Imagine being able to take a weapon, skin, or armor from one game, port it into another game, have the same stats, and not have to grind again for hours. That concept is not hard for NFT folks to understand, but mainstream gamers will be in disbelief that such a thing is possible. That is what interoperability means in blockchain gaming. Kieran Warwick and the rest of his team are hard at work building Illuvium as the world’s first interoperable blockchain game. Illuvium is the first AAA title on the Ethereum blockchain. It is an amazing universe of interconnected assets that have utility across their multiple titles. This mind-blowing achievement is the result of the team’s dedication to build an awesome experience for the most passionate Web3 gamers, and ultimately, for the mainstreamers as well. Join in and find out how it works.
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Listen to the podcast here
Kieran Warwick Of Illuvium: How The World's First Interoperable Blockchain Game Is An Amazing Universe Of Interconnected #NFT Assets Usable Across Their Multiple Titles!
This is Kieran Warwick of Illuvium, the game-changing and first AAA title on the Ethereum blockchain. I'm on the Edge of NFT, the AAA show showing the outer edge of how the game is changing. Keep on reading.
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Stay tuned for this episode to learn how Illuvium is building an incredible universe dedicated to the most passionate of Web3 gamers and how argumentativeness can be awesome. A little bit more, about how you could find your own private island. All this and more on this episode. NFT LA 2022 was a blast, but it was also a blast off in a giant plume of bright burning rocket fuel Web3 NFTs blockchain. Decentralization and a suite of immersive new tech developments have exploded onto the canvas of life.
Outer Edge is the theme of this event in 2023, dedicated to those of you building with us at the outer edges making the future happen. The community-centric gathering returns to LA from March 20th to the 23rd, 2023, to uplift creators and technologists through interactive experiences, a wide variety of discussions and presentations, and entertaining surprises that transport participants to the outer edge of what is possible when we co-create a new paradigm embracing the decentralized web, artificial intelligence, extended reality, and more. To register to attend or learn how to co-create an experience on the outer edge, head over to OuterEdge.live, the events being organized by the Edge of Company and us founders of the Edge of NFT. See you there.
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This episode features Kieran Warwick, a proven serial entrepreneur and Cofounder of Illuvium. Working alongside his brother Kain Warwick in eCommerce, Kieran was exposed to Bitcoin and Ethereum early on. His enthusiasm for the crypto space led him to join Blueshyft. While there, Kieran successfully onboarded major Australian exchanges and started the world's first OTC cryptocurrency exchange. At the same time, DeFi was quickly growing.
With his background and interest in trading penny stocks, Kieran wanted to pioneer a DeFi project that would be a game changer for the industries it represented. With this in mind, he tapped his brother Aaron, Cofounder and game designer, to develop what will be the first AAA gaming title on the Ethereum blockchain, and Illuvium was born.
Illuvium is a video game developer and publisher of AAA play to earn crypto games. They remove the ownership gap between gamer and game, engaging its stakeholders in a community-governed collaborative game development model. The games feature collectible NFT assets with in-game functionality that are playable across multiple games planned for the Illuvium Metaverse and will appear in partnership with other games in the larger DeFi Metaverse. Kieran, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me. It is awesome to be here.
It is a pleasure. We are talking a little Crocodile Dundee before we start on the show. It is good to have you on to represent. You and your pet kangaroos are here. You have a couple of them. Let's jump right in and start from the beginning here. Where did the idea for Illuvium come from, and how would you describe it to someone completely unfamiliar?
It started with three brothers. We come from a family of four boys, which you can imagine was quite competitive growing up. One thing that we loved doing was gaming. As early as I can remember, we would play games on Nintendo. Our dad was obsessed with Macs. Whatever limited game that was available on Mac, we would play. We had Game Boys. We were always playing video games.
We were destined to get to this stage at some point. It wasn't until I got back into crypto because when I was working at Blueshyft, I traded for a little bit. Ethereum was at $8 or something like that. I put all of my money into it. I lost a whole bunch, which killed me. I was like, “Screw crypto. I'm out. I don't believe in this space anymore.” I left.
It wasn't until 2020 that I came back when DeFi Summer kicked off. I was looking at 30 to 40 different protocols a day. I saw a game called Axie Infinity. It wasn't even taking off. Only 10,000 people were in it at that stage playing it. It was NFTs inside of a game that got me. I hit up our two other brothers. One is an extremely good artist. He has been in the CGI industry for a long time. The other is a game developer, who is particularly in game design. I said, “There is a huge opportunity here to have ownership inside of games. Let's start building something.”
It sounds like a fun crew. There are four of you in total.
