#TL;DR:
- AMA with Lahm Ho, CEO of Senspark - the gaming studio that created Bomb Crypto.
- Senspark plans to expand their product suite by building a metaverse of multiple different games.
- Bomb Crypto has had impressive retention rates and steady increases in new users. According to Lahm, these healthy metrics are a function of the experienced Senspark team and carefully curated tokenomics.
- Bomb Crypto has just released a wallet-based account creation mechanism that makes it easy for Gaming Guilds to operate Bomb Crypto teams.
- Lahm Ho doesn’t believe in the longevity of the P2E model. He believes more in a “Win-to-Earn” model.
- Senspark will continue to build in Web3 as its decentralization and ownership mechanics bring a host of advantages when compared to traditional web2 platforms.
- With 100M downloads across 40+ mobile games, Senspark has a massive Web2 user base that they plan to onboard into Web3 - starting with Bomb Crypto.
- Infinite Games is a free ebook exploring GameFi through in-depth, on-chain data analysis into the top blockchain games like Bomb Crypto. To read more on Bomb Crypto download Infinite Games by clicking the link below.
Why is Bomb Crypto exciting
Infinite Games ranks Bomb Crypto as one of the largest games in the space with over 30k daily active wallets and 135K daily transactions. The simple, pixelated graphics combined with the low gas fees on BSC have been a recipe for success. The broader NFT market might be able to get away with high Ethereum gas fees but the success of Bomb Crypto is a testament to gamers intolerance of slow and expensive transaction fees.
Covalent hosted a text AMA with Lahm Ho, the CEO of Senspark - the gaming studio responsible for Bomb Crypto - in an effort to better understand this impressive growth. The conversation sheds more light onto the awesome work the team at Senspark have done to pave the way for traditional Web2 gaming studios to build in Web3.
Enjoy!
Question 1: Can you please give a little bit of background into Bomb Crypto and Senspark?
Lahm Ho: Senspark has more than ten years of experience in making mobile games. We were quite profitable with mobile games back then and although we had around 100 million downloads, we did not feel fulfilled because we had not really made something big. We were so eager to apply new technologies to make new mobile games on new platforms. That’s why we have capitalised on the NFT gaming trend so quickly with the creation of Bomb Crypto.
Recently we’ve rebranded our company to Senspark Zero which solely focuses on mobile games. However, our main focus now is on a new NFT gaming business called Senspark One which is located in Singapore and will be responsible for building out our long term plans in NFT gaming.
Question 2: Where do you see Bomb Crypto going?
Lahm Ho: Bomb Crypto is like our first love in NFT games, so we will continue to cultivate it with extra care. Bomb Crypto has also achieved tremendous achievements in the numbers of users and the speed of growth. When we started, this growth was beyond our imagination.
Bomb Crypto is currently still in the first phase of its development. The game will soon reach much higher levels of development in regard to product, operations, community and marketing. I believe people will be astonished at how the game continues to grow. As you can see, Bitcoin is the flagship, the faith, the religion of the crypto market. Bcoin will be people’s faith in the Senspark Metaverse and the ecosystem of NFT games that we will be building after Bomb Crypto. A large number of token holders and Bomb Crypto community members set ambitious cornerstones for us to do bigger and better things.
Question 3: Despite a rocky market impacting a lot of P2E economies, the research in Infinite Games indicates Bomb Crypto has seen a steady, consistent increase in new users since September. Why is that?
Lahm Ho: September 2021 to January 2022 was a period of rapid growth for Bomb Crypto. The growth was a result of many factors including the product’s quality, the team’s experience, reward distribution, community management, marketing, security and scaling servers. Once all of these factors were well managed and executed, it helped attract more users into the game. We are at this phase of the game’s lifecycle where we need to prioritize more of this steady, sustainable growth.
Question 4: Why do you think Bomb Crypto has been able to sustain impressive month over month retention of new users?
Lahm Ho: The game itself was chosen from one of Senspark’s best mobile games in terms of retention. This meant the game's user experience had already led to product-market fit on other platforms. We also added tokenomics that are calculated thoroughly to attract users with rewards, but not to make the token’s supply inflate too quickly.
