Digital Assets I Lawyer l Ex-Drinker Helping the Sober Curious I Seeker & Finder I Grateful I #RKL #MAYC @HYTOPIAgg @ChimpersHQ @ThePlagueNFT @FWBtweets
Here, Now
Joined March 2011
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Tuptastic retweeted
NFT Worlds started on Minecraft.
After Minecraft banned blockchain integrations, we built @hytopiagg's own engine and a platform for other developers' games. That failed.
I think we take one last shot. We return to our NFT Worlds roots with our own game.
Here's the idea 🧵
Tuptastic retweeted
Today I turn 55.
I’m the fittest, sharpest, and happiest I’ve ever been.
If I’m an outlier, it’s not because I’m built different or discovered a secret formula. The truth is far less glamorous:
It’s a million tiny choices, compounded over decades.
Here are 55 of them:
1. Walk 15+ miles a week, even if you do other exercise. Humans are uniquely made to move slowly over long distances—it’s critical to longevity.
2. Develop a writing practice. It’s the single best way to sharpen your mind. And remember, you don’t have to be a good writer to write. Start with 10 minutes a day.
3. Swap out your toothpaste, deodorant, lotions, soap, shampoo, and other personal care products for natural versions. Here’s a rule of thumb: Don’t put anything on your skin that you couldn’t safely eat.
4. If you have a positive thought about someone, don’t keep it to yourself—share it immediately. Encouragement defies the laws of physics: When you give energy, you also receive it.
5. Wear shoes with a wide forefoot (I like Topo Athletic) and wear toe spreaders around the house (search “yoga toes” on Amazon). Spine health begins with the feet.
6. Get sunlight regularly. Moderate sun exposure (without sunscreen) is hugely important for overall health.
7. Do a 3-minute deep (“ass to grass”) squat every morning. Deep squats are often called the anti-aging exercise. It’s been said that, “It’s not that you can’t do deep squats because you’re old, it’s that you’re old because you can’t do deep squats.”
8. Explore minimalism (it’s not what you think it is).
9. Set boundaries on toxic relationships. We tend to cling to relationships past their expiration date, and it takes a bigger toll on our health than we recognize.
10. Eat real food. Not too much. Don’t eat garbage. Binge occasionally. Fast occasionally. That’s the diet.
11. Learn about FIRE. It’s a great framework for financial success.
12. Don’t take antibiotics except in emergency situations. They’re massively over-prescribed and aren’t needed in most cases. Antibiotics have done untold damage to our guts, which is where health begins. Great natural alternatives are out there.
13. Get 8 hours of quality sleep each night. To optimize sleep:
—Don’t eat after 6pm
—Get blackout shades and cover LEDs with black tape
—No screens 2 hours before bed
—Try ashwagandha (an herb) to calm the nervous system
14. Stop drinking, even in moderation. People find all sorts of ways to justify drinking, but there’s no escaping the simple fact that alcohol is a toxin and it limits your potential.
15. Travel as much as possible. Nothing expands the mind like seeing the world. And travel doesn’t have to be expensive—the best experiences happen outside of fancy resorts, when you live like a local.
16. Let go of resentment. When you forgive someone, you release the prisoner, and the prisoner isn’t them… it’s you.
17. Show up on time, every time. Poor time management limits success more than most people realize. If you struggle with punctuality, stop everything else and fix that first.
18. Spend lots of time in nature and touch the earth. Humans evolved over 300k years to live in harmony with nature, and only recently have we retreated indoors. If you don’t spend time outside, you’re fighting biology (hint: You won’t win.)
19. Stop doing dumb things. As Leo Tolstoy said, “People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing—refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.”
20. Find your happy place and (eventually) move there. Most people live where they live because... that's where they live. We are products of our environment—choose yours carefully.
21. Find a hobby and pursue mastery. You can’t have a happy life without a passionate pursuit that isn’t your vocation. Your work—even if you enjoy it—isn’t enough.
22. Avoid mainstream medicine except as a last resort. The results are in—our healthcare (or more appropriately, sick care) system is badly broken and only makes people sicker.
23. Have a mindset of abundance. There is no advantage to being a pessimist—even if you’re right, it’s a miserable way to live. In a very real way… whatever you believe, you’re right!
24. Do hard things. Choose courage over comfort. Everything you want is on the other side of fear and hard work. As Jerzy Gregorik said, “Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.”
25. Ignore haters. Hurt people hurt people. Negative/toxic people live in a prison of their own design. Don’t join them!
26. Say no. Protect your time and energy like it’s your most precious asset… because it is.
27. Become a water snob. As an alien said on Star Trek, humans are “ugly bags of mostly water.” You are what you drink—literally! We have Mountain Valley Spring water delivered in glass 5-gallon jugs and also have whole-house water filter (Aquasana Rhino).
