Blending Web2 Strategies with Web3 Gaming: A Winning Formula – with Corey Wright | S3 E45

Corey: 1:09

approach that we took is we started by building product first and in Web2. If you build a great product, it generates hype, and so what we've done for the last two years is really just focus on building a really, really great product, and it's now starting to generate a lot more hype because there's a real product in substance under what we're building.

Joeri: 1:28

Hello everyone and welcome to the web three CMO stories podcast. My name is Joeri Billast and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm joined by Corey, Corey. How are you? I'm doing great. How are you doing? I'm good. I see, you know, on your side of the world it's still early. On my side it's already a bit later. It's always interesting to have these all these time differences. But, yeah, I'm good. I already had my. Almost a big part of my working day is done.

Joeri: 1:59

But, guys, if you don't know, Corey. Corey Wright is a lifelong entrepreneur. He launched his first business in college, nearly 20 years ago, and has launched, scaled and sold more than half a dozen businesses since, and then in 2021, a bit fast forward. Corey Corey launched Hexicon Studios, which is a Web3 gaming studio, and their first title on Newland is in the major app stores and is a top mobile game on solar. Curious to hear, to hear, all your stories, Corey. If you want, feel free to add some more to your background. But yeah, my first question would be like, with all these entrepreneurial ventures that you have had already, what would you say are the top three lessons that shaped your approach to your business, and especially for Web3 business?

Corey: 2:59

Yeah, it's. You know the transition from like what I would call Web2, where I've been building for 20 years, into Web3, was been, it was, it was. I think there was a lot of value that I was able to get from that and kind of moving into Web3. I think that the three biggest lessons the first one would be the difference between Web2 and Web3 is in Web3 you try and give as much hype as you can and if you can build a ton of hype and you have to go figure out what the product is actually going to be, and that's where we've seen a lot of these projects fail.

Corey: 3:30

And so I think the approach that we took is we started by building product first and in Web2, if you build a great product, it generates hype, and so what we've done for the last two years is really just focus on building a really, really great product, and it's now starting to generate a lot more hype because there's a real product and substance under what we've been building.

Corey: 3:47

So I think that's thing number one. I think thing number two is to build a real focus on a revenue generating business. There's a lot of times in Web3 where we have these like infusions of capital early on through, like an NFT mint or a token sale or an investment, and we figured that that's just never going to run out. And all of a sudden you realize that you get to this place where you know an NFT mint is a lifelong transferable membership that you're selling to somebody and you have to support and service that membership for life, but you don't continue to generate revenues and so a lot of projects kind of early on have this infusion of capital but fail to actually build a profit model. And so I think figuring out how to build product first, figuring out how to really generate revenues, and then I think just there's a mindset to Web3 that's different than Web2, which is it is like the pace that it moves at it is it's very fickle, it is fast, it is it's brutal and that works both good and bad.

Corey: 4:41

And I think you just need to have a mindset and a mentality that says this is going to be. There's going to be a lot of ups and a lot of downs, and they're going to feel incredible on the ups and they're going to feel just incredibly demoralizing on the downs. But tomorrow there's a whole new story. It moves quick and so, like, use that to your advantage and always you know, knowing that when things are down, that it's your 24 hours away from a whole new set of problems and challenges and things that are coming across people's timelines and things that they're they're consciousness, but also that you know, on the good side of things, that that feeling, those great feelings, won't last forever and you're a day away from you know just something happening that moves everybody's attention, and so I think those are the three things that I've really had to learn in web three, different than Web2.

Joeri: 5:27

Wow, yeah, I also love your energy and the mindset that you're looking at these things and I thought why not start a podcast with asking lessons to change a bit. But obviously you have launched your Web3 Gaming Studio. So interesting for me to also understand your transitioning, because you came from leadership coaching if I'm not mistaken, and then you launched your Web3 Gaming Studio. So what was the motivation behind that?

