Creating a fully decentralized game on the blockchain is a lot more complicated than it sounds. There are just so many centralized elements to gaming in general, whether it’s where the data is stored, authenticity checks, anti-cheating checks, and so on. Is it really possible now to create an authentically decentralized game? Riccardo Sibani thinks so. In fact, he and his team are calling their brainchild, My Neighbor Alice, the first fully decentralized blockchain game. My Neighbor Alice won the Binance Launch Pool Project of the Year award in 2021. Ricardo works as the CPO at the company. He has been in the Web3 space since 2016 and has worked in fintech, devops, blockchain, and gaming projects in both technical and business roles. Learn everything there is to know about My Neighbor Alice and why it represents a key inflection point in the ongoing evolution of decentralized blockchain gaming.
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Edge Of NFT Podcast | Hot Topics Feature: Riccardo Sibani Of My Neighbor Alice - Revolutionizing Blockchain Gaming On The Chromia Blockchain
The word on the street, Eathan, is we have a very special Hot Topic. What do you say we dive in on that?
That sounds good. Let's hit it. This Hot Topic features Riccardo Sibani of My Neighbor Alice. My Neighbor Alice won the Binance Launchpool Project of the Year award in 2021. It aims to be the first fully decentralized blockchain game. Riccardo Sibani, CPO of My Neighbor Alice, started working in the Web3 space in 2016. Since then, he has worked on projects spacing from FinTech, DevOps, software for blockchains, NFT protocols, and games both in technical and business roles. Riccardo, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much for having me here.
It's a pleasure.
It sounds like things are a little bit chilly over there. You're in Norway.
The Netherlands.
I was so close. It's a good time to build in the cold weather, and you have been building a lot. I remember when this project first hit the news. I'm curious to get the latest and greatest from you. To give our readers some background, why was My Neighbor Alice created? How does it connect to the world of NFTs? How did that idea come about?
We started a few years ago. We have been building. Making a game takes years and making it pretty decentralized on the blockchain is even more complex. The idea of My Neighbor Alice was born because we created a protocol for the originals. We wanted to test it in the real world. We created all these protocols. We think they're faster, but then they're better only if they're used for different projects. We wanted to show its potential. We thought that the game would be perfect because it handles a lot of facets and handles a lot of complex logic. You can build up on that. People can build up on that. The community can create better tools and stories and self-express in the best way.
We started looking for games and what kind of games we wanted to make and came to the conclusion that we wanted something that was about the community. It was something fun and happy and a safe space. That's how we came up with My Neighbor Alice. The idea of one of the creators at the time was to create a world that was very welcoming to the user. This is nice. On the other hand, we tried to push the technology a bit forward by having all these NFTs. Everything in My Neighbor Alice is an NFT.
Why Alice? Is Alice because no one has ever met a not-nice Alice? Is there a certain reference to Alice?
When the name came up, it was not even discussed, "That's the name." It gives the idea of something familiar. Everybody knows Alice. At the same time, you have a neighbor. You are already safe. You're already in a place that you're acquainted with. There wasn't a big thought about the name. Games usually change names many times over their life. It works.
What's the target niche audience? It's access to a broader audience, but who's the avatar that you aim this toward the central core?
We are looking into the crypto community. We're quite known in the crypto community, but we're not outside. It doesn't make sense to reach all the people outside when a game is not yet fully developed. The audience that we want is somebody that plays games. Something that I realized working with studios is that they say, "We don't want blockchain. We want to make games." Crypto people don't play games. I don't know if any of you play video games. I know you had a lot of game projects, so it's a yes. I've been working in crypto and playing games. There is an overlap.
The way that we made Alice is that it can accommodate different types of players. We have a layer for people who know crypto, people who are comfortable using the token, and those who are comfortable using NFTs, not in a more techy way but in a more crypto-friendly way. These people are the ones that make the tool and welcome the people that are not into crypto because we have different layers. For example, we have a feature that will come out that is renting. You don't need to own land. You don't need to buy an NFT. You can rent it from them, and they can invite you. Maybe I'm into crypto, and I can invite my friends who are not.
