We’re less than three months into 2021, and this has already been such an eventful year for the teams from Chromia and My Neighbor Alice! With so much news to catch up on and so much still on the horizon, yesterday was the perfect opportunity for core team members Henrik Hjelte, Anna Norrevik, Lenny Pettersson, and Anastasia Plane to join the Chromia Telegram group to connect with our communities and answer some of their most burning questions.
Our host and audience asked many thoughtful and engaging questions, and the team provided open and honest answers about their challenges, achievements, and goals for the future. Among the many topics they discussed were their personal favorite events of the year, adapting to a rapidly-evolving ecosystem, Chromia’s advantages, Chromia Originals NFTs, and what comes next.
If you missed the live AMA, read through this recap to catch up and gain some deeper insights into what tomorrow might hold for Chromia and My Neighbor Alice.
Introductions
Host: Welcome everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We have a great team here, ready for all of your questions.
Let’s begin with some brief introductory Q&A to set the scene and provide broader context into the teams behind Chromia and My Neighbor Alice.
Welcome, Henrik Hjelte, Anna Norrevik, Lenny Pettersson, and Anastasia Plane. It’s a pleasure to have all of you with us!
These titans of the industry have joined us here today for an AMA to discuss recent developments and news from the My Neighbor Alice and Chromia teams.
For the benefit of new community members, could you please briefly introduce yourselves? And perhaps the Alice team can provide a brief introduction to My Neighbour Alice for anyone who isn’t familiar with the project yet?
Anastasia: Hello everyone 👋
Anna: Thank you. Happy to be here!
Henrik: Hello. I'm Henrik, CEO of ChromaWay - the builders of the Chromia project.
Anna: Hello everyone, my name is Anna Norrevik, and I'm the CEO of Antler Interactive, which is the game studio developing on My Neighbor Alice. I've been 7 years in the games industry including 5 years at Paradox Interactive, as team leader/producer for 7 expansions, including the largest game project at Paradox, Crusader Kings 3, which was released in Sept 2020 and received 91/100 in metacritic score. In august 2018 I joined Antler Interactive.
Lenny: Hi all! My name is Lenny Pettersson and the CMO of Antler Interactive. For those who don't know me I have 15+ years of experience within the media & gaming industry. Before Antler, I worked 8 years as Senior Marketing Manager for the Nordic & Baltic region at Turner a WarnerMedia company. Vast experience in launching original IPs (such as Adventure Time, Ben 10 and Powerpuff Girls) for Cartoon Network.
Anastasia: My name is Anastasia, and I am working with Marketing together with the Antler Interactive team. My background: I have an MA in Business and Marketing, Marketing Specialist Project Lead of multiple gaming and blockchain-based projects. Ex-professional athlete and gamer. 😊 I am working closely with blockchain, crypto, and gaming and have vast experience in these fields.
Henrik: Oh, and I'm also involved a bit in My Neighbor Alice in ideation, and DAO implementation
Anna: I also want to give you a short intro to My Neighbor Alice (MNA): My Neighbor Alice is a multiplayer builder game, where anyone can buy and own virtual islands, collect and build exciting items, and meet new friends. Inspired by successful games such as Animal Crossing, the game combines the best of the two worlds - a fun narrative for regular players who want to enjoy the gameplay experience as well as an ecosystem for players who want to collect and trade NFTs, even if they have no idea what an NFT is.
Introductory Questions
Host: That's great. Thank you all so much for being here again. Before we dive into community questions, let’s provide some context for the new community members with some introductory questions.
My Neighbor Alice and Chromia have both made major progress this year. Alice has completed a SHO sale, been listed on Binance, completed an NFT-auction on BSC, and much more. Chromia has announced their next-gen Chromia Originals NFT protocol, gained the attention of the wider crypto space, and continued their work with governments and enterprises to develop blockchain-based solutions, just to name a few.
What has each of your favorite events been so far this year?
Henrik: My favourite event I think was seeing the My Neighbor Alice demo for the first time, (even if it happened last year). I got a feeling of a hit.
Anna: No problem! My favorite event of 2021 was hearing from Binance that Alice is getting listed. It will be very exciting to bring a broad community with us on the journey with Alice, and I think we're all excited for what the future has to offer.
Lenny: I have to agree with Anna about the Binance listing, the entire team worked very hard for it to happen, and it's extremely fun to see all the interest for My Neighbor Alice🚀
Anastasia: My favorite event is to work on My Neighbor Alice with a fantastic team of very talented people. We have great and very supportive advisors, partners like ChromaWay, and many others! Now, seeing us moving forward with the project, I am very excited for the game release later this year. ✨
Host: Thank you! These are exciting times! Next question: Teams that experience rapid growth often also experience some growing pains. Both Chromia and Alice have introduced big news this year. How have your teams and you personally adapted to the changes brought on by this crypto bull market?
Lenny: Well it's been an interesting time to say the least, especially coming from traditional gaming and media companies. Fast-paced has a totally different meaning to me now, haha. Less sleep, more coffee has been a way of adapting.