Corey: 5:56

Yeah, so I mentioned I was like an entrepreneur for about 18 years running starting businesses. I had my last sales in 2019. I sold a business that I've been working on for many years and I just wanted to take a break from operating businesses for a little while, but I still wanted to be involved. So I saw business coaching as a really cool way to be involved with a lot of growing businesses, but not at the operations level, more from the organization and strategy and alignment level, and it was a lot of fun. But after a two and a half year break from that, I was ready to get back into the saddle and ready to start operating again.

Corey: 6:30

And one of my co-founders, Justin, who is somebody that I had known for about a decade when he had his own business, before he had had a really successful exit he was somebody that I always admired and just the way he approached business, the thoughtfulness and talent that he brought to his own business, and I'd always just kind of in the back of my mind said, man, I'd love to figure out a way to do something with him in the future.

Corey: 6:50

And he gave me a call and said, hey, Corey, there's an opportunity. I've got a friend who wants to launch a Web3 gaming studio Would love to see if maybe this is something that you could be a part of, and so we just started that conversation. So it was just the right timing. I wasn't looking to get into gaming, I wasn't necessarily looking to get into Web3. But the opportunity was there. I was ready to get back into operating. I wanted to do something with Justin and the opportunity just looked really really cool. So that's where the transition happened, and it was really good timing and has worked out pretty well.

Joeri: 7:15

Oh, interesting. And of course you're an entrepreneur like me, so you know with all your experience that it's important to stand out, you know to be different than the others. There are a couple of games out there, of course, and of course, that also are in to Web3. And so for me it's interesting to understand about Honeyland, because now it's a top mobile game on Solana. What do you do, or why do you believe sets its apart from other games in the market?

Corey: 7:47

Yeah. So I think when we entered this space and I mentioned kind of early on that there was a lot of advantages, I think, that we had from coming from Web2 and then starting to build into Web3. But much more with the Web2 mindset we really challenged a lot of the norms, like we didn't just accept. You know, this is the way that things have to be done and so we'll build that. And so I think in that we really tried to rebuild and I would say either iterate or innovate almost everything that we did, and I think part of that comes to just the game ecosystem the way that it mechanically built the game around the ecosystem.

Corey: 8:19

That was really built for sustainability, not like, hey, how much can we pay players to get in and start playing?

Corey: 8:26

And eventually we can't keep paying players, and so what happens?

Corey: 8:29

At that point we really built with the long term mindset and so I think the mechanics of the game and the economy are built incredibly sound from a fundamental standpoint.

Corey: 8:38

And then I think ultimately you know I'm sure we'll talk about this a little bit more, but we just really tried to obsess over the player journey and say, like, how can we get anybody who's not interested in Web3 to come in and start playing a Web3 game experience, all the Web3 has to offer, but get by all of those kind of friction points that stop a lot of people from even considering Web3 gaming, whether it's the discoverability or the onboarding or the on ramping or the fear or the you know all these different things that like just create this massive gap or this massive amount of friction. And so we're trying to break all of that down to the ground, make it incredibly accessible for everybody, but also make it, you know, from a from a Web3 standpoint, stand out from the sense that when you start to look really deeply into the game economies and the sustainability and the fundamentals fundamentals of how the actual game works that we built, one that I think is as sound as any games out there in Web3 right now.

Joeri: 9:31

Yeah, you mentioned it, of course, the audience, Web2 audiences, Web3 audiences. So it's how do you manage all of that to the strategies that you're using? You can give some more details about you know, give a good experience for both Web2 user and, yeah, Web3 user, Web3 audience.

Corey: 9:52

Yeah, it's funny, the you know we when I talked about Justin, one of my co-founders, he had the business that he had. That he sold was a mobile, basically a business that was in mobile ad tech and he was helped companies like you know King comm and Green machine zone and some of the biggest like game studios on the planet. We're using his software to generate downloads and and new, new players and user acquisition At like high, high scale, and so we knew that we could go out and if we could have a Web 3 game that we could launch a Web 2 playbook on that, we could start to really get a lot of users Into the space. I think what I Underestimated was how awesome Web 3 gamers are. It's a game for them and it's been a ton of fun. So we're really starting to watch.

