and now it's kind of the subject of memes.
But how much does it feel like these are real people?
And how much does it feel like you're having like a genuine, fresh interaction?
And I think some of the interesting implications of what's being built with colony is that it's like
genuinely new, like no one has ever, ever had this dialogue that you're having right now.
But that's what felt amazing to me about Baldur's Gate 3 was that,
like, every character had something to say, and quite a lot to say, actually.
And it was so vast the scope of dialogue that it made it feel like I'm the only one hearing this,
like, this is just for me, you know, and that feeling in games is so special.
And what if you could have actual AI agents that literally are saying something to you
that no one else has ever heard, right?
I think it just opens up new doors for gaming that we've never seen.
I think you are the third or the fourth person to mention Baldur's Gate 3 in the past couple of
spaces. It was already on my shortlist to check out, but I just need to buy it and check it out
because it just keeps coming back.
It's a genuine masterpiece.
I mean, it's one of the greatest games I've ever played. It's amazing.
So you already mentioned you kind of watched the YouTube vists or streams.
But I was wondering, like, do you still play a lot of games nowadays?
Or are you just simply too busy with work?
I would say that it's like probably the only other thing I really do,
you know, and I'm in a relationship now.
And so, you know, when I'm seeing my girlfriend, then that's the other thing I do.
But like, besides that, I work and I play games.
That's quite literally the only the only things I do.
So kind of describing my life.
Yeah, I mean, but again, like, to your point, it would be hard to fit in if I wanted to do
a variety of different other types of things.
It just so happens that I don't really.
And I'm happy to just, you know, with my time on the weekends, sit down and go raid
And I enjoy that and it makes me happy.
Seems like you're in a good industry.
So so speaking of industry, I was working on as her as wondering, what were you working
Like, what's a little bit of your background if you were to summarize it?
Yeah, so been in crypto sort of full time for seven years now.
You know, background is is like marketing psychology, I guess you could say, and
worked at a consulting firm after grad school, doing a lot of work for various Fortune 500
And then found out about crypto, I thought it was really important sort of idea for the world.
And then join the industry.
You know, first business I worked at was was sort of categorically a failure.
Then I found out about NFTs very, very early, like before people in crypto were talking
And I was like, convincing my friends that I wasn't insane.
You were already in crypto, mind you.
And so kind of ended up being really to a lot of like, what ended up being very major
collections in the NFT world, including parallel, and was speaking about them, you know, on
And then actually, for a substantial portion of that period, I was working for an NFT marketplace
called block party, helping to set up some of like the first celebrity type NFT drops.
So, you know, I was kind of like very hands on.
And what I guess I would say was like the formation of the NFT industry, and being like
an early advocate of it and then found parallel and was kind of like, Oh, this is like the
This is the ultimate expression of web three that I've seen, and felt like that from the
beginning, still feel like that now it's continuing to evolve into things I couldn't
imagine that it would be.
But the idea of parallel sort of being the standard of excellence was clear to me at
the beginning, and just decided I wanted to work there.
So still enjoying it, I imagine.
Can you briefly name some of the other key people within parallel?
Maybe, you know, what's kind of the background across the team, you would say on the gaming
Yeah, I mean, it's it's the team is quite large at this point.
Not even sure what the number of, you know, full time people that we have working on it
are, but there's, you know, Kalos and Mr. Gone, who are two of the more like publicly
known founders, and then you've got a bunch of developers, you got a bunch of game design
people, you got a bunch of like, game development people, you know, the backgrounds go from
everything to like, you know, innovative use of like banking technologies to someone like
Oscar, the art director, who's got like an insane depth of experience in, you know, films
and games over the last sort of 20 years, people who worked on Magic the Gathering,
people who worked on Hearthstone, people who are excellent Hearthstone players,
just in their personal lives, and also do game development.
There's it's a super diverse background.
And I think it contributes to like, the cool stuff that we produce, is that there's a lot
of people from like different types of innovation.
Not just like, hey, I've worked at a bunch of major game studios, we have that for sure.
But also like, hey, I've worked on really innovative applications of blockchain technology
or things of that nature.
And I think honestly, it shows as well, just like what you said as well.
Like there's some people in there that actually very good Hearthstone players, for example,
and just when you go and we'll get into the gameplay later, but when I first booted it up,
and I was kind of playing it, I'm like, there's a lot of depth here.
And we're going to get into that in a bit.
But there's so much that and I did play Hearthstone.
I did play, you know, hearts, sorry, a team by tactics, things like that.
But here I found the learning curve pretty steep initially.
