As a child of the 70s and 80s, video games are in my blood. I was one of the first kids in my neighborhood to have an Atari and quickly worked my way up to Colecovision, The Commodore 64, Atari computer, Nintendo, Sega Genesis, PlayStation 1,2,3,4, PC... Ok you get the point. I freaking love video games! As a result I am incredibly excited about the games that are popping up all over Steem. I have been an early adopter of Steem Monsters, Drug Wars and Next Colony. Not only do I enjoy playing them, I truly believe they are a key in the success of this blockchain. Games have the power to attract "normies" to the blockchain. The more fun the game, the more likely it is for the masses to jump on board.

NextColony has a ton of potential. It is already better than a similar game I tried on another blockchain.

Although I have absolutely no technological expertise, I do know a lot about games and a little about people. Whenever possible I have tried to help these brave devs (Yes "brave" these guys are doing something groundbreaking and new. That takes guts!). Usually this means all I can do is provide a little encouragement for them to keep going. Sometimes I give them some feedback based on my perspective, my friends' perspective and the perspective I perceive other players to have.

Recently I was lucky enough to chat with Oli from Next Colony. He and his entire team have been very willing to communicate with players in their discord chat. I truly respect this because I know every second they spend chatting is a second that they cannot be working on their game... and these guys really want to work on their game! In order to get a better understanding of the team's vision, I asked the following questions:

1. What type of gamer are you trying to attract? (Ones with the patience to build a game they will play for years?)

2. Are there enough of that type of player who are also comfortable doing things on a blockchain for the game to thrive? (Those seem like two very small niches. Is there enough of an intersection for this to work?)

3. Battles seem to be the most important thing right now. Why? Will including battles attract many players? Will those players stay if they find it will take them a month to build their first ship and there is not much to do while waiting?

4. Is the advantage gained by early lucky players (like me) so big that new players will feel hopeless and quit nearly immediately?

5. Are too many players being driven away by the slow pace and the unpleasant feelings brought on by true 100% randomness when it comes to explorations?

Oli was incredibly quick, open and honest with his answers. He had definitely already thought about each one of these before I ever asked (which was an awesome sign).

Here is what he said (posted her with Oli's permission):

1. We don't make it easy for people, this is deliberately a hard PoW cycle. We can't get passed the fact that it's about rewards, we are very realistic. But before the rewards we have a difficult task. But we haven't been able to draw the whole picture yet, we're at about 20%. Target is: Crypto relevant gamers

2. We're a very small niche. There is no way around it. [Some other games] cheated and that's not an attack, there are not 6k players in the whole Crypto landscape, but we're coming in that direction. We don't compete in the App Store, but we can convert players in the Crypto landscape to Steem and have already converted nearly 50 players to Steem. That's not many, but marketing outside the chain hasn't started yet.

3. No, Battles won't bring any new players. Battles are a building block that is important to finish the picture, we are on a kind of alpha.

4. This is one of our big current problems, for which I currently have no smart answers yet. I have approaches.

5. We're seeing that now, and I can't stop it. I'm counting on being able to reactivate all players in the long run by releasing the next 4-6 modules.

As soon as I read the second answer, I cheered out loud (I'm not kidding).

"Outside marketing"!

I let Oli know how excited that phrase made me. Then Oli let me know that "marketing is my profession".

Professional marketer!!!

One thing that has been sorely missed around here is marketing. These guys have a pro on their team! That is music to my ears.

Is Next Colony perfect? No. But after this conversation I have a ton of confidence that this team is doing everything they can to get as close to perfection as possible. Just knowing that they recognize and understand some of the early bumps in the road was a huge relief. If a team does not understand the problems it faces, they cannot fix those problems. I also appreciated the fact that they were honest and did not pretend to have a perfect answer to every question. I am confident this team "gets it" and is going to do what they can to create a great user experience.

What questions would you have asked that could help the team to make improvements?

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