Anastasia: Agree with Lenny 😅 More caffeine every day for us for sure ☕️
Host: I can definitely relate with that!
Henrik: It has been fun to watch a game company experience the crazy crypto world... I think they start to like it.
Lenny: Indeed we do Henrik😃
Anna: It's truly exciting!
Host: How could they not?
This next question is for Henrik, Chromia Originals NFTs offer some unique features that other blockchains can’t support. How did you realize that Chromia would be able to handle enhanced-features NFTs, and what do you imagine are some future use cases for them outside of virtual gaming?
Henrik: One good thing with Chromia NFTs is that they can have mutable properties. So they can be changed by the game. For example, a fishing rod can maybe be used only a certain number of times, every time it is used the values of the NFT will change. There are more features. One aspect is that storing data is natural on Chromia. After all, it is a database and a blockchain.
Host: 🤯
Henrik: I think we started Chromia wanting to explore bleeding-edge game tech. I have been seeing NFTs on Ethereum, but owning a hex code on a blockchain, we can do better. Much better.
Logic with transparency, DAO management, Logic on NFT on chain, graphics and metadata on chain.
My Neighbor Alice explores a lot of this, also we always want easy-to-use games with a mainstream market potential. So that is supercool. I love the graphics, and that it is not only a crypto nerd game.
Enough on this?
Host: Sure, we can move on now. That really seems like a game-changer so to speak, and congratulations on all the buzz this news has generated for Chromia and My Neighbor Alice. This next question is for the My Neighbor Alice team. Anna, Lenny, and Anastasia, how did you come to the conclusion that My Neighbor Alice should be built on Chromia as opposed to some other more well-known blockchains? Did you already know about the advanced-features NFTs, or did something else compel you to choose Chromia?
Anastasia: Great question, and I like it 😊 We are using Blockchain technology for our game essentially to enable true digital ownership by the users, so they can exchange, trade, sell their assets, creations and game items they collect within our virtual world. Chromia has an excellent reputation of handling projects exactly like this. Look at their projects such as Chromunity, decentralized game Mines of Dalarnia, and many others! We’ve never regretted going with Chromia for our game.
There is also a technological standpoint. The first and most important layer to this project is the backend infrastructure. The project was created on the fundamental idea that it will deploy the Chromia platform as a layer 2 solution. Chromia is well-known for its innovative relational blockchain technology and RELL, a programming language. The backend is a postchain database that is used in conjunction with unity to operate accounts, token transfers, relational data and user progress, among many other things. It’s meant to follow the development of cross-chain playability and interaction with NFTs. The second layer to the project is the unity development. The largest part is the procedural building system. It's essential that it is fun, feels great and is on par with other building games on the market. Second biggest is the focus on gameplay loops and daily activities with player retention in consideration. We also work on connecting the backend with frontend, login-registration edge cases, and multiplayer scalability & stability. The third area in the project is the economic infrastructure. “Property/Plot” auctioning, asset trading, token transactions.
It is important to note that the blockchain infrastructure is “hidden” for players who are not interested in the underlying technology. We want to attract regular players who want to enjoy the gameplay experience. But for those interested in diving deeper into the game, there is a space for blockchain enthusiasts as well.
Host: Wow! What a well thought out and succinct answer!
Alright, let's direct this next question back to Henrik, but others should feel free to respond as well. In a recent AMA, you said that you’ve done some research on eDating websites and would consider Chromia an excellent blockchain upon which to build one because of its scalability. Can you share any insights regarding that revelation? Should we expect an eDating platform on Chromia anytime soon?
Henrik: LOL, yes I personally worked a bit on an dating site some years ago. Optimized signup flows, I managed to do some good growth hacks… Chromia is a fantastic blockchain to build web apps on. I mean Facebook was made with PHP and MySQL, it is even easier (and better) to work with our stuff. Chromunity, first version of a social network as was done in a week,...
So, I hope some entrepreneur will come to us with a well thought through idea on dating plus blockchain, but I don’t have any announcements or anything.
We are ready to support projects, and even co-build if we have a fantastic driver of a project.
Enough info?
Host: That's interesting, thanks for sharing! Back to My Neighbor Alice:
My Neighbor Alice bills itself as an introductory blockchain project which people can play without having any prior knowledge of blockchain or cryptocurrency. As a result, the team anticipates that adoption of the game will lead to broader adoption of crypto. Will you be releasing any introduction to blockchain materials under the My Neighbor Alice brand to help people who are interested get started?
Lenny: Thanks for asking that. In-game we´ll make it as intuitive and smooth as possible to get players on-boarded to the crypto side of the game as well as showcasing the advantages of it.
In regards to introduction to blockchain materials, we´re already planning to create tutorials and help content in how to access and enjoy the blockchain features in the game but in a broader sense the My Neighbor Alice brand definitely has the potential to branch out and help in onboarding people to blockchain and crypto in general.