But that's mainly because of the depth.
But yeah, let's get into that in a bit.
Because now that we've kind of, you know, comes to know you come to know a little bit about the team,
I want to dive into parallel.
And basically, I want to start at the beginning.
So if you were to describe, like, how did parallel start?
And, you know, what's it inspired by?
Yeah, I mean, it started, I think, is like an idea amongst friends.
I mean, and again, Kalos and others have told us the story before and tell it better than I do.
But like, you know, sitting around during COVID, being like, what the hell do we do?
And, you know, a team of people that at the time was already familiar with blockchain from having
like worked in the space and already liked gaming and played games in their free time
and specifically like card games.
And then the idea just kind of coalesced into why don't we make a really cool sci fi different
feeling type of card game, leveraging blockchain.
And that was in like 2021, or actually probably that idea coalesced in 2020.
And then sort of became a brand.
And I was like one of the first people on chain to buy a card.
And I just remember being in a clubhouse.
This was like before Twitter spaces existed, and Kalos was in there with some other people
like Dave Krugman and Jan Silva, who were, you know, still good friends of mine to this day.
And he was just dropping some crazy knowledge as he tends to do.
And I was like, wow, this is insane, like what he's talking about.
And then, you know, DM'd him and then it kind of went from there.
And, you know, I think a lot of people just, you know, either found out about it organically
on Twitter or like me tweeting nonstop about it.
And then it really snowballed from there.
And now it's become like much, much larger than, than any individuals.
I don't know, it's, it's at this, yeah, it's at this point now.
It's kind of like a behemoth that's just sort of moving, moving forward into the future.
And it's been really cool to see.
I mean, it went from, you know, an idea into, you know, basically a Twitter account into
a website with a handful of cards available on it in the pre-sale into, you know, the largest
Ethereum game collection all time and so much more.
And, you know, that's, that's all happened over what I would say is a relatively short period of
time. Yeah, that's always something that just fascinates me when, when I think about, you know,
how long projects have been around, then obviously the first year is typically the hardest, but to
see some of the success stories.
And I think, you know, Meritor, quite frankly, is one of them as well.
It's just in a short time span, things can go and get big really, really fast.
I think with parallel, that amazes me a lot as well.
We're going to get into like community engagement in a bit and how that came about.
But the other part that you said was you basically were an early advocate, just interested in the
game. And I think that's interesting for those listening in the audience as well.
I know we have Simon here, for example, in the audience.
He is similar to interested in a project, just gets really involved and gives feedback and whatnot.
And ultimately, you might find yourself actually get a role within a project to work with them.
And we sometimes get people asking, hey, how do I get started with working in web three?
Well, I think you're describing, you know, the perfect way to do that, you know,
get proper feedback, be there, listen, help, improve it.
And maybe there's a role for you down the road.
So just looking at parallels gameplay and comparing that to Hearthstone,
team fight tactics, other card games.
What would you say in a nutshell sets parallel apart from the other TCGs?
And then maybe also what sets it apart from TCGs that we see in web three?
Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of things that come to mind.
One, I think is like the universe itself feels different.
It's visually quite distinct.
You know, you've got like sci fi is a theme is fairly uncommon slash almost never seen in TCGs.
And it's like the quality of the art is what we're most known for, I would say.
And it really just sort of blows you away and, you know, gives you a feeling of immersion
that I would say the average TCG just does not provide from like a lore and connection to it
perspective. And, you know, the fact that we're building like a broader franchise with a variety
from products, you know, with with a ton of like innovative uses of technology, be that
blockchain or now AI kind of continue to add value to the experience on the periphery.
And then you've got, you know, in game features like banking, you know, the sort of default use
of paragons, which are heroes, which craft your your play style. And then there's a lot of minutia,
right, in terms of the specific, you know, mechanics, you know, like the shroud singularity,
for example. So, you know, one of the particular factions having like a card pool on the board
that's, you know, fairly unique. But yeah, I would say like the game features wise, it's definitely,
you know, banking and paragons kind of make the game feel more distinct from just the game
perspective. And then there's the fact that like, it's a sci fi franchise with this product. And
there's a lot of other stuff being built. And then that can be other areas of interest, you know,
for you. So that's kind of the simplest summary. Nice. Yeah, I think that's very clear. And just
for those in the audience listening today, I think, you know, very often I have a guest on it says,
you know, our game is very early access is limited, you know, access, or the game is not out yet.