28. Stop drinking sodas and sugary energy drinks. After a few weeks you won’t miss them, and a few months later they’ll seem disgusting. Refined sugar causes inflammation, which is the root of most disease.
29. If you’re over 35, find a good functional/longevity medicine doctor and start tracking your hormones. Modern life is hell on the endocrine system and restoring healthy hormone levels can change your life. As we get older, we either accept a slow decline in performance or we do something about it—choose the latter!
30. Develop a morning routine and follow it faithfully. Win the morning, win the day!
31. Invest in experiences, not things. People frequently regret buying things, but rarely regret investing in great experiences (especially when shared with loved ones). Remember, there’s nothing you can buy in a mall that you’ll remember in ten years.
32. Explore spirituality. It’s arrogant and small-minded to believe there’s nothing going on in our universe that is beyond our comprehension. We know less about our universe than an ant meandering on a sidewalk understands about this planet.
33. Have a strong bias toward action—doing rather than talking. If you ask a bunch of old people about their regrets, they’ll talk about the things they *didn't* do—the shots they didn’t take—more than the things they did do (even if it went wrong). As Wayne Gretzky famously said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Most people don’t take enough shots.
34. Stay lean. Men in particular are obsessed with muscle mass these days, but bulk doesn’t age well. The goal is to be strong but lean. The fittest guys in their 50s and beyond aren’t meatheads, they’re lean guys who are serious about a sport.
35. Curate your inner circle carefully. Surround yourself with people you admire and who challenge you to grow. Remember, we’re the average of our 5 closest relationships.
36. Be the fittest version of yourself. Your body is your only vessel for experiencing life—so treat it as such. Fitness isn’t working out a few times a week, it’s a lifestyle. The older you get, the more time you need to devote to your health.
37. Take the time to appreciate art and beauty in all its forms.
38. Think globally, but act locally. Too many people put their energy into far-away problems they don’t understand and can’t impact, while ignoring problems right under their nose. Want to change the world? Start at home.
39. Try psychedelics. It’s one of those things everyone should do at least once, and it might be the breakthrough you’ve been looking for.
40. Limit bad habits, including unhealthy thought patterns. We all have them—practice avoidance and find substitutes. Get professional help if needed.
41. Be a lifelong learner. Your brain is just like a muscle—if you don’t feed and flex it regularly, it will atrophy.
42. Find your purpose. People with a strong sense of purpose are happier and live longer. Lack of purpose sucks energy and magnifies depression.
43. Only take advice from people who embody the traits you want to have. Talk is cheap—emulate those who have DONE it.
44. The goal is not to retire and do nothing, it’s to build a great day-to-day life that you don’t need to escape. A life of leisure is a slow death. Happiness isn’t possible without a little struggle, uncertainty, and skin in the game.
45. Have fun! Do frivolous and silly things that make you smile. As George Bernard Shaw famously said, “We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
46. Whatever you want to do or achieve in life, start NOW. Don’t fall victim to “someday thinking” because someday never comes.
47. Accumulate assets—things that grow in value over time. It’s the #1 habit of rich people, and it can be done in tiny chunks. Instead of spending $100 on an impulse purchase that has no lasting value, put that money into an index fund or Bitcoin. It becomes addictive (in a good way).
48. Don’t ignore the big 3 canaries in the coal mine for health:
—Low libido (and ED)
—Frequent sinus & respiratory issues
—Depression
These usually aren’t medical conditions in themselves, they’re symptoms of an underlying problem. Find a good doc (outside of the mainstream) and figure out the root cause.
49. Have a clear vision for your future. How can you decide which direction to go if you haven’t clearly defined the destination? It sounds obvious, but 95% of people haven’t defined their “Ideal End State” in detail and in writing. (Check out my thread on this topic.)
50. Make your own decisions. We live in an era where most of what society tells us is wrong. Don’t be afraid to break from societal norms—if people say you’re crazy, it’s a sign that you’re doing something right.
51. Get hardcore about mobility exercise. As you age, it’s usually the knees, hips, and lower back that limit physical performance. 30 min a couple times a week can spare you a lifetime of pain. YouTube is a great resource.
52. Go all in on family. Get married, stay married, have kids. Burn the boats. In the end, family is all that matters.
53. Be ruthless with your time. Money comes and goes. Time only goes. Audit your calendar ruthlessly—cut the trivial, double down on the meaningful, and spend your hours like your life depends on it. (Because it does.)
54. Have a strong bias toward action. Be curious, try things, meet people—it’s how you increase your surface area for serendipity, the most powerful unseen force in our lives.
55. Reinvent yourself every decade. Over time, we slowly drift off course from our priorities, values, and true identity. Take stock and don’t be afraid to hit the reset button. Bold, calculated moves made for the right reasons almost always pay off—usually even more than you can imagine.