Corey: 10:40

You know, I thought it would be like 95% Web 2 gamers. We're very much still heavily loaded on the web 3 gamer side and bringing in more Web 2 gamers. But I think, to answer your question, you know the what Web 3 gamers I think like is that we're solving a lot of the problems that you think of Web 3 games right now and they're just they kind of have these deficiencies that that us in Web 3 are just okay to put up with and deal with, that Web 2 gamers Would never put up with this idea of like having to like have assets or buy into things before you come in for, like a mobile Game like they just they're not Web 2 friendly, and so we're really trying to break all those down, make a game that performs at a high level that you can find in the app store and download. You don't have to download through some weird link and, you know, play through test flight Although we did early on but there was just like kind of all these things that just Web 2 wouldn't accept and actually come into your game, and so, in our obsession with building a game that Web 2 players could enjoy, I think we've built something really special for Web 3 as well, the Web 3 gamers.

Corey: 11:38

It's kind of a breath of fresh air to not to be able to just go download it through iTunes, to be able to just like sign up with a Google Google account, to not need NFTs and cryptocurrency and all of these things before you can get into the game, to make it so that, if you're not Native to the Solana chain, that you could buy our HXT as an in-app purchase and so all these things that are that you can transact in the marketplace directly in the game. You don't have to go link a new wallet to the Magic Kingdom or step into a different like outside website or things like that that you can just do it all from the app. And we did this so that we could go attract a Web 2 audience and it's working incredibly well there. But I think it's been like in like this Totally different experience than Web 3 gamers are used to, because we've removed so much of that friction that I think Web3 is really finding a lot of fun in this game as well.

Joeri: 12:24

I Love that you talk about it, as it is really simple. You know what to do all of that, but I think it's a challenge. Of course, you need to have your game approved on the app store and also you need to find all those users. So you need to do, I guess, both, Web2 marketing, Web3 marketing, traditional marketing, perhaps first explain a bit how, yeah, where did you find all those users?

Corey: 12:50

Yeah, so when the Web3 side of things, you get to play the Web3 game and it's so much fun, all the Twitter and the memes and the discord communities, the NFT means you know, and we've done a lot of that stuff and those became our early community, the discord, the NFT means.

Corey: 13:05

And, and so that was our Web3 foundational community.

Corey: 13:08

It's start to become a lot more organic. You realize that once you catch a little bit of attention, if your token starts to move in the right direction or your NFTs have a floor price, that's moving up, or you have a game that's actually fun and people are certain parlor friends, and so we've had a lot of organic growth in Web3. That's been a ton of fun from the Web2 side of things. Once we were able to be, once we were approved in app stores, both iTunes and Google Play, we can now start to just roll out traditional Web2 user acquisition strategies, and this is using performance marketing, it's using game marketplaces, it's using launchers, it's using the app stores and we're gonna start moving into even more traditional like even more traditional Social media advertising and things like that as well.

Corey: 13:48

So we have a heavy expertise on our team in Like user acquisition, high volume user acquisition for Web2 games and now that we have a Web3 game that feels like a web two game. It can be found in the same places, you can create an account in the exact same ways and you can start to participate in all the Web3 Activities without having to be a Web3 native it. We've really started to unlock that playbook now as well, just bringing people into the space from what we would call pay you know what paid acquisition as opposed to a lot of the organic that took place in the Web3.

Joeri: 14:20

Yeah, interesting. So I think, yeah, today. If it's Web 2 or 3, doesn't matter so much, because you have a gaming audience and I guess maybe you launched also your token, your NFT, at the right moment. No, if you, because it was, I think, 2021, right, or 2022, if you would do this today would maybe be a bit bit more difficult, and any thoughts about that?

Corey: 14:47

We were fortunately well funded. We ran incredibly lean. We've created a focus on, like I said, generating profits. So it wasn't just a single event, but our original mint was June 1st of 2022.