With parallel, anyone can play just right now. What devices is the game currently available on
and for those wondering, you know, that want to get started, where can they go to just check try
out the game and check it out? Yeah, I mean, you can go to our website and input the code play
parallel in all caps and, you know, get access to the game. We're also like pretty close to being
an open beta at this point. Right now we're, you know, putting a big focus on optimization. So like
bringing system requirements down. It's just incredible how complex these things are. Like
there's so many different moving parts and operating like a real time, you know, sort of
game service like this, and making sure that everything works. So, you know, it's we're kind
of looking at those those things now. And, you know, the game is, I would say I would use the
word, unfortunately, still only available on PC. That's also, I would, okay, so I'll say like,
as we progress through open data, the priority is to open up more ways for people to play the game.
And I can break that down to a couple different categories. On the one hand, you have like raw
system requirements, right? So what is the technical specification needed to play the game?
We're working on reducing that burden, right? The other area would be like game stores or places to
download the game. Currently, it's available on Parallels Native Launcher. We're looking to,
as we've posted about before, you know, being on Epic and Steam and places like that.
So as we get into open beta, those would be things that also open up the game to more types
of players. And then there's sort of like form factor. So, you know, ability to play on Mac,
ability to play on mobile, these are much bigger pieces, but also pieces that are sort of part of
that puzzle. And I would say that that's like quite high priority set broadly in parallel,
and each of those things kind of happens in a different relative order. But opening up the
game to more people to play is a high priority right now. And but you know, like I said, when we
enter open beta, anyone will be able to download the game from Parallels Launcher, theoretically,
right? But we're, we're working on making that like, practically, you know, if that makes sense.
Yeah, no, absolutely. And just to be clear as well, the game has free to play versions,
basically, it is free to play in essence. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it is it is it is free to play,
right? So you can progress without any NFTs or web three whatsoever, unlock cards as you go
via the rookie mode. And then there's ways to acquire, you know, additional packs that are
not NFT packs with credit card and all that type of stuff. So really functionally is the same as
Hearthstone in that way, but also has the web three stuff if you choose to opt into it.
Exactly. And so one of the things I mentioned earlier was the first time I booted up this game,
I was like, wow, there's definitely a learning curve here. So I was wondering, just general
feedback throughout, you know, from people that have tried out the game that have been playing
for a while, will you say that the game is very easy to learn? Will you say it's a steep learning
curve? Are you working to improve that as you know, accessibility becomes easier as well?
How is that going? Yeah, I mean, I'd say like the the game has a fair degree of complexity.
I think one of the other problems is that like the average quality of players who actively play now
is quite high. So you know, it feels like maybe it's more difficult to play in ranked because of
that. So maybe like the tutorial and the rookie mode is fairly trivial to complete. But then
more organized play after that is more difficult. So that's another problem for us to solve, right?
And I think like open beta sort of de facto solves some of that. But there's other things that we can
do to, you know, speed that along. But yeah, I mean, I think like, it's it's a game that is fairly
easy to pick up at a basic level, and then quite difficult to master, you know, there's a lot of
complexity and depth to it. And, you know, also bearing in mind that this is like the first set
of cards. And we have an expansion set that's, you know, we're working on integrating into the game
now, which will add even more complexity. But I think it'll also open up new opportunities for
players to come in and find things that someone else hasn't found and be more successful, you know,
because of that. So it's, again, very complicated picture overall. But I would say like my shortest
summary would be the game is fairly easy to pick up at an initial level, and then becomes difficult
to master. Exactly. Yeah, no, I think that's, that's, you know, also the mind, the thing you
mentioned regarding matchmaking, that's what I found is what I found the tutorial and whatnot,
that's pretty easy to get through, because it's very clear. What you have to do is when I get to
play against a real person, I'm like, you know, shit, this person probably played quite a bit
already, because I just get full on demolished. So yeah, I'm like, there's, you can think about
that in like a couple different ways. Like, one, we can look at how matchmaking works and make
changes there, which we sort of progressively do, you know, we can think about maybe different types
of game modes. I mean, there is like rookie mode and unranked mode, which, you know, hopefully help
accommodate that. But maybe there's something else that we look at there. But then also just like,
influx of entirely new players into the ecosystem, all at once, because like incremental influx,
then it's like on a day to day basis, the experience of those people is going to be the
same thing, if that makes sense, because they're all going into that like elite match matchmaking
queue. And the average player that they get matched up against, if it's an incremental increase,
is is that elite player versus if you add in larger amounts of people in a more concentrated
span of time, that problem actually becomes more substantially solved. So makes sense,
makes sense. So as far as slowly becoming more familiar with just general like game setting,
I'm going to slowly get deeper into, you know, all the different mechanics cards and whatnot are
here. So we're slowly going to get into that three side as well. But just on the gameplay side
itself, you mentioned, you know, right now, as PC ultimately might be also mobile, etc.