Four in total, but we don't include the eldest one because he is not in the project with us. He got his own project, Synthetix. He was the one who pushed me to come back into space.
It is family members and the history there, the understanding of how you all operate. It is a different thing. I guess there are pros and cons.
There are pros and cons, but we can all hold each other accountable to a level that you couldn't normally hold team members or even cofounders. I have had many ventures in my time, and it was like, “I don't want to upset them.” That I don't want to upset them filter is removed.
One of the things we know is many people have been working on trying to decentralize games. It is a hard thing to do. There are many different elements, whether it is where certain data is stored or how they function. It is hard to do. Interoperability is one of those things that has been floating around out there, and folks are starting to integrate it into their games to be able to move assets across games and different chains. What do you guys think about that with Illuvium?
We think interoperability between blockchains and different gaming IPs is still a little bit away. It is a ways away. When I say a ways away, I mean to be fully optimized where you have the same gaming experience across each one of these games. It is hard to collaborate and ensure that the user doesn't have a bad experience in one game. They were, “In this IP, I can use my NFT in it, but it is a terrible game. The graphics are bad. There is no storyline here. It broke down because they are on a set of chains that went offline and all of these types of things.”
We took a different approach, and we decided, “Let's build our own universe inside of the metaverse.” We decided to have interoperable assets between our own IPs. The reason is we can control all of the different factors. We know the games that we are building and how an NFT goes from one game to the other game. We know if we decide to create an additional game on top, how that is going to integrate into it. Because we can control the entire experience, it makes it a much smoother transition for interoperability.
At least, it is a starting point. At some point, as folks continue to evolve and grow, it is a several-year process where there would be some universal standard that everybody agrees on for interoperability. That would probably be an inflection point at some point in the future.
We are not against it. It is something that we are not opposed to doing. At some stage, potentially saying, “Here is a bit of a sandbox environment of Illuvium. If you want to go and build something, here are our standards. Go for it.” If the community agrees on it, we will integrate that in the future. We still think that is a ways away, but we also think that is okay.
Our goal here is to get traditional mainstream gamers to come over to Web3. The idea that you can take a weapon, skin, or armor from one game, port it into another game, have the same stats, and not have to grind again for hours, that alone is a concept that seems fairly simple to us NFT folks. When you say that to a mainstreamer, they are like, “That is insane. How does that work?” We think that is going to be enough. We want to do it well so people don't sit there and go, “You can bring that piece of armor into a new game, but it is broken and bugged. It doesn't fit inside that game. We want it to be seamless.”
What is Illuvium Overworld? Can you tell us a little bit about that concept and what goes on?
Overworld is where everyone captures their NFTs and characters. We call them Illuvials. That is where a large chunk of our storyline is. You are this ranger that has crash landed on this mysterious planet. You don't know what is going on, but there is this society that goes around and hunts these Illuvials. It is your job to try and figure out what happened here and what these Illuvials are. You do that by going through and traversing the seven different regions that we have. It is a massive open world. Every region is a different type of biome. We are trying to immerse the user in the experience.
You got to level up a typical adventure game where you start off battling what we call Tier 0 Illuvials. Once you have captured those, you can go and battle against more powerful Illuvials. You slowly start building up your team until you can ideally collect all of the Illuvials that are in every region. You go into our third game, which is Illuvium Arena, and you start battling them with that team that you have.
It is interesting when I hear there is so much lore in-game dynamics that go into this thing. I can imagine how interesting and complicated putting that together is. I might have to ask this question based on our previous part of the conversation in which your brothers are involved. Maybe the answers are out there, and I don't know it, but do you have any family history, Easter eggs, or context that you are baking into this thing, or is it a separate world?
We are protective of our lore. We want it to be an experience that people go through and learn as they are playing. That is the first thing. One thing out there is we created three characters based on the three brothers. They are all monkeys. The idea is that I'm this fighter character. I'm always on the front line. I bash down doors and things like that. I got this big monkey club. Aaron is a Scion. He is the brains behind the game design. Grant is a rogue. They got cool names. Aaron is Apon, and Grant is Gorilla. I am Monkier.
I'm not privy to everything that goes on in game design. I'm very much the business guy who is on those front lines. I'm heavily involved with marketing and other components like that. I don't know what these guys have got in store for me. There are Easter eggs that I'm going to find and be like, “You bastard. Why would you put that in?” I don't know them myself yet.
You mentioned Illuvium Zero. Tell us a little bit more about that. What are the details? How does it all work?
Illuvium Zero is super cool. It was meant to be a small companion game for us to demonstrate to our community that we can build games because a lot of people don't realize that we are a brand-new studio that hasn't released a title yet. Several months ago, we were ambitious to create this universe, and we wanted to create something quickly that, like most things in Illuvium, had huge amounts of scope creep. Now, that s a fully-fledged mobile game that is a city builder.