Corey: 14:59

Okay, it was like we had watched Seoul as you know, we're building on Solana, seoul go from like a hundred to thirty dollars in the six weeks prior to that mint. It was not a good time to be launching an NFT collection. Okay, our launch pads told us they said, listen, nobody's minting out. And so, you know, we were able to. We were able to mint out during that and kind of maintain, through the bear, the token we were gonna launch at a similar time and we said we've got to put that on hold. And so we launched that in March of 2023 and so, again, it wasn't like the perfect time to be launching a token, but the game was ready and and the game needed a token. And so we were fortunate that, you know, we again, when we because we've led with product, we've led with transparency, authenticity, a lot of these things I think our community has stuck around, even through a bear market, realizing that this was one of the assets.

Corey: 15:51

This was that, you know, whether it was our entities or a token that was continuing to hold a relatively Strong amount of value, and so they were kind of starting to shift a lot of their other you know, kind of Investments back into Honeyl and and could see that we were continuing to build, and so the timing wasn't great. But you know it's. I think building in a bear is awesome if you're trying to, if you're trying to catch up in the bull market. It's tough to build the right way and lead with product. You kind of have to get caught in the hype cycle, and so I think that we were fortunate in the markets From a from the standpoint that I think it worked out really well for us. But yeah, it's, I think there's positives and negatives to both bull and bear markets, but we're definitely looking forward to the bull, yeah it creates more opportunities.

Joeri: 16:37

I would say so, yes, actually it was not the right timing to do it, but yeah, you know, you see, if you have a good business model and Probably also community behind you, that helps and that this is also what I would like to hear from you About community. It's it's a cornerstone in Web3 projects. What strategies have you found the most effective for building such a community, for nurturing such a community around Honeyland?

Corey: 17:09

Yeah certainly the the Web3. It's Twitter and discord and all these things that are really really fun. There are some of the like the people that I communicate with most today in my day-to-day life are people that I did not know two years ago and I've never met in real life. They're just on discord or just on Twitter and it's really really cool and I get to see them at conferences and things like that. It becomes even better. But, yeah, this community is is really cool.

Corey: 17:30

I think the two things that we did that really Help build and foster our community is we were very clear on our values early on, what we wanted that community to look like. We wanted the community to be one of respect, one that people respected themselves and others, one that had a voice of positivity, and we really kept out and quickly moved anybody who wanted to bring different, you know vibes or energy into our community. So negativity and things like that it doesn't mean that you can't question things. It doesn't mean that you can Think that what we're doing is wrong. All of that is fair game, but when it comes, it's it's about where it's coming from, and we just wanted to make sure that there was a, there was respect for everybody in the community and then I think, our authenticity, which came through Regular communication. It came through listening to the community and allowing them to actually have a voice, not seeing Just set as fun or or negative bad things necessarily, as long as it was coming from the right place, and so I think all of that just became a really safe place. We wanted people to be able to show up and know that they were gonna have a positive experience when they're in our discord or on our Twitter, and we just wanted to foster that from an early, from an early age.

Corey: 18:41

And I think again, oftentimes when you just want hype and you just want numbers and just want Something that feels good, immediately it becomes From a sustainability standpoint. You start to attract some of the wrong people. You don't really clearly have a sense of culture or who you are when you're desperate to get people, and so we were willing to, to, to to keep the wrong people out at the expense of, you know, building more slowly to make sure that we built the right way, and I think that's kind of a cornerstone of our project, our community, our assets, everything We've done that to where we're not just trying to get the biggest spike in numbers, a or price that we could early on. We want to build something that will continue to have sustained, increased value over time for every single one of those, from the project to the game, to the community, to the assets that people own.

Joeri: 19:32

Yes, it's a sustainability really important because there is so much you know about to have to talk to people. I think about hype marketing, about hype about this discord communities here you have both Web 2, Web 3 that meet each other. I guess, on these communities, on this court, building a sustainable economy you mentioned it is crucial. Okay, maybe can you talk a bit more about that, about, oh yeah, I share some keys to creating such an economy and, yeah, how on the land has implemented these principles?

Corey: 20:05

Yeah.