On the game side, how long does around usually take? And do you anticipate that to take, you
know, the same length on mobile, or are you going to get adapted play versions there? How is that
going to look like? Yeah, I mean, right now, it's probably 10 to 15 minutes, you know, depending on
the matchup, it could be a little bit more. And with mobile, it's hard to say, I mean,
how much shorter that would be, I think it would be great if it was a little bit shorter, but not
too much. And it's going to be I'm like, I don't have enough game knowledge to really answer this
question. You know, like the addition of an expansion, what that's going to do, you know,
I, what my guess would be is that like, initially, that'll make games longer, but in the mid to long
term, it'll make games shorter. Again, I don't know if that's true. That's just kind of my,
my intuition. So we'll see, you know, as the expansions added.
Oops, looks like my, my mind didn't fully unlock. So on the game side, right, so players have
cards, and they have decks and that they can play with. You already mentioned it. But right now,
parallel as I think the biggest NFC collection on Ethereum network, how many unique cards and
NFTs and you know, types of entities are there currently in the parallel universe?
Oh, I mean, a lot. Wow, I don't even know the answer to that question, like unique token IDs,
I would imagine 1000s. I mean, if you're including avatars, then definitely,
definitely thousand, like, you know, what, like probably 20,000 or something like that. I'm not
sure. Quite a few. Quite a few. But like, we've, we've put together, you know, starter decks,
which hopefully will be back, you know, available fairly soon. And then there's kind of like guides
for people out there. And, you know, part of the ambassador program that we announced fairly
recently is to, you know, accelerate that type of stuff, like the development of content that guides
you with what to do. Because, you know, one of the problems that comes with building something like
that is complexity. And, you know, abstracting away the complexity for people, basically saying
like, hey, here's what you need to get started with this type of play strategy. I think there's
a fair amount of material out there about that right now. But, you know, we're trying to push
for more. So but quite a quite a lot is the answer. I love it. So when you're introducing
new cards to the game, right, I just find one of the most one of the trickiest things with the TCG
is introducing new cards and just making sure that the game stays balanced. So I was wondering
how often is our new cards being introduced? And how is that balancing going? Are existing
cards also constantly being rebalanced? Is it just when new cards get added? Like how does that
mechanism work behind the scenes? Yeah, I mean, it's again, super complex. And it's interesting,
because I'll occasionally see someone sort of be mad on social media about it. But I think that
it's like, not uncommon for that sort of thing to happen in in TCGs, you know, where people are
like, frustrated with the current state of balance of the game. I mean, important to remember, like
the game is quite literally in closed beta, with like one existing set of cards, that's been the
set of cards for quite a while, you know, naturally, there's going to be some degree to which the game
is like solved in the meta has boiled down to a certain set of things. And like, obviously,
the team isn't ignorant of that, right? But the degree to which like a sweeping change right now
would make sense compared to the changes that are implied by the coming set. You see what I mean,
like, you know, it wouldn't make as much sense to do, you know, too much balance now than has already
been done. So I would say that like, balance starts with a lot of different things, and then
tapers off, and then a new set is introduced, and then a lot more balance, and then it tapers off,
and then a new set is introduced, you know, we're just in that hinterland between
the new set being introduced right now. And so I think like when that new set is introduced
into the game, it's going to shake quite a bit of stuff up, and you're going to see a lot more
diversity of play. And then there's going to be balancing. And then inevitably, I think it,
it refines itself again into well defined metas. Yeah, that's usually how it goes.
