Interview With Pixels Online Founder: Luke Barwikowski

Pixels Online is the hottest new live game in the blockchain gaming industry with over 100K+ DAU after a recent migration to Ronin and token incentive play model. With only 10 people on the team, they are a lean organization building an interoperable Web3 farming game: "Make your home in a world of unlimited adventure. Master skills and play with friends. Build new communities and enjoy a new style of gameplay!"

In this interview, we speak to the brains leading the team, CEO & Founder Luke Barwikowski

"With such impressive initial success, what are your next steps or future plans for Pixels Online?" 

There’s still a lot of work to do! But we have a whole host of features lined up over the next 3-4 months. We’re working on a much larger release and re-work of our systems called Chapter 2. Chapter 2 will fix a lot of the core issues in gameplay and economics we’re experiencing right now, and it also introduces a new end-game into Pixels. Chapter 2 will heavily emphasize Guilds & come with some new social-fi elements layered into it.

We have a few other cool features lined up, including a new product called Realms. Realms is basically going to be a sandbox where you can create your own worlds.Oh yeah, and our token $PIXEL is coming out very soon.

 "How has the migration to the Ronin blockchain specifically contributed to the game's recent surge in metrics?"  

This initial surge of new users is almost entirely due to Ronin. We hadn’t changed the game significantly from what it was on Polygon after migration to Ronin. Ronin contains by far the largest number of web3 gamers - and I don’t think we’ve even come close to getting exposure to all of them yet. That being said, we do have a game that we’ve been working on & iterating on for 2 years, and we had a great community as a base. Our existing community fit in really well with the typical Ronin user base.

"How important has the community been in the growth of Pixels Online, and how do you plan to foster this community moving forward?" 

It’s the most important part of our growth. Everything we do at Pixels has been centered around community. We build in public and build with our community. Our community feels like an extension of our team. It can be difficult at times, but also a superpower. We’re able to crowdsource ideas, growth, and solutions with them. We’re going to keep this up even at scale.

"What is your long-term vision for Pixels Online, and how do you see it evolving in the gaming industry?" 

I want Pixels to be at the cutting edge of what it means to be building a web3 game. I see web3 gaming as a different gaming category, just like free-to-play was. There is still a blue ocean out in front of us regarding the next iteration of consumer behavior in gaming. I want Pixels to be the company that pushes the edge, and explores new types of behaviors and new business models.

 "What is one piece of advice you would give to other people working in the blockchain gaming industry?"

Learn from the best in web2 gaming. Do all the work to make your game good, but also realize that web3 brings new challenges and opportunities. Building a fun game is only half the work in web3 - there is a whole other half of the problem set regarding incentive design, LiveOps, bot prevention, and growth when you launch a web3 game. Think a lot about what value-add the web3 actually brings and take full advantage of it. Don’t write off previous iterations of web3 games or social products because they didn’t work - instead, understand what they were able to achieve and dig into WHY they didn’t work.