🎁 P.S. If you enjoyed this post, would you give me a birthday gift? Repost or comment with the item number(s) you liked best?
Tuptastic retweeted
HYTOPIA is now a mobile-first platform.
The Android app is exploding in Asia.
Cheap ads. High-intent users.
They test everything you throw at them.
Look at Roblox:
The next generation lives on their phones.
This is where all traffic will come from in the next few years.
HYTOPIA’s public stats literally show 98%+ of players are joining on mobile right now.
If you’re building games and not optimizing for mobile first…
you’re leaving a skyscraper worth of traffic on the table!
Do I like it?
Honestly, no.
I’m a PC player.
I’d rather grind on desktop forever.
But the market doesn’t care about my preferences.
Mobile is the distribution engine.
Mobile is where the young audience is.
Mobile is where your game scales.
You can fight reality…
or you can build for the platform that’s actually growing.
Winners adapt.
Losers cope.
Tuptastic retweeted
Brand coin asymmetry
Category check: brand coins (MEW, NEIRO, TROLL, BERT, CAT, PONKE, MANYU, KEYCAT, DOOD and etc...) sit at a combined $1.214B MC with $199.3M volume. Most of them are pure memes: no utility, no alignment, charts down -80% to -95%
Now drop $CHMPSTR beside them:
- Current MC: $5M
- Deflation: 10.36% already burned
- Constant bid: strategy buys nfts -> realizes profit -> burns $CHMPSTR
- Team cadence: pre-season already heavy
- TokenWorks platform + full lauch next
Simple ladder math from $5M MC :
Dead IP floor (what lifeless brand coins fetch) :
- $8-12M MC -> 1.6-2.4x (call it 2-2.5x)
Working mid tier IP :
- $20M MC -> 4x
- $31.8M (DOOD) -> 6.3x
- $21.9M (PONKE) -> 4.4x
Category leaders :
$100M -> 20x
$215M (APE) -> 42.8x
$651M (PENGU) -> 129.6x
Degens, translate to a $100 ticket :
to $10-12M -> $200-$240
to $20M -> $400
to $100M -> $2,000
to $651M -> $12,960
And unlike most brand coins, $CHMPSTR isn't only attention. It's deflation, treasury and aligned incentives mechanics that keep floors sticky when hype fades
Why a brand coin can compound for real
You don't have to believe in web3 fairy tales. Just look at how character IP behaves in the wild :
Pattern: outsider -> distribution -> licensing -> empire
- web2 took 10-20 years to do it with slow deals and tiny royalties
- web3 lets a brand coin capture upside as distribution compounds, not after
Real world commerce is queued and legally locked
- 2026 physical product rollout planned
- Four USPTO principal register trademarks covering core monetization classes :
- CHIMPERS word mark
- Pixel CHIMPERS + chimp
- CHIMPI word mark
- Stylized chimp head
- Translation: clean lanes for retailers, licensees and partners
Test sales already ran: plush toys, keychains and figures sell - through proved demand before the full line
Why $CHMPSTR screens safer for a brand coin
- Deflation onchain: 10% burned already, continual burns ahead
- Permanent bid: strategy flywheel buys nfts, realizes and burns the token
- No VC leash / unlock overhang: alignment with holders, not cap tables
- Real audience today: @ChimpersHQ content + social reach funnel already live
- Platform unlock: TokenWorks seasons + new strategies expand users/flows
- Physical + licensing runway: trademarks secured, 2026 products and proven test runs bridge web3 -> retail
Even if you handicap $CHMPSTR like a meme and only grant it the dead IP baseline, path of least resistance is 2-2.5x
Price it like a functioning brand coin and the 4x / 6x / 20x+ rungs are just math
Price it like a category leader and you staring at 40x - 130x from a $5M base
Market still values most brand coins on vibes. $CHMPSTR adds mechanics + legal + merch. That's difference between a pump and a system
We are so early
!CHIMP
Tuptastic retweeted
🚨Quirkling Giveaway - OPEN TO ALL🚨
Here’s the deal: I’m giving away 1 rare Quirkling!
To enter:
1️⃣ Follow @QuirkSalesBot, @quirkiesnft, @TheCPTDavid, & @TheQuirkKnight
2️⃣ Like + Repost this tweet
3️⃣ Engage with the @QuirkSalesBot for the potential to win a surprise throughout the week.
*Winner will be picked at random and announced after 5PM EST on 11/14*
Tuptastic retweeted
🚨Quirkling Giveaway🚨 (for future Quirkies!)
This one’s for anyone who’s not yet part of the Quirkies community. I’m giving away 1 Quirkling NFT to share the experience of what it is like to join!