Did that answer your question? 🙂
Host: Yes, you did. Thank you. One final question from me and then we’ll open it up to the community. The crypto industry has really been booming this year. Both teams have already made several announcements and launched multiple products. Are there any unannounced upcoming developments about which you’re able to share with the community? If you can’t reveal anything specific right now, how about letting us know the general milestones you hope to reach this year? I’d love it if all the panelists would answer this one.
Anna: Great you ask! Because we are working on a second game project behind-the-scenes. Without saying too much, it will be an open-world RPG featuring blockchain in exciting ways. It's still unannounced and we're still very early on, just having entered production of the game. If you follow Antler's social channels I'm sure you will get the news when it's announced.
Host: 👀
Henrik: From Chromia, we are preparing to scale up the support of entrepreneurs, and co-build stuff that is really interesting, and can become showcases of how Chromia is good. I think that is very exciting, also I think some of the projects we have been helping out such as Lingon and CapChap will show progress that is very visible.
Lenny: Not a new announcement, but I'm really excited for the early access release of My Neighbor Alice in July this year and to get feedback from the community.
Henrik: And yes the game Anna has mentioned, that looks awesome.
Lenny: Indeed😃
Anastasia: Totally ✨💯
Host: These are exciting times, and I'm looking forward to what comes next! Ok, let’s jump into the main event! Community questions :)
Fire away!
Anastasia: Let's go! 🚀
Community Questions
Q1: Smart contracts are prone to failure and many projects fall victim to this, costing users money and the project discrediting. How reliable and secure is your smart contract? Have you audited it through any of the parties?
Henrik: The problems with smart contracts being "prone to failure" is not a law of nature. It is a consequence of how blockchain languages are implemented. The idea with Chromia is to make a more secure yet more scalable environment. Secure because: the implementation of the core technology has been used in production in enterprises for decades: our "virtual machine" is the PostgreSQL database. And we add security layers on that, such as static typing and determinism.
Q2: Where can I buy ALICE?
Lenny: ALICE is currently being farmed in Binance Launchpool and will be listed on Binance on March 15th
Q3: What do you think of My Neighbor Alice vs Animal Crossing? Anastasia: Hi 👋
Our goal is to make My Neighbor Alice not just a game for blockchain players. But a game to introduce blockchain to millions of players.
The game is needed because we compete with titles like Animal Crossing and Minecraft, but the difference for the players is that in our game you'll be able to monetize the energy, effort and sweat that you put into the game. You don't need to pay a dime to get into the game, instead you can earn money along the road if your assets or your land look interesting enough for other players.
We let players join a big creative and cute world where you'll eventually be able to get paid for creations.
Please, join us on Social Media channels! 🌼
Telegram / Announcements / Twitter / Blog / Website
Q4: Are you guys hiring for any non-technical roles?
Henrik: Chromia is looking for staff in business development, technical writing, senior marketing (but close to biz dev), and entrepreneurs.
Q5: What is your strongest advantage that you think will make your team lead the market? In contrast, what is your weakness? How do you plan to overcome it?
Anastasia: Our biggest advantage with MNA is our strong background in games. It differs us from many other blockchain game developers and allows us to target a huge target group: gamers who don't know blockchain. We have some experience making blockchain features before but that could be considered a weak spot compared to other blockchain game developers - fortunately we work closely with ChromaWay to create MNA which means we get incredible support in this area.
Q6: Can we earn real tokens in Alice just by playing it?
Lenny: In short, yes:) You can read more about the game economy in My Neighbor Alice here: http://bit.ly/MyNA_Economy
Q7: Can you imagine having online schools within Alice like permaculture courses ?
Anastasia: I don't see it happening any time this year 😊 But that would be great! 🚀
Q8: What is your plan for global expansion? At present, which market does Chromia focus on, or is it focused on building and growing to gain customers, users and partners?
Henrik: Right now I think the crypto community is starting to see Chromia benefits for DeFi, and Games, so we think there will be progress there. We are always doing Enterprise, but it might be a bit slower-moving. I also think that a user-controlled Internet is something that will come.
Q9: Many new projects develop well at first, but then fail to achieve good results. How will you manage and develop your project to gain a position in the market and become a good project in the blockchain industry?
Henrik: Hehe, I think we are the opposite. We develop bad at first, but then succeed in achieving good results. As a team, we have a very serious technical background. I got my first full-time job as a developer in 1989. And I'm not even allowed to code 😊
Host: Okay, it looks like we're all out of time today. Thank you to everyone who asked questions and took part in the AMA! And thanks to Henrik, Anna, Lenny, and Anastasia for taking the time to join us today!
Anastasia: Thank you for having us! Great AMA and we are glad that so many of you are interested in the project!
Don't forget to give us a follow 😉
Lenny: Thanks everyone, it was great to be here today and thanks for all the great questions😃
Nicole: Alright, we're unmuting the chat. Thanks everyone!
Shane Latham (LDA): Awesome AMA, thanks for joining us!
Anna: Thank you everyone!
Henrik: Thanks everyone!
Please stay tuned to our announcements channels and social media so you never miss a beat on the latest news from Chromia and My Neighbor Alice.