So with the balance, you know, do you look at like metrics, how often cars are played? Is it just
the devs mainly doing internal testing with the gaming? Is it also regular games, you know, gamers
giving feedback? How does that go? Yeah, I mean, it's all the above. And again, I'm not, you know,
game dev, so I can only just sort of paraphrase what what I know about this. But yeah, metrics are
100% used. And oftentimes, the metrics may sort of contradict what the players like subjective
experience will be. So balancing those two things is like a tricky dance to do. But you know,
of course, like subjective experience, you know, objective metrics, and then again, thinking about
balance relative to things that may be coming in the future. There's a lot, right? It's a, it's a
complex thing. And something that we're always like, putting a lot of attention on. But again,
I think like the relative perception of how much attention is put on it, based on the number of
recent changes that have been made, is not always the most accurate metric. Because like I said that
implication of changes tapers off later in, you know, a card sets lifecycle versus, you know,
the actual changes that are coming with a new set being introduced. So makes sense. So we mentioned
earlier, right, just to dive and transition slowly towards I would say deeper in the system
on the web tree site, we mentioned the there's the cards, there's the decks, there's the banking,
what gameplay elements do you find relevant that we talk about that we haven't spoken about yet,
that that listeners might want to understand before we dive a little bit into the NFT aspect of that
is in the game. Yeah, I mean, basically, there's, you know, five factions and then a pool of universal
cards that can be used by any faction. And each of those factions have three like hero units that
inform different styles of play. So you know, based on that, you're going to then assemble a deck
that's some composition of one faction that you like the most, or maybe two or three or whatever
it is. And then, you know, some universal cards to sort of fill out that that pool. So that's kind
of just what I would say is probably the thing to be more clear about is, you know, the 40 card
deck with that type of composition, being how you build a parallel deck, the rest of the gameplay
will come to you by playing it. But if I were to just explain one thing, that would be that would
be kind of what it is. Cool, got it. I think we we started good grounds here. I hope that you know,
for the listener, that you're slowly starting to understand the game better. Again, if you just
tune in, you can already play parallel, you can just look it up, you can download it. And soon,
you know, we're gonna see more more players, I would say during the open beta. But yeah, just
slowly transitioning, like I said, to the, to the rep free site, right? There's entities in the game,
there's free to play options. If you were to summarize, because there's there's a lot of
different, you know, things and elements, what are the different types of NFTs that currently
exist in the game? Are there going to be new kind of elements added to that? And yeah, how do they
function in the game? Yeah, I mean, there's like the cards are collectible as as NFTs, right? And
each of those is going to have different versions. You know, broadly speaking, for a new player,
the different versions don't really matter to you. If you're more interested in collecting
and like optimizing your experience, then you're going to care about the different versions of
cards. But you know, if you're just a new player, that's that's not really a super relevant thing
for you, you're just going to want to have some cards and be playing the game. Specifically,
if you have some NFTs in your deck, and you play in ranked, you have the chance to earn prime,
which is the token associated with the parallel ecosystem. And there's a lot of attention and
interest in that realm lately. So, you know, that's really all you need to get started with
with earning prime is just some amount of NFTs in your deck. And what I would emphasize for
people is just like start playing, do the rookie mode, learn the core game, and then go get some
cards, right? Like you don't need to buy cards first. Start with just kind of learning the core
of the game. And then, okay, maybe I like this faction, this faction seems to be good.
I'm going to go get a couple pieces of a deck and go from there.
Yeah, makes sense. And so you briefly mentioned this how you earn prime. Speaking of like the
play experience for free to play players compared to someone that holds those NFTs. Would you say
those NFT cards directly impact the gameplay? And are you seeing like higher win rates for people
that have those NFTs? Or is it solely the main, you know, aspect of earning prime during your
gameplay? Yeah, so from a functional perspective, like the NFT version of a card and the non NFT
version of a card have no difference in the game. The only thing would just be like unlocking cards
that you may not have unlocked yet, and or unlocking the ability to earn by playing with
those cards. That's that's what the NFT versions would do for you. But again, like there there's
a way for, you know, a very nominal amount of money to, you know, be be purchasing non NFT,
you know, card packs, we're talking like, you know, handful of dollars, and do that, you know,
to make sure like you're, again, by the time you complete rookie mode, you're going to have,
you know, most cards unlocked at that point anyway. But if you need to fill stuff out,
it's not like you have to go buy NFTs to do it. And we also have entirely free to play players who
broadly that that like degree to which a completely free to play player can be successful
is something that we we look at. And we want to make sure that like, that is a viable path to go.
But what I'm saying is like, the the other alternative to that isn't that you just have
to go buy NFTs. You know, you can also just unlock non NFT versions of cards for way, way,
way cheaper. But again, you missed out on the prime. So yeah, so we're gonna dive into the prime
side in a little bit. But I was just, you know, keeping my eyes on the questions the community
asked. And here's Silkweave asking, you know, a lot of people got rekt on many different NFT
projects in the past. And obviously, that might scare web two crowd comment on or even, you know,
web three crowd being interested in gaming. How do you look at bridging the gap between traditional
TGG players now coming into the web three side is really that free to play aspect of the game? Or
how do you get them to, you know, become familiar with the red three aspects that are in the game?