Think about the Simpsons: Tapped Out or Sim City back in the day. You are trying to create an industrial complex. The more optimized your complex is, the more fuel you can extract out of your land plot. If you buy this NFT, it allows you to start playing. There is a free version that you don't need an NFT for, and that is important, but there are these limited NFTs, which we call land plots, that allow you to extract that fuel. That fuel that you extract is what powers the entire economy. If you want to travel to a region, fuse together three Illuvials to make a more powerful one, and you want to craft weapons, all of it requires fuel.
It is starting to tie all these different elements together of Illuvium. It is the launchpad into the next iteration. We have talked a lot about land and land plots. It is interesting for us as we are doing Outer Edge LA, formerly NFT LA. One of the things we did was we created the concept of land grants and land plots for folks that come in and can do whatever they want within the space, like the physical space.
Much of this conversation we have been having relates to land in the metaverse, Web3, and all these different games and universes. Every little thing we talk, it gives us other ideas for how to translate that into the real world and level people up. There are interesting possibilities with that concept. We are getting started on it, but it's fun.
We haven't said it out loud, which is because we got concerned enough about the rest of the planning, but it makes sense that these land plots could be NFT. It fits well. Maybe in 2024, we will get them involved.
You got to start somewhere. If you try to be perfect and incorporate every last element of everything you want to do into your first iteration, you are never going to get there. You got to prioritize, start someplace, and start building. It is awesome. You guys are chopping wood, but you are starting to accelerate. You can see these different releases. It is cool to learn about.
Tell us about all Illuvitars. These are configurable collectibles and have lots of possibilities. What is going on with them?
There are billions of combinations that you can make in set one. They are your avatar for your Illuvial. They can also be used as your avatar across all of the different games. Think about when you are in a lobby and you are waiting for a game to start. You are on your own social chat. Twitter, Instagram, or whatever it might be, you used one of these Illuvitars as your identity inside of Illuvium one step further in typical Illuvium fashion and said, “That is not good enough.” There are many NFT collections out there where it is like, “This is my identity.” That is where it ends.
We have built a game on top of that called Illuvium Beyond. That is our fourth title, which is a card-collecting game. There is no TCG yet. If the community wants to, they are able to vote for which games we build next. There is the card-collecting element. We have tried to take card games like Magic: The Gathering or Pokemon and digitize them.
You go out and buy these things that we call disks. They are like a pack. They contain a bunch of accessories and a couple of Illuvitars, which these profile pictures in the first wave, which is coming out on March 7th, 2023. There are 25 of the non-tier zeros, and there are another 25 of the tier zeros. The idea is that you are competing with other collectors to try and find the rarest combination of which you make up. You have the option to, when you mint these things, say, “I'm going to take this bow tie and put it on this squeeze because it looks better there.” There are four different accessory slots that you can fill, whether it be a tattoo, hat, prop, or all of these sorts of fun stuff.
The idea is there are billions of combinations that you can make, but all of the art is hand drawn. We have this super high standard, and a lot of people can see that across the graphics inside of our main titles. We brought that into this new game, Illuvium Beyond. I'm excited about it. I have started teasing the community going in and minting packs on Testnet. Some of the combinations you can build are cool. You got pipes, earrings, and stuff like that. It is not inside of the Illuvium universe. It is not part of the lore. That is why we call it Illuvium Beyond. It is a fun way for us to bridge the gap between NFT collectors and gamers. We think that they are two distinct segments.
It sounds like you guys are balancing these different elements. There is the gameplay, and by definition, it is supposed to be fun, engaging, and competitive elements built into it, but there is pure fun, like collecting things and creating things for a lot of people. There is a ton of pure joy built into that. Finding a way to incorporate that into everything you are doing here sounds special. I know initially, the real needle mover for me with NBA Top Shot was opening packs. When the first beta was released in August 2020, I was like, “What is this? This is cool as a baseball card collector in years past.” There is something special about it. It is pure joy for me to do those things. It is cool to hear about how that is evolving for you guys.
Grant and I were obsessed with Pokemon cards growing up. Our dad was a famous tennis player. When he retired, he had a tennis center. We were forced to work at that tennis center because we lived in the house. We negotiated with our parents to get something $5 a day if we ended up minding the desk and selling chips and drinks to the tennis players. We would get that $5 at the end of the day and go straight to the store and buy a pack of Pokemon cards.