To enter:
1️⃣ Follow @TheCPTDavid - @QuirkiesNFT - @TheQuirkKnight
2️⃣ Like & RT this post
3️⃣ Comment why you’d love to join the Quirkies ecosystem👇
Winner announced on Sunday at 5PM🗓️
Tuptastic retweeted
26.49K active players just the last 24 hours
Google Aps
----------
Rating is 4.482
Platform now runs on 152K+ devices
247K minutes of total session time YESTERDAY
$HYBUX DROPS 11/14 & all hell will break loose!
This is even more exciting than when Worlds were at 15E!
Tuptastic retweeted
Really well articulated - I’ve written off all my positions in web3 gaming over the years but I’m happy it all led to me to play a small role in the @hytopia story- I’ve worked very closely with both @iamarkdev and @Temptranquil and I can attest that this is probably the only team worthy of being a hero story and flag bearer for web3 gaming. It has a 4 year lead on building a leading ugc gaming platform when everyone else is waking up to the ugc opportunity - the team has come back from death moments, have multiple scars and have stood tall and continued to build - most people don’t understand how hard it is to build a ugc platform - building the underlying engine, handling infra that can handle concurrency, acquiring developers who can build quality games, acquiring players who stick and stitching all of it together at the same - it’s hard really really hard - but the moat will come from this - because once you build network effects, it will be really hard to break them. It’s not going to be easy and it shouldn’t be easy - if it was, most other people would have tried it.
The other thing about this team is they are very clear first principle thinkers - they don’t chase flashy exchange listings, kol marketing, engaging with market makers and doing all the shady stuff that 99% teams in web3 do - they are focused on real metrics that matters-
- how can the developers build better games
- how can we build a better engine
- what will it take for players to spend more time on th platform
- will players have fun when they play games on Hytopia built by other developers
- how can we increase player concurrency
All of this is hard. But hey this is one of th few team that’s thinking straight. So you gotta rally behind them and let them be the defining story of web3 gaming.
- forever hytopia cheerleader
*MIS* ADVENTURES IN WEB3 GAME INVESTING CONTINUED
The last post featured some of the games that failed.
Here are some more games I've invested in over the past two years.
These are still alive for now.
Some are in a better state than others.
I'm continually asked about the state of these games since at one time of another I posted about investing in these.
So in a mega thread, I've given my thoughts on each one as a sort of update on where things stand.
1/ @Revolving_Games
Wrote a thread roast on them some months ago, post TGE. I had nothing good to say about how much of a fuckup that was.
I had millions of USD in NFT assets there and backed the team based on their history of building real web2 games.
On TGE, the team demolished their community. Token has zero utility so far, 4 months post TGE...
Token is at 10M FDV, down from 300M on TGE. Private sales raised at 75M and 120M, so the token is literally down 87%+ in just 3 months post TGE.
All the backers and VCs (Pantera) utterly rekt.
Team have been silent, and nothing has been done on web3 side yet. Something like 35% of the tokens are going to the nodes that spit out inflation. Don't see a world where the token is going to go up, given how badly the token has cratered in just a couple months. It costs more to run a node then the tokens will pay you even. Horrible ecosystem design by the team.
Strong chance they probably just slow rug on the web3 side, build their games for web2 and just keep the profits in the company. I think that's the likely case here, if they don't run out of funding and shut down given how badly the studio has done.
Only chance here is if their still unreleased game Skyborne is actually good enough to grab real web2 revenue and team are able to link this success back to the token. Given how badly they failed to execute at TGE and beyond, this is a moonshot. I hope for my bags to be wrong here, but not optimistic.
@delabsOfficial
Worst treatment of NFT holders I've seen.
6-7% supply were promised to the NFTs. Team swore they would treat their community right.
Come TGE. team gave something like .2% with 6-month vesting instead. Gave Binance Alpha 6% or such. Rekt the community. I understand it was at the behest of some exchanges that never materialized a listing.
I personally spent about 20k buying Delab passes and another 20k or so helping them mint out a secondary mint that was failing. Invested 25k into their private sale round and agreed to become an Advisor, given the CEOs previous history as CEO of Nexon games and the projects stance towards community.
I do not support this team anymore, given how they broke all promises to NFT holders. Would never touch anything this team builds again after seeing how they played the community (and used my name to held enable this).
Token has crashed since TGE. Hard to see a path here where the company is going to be profitable. Community and NFT is already so rekt there is no place in web3 for the team anymore. Probably they rug on the web3 side and just build mini midcores for Telegram and mobile.
@UltiverseDAO
Shoved in 50k into this pile of trash.
AI metaverse.
All vapor. The team raised millions on hype and have delivered nothing of substance.
This was a failed 'made for Binance' Chinese hustle. Didn't land Binance, and it's been down down down.
Soft rug for sure.
@Tatsu_Verse
Invested 25k. Had a bunch of the NFTs (50-70k USD worth).
Dumped everything for pennies on the dollar last year when it was clear nothing was going to happen and the team were stalling around trying to find a PMF somewhere.