Another nice part of Alice is that if you play the game, you do not notice blockchain. There are transactions going under the hood and you have a wallet to link, but there is no crypto complexity in the game. The complexity is out. It's deliberate to have this division because if you play the game, you want to play the game. You don't want to deal with MetaMask and stuff like that. If you want to set up, expand, or create something better, then you have your website where you can take your tokens.
You want something that isn't going to be broken. I know that you have a propensity for making an unbreakable game or working on something unbotable and unhackable. Can you tell us a little bit about how you go about that mission?
Making a game fully decentralized means that somebody is going to try to hack. You see it every time people make super interesting attacks on Uniswap, even by leverage of front running and stuff like that. This is easy if you don't have a specific design to prevent that. For example, Uniswap has many mitigations at least. Similar protocols have many mitigations. In games, usually, you have an anti-cheat engine. You have software that can be run on the server on the front end that tries to guess if you are cheating. This is a centralized software. It goes against the idea of a decentralized game.
We are prevented from using this software. In the same way, being decentralized, we don't have a server that can verify your logic. What we do is have a smart contractor on-chain that makes sure that the action you're taking is strategic and not based on grinding. In My Neighbor Alice, there is no grinding. All the grinding that you do is very little and is for fun. It's for seeing, for example, your plant growing and seeing that your plant is getting taller and developing the fruits. You harvest, but it's not going to take twenty minutes to click on every tile like in free-to-play games. This is because this is something that will be very easy to fake on the blockchain.
The gameplay that we offer is something that is more strategic. It's more about, "I want to create a strategy. I want to create this ambiance in my plot. People want to buy these thematic NFTs in My Neighbor Alice. I want to strategize to craft the item that I want to buy and that I want to sell tomorrow." It's a different way of designing the game and taking a blockchain-first approach. This was one of the leading thoughts that we had back in the day.
You flagged it as the first fully decentralized blockchain game because there are so many centralized elements to gaming, whether it's where data is stored, authenticity checks, anti-cheating checks, and so on. It is hard to build something that is authentically decentralized, even now.
The point is that people should at least be proposed with a choice. If I want to play My Neighbor Alice and I don't want to have any centralized solutions because I live in a country where it's not possible, or because there are bands going, or because for my privacy, or because I don't want to disclose information to my government or anything. I should be given the possibility to do that. There is a different type of player that is willing to give that information away and use custodial solutions. We have to give these tools also. We should integrate these tools. If you have something decentralized, you can always accommodate the centralized part, not vice versa.
It's easier to go back.
It's good to create a call that is decentralized. That's what we are doing. There are many services that help onboard the user and make the life of the user easier. All these technologies are coming up now. You hear from them every week a couple of times. It's just a matter of time. Crypto is coming.
Trains left the station, as we like to say. One of the core elements of a blockchain and a decentralized world that's so important is community. You have this community quest that's currently happening in the game. What is that? How does that relate to shared NFTs and the whole underpinning of this game?
The idea was that we wanted to have these collaborations. We want people to shape their archipelago. We have this aggregation of islands separated into regions. The people that own a plot in one region are not just guarding their ranch and staying away from the other. We want people to interact with each other. We have plots that are for the community that is available for everybody. You can go there and gather resources. For example, in season two, we are gathering resources to create the initial Town Hub.
I can't display it, but you will get some fundamental buildings that you will need further in the game that are owned by all the people that are in the regions. These are multipurpose buildings. They can gather in communities that are smaller, for example, a neighborhood of plots. They can gather in neighborhoods and build facilities that make everything easier for them. For example, they can have a storage that is shared. If you don't have the budget to buy one, you can share it.
I'll make a very silly example, but we have a fish rod. It was very expensive. It gets the best fish that you can get in the salty waters, for example. Why should you buy it and own it if you're going to use it once every four weeks or once a week? You can say, "Let's buy together. We are ten people. We pay a tenth of it and then have it here in the main square." This is the point of smart contracts. The smart contract totals that we can be trustless. I can leave the fish rod there and know that nobody is going to steal it because there is a smart contract in my fish rod.