That's the that's the multi million dollar question, isn't it? Right? 100%. If I was able
to give you that answer in a paragraph, then we would already be dominating, right? 100%. You
know, not to say that we're not successful up to this point, but that is like the golden elixir
that we're all seeking here, right? I think we've got some ideas at this point. I could maybe
answer that question for you in like a small essay. But I don't have it down to a paragraph yet.
Yeah, certainly some of those elements mentioned are are key, right? Like free to play,
unquestionably important. Because when you go to people and you're like, you don't have to do
anything with web three to play this game. Now all of a sudden, you open up like consideration.
You know, and then the next piece kind of becomes, okay, like you talked about, you know, in the
question, bridging the gap. So there are two separate things. Like one is like getting them
to try the game and two is bridging the gap. On the bridging the gap side, I think there's a lot of
like, how should I say this like ongoing interest in that. And there's, you know, sort of
infrastructure with like, when and where does the player come into contact with a web three wallet
for the first time, provisioning of NFTs for them, maybe as like a little sample, you know,
there's a lot of different things that are implied there. Suffice it to say, we're quite interested
in that, I would say that like parallel has, you know, some evidence to suggest that the potential
of converting people from TCG player to, you know, web three player is quite high. And that evidence,
you know, comes partly from the streamer tournament activation that we did,
where a number of those streamers then just became very interested in the web three pieces
organically. Just by being like, very good TCG players, they started to see why the NFTs were
there, why they mattered, and that, hey, I could actually be like, earning quite a bit of money
here, if I had these. So then there's also kind of like the materials and information and educational
component around that, and scaling that, you know, up as well. So there's a lot of different
parts to the answer of that question, it would be way beyond scope to like, go into the minutia of
it right now. But I would say that like, we are focused on each of the different individual pieces.
And the potential to really convert players at scale is definitely there.
Cool. Love it. Sorry, I was just getting another question, but I'm gonna ask a little bit. Just,
just, you know, you mentioned about the Prime side. And I was wondering, for people that are
not familiar with Prime, how does that token function in the ecosystem? You mentioned it's
earned, but how is it, you know, how is it used within the ecosystem?
Yeah, there's, you know, like a dozen or more answers to that at this point. But think of like,
gold, or, you know, any other type of like, game currency, and all the different uses that that
that potentially has for a game ecosystem. You know, you've got all that type of stuff,
you've got more of like, blockchain oriented products, like a payload that we've developed,
where, you know, you could put one Prime in and get one card out, that was the original design of
it, of course, but, you know, there's a bunch of different ways that you would use, and most of
those really falling into the category of spend the token to unlock different types of experiences
and enhance your, your connection to the game. So, you know, the, the earn is kind of, I think,
at this point, the thing that everybody is hyped about. But there is a lot of use, and I would say
like more use coming to for, for the token. So yeah, makes sense. And so I was looking at the,
you know, the token website, if I can call that earlier today. And basically, it's talking about,
you know, obviously, it powers the parallel TCG, but talks also about, you know, the ecosystem with
potentially other games, because talks about games. So I was wondering, just moving back to the studio
side, is the core focus now solely on parallel the TCG, or are also other game modes or games
being developed in house already? Yeah, I mean, I think like the one that's kind of known is,
is, you know, colony. And then there's there's other stuff, right. And, you know, the the sort
of broader mandate of echelon, the token, you know, foundation, is to have a token that is
usable in web three broadly. So like other games could just, you know, include prime as their sort
of native token, or, or also potentially as a supplementary token, and leverage, you know,
the existing strength and design of the prime ecosystem. So, you know, as the prime ecosystem
sort of kinks get worked out, that's something that, you know, in the future, you would you would
sort of expect to see. Nice. Yeah. And colony, by the way, is something I want to get into. But I
think we're going to do that. Also later on, probably in another deep dive, just to fully go
on the colony side. But right now, I really wanted to dive mainly into the TCG type of thing just for
yeah, clarification to the listeners as well. So moving on, like way in the beginning, right,
I want to talk a little bit about a community and community engagement, because parallel, you know,
you took the industry by storm, I would say this year, there's a lot of eyeballs that went on
parallel. So we casually mentioned parallel took home three awards during, you know, the game awards,
which is, again, massive. So you having been there from kind of the beginning, what is the sentiment
in the team to see, you know, the community grow so much compared to what it was in the early days,
what was that community like, early on? And, you know, what's the sentiment like right now?