Was multiples up on the NFTs, but ofc I held thinking this was maybe going to be a breakout game on Solana, back when gaming even had a meta.
Ever get lost in the desert chasing a mirage and hoping that oasis you see in the distance is just 100 meters away with each step? Me holding these NFTs was this story. The game never materialized, and I held until I died of thirst.
Instead of being the breakout Solana game, they broke investor wallets. Had strong VC backing and a history of building Discord products that catered to millions of users.
The web3 game, though, basically failed to appear, and the team went back to building Discord services or something.
I perceive the team as trying at least, and they basically didn't find a PFM.
But if there is a prediction market bet on the team running out of runway and shutting down within the next 12-24 months, I'd take that bet for sure.
@CityVerseTycoon
Team minted NFT collection, launched mobile game via PWA (Progressive Web Apps -- on browsers).
Game was decent and playable, though it still needed more features to really be fun. I put hours testing it out.
There was supposed to be a token linked to NFT, but it looks like the team has shuttered the entire web3 side.
Absolute crickets the entire 2025 re the game and the web3 stuff from the team. Discord channel for the NFT remains abandoned. If the team has bailed on the NFT side completely, they should pony up a refund then.
They are still building in web2, but the web3 side (and nfts) look dead. I actually liked the game and thought it had potential with tweaks to onboard web2 users into web3.
So a pivot away from web3. The problem is that the team had a paid NFT mint, and so far, nothing has been done there for the holders.
I actually don't think the game is dead, but the NFT holders have been left for dead.
@InfiniGods
Put in 25k into the 75M round.
Had 250k worth of NFTs. That entire value is worth less than $30k now. I further spent around 60-70k spending in the game Play to Airdrop competitions and a few of the post-TGE tournaments. Yikes.
One of the most promising web3 games.
They had the community, they had the pedigree, and they had the execution ability.
Until TGE that it is.
Turned out the game was not good enough to scale to web2, and the token was just being farmed weekly by the community.
The team were supposed to launch a much updated and deeper game post TGE, but no such update was delivered, no deeper game loops appeared. A couple months post TGE, team abandoned the web3 side.
My take is the team launched the game a year too early.
Huge mistake to spend 1M on a hyperliquid spot listing for $GOD. To be fair, Hyperliquid kind of led on expectations that spot listings would matter and they would do something with their native bridge. Hyperliquid really fucked over all those spot listing ticker buyers.
The game was nowhere near ready to scale to web2 (not enough to do in the game) and the game was not ready for a token. They should have waited another 12 months before TGE.
As it turned out, the game just was not good enough for web2, and the team paused the web3 side to rebuild the entire game as a slots (pivot from cards) game.
I think the new pivot has a chance. If they can make this work in web2, they can find a way to funnel in web3 (and the token). However, the web3 side is going to be dead for the midterm.
Will see in 6 months how things look. But some hope there still seeing their new slot game product. But doesn't change the fact the token is down like 99% and the web3 assets have crashed around the same. A cautionary tale here about not being ready for a token. Team rushed out a TGE when the game was not ready and the result was the destruction of the web3 side.
I hope they can pull a pivot though, and it's one of the only games I think maybe has a chance still, even though the ecosystem is rekt. I understand if they can't make it in web2, which is their focus now, they can't make it in web3. So I'm willing to wait, even though not selling everything leading up to TGE was the fucking stupidest thing I've probably done.
Team gets a big fail for going silent on their community for most of this year though. You don't start a community, bring them along, fail them at TGE with a bunch of bad decisions, then go crickets for 10 months because you fucked up. At least communicate to the people you kicked in the balls and maybe they will stick around if they believe in your pivot.
Holding tokens on this small chance for a rebound in the future, if there ever is one.
@L3E7_Official
Not sure what's going on.
I invested $50k back in 2023 after a call with the team and spent something like 30e on the Genesis NFTs with the expectation that the team was within 12 months of launching the game.
My expectations were misled because almost 3 years later, the game is not live. To be fair, the team never gave me any hard dates, but I surely would not have put in the capital if I knew this would be a 3-5 year journey.
There have been some open betas with the game, and the game does look promising.
The NFT assets have died, though. Total wipeout. This is why you don't start minting NFTs 2-3 years in advance of your game actually being ready. I think they probably still have another year or two before the game goes live.
I'm kind of hopeful on this one as the game is really unique (basically a web3 SciFi Pokémon GO experience, mapped to the real world).
Best for teams like this to just skip out on cultivating a web3 community and doing mints years before the game launches.
@GunzillaGames
Invested in the seed.
Off The Grid is at least trying. It was the best attempt at a FPS web3 game, but the token is down only and keeping a large scale team active is expensive. Tokenomics are horrible and given the token is 80% down and a very small circulating, it's likely the token is going to start crashing hard once the investor / team unlocks start happening.