In addition, the game has been developed and promoted by an experienced and talented team. Therefore, our investors, players, and community have a high level of trust in us to develop a great game, and make it obvious that Bomb Crypto is the number one choice when it comes to playing and investing in the GameFi sector.
That's why we continue to get the month-over-month retention as such.
Question 5: How is Bomb Crypto approaching Gaming Guilds or scholarship programs? Do you see it as a way to onboard and retain more users?
Lahm Ho: Bomb Crypto has just launched a wallet-based account creation mechanism, thereby users that play with the account cannot claim BCoin or buy and sell BHEROs without access to the wallet.
This mechanism enables Gaming Guilds to buy our NFTs, give the guild members access to the NFTs, and share in the profits. We think these features will be a significant catalyst for Bomb Crypto’s future growth.
Question 6: How do you see the intersection of DeFi and Play-to-Earn playing out? What does it mean for the utility, liquidity and accessibility of players' NFTs when they can be fractionalised, collateralised, etc.?
Lahm Ho: DeFi was the first crypto trend to attract large amounts of investors to the space. GameFi has taken key aspects of DeFi and invented a richer medium to interact with crypto and earn profits.
I think DeFi, with its attributions like utility and liquidity, has been a foundation for GameFi; and GameFi, with strong attributions like NFTs, ownership and the ability to easily educate non-crypto users, will be the foundation for attracting the next wave of crypto users.
When these primitives are mature enough, they will solve some of their weak points, as you mentioned above, by fractionalizing, collateralizing, etc.
Question 7: Where do you see the P2E model going?
Lahm Ho: Actually in my opinion, there is absolutely no “Play-to-Earn" model. Perhaps in the first phase during the first few months of a game, players can clearly see the Play-to-Earn model in a game where most gamers can profit. However, this will stop when the game goes to the next phase where some gamers can still be guaranteed rewards, but users that consistently win have to move to the next section which is a “win and earn” model like in a casino. As a result, games will need to create new core values beside increasing token values for rewards. An NFT based game must balance the inflation, the popularity, and its core values to make the game into a more sustainable business. These shifts in business model will probably result in 90% of these new and exciting games to vanish.
Despite these downsides, I still see many upsides in this. You see, most people are very concerned and skeptical about NFT games which means there is still a long way to go in introducing Blockchain, NFT Games and Metaverses to traditional users. GameFi’s current “play to earn” model can act as a catalyst for the blockchain industry to innovate and solve current problems.
Question 8: As a game developer in both Web2 and Web3, what are the major similarities and differences between the two?
Lahm Ho: There are so many similarities between Web2 games and Web3 games. In-game development still includes factors such as design, art, code, marketing and data analytics. Besides, they all have similar external factors like audiences.
There are also a lot of differences between these two platforms as well. It is difficult to allow users to spend money in Web2 games. It is easy to do so in Web3 games because they have to invest to buy entry items. However, Web3 users expect to be in profit after a period of gameplay, which makes it more difficult than mobile games to create a sustainable gaming economy. Web3 also has major external factors affecting the game’s operations like token markets and investors.
Question 9: If you had to pick between Web2 and Web3, which one are you most excited to build in?
Lahm Ho: The decentralization and ownership mechanics in web3 bring a host of advantages when compared to traditional web2 games. I am one of those people who enjoy discovering new spaces and platforms for development. Therefore, if I had to choose one I would prefer web3 because of its new, high-speed and innovative factors.
Question 10: Does Senspark have future plans for any new games?
Lahm Ho: After leaving a mark with Bomb Crypto in GameFi, we are planning to build a decentralized game-based metaverse. This is an enhanced digital space for Bomb Crypto, Senspark’s future games and our partner’s new upcoming releases. We have more than 20 traditional mobile games and are in the process of converting them into NFT games to join our game-based metaverse.
Special thanks to Lahm Ho for answering our questions. We are very excited to support Bomb Crypto as they build a gateway into the metaverse. For more on Bomb Crypto and other top games in the space, download our free e-book - Infinite Games