We wanted to recreate that feeling. The cool thing about collecting cards digitally is you can't lose them. They can't be stolen and have frayed edges that make them not worth as much. You always got them. You could get your wallet stolen or something like that. That is the equivalent, but that is what we are trying to tap into. That is psychology.
This roadmap you guys have been building and executing against it. What is next? What do we have to look forward to, partnerships, collaborations, or new releases?
With Illuvitars, we have started approaching huge brands in the fashion space, the food space, and sporting teams. We have started signing deals that we can't release yet what they are. There are going to be these partner packs where we will do a collaboration with a brand, and you will be able to mint an Illuvitar that has its fashion all over it. You will have their branded glasses, hats, and shirts. What we are trying to do there is open up Illuvitars to their Web2 audience.
It is like, “This is something that one of your favorite brands is doing but also this IP that you are buying into.” We still use our characters. We bling them up in their brand. You take a look at it like, “That is their Pikachu. In our case, it is an Atlas. What is this?” Hopefully, they start going into “What is Illuvium Arena and Illuvium Overworld?” They start getting into the IP.
That is the first thing that's coming out on March 7th, 2023. Partnerships with the Illuvitars are going to be a little bit later, but after that, we are opening this thing up. At some stage in 2023, all games will go live at the same time because it is all interoperable. We can't have a situation where we launch one and not the others.
Several years of building is coming down to a single point where we opened the floodgates. The cool thing about that is a lot of games will sell you their NFTs. We don't do that. You have got to go and capture them. You can spend no money and start capturing NFTs inside of our universe. We think that the first dash around the old world is going to be insane.
I can't wait for the Illuvi Vuitton collaboration. That is got to be in the pipeline.
Before we wrap up these conversation topics here and get onto Quick Hitters, which I'm sure will be fun, what projects are you following outside of Illuvium that you find interesting that maybe our readers would find interesting?
I love Ethlizards. It's this project that spun out of the degen channel in Illuvium, which was this place where I could go in, and I could be myself. There wouldn't be many of our community members that would go in there because they were like, “These guys talk absolute trash. They are going in and out of projects all the time. Even the founders talking trash in here, I'm going to stay away.” That was my safe place. Those guys were smart enough to go, “Let's build an NFT collection around this and take it outside of Illuvium.” One day, I went in there, and it was non-existent. No one was talking. I'm like, “Where did everyone go? This is my community and outlet.” I found out that they had moved it over to their own community, and now that is grown into a huge project.
At one point, these things were worth five ETH each. I advise those guys, and I love what they are doing. I invested heavily in games. Civitas doesn't have a token yet or anything like that, but you can still buy their NFTs. I’m excited about that. Another one is Fancy Studios. They got one game out, which, unfortunately, they launched in the bear market, but they are focusing on hyper-casual games. They are the two that I enjoy.
Thanks so much for sharing Illuviums. You got so much that you have accomplished. 2023 sounds like a pivotal year for all of our readers. Check it out. Illuvium is crushing it. We want to shift gears and want to talk to you about some personal perspectives on questions. It is a segment that we call Edge Quick Hitters. It is a fun and quick way to get to know you better. What we are looking for is short answers, single words, or a few words. We might dive a little bit deeper if we find something of special interest. Are you ready to get after these?
Yes, let's do it.
Question number one, what is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
Tennis racket.
Question number two, what is the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
A Pokemon card that was grossly overvalued, and I don't feel good about it. I still lose sleep at night.
You wish you still had it, is that the thing?
If he still has it, he is laughing at me, but at the time, it was worth $5. I was like, “This is at least $25.” His brother gave him his lunch money.
Question number three, what is the most recent thing you purchased?
It was an exercise bike for my fiancé.
Is it one of those Peloton-type ones with videos and cool stuff like that?
I have started using it. Apart from the seat being a cement cinder block, it's the fact that you can go around. I was in Iceland. Before that, I was in Hawaii. It is pretty cool.
It is addictive, especially when there are other people in there, and you can see how you are doing against other people.
You can compete. You go up a hill. I was sitting there, and she was like, “I need this one.” I'm like, “That is $3,000. No, look at the market. We are not there yet.” I ended up doing it anyway.
Question number four, what is the most recent thing you sold?
I don't sell much stuff. I sold my fiancé's car. I bought her a new one. I said, “The money you get from that car is mine.” She ended up taking it anyway and was like, “I'm spending it on my wedding dresses.”
It sounds like not a bad outcome there. It keeps you out of trouble.
It allows me to sit on this stand.
Question number five, what is your most prized possession?
It is an NFT, which is an Ethlizard morphed with a robot, which is a Mozart robot, and Roger, the artist that drew it. We do these metal plates where you can print your NFT on the metal plate. He signed it, and when that came, I got one thing in this office that I have, and it is that.