Team did a full-on second raise with the node sales and scammed everyone on that.
Game is still alive, but I think it's just a matter of time before the studio runs out of money and start dumping the charts to keep the lights on.
There are still other games, but I'll leave them off.
Some other games:
@youmio_ai
- way too early to have put out the NFTs. Team made some mistakes ($LIMBO). Unique product and not strictly just a game. Holders are getting antsy, given it's been two years. I like the team and the product is so unique (AI x Gaming) that I think it's going to be worth the wait. Still bullish.
@hytopia
Was the largest NFT holder for some years. Literally put in 1M into the old token and another 1M into the genesis NFTs. About 200k minting NFT Avatars. About 400k buying those worthless grayboys that they never did anything with. 180k minting like 650 Topia Nodes.
Yikes, one of the worst investments I've made in gaming and outside of gaming.
The team made huge mistakes with the tokenomics and has pivoted more times than Britney Spears has posted batshit crazy videos on Insta. The amount of extractive mints the team has used to fund their operation without giving back value is also a black mark.
Yet.
The team is still building, and the game platform is shaping up to be a sort of web3 Roblox that's impressive and attracting actual users and builders. I admit, I wrote off the team at the beginning of the year and sold off my NFTs given how much they kept on pivoting.
I still have a huge position of the Topia Nodes, though.
The platform is becoming one of the more interesting things coming out of web3. I hate to eat crow, given I've publicly crashed out at the team and called them extractive. Yet, here we are, and they have actually delivered a really cool platform on which you can build any kind of game or world, as per their original promise nearly five years ago.
Dare I say it may actually be worth buying the new gaming token (HYBUX)?
A potential comeback story in the market. Alas, I sold off all my NFTs. I can't believe they have managed a turnaround and are looking actually bullish as maybe a breakout game from this slop called web3 gaming.
I still have a much diminished stake in this ecosystem of 650 Topia Nodes, whatever that will be worth.
@playchronoforge
Have a big bag of NFTs. Like nearly 600 or so (second biggest holder, I think). Also invested six figures into the private sale. At the peak held nearly 1M USD in NFT values when the genesis nfts were worth .7e each.
So this is the little team that proved they could. A lot of respect for the team who are anything but shady. Frankly, the fact that they have gotten so far with so little capital and runway speaks volumes. Huge respect for the founder who literally mortgaged his house and put it into the game to keep things going.
But that's also the biggest risk: team runs out of funding.
Game is now early access, but it's clearly not ready. The team has been way fucking overly optimistic on the game launch time frames over the past 2 years.
It was supposed to launch in January 2024 and then March 2024, but the live beta was a catastrophe and showed the game was not close to ready. Team had to go back to the drawing board, hire more people and rebuild the game engine and server infra.
Well a year and a half later, it's in a much better state and probably the state it should have been in back early 2024 when they said they were ready.
But.
The game probably needs another 2-6 months of it before the game will be ready. Early access was suppose to be 1 month (sep 10 to oct 10) but that's way off. I think they need 3-6 months of early access to fix all the bugs.
But I think if they can fix the bugs, fix all the many balancing issues with the classes and gear, and get the web3 side there and make sure it works bug free, Chronoforge could be a very interesting game. We certainly don't have a web3 game like this yet.
One of the purest web3 style games we have, where the NFTs have deep utility and the token is absolutely required to play the game. Only say @playcambria has NFTs so deeply integrated into the game economy. Chronoforge takes it a level deeper, where you can play in the game with those NFTs.
This is a game I really want to see work to prove that NFTs, tokens, and gaming can coexist.
Main risk is that the team runs out of funding before they can hammer the game into a state that's ready to go live. If they rush to TGE when the game is not ready, game is finished. I think this is a significant risk here.
@Pixelmon
- oh man, probably was my biggest holding. Had nearly 8 figures in NFT value alone back in early 2024. NFT airdrop was worth 2M alone.
Bag held everything.
The one project where I'm down 85% but I still love the team, even if the TGE was way too early in hindsight. Team made the mistake of having a token years before the products were ready. But the meta at the time was to have the token out as was the community pressure, given many were still around holding from the rug era of the previous founder.
Bullish on the CEO/founder Gulio, who I think is one of the most legit founders in the space. Also bullish on the 35M treasury, which is 2x the FDV market cap. This puts @Pixelmon in a very unique situation. Literally every other gaming studio is struggling with funding. Pixlemon is sitting on a pile of capital. That gives them options.
The games they have been working on for almost 3 years are about to be launched. The focus there is on web2 NOT web3, which I think is the right move. If things don't pan out, the 35M treasury allows the team to do a complete pivot from gaming to a more bullish sector (defi), worst case, which I think is probably a good move to make.
