W3GS: Growing the Creator Pool Within Parallel
Sharing the stage with Gabby at W3GS, Kohji Nagata talked about how Parallel’s content creator program encourages community members to support each other in becoming creators.
At the YGG Web3 Games Summit (W3GS), Kohji Nagata, co-founder and Head of Game Design at Parallel Studios, joined YGG co-founder Gabby Dizon for a fireside chat. They discussed how the studio’s hit competitive trading card game (TCG), Parallel, distinguishes itself from other TCGs by combining the best elements of games like Hearthstone, Magic: The Gathering, and Legends of Runeterra, in an immersive, post-apocalyptic sci-fi world. They also explored how Parallel introduces web3 gamers to their first NFT through the Battle Pass, which allows players to mint an NFT for free.
In the following excerpt from this fireside chat, Kohji shares how the idea for Parallel was born during the pandemic when he would play online games to communicate with friends. He also outlines how Parallel is engaging gamers in web2 by teaming up with creators like Alliestrasza. He talks about how the Parallel community supports new content creators by providing curated tutorials for playing the game and helping them set up their livestreams on Twitch.
Kohji also shares his plans to provide rewards and infrastructure API to guilds and organizations within the partner program, enabling them to organize tournaments and allow winners to compete in a future world championship. He then explains Parallel’s latest simulation game, Colony, which pairs players with AI to govern their actions in the world of Parallel while sharing on-chain resources.
Watch the full recording on Facebook.
W3GS - Discovering Parallel: Now and What's Next
Gabby (3:58:33): Let's talk about your approach to community-building and content creators. I've seen this really strong community online on Twitter, very helpful content creators, very strong community members. How did you guys go about it? And what's the general approach for dealing with community building?
Kohji (3:58:53): Yeah, I think as far as content creators go, it's a little bit multifaceted. Obviously, we're trying to engage with the current content creators in the web2 card game space. So Hearthstone players, if you've seen any of our content, a lot of it features a Hearthstone streamer by the name of Alliestrasza. And it was really important that we reach your traditional web2 gamers in that way.
But one of the things that I'm really proud of that we've done, is we've created a content creator program within the Parallel ecosystem. So if you're in the Parallel Discord and you're interested in creating content, we're trying to help enable community members to become content creators, because I think, ultimately, the way that the game is going to succeed, and new content creators are going to succeed is if we grow together. And so a lot of what we've done is to just drive people to the Discord, give them all the pieces to learn how to create content, and put it out there.
We even have community members who are willing to, at no charge, give people tutorials on how to play, teach them the strategy of the game, and teach them how to even do things like use Streamlabs, so that they can stream on Twitch and do all that stuff. And I think it's really important that we promote people from within the community, as opposed to just bringing people from the outside.
Gabby (4:00:16): So for the content creators in the audience, they can just head to the Parallel Discord and start creating content with you guys?
Kohji (4:00:23): Yeah, I mean, we have a content creators channel. And we'll do everything we can to enable the content creators who are interested in creating Parallel content. And we'll hook anyone who joins up with other content creators so that there can be collaborations. As an example, a lot of the bigger sort of web2 streamers that we engage with will routinely raid streams from the smaller content creators that have started with us. It's a community of inclusivity.
Gabby (4:00:56): Let's talk about the competitive circuit for a bit. So it seems like there are a lot of plans for competitive play within Parallel. So what are the plans for next year?
Kohji (4:01:07): I think in the coming year, you're going to see us run some regular tournaments so that we can help foster an esports scene. But what's really important to us is to bring in other organizations like ParagonsDAO, and of course, YGG, and create a partner program to allow outside organizations to create their own tournaments. We'll help you know any way we can by providing prizes, infrastructure API, and whatever our partners need to perform a successful tournament. And then what we want to do is take the winners from those tournaments and actually fold them into our sort of larger-scale, let’s say Parallel World Championships.
Gabby (4:02:14): Lastly, let's talk about Colony. So you guys actually decided to make two games at the same time?
Kohji (4:02:22): We have a game currently in development, called Colony. And it's a bit hard to explain because it's not a genre that really exists yet. Basically, what we're doing is creating a game where you as the player, I like to call it a one-and-a-half-player game.
So it's you, as the player, teamed up with an AI, and your AI is a person who's living in a colony. And it's your job to help direct them. So basically, you're like their superego or the angel or devil on their shoulder, saying, “Hey, I think you should do this, or maybe don't do that.” You're sort of training your AI on how to best live in this colony, while at the same time building a relationship with them.
And then it's the AI’s job to mine resources, create weapons, build armor, and all of these things are NFTs that they can transact. They have their own wallets they can transact with on their own, and it's completely autonomous.
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