In looking at the Ethlizards, it reminded me of a mix of Muppets, the characters from Fraggle Rock, and Sleestaks from Land of the Lost if you watch that show from back in the day. It is a lot of nostalgia in a simple but fun design.
The reason I love this one is Roger designed it. He is one of the best concept artists in the world. We have these Honorary Ethlizards. If you look at that collection versus the normal collection, they are hand-drawn, ridiculously good-quality lizards. This is one of them.
Question number six, if you could buy anything in the world, something digital or physical, service and experience that is for sale, what would it be? What do you have your eye on?
An island.
Is there a specific island? Have you been looking at anything in particular?
No. It would be cool to be like, “Thirty of my friends, let's go out to the island.” You need a whole bunch of other stuff to be able to get there.
Ethan got his eye on one, if not mistaken.
They would have this nowadays if you didn't already know. There is a private island, basically a real estate site. I found one in Argentina that looked awesome.
How much was it?
From memory, it is affordable. We are talking about $1 million or something. For an island, that is affordable. It had its own wildlife running around. That is in the middle of this lake. It also has a lot of responsibility. There are rising sea levels.
Question number seven, if you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
I don't know. Maybe charisma. I don't take myself too seriously, and people appreciate that sometimes.
Flip it on its head. If you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would that be?
My argumentativeness. I'm a debater. Even if I don't agree with something or I do agree with something, I still find a way to sit there debating it, and it gets frustrating for people.
Question nine, what did you do before joining us on the show?
I was spying and selling every single FoodCoin in existence.
Explain more.
Think of sushi, token pickle, and token kimchi.
Did you do bananas?
I didn't do a banana. I ended up on the TRON Network buying and selling tokens, which I'm an Eth Maxi. When you get down to that level, you are talking serious degenerative stuff there.
What prompted this? Were you hungry for a fruit salad?
There were hundreds of tokens that I was trading. I was a yield farmer. I wanted to stake my tokens. This was back in the day when if something didn't have 10,000 APY, I'm not even looking at that. That is no way. You put $1,000 in, you make $50,000 in fifteen minutes, and you are like, “What is this space?”
We will have to keep an eye out for how that collection goes, Kieran. It sounds interesting. We will have to launch something for you. The Taquito NFT, keep an eye out for it. Last one, buddy. What are you doing next after the show?
Unfortunately, I am going to start my workday. It is 9:00 AM. That will probably go until somewhere around 1:00 AM, and I will do it all again.
Ethan, you got something extra there? You look like you had something out there.
I was buzzing about some stuff. We will throw one in because you asked. If your brothers could choose one personality trait to not pass on to the next generation, would it be the same one, the argumentativeness, or something else?
No, we are all different. The magic pudding that gets put together is we all bring different ingredients. We are all competitive. That is a trait that is across the board. We all bring different things to the table, and they balance each other out somehow.
That is Quick Hitters. We appreciate your help in bringing some levity to what we are talking about over here. We do appreciate that. Before we break for this episode, we do want to make sure that everybody knows where to find you and follow Illuvium if you guys are active on social and as individuals also. I want to make sure people know where to track all this fun stuff you are doing.
Discord is the best place to start. Join the Illuvium Discord. There are 210,000 people in there. It is crazy. You will be welcome. If you are on Twitter, it is the same thing. Follow us on Twitter. We are active there. We are transparent. We always share different stuff. If you want to follow me and some of my troll posts and useful information every now and again, I'm on Twitter as well.
What is your name on Twitter?
I'm just @KieranWarwick.
The last thing is we were chatting a little bit earlier about a giveaway that we were putting together for our readers. We will be putting it together on Gleam and sharing it with everybody. Let them know the details on our socials. Do you want to give a little bit of background on what they can expect?
What we will set up is the first. We haven't done this with anyone. It will be Illuvitars giveaways. We will give you guys a bunch of standard disks which people can open. They got those Illuvitars and accessories in them. We will give you a bunch of mega disks which have rarer higher-tiered Illuvitars in them. We will set up the parameters of how we do it, whether it be in your Discord or on socials. We love to get your community a part of that.
That will get people excited. Keep an eye out on our socials. We will get all the details together for you and get pumped because there is some amazing stuff happening at Illuvium. We have reached the outer limit of the show. Thanks for exploring with us. We got space for more adventures on this starship. Invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. Go to Spotify or iTunes. Rate us and say something awesome. Go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. Look us up on all major social platforms by typing @EdgeOfNFT and start a fun conversation with us online. Lastly, be sure to tune in next time for more great NFT content.
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