SUMMARY
Well, a lot of misery and lost capital. There's probably 5-10 more games I can add to the list, but I'm out of energy and tired of writing this massive post. I just want the pain to end.
I probably need to come up with some lessons learned here and all since you made it this far.
Lessons?
1/ Gaming was not ready for a breakout moment. I invested too early.
2/ You can be right about a thesis, but wrong about the timing. And so far, I've been painfully wrong on the timing part.
3/ Underdog stories are not often good investments.
I also made bad decisions backing founders who had a good story (underdogs). These folks meant well but did not have the capacity or experience to deliver i.e. @ValeriaStudios).
4/ Founders fucking lie through their teeth to get funding.
Some founders were straight out scammy and lie to your face about dates.
"Oh yes, we have 1M players".
"Oh yes, the game launches in 3 months."
"Oh yes, we have a riot partnership."
"Oh yes, we are talking to Binance and have signed a LOI for a listing!"
"Oh yes, we are in talks with Bybit. The CEO's mother's husband's girlfriend works as head of listing there and we have secured a deal."
"Oh yes, Sydney Sweeny has agreed to pose nude in our game."
In gaming, never trust the team's given game launch dates or the TGE dates. 95% of the time, these are wrong.
5/ NFT mints far too early
If your game is more than 6 months away from live, don't launch an NFT collection. You will just waste capacity on appeasing an increasingly impatient, entitled, and demanding community. I see little benefit and only pain to spit out an NFT collection (even worse pain if it's a paid mint) when your product launch is distant.
6/ No game, No token
The biggest mistake is to launch a token with no product paired to it. Almost all the web3 games TGE then figure out how to build a game for the token after, sometimes years after, sometimes never after. The number one way to absolutely destroy your token. Launch your game, find a real PFM there, then throw in the blockchain layer. A token should be vital to the economic side of your game. If the token has the same utility as a memecoin, you should never launch a token. If you can't explain what the token is used for in fewer than 20 words, your token is bullshit.
7/ No money, the bear eats all your honey
Crypto has cycles. Game dev has cycles.
Both do not necessarily align.
It can take 3-6 years to build a real game of quality. And the costs are enormous. Building games is enormously expensive and time-consuming.
Crypto boom-to-bust cycles play out over 1-2 years.
Which means, a studio needs to have enough capital to comfortably build over 2, maybe 3 crypto cycles.
You don't want to be an investor in a gaming studio that runs out of capital and is forced to spit out a TGE before the game is ready, and has to launch on a DEX with a $10k liquidity pool.
THE END
There you go. Go forth, future gaming investors and let my pain be your knowledge gain.
At least don't go about and make my mistakes. I like to imagine I took an L for you guys to take a future W.
I'd be ver,y very careful playing around in gaming as an investor.
There are better sectors to invest in where you don't risk total wipeout and you don't have teams packing up your gaming nostalgia into something investable.
Tuptastic retweeted
Chimpers Appreciation Thread🐒
I have been looking at Chimpers for a long time but more recently, the data behind the project.
I have connected with the community where I really found what is special about Chimpers and the people involved!
Here is a thread of charts and reasons why you should be entering this outstanding project.
Tuptastic retweeted
Roblox creators are slowly coming to @HYTOPIAgg. Sure, the video was sponsored by the project but it would have been completely unthinkable only a few months ago. Extremely excited about where this is going 🔥
This quoted post is unavailable.
Tuptastic retweeted
Just dropped the go-to guide for creating HYTOPIA games (start-to-finish)
YT link below 👇
Tuptastic retweeted
Roblox takes 75% of your earnings.
Minecraft gives you 0% ownership.
They built empires on your creativity.
That era is over.
HYTOPIA is the creator-owned revolution.
You don't just play the game. You OWN the game.
The migration has begun. Don't get left in the old world.
RT if you believe creators deserve to be paid. $TOPIA
Tuptastic retweeted
I can see many reasons why one should hold a bit of $topia right now:
✅ Finally available on the app stores (Apple and Android)
✅ New tokenomics coming soon - team seems more bullish than ever before, pointing to a bold approach
✅ 3rd Game Jam on the way -> new inflow of mini-games
✅ First MMORPG and AAA game being built by two star Minecraft devs
✅ Perfectly positioned to surf the vibe-coding wave
✅ Social media marketing ramping up
✅ $TOPIA hasn’t moved much in comparison to other low cap alts, looking stupidly cheap at a $16m mc
Full disclosure: I am stupidly long, but those are the reasons why ⬆️
Tuptastic retweeted
Alright, took a little longer than expected to land back on my computer but here we go!
Right, you see it too, this is the 2-sided cold start problem.
I definitely don't think this goes from 0 to multi-million dollar dev studios building on it tomorrow. It will grow in iterations, both on the dev and player side.