I can book it, take it, get the fish, and then decide to also put the fish or not in common with the others. This is also a part that the community can decide via the smart contract. The way of My Neighbor Alice is to give the tools to the community to create the governance and rules they want to have within their community. They can have multiple communities. You have a community that is in your blocker, town, city, region, state, or country. I don't know what else.
It makes sense. One of the things that's always a tenet of how we think about things is the idea of collaborative consumption and taking advantage of excess capacity. We have done that a lot in the real world. We're doing it even with Outer Edge, our event. We have this space on the Outer Edge and these land grants. We're bringing people in to have access to this space that might not otherwise be able to participate in our event.
I don't think I've layered on the idea of collaborative consumption and leveraging excess capacity in blockchain, the digital world, gaming, or even the metaverse, for that matter. I haven't heard a lot of people talk about that besides yourself. There's something interesting in there when you think about how to efficiently utilize the space, involve the community, and consume in a collaborative way.
There are many protocols that do renting, which is something that goes in that direction. They usually work with collaterals or in a way that is not as decentralized and that is simply put. Having something that works trustless can dramatically increase the chance of people collaborating because we tend to trust people in the real world, which is amazing. We have even lower security barriers. If you borrow my fish rod, maybe you will bring it back and maybe you don't, but in this case, we can be sure that you're going to bring it back.
I believe that the point of My Neighbor Alice is about collaboration and self-expression. I believe that people will own the special NFT that they want to display, wear, use, and stuff, but there are a lot of parts that can be achieved by putting the people together. One interest that we have is that if you collaborate, you should always get a higher reward than playing alone. For example, in this case, if we share the fish rod with ten people, I'm going to pay 1/10 of it. You can scale this up and then get better NFTs because you have more liquidity available. The idea is that we want people to collaborate and get a better experience in the game. I hope that a bit of this gets translated into the real world.
The trustless component is such a big deal. I don't know why I keep thinking of Airbnb. It's great. You can share a space. People can come in and out, but Airbnb has done this thing where they have this insurance that they have if there's a problem here. They pay if there's a problem. The banks do the same thing. It's not that there's no fraud. There's a fraud and the banks pay to make it go away.
The fascinating thing about the trustless component we're beginning to have is that it doesn't even have to be that way. Especially with a physical thing like the Airbnb situation, there are all sorts of things that can go wrong, but if it's transactional on the web and digital transactions, if you can set up a system that's trustless and get rid of the whole fact that there's some fraud available in the first place, it generates so much value. People don't realize how much value is being spent on that thing these days.
I like that you brought up the example of Airbnb. This shared economy is shedding away because a centralized actor tries to cut even bigger fees on the other side. They're monopolizing. They're incentivized into having substandard service as bad as you maximize the profit and stuff. We want to give something that gives security. Why do you use Airbnb and don't use Craigslist? It's quite obvious. We want to use the blockchain so that everybody can have the same standard or the reputation of Airbnb because the smart contract guarantees everything will be all right.
It's awesome stuff. We could talk to you about this all day. I'm seeing that there are lots of components. It's a game, but it's not just a game. It's cool to hear the way you're thinking about it. Before we jump off the special Hot Topic here, we want to make sure people know how to find out more about you and what you're up to. Do you want to send us some links, websites, or socials?
We're on Twitter and Discord, and MyNeighborAlice.com.
Riccardo, thank you so much. We will let you go for now, but we look forward to seeing you again on the flip side.
Thank you very much for having me.
It's good having you too, buddy. We have reached the outer limit at the show. Thanks for exploring with us. We've got space for more adventures on this starship, so invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. How? 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 Edge of NFT and start a fun conversation with us online. Lastly, be sure to tune in next time for more great NFT content.
Important Links
- My Neighbor Alice
- Uniswap
- Outer Edge
- Twitter - My Neighbor Alice
- Discord - My Neighbor Alice
- Spotify - Edge of NFT
- iTunes - Edge of NFT
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