Yeah, I mean, it like, it waxes and wanes, you know, I think as you become, like, bigger and
more established of a game, and people are like, really spending a shit ton of hours in the game,
you start to have like a blizzard like effect where, you know, if you ask people, what do they
think of a company like Blizzard, they're like, fuck Blizzard, you know, kind of thing. And yet
they play the game a ton and, and really love it, you know, in many different ways, whatever
Blizzard game that would be. So like, I think an inevitable part of growth as a franchise is like
people, I'm just call a spade a spade get more pissed. Because something isn't exactly the way
that they would like it to be, again, perfectly understandable. I'm that same type of gamer.
If you weren't, you wouldn't be griping if you didn't care, right. So there's inevitably part
of part of that. That sort of happens. You know, I think like the internal sentiment with the team
is, we're always we always like feel like it's not good enough. I don't think that anyone's like a
harder critic on us than we are on ourselves internally. There's there's rarely like a feeling
of like jubilation and celebration. It's always like, this is not working. This needs to be built,
like we need to do this thing. Right. And it's still so early. I mean, the game is still in
closed beta. So I don't think that anyone's looking at like, what we've accomplished, like we're done,
you know, it's like, the feeling the feeling is like we were just getting started. The biggest
mountains to climb are still ahead of us. And, you know, that's that's pretty much it. So like,
yeah, I would say that, like, you know, the pressure cooker is always on. And we're always
trying to push forward. I was gonna say some of us could just pushing forward. I think that's,
that's a natural feeling. I think, you know, myself also as a founder, when I look at a project,
sometimes people, you know, ask the question, do you ever stand still and just look at, you know,
the things that have been done. But it's like you say, it's very easy to just look at the potential
where you want to see it and just keep pushing forward. And that's something that I see with
parallel for sure. I mean, the quality is already very, very high. I mean, you're raising the bar
here in the industry. But yeah, like you said, plenty of improvement. And I think especially on
the user acquisition side, that's just it goes back to the golden question that every studio right now
wants to, to find out like, how are you going to get that proper user acquisition to go to those
mass numbers that you're looking for. And that brings me to the question, just looking on the
community side right now, has the, the strategy of user acquisition, or, well, I think in a close
beta, maybe we don't, we don't speak of that yet. But like community growth, has that strategy
changed throughout the past couple months compared to how it was early on? Or are you kind of still
hanging on to the same philosophy and going about that the same way?
Yeah, I mean, I would like my shortest answer to that would be the strategy hasn't changed,
the tactics have changed, right? Like the the strategy has always been, we need TCG players
at large, right? We felt that way for quite a long time. You know, we sort of felt like we were
a superior tier product in web three, and that the acquisition of web three gamers was was fairly
inevitable. I don't want to say it like it's a completely foregone conclusion. But like, you
know, the web three game awards and all that stuff, you know, to a degree that that felt like
that was just something that we had earned. And, you know, so the the the web three game audiences
were going to get it. And I would say generally speaking, that's been true. There's more that we
can do there and more that we will do. But really, like the greatest challenge is going out and
getting TCG players at scale. So strategically speaking, that vision has not changed. It's just
now that we've added new resources on the growth side. And like the execution and the tactics to
go and do that as we enter open beta, now are more developed. And the reach potential is greater. And
the types of things that we're thinking about are better, right? So yeah, the simplest answer would
be strategy is the same tactics are growing. Yeah. And when you when you talk about a user
acquisition that comes into play, you know, the CCT players comes into play when you're headed
into open beta, would you say that the tactics then do they go and lean more towards regular
user acquisition strategies that, you know, regular studios would use? Or does it look
completely different because you are an essence of Web Free Studio? No, I would say I would say
it looks like more traditional studios would use right. And like I'm where we all have the
capability of thinking of what that marketing mix is, right? There's digital advertisements,
you know, we've increased our capabilities there, and started to test some things out.
There's influencer work, right? And the influencer work, you know, how it takes a couple different
forms. The ambassador program that we're rolling out is like one piece of that puzzle. So there's
sort of like TCG network influencers, and then gaming network influencers more broadly.