I think the first thing is, we don't explicitly need nor heavily target veteran developers who are looking to invest millions to start right now. If they came early on, that'd be great - but like you're saying, the incentives and opportunity have to be correct to likely be a good fit for them. This means lots of player reach, monetary incentives, long term partner or derisk incentives where if they come in early we give their games visibility priority or something else for the long term for taking the early risk, etc.
When we started building this engine from the ground up, the initial goal was differentiate on ease of access and entry for the indie game developer, or average web developer into building games. We wanted to expand the target pool of potential game devs, not just fight in the existing pool. To do that:
- We chose Javascript/Typescript for the scripting layer (most known language in the world)
- The SDK pattern for building games is less like a typical game engine and much more similar to an event based pattern you'd see in your favorite JS libraries. It's significantly quicker to learn and get up to speed with. It's also much easier for these LLMs/agents to vibe on and get correct context for.
- The UI layer is one of the first as far as I'm aware from a UGC standpoint to give you a 100% UI control and create UI's using regular ol' HTML/CSS/JS that just works everywhere. (browser, native app, mobile, etc)
- Complex game engine elements like physics, netcode, runtime optimizations and so much more are 100% abstracted away. Devs just 100% focus on the gameplay and need not worry about anything else.
- And more, you can read through our dev docs if you want to get a deeper idea: dev.hytopia.com
The thought overall here on the dev side is build the engine from the ground up to be as entry-friendly as possible for devs. This widens the pool of early indie devs and talented but historically non-game devs who have always wanted to make games but learning a traditional engine is way to bloated and complex these days. The faster they can ramp into playing with the engine and building something they're excited by, the more likely they are to stick. Early on we want to empower these people.
Additionally, building an engine from simplicity and web standards using the most known language and some of the most common developer patterns have made the vibe code side of things especially potent when working with the engine. Full game features, and even basic games these AI agents can build with a single prompt already. It's only going to get better, and it wouldn't be possible without factoring simplicity w/ flexibility as a first principle for the engine when building it from the ground up. It's going to be a lot harder imo for these other engines to take advantage because they're built on years of bloat, have massive complex codebases that don't fit anywhere close within context limits, are often an intermix of code editing + GUI for building games which doesn't work that well for vibe coding just yet, etc.
I think we also have some early symptomatic evidence that this approach will work. Specifically what I'm seeing within our dev community right now..
- Over 50% of the first games released on the hytopia.com site were made by developers who had literally never programmed in their life, or only had done web dev. We ran an initial game jam back in January. Within a week for that jam and using Cursor + the vibe code and agent tools we had, they were able to ship something playable, while relatively basic, but reasonably fun and enjoyable. PHSH, Drop Dash, Astro Breaker, Volcano Dash and Block Splat are some examples of this.
- Of the developers who had an engineering background but had never touched the SDK, in the same game jam, they were able to ship games as well with innovative and creative features that were quite fun. Zombie Survivors, Keep Crashers being an example.
- Of the new devs recently coming into the platform either on the back of vibe coding or organic inbound, they're playing with this engine as a toy to start but typically stay engaged in building because of how quick it is to get ramped up building games, and continue to engage in our dev discord.
Will these types of devs make the absolute best, most killer games compared to top tier game devs? Probably not. But that's fine, with quality example games in the SDK, and the engine in how it exposes systems or pushes devs to build can influence the outcome, feel and quality of whatever games are made. We are already seeing this. Over time I expect this to skew as incentives or opportunities align for bigger dev studios, more experienced game devs, etc. Step by step.
On the player side, and cold starting that, is the other side of the problem. We need fun games, good content, and visibility exposure to pull early players in. We also have to iterate on social dynamics of the platform, retention systems, device accessibility, etc. Iterative things as well that in time I believe will fall into place and are actively being worked on by the team.
We're starting to do our first experimental initiatives on player acquisition in the next few weeks. This includes things like co-launching audience-relevant, branded games with moderately sized (500k to 1m+ followers) influencers from the MC, UEFN, Roblox community to drive players into these games and doing rev split + market spend with these creators, evaluate, iterate.
On the platform fee side - that's right, atm the thought is effectively a similar or identical model to Roblox but with a better dev split. Any early studios or quality games that come to us and want to launch, or show significant player acquisition / retention for their games we'd be doing specific deals with where we apply a smaller or no platform fee at all to their games while giving them some level of visibility guarantees for some foreseeable time period as the platform grows. Basically ways we can structure terms to offset their risk, help us grow the platform, and take care of them for the long term as the platform grows.
Last thing imo, time and context is really important here too as well.
With fast enough iteration, experimentation, talking with devs/players and progress I think a lot of the pieces will naturally fall into place with how effectively the team is executing.
I look back to us starting to build this engine from scratch, literally first line of code written, in September '24 (6 months ago), and how fast internally everything is moving comparatively.