And, you know, there's quite a bit of stuff that we're we're working on there. There's like
partnerships with relevant organizations, not going to name names, but there's a number of
different organizations that we we are affiliated with that have their own massive pools of users
that, as we enter open beta, we want to be tapping into. So, you know, it's there's, there's a lot
of different, you know, and then events, right, there's, there's a bunch of stuff with events
that we're, we're thinking about. So, you know, there's a lot of different pieces to that,
I would say that it's not like because we're a web three game studio, we feel like the marketing
mix needs to look intrinsically different. Yeah, I think the core marketing mix is exactly the same
as a traditional studio would be. But there are like additional things that because we have
a web three studio, we could consider. It's kind of the answer. Yeah, I think it's the right answer
to I mean, there's no wrong or right. But I so often hear studios take, you know, complete
different approaches where I'm like, you know, you're forgetting so much about the way that
traditional studios went about user acquisition, like there's a reason why that works and why you
should at least look at doing it that way, rather than just solely focusing on for example, web
pre audience, but sounds good. So I want to be mindful of your time, I want to be mindful of
the listeners time. Again, if you have a question for a feature free to to comment it, I'll see if
I can get to it. But I want to get to something juicy, I want to get you know, ask for slowly
getting to the end of the space is talk about some big upcoming milestones for parallel and what's
you know, next on your roadshow. So when we're looking at what's next for parallel, can you
summarize like looking at this quarter? What are the major milestones you would say that you can
talk about? And is there any offer that you can give at all? Or are we just going to have to
keep our eyes on the channels and see for ourselves in due time?
Yeah, I mean, I guess like the the simplest answer would be open beta and everything
associated with that, which is quite a lot. And then the expansion coming into the game,
you know, then the you know, and like so the optimization of the game piece kind of fits
within the scope of the open beta answer. So, you know, as we as we sort of like ramp up for open
beta, you know, we want to just be thinking about how many people can access the game,
making the game as successful as possible, progressively over time, you know, like the
game stores that we've, we've talked about, the different launchers, we want to be activating
those, we want to be getting planet fall, you know, playable into the game. And then we want to be
doing additional big activations like the last streamer tournament that we did, we want to be
bringing that type of stuff back. And basically just kicking up the the marketing mix, you know,
really prior to open beta, the degree to which marketing is actually like a good use of your time
and money is fairly minimal, right? Yeah. Because you're still working out kinks with the product
and like exposing people to the product at scale is really not what that phase is about. But as you
enter open beta, that starts to become more what that phase is about. So I think people could also
expect to see a lot of different types of marketing in that that phase. So that's that's the core
answer. It's just gonna be a lot of a lot of ramping up and new exposure.
Makes sense. So so that's, let's say, you know, this this upcoming quarter, if we look further and
dare to dream, you know, one year from now, two years from now, five years from now,
where do you hope to see parallel in a year? And what would you say is your big vision for parallel
basically, like five years from now? Yeah, I mean, I think like the one year from now, you know,
there's, I would, I would hope like hundreds of thousands of active active players in the game.
And, you know, parallel sort of like considered globally amongst the TCG world, like a viable
title. And then five years from now, you know, it's hard to say because Kalos is such a mad
scientist, you know, and like the the ambition of the potential vision for where we'll be at five
years from now is pretty insane. So I don't really want to speak on that too much. But I think,
you know, probably parallel studios would be a multi title studio. And those those titles would
take different forms and have different appeals. But at the end of the day, still be like all all
part of parallel. So I understand. Nice vision. I love it. I think, you know, in in throughout those
five years, hopefully I get to have you on the Twitter spaces, you know, many more times to also
talk about those different titles and go go in there will be really, really nice. So yeah, again,
I want to be mindful of your time. So I wanted to ask you, you know, gameplay wise, ecosystem wise,
roadmap wise, do you feel like there's anything left that we haven't covered that you really,
really want to talk about? No, I mean, I think we we hit a lot of great stuff.
And I do have to go for a call anyway. So I mean, if there if people had questions, I will get to
them on Twitter if they write them out after my next call. So perfect. Sounds great. Yeah, thanks.
Thanks for you know, so much for for being here today. And you know, thank you so much to the
listeners also for tuning in today. I would want to ask you if you enjoyed the spaces, please give
a follow here on Twitter, also the echelon account and check out parallel your you'll find that
account as well. And if you end up playing the game because of the spaces, please tweet your
screenshots. I love to see gameplay. And yeah, again, you know, Fitch, thanks so much for being
here. I hope you enjoyed it was a proper one on one. But I think we'll do you know, more deeper
and deeper dives later on. But yeah, thanks so much for your time. Yeah, yeah, it was a pleasure,
man. I always enjoyed chatting with you guys. Love it. Good luck on your meeting. And yeah,
I think you know, for those that listen tonight, again, thank you so much for tuning in. I'm going
to be back next week with a new episode of let's talk gaming, which is a different series that we
also host where we talk about what is hot and wet free gaming right now. We're going to have a panel
with new guests, probably three for guests that are going to be there. So hope to see you there.
And I think you know, other than that, the only thing I have left to say for tonight is
thank you for listening. Have a great night and bye bye gamers.