Corey: 20:05

So I think there was a couple things that we did from a from just a game mechanic standpoint, we were really really thoughtful about the token emissions and the token Just kind of how it was structured. So it's a single token economy, it's just a utility token. There's no like Governance token that I that pairs with this. The one single HXD, which is our, our native token, does everything. It's the governance, it's that utility, it's the value of the ecosystem, and so I think that was really important. We made it a fixed supply which is actually deflationary in nature. So we've minted a billion tokens, we've thrown away the keys to be able to ever mint anymore. So you know that it's at a billion.

Corey: 20:46

We have burn mechanics in the game so as players are doing certain things that may have Um impacts on the economy, there's burn that take place to have like a counteracted Impact on the, on the token and the economy. We've built in really thoughtful mechanics. So we've never we've never told anybody that we're playing our game Right. We want to be a really, really fun game that has a token and asset economy that it's built around. We hope that those assets increase in value over time, but the goal is to come in and play and own assets and you can own those over time. But it's not done in a way that we just want to incentivize Extraction from the ecosystem, and I think that's where some of the other web three games have. Really, in order to get players, they come tell you how much money you're gonna make and how much you can earn, and, while we hope that if we build the game in the economy the right way, that there is value that it proves over time, that is not what we lead with. We lead with a really fun game and we we leverage the assets that you can own in the game to enhance your experience and your happiness overall, and so my goal is to build as many happiness sinks as possible and if we do it right and we get enough scarcity for the assets and we bring enough utility for those assets, that it can increase Demand and, over time, will increase value. But the goal is that we're not a play-and-earn where playing on, where a web three game that has a lot of really, really cool things that you can do.

Corey: 22:07

And yeah, there's been a lot of really cool stories that I've heard just specifically over the last month or so of people who have Been able to take whatever the time and energy and resources and money they've invested in the honey land and they've been able to pay off debt that they've had for a while or take their family on a vacation or buy a new car or get their wife a really nice gift and all of those things. I can't tell you how much those types of stories touch me, but really that's just another way to happiness. When I see people in the discord Talking about how much fun they're having in the game or strategizing or trading assets with each other. All of that is part of the happiness as well, and so I think fundamentally, that's what we've done, for sustainability is focus on happiness, not profits, and I understand that Assets that increase in value over time can create profits for people, but we lead with happiness, not profits, and I think that's one of the things that we've done, and the mechanics speak to that as well.

Joeri: 22:57

Oh, I like these stories and it's mostly on discord that people share those, or maybe do you also like Twitter spaces no X call, of course and and stuff that people can share their stories.

Corey: 23:09

Yeah, so all of that's been done, just be it privately. People admit rep, message me and said, hey, I just want to. I just want to tell you that, like honey, land has brought a lot of joy and happiness to my life and it also allowed me to do X over the last you know, a month or, or wide period, or book this or, and so all those have been really fun. But yeah, I'm in discord every single day talking with community. We try and do.

Corey: 23:30

You know, I do video updates regularly. I do live AMAs where people can come and ask any question. There's never been a question from the community. Over the last two years I've done over 300 different videos. I've done over three dozen live AMAs. There's never been a question from the community that I didn't answer. If it comes, and so I think there's a lot of, like I said, transparency. There's a lot of authenticity that comes. There's a lot of access the community has to the theme. But, yeah, through spaces, through live AMAs, through discord, I think that's part of what makes it such a fun place to be. It's a place that we've built, kind of a community that I Want to hang out in, and I think that's why I have so much fun and we've attracted a lot of people who value a similar thing. I.

Joeri: 24:12

Yeah, I love that you are so approachable, you know, on this call, because that's not, you know, you don't have that. You have some not have that a lot. I say. Sometimes you have projects at start and people are approachable, Like I've seen also those discords, communities. You're there and suddenly you know the approaching gets bigger and the support is not there anymore, you. So that sets really, I think, one of the things that also stand out for your game. Now, for Honeyl and and maybe for Web3 gaming in general. What do you see happening in the next years? What are the evolutions that you see and, yeah, maybe that you are excited about?

Corey: 24:50

Yeah, I would say, in Honeyl and specifically, this year is really about what I would call making the player the hero, and we built a game that is really, really fun. But there's a lot of opportunities now that we can allow players to really feel like they're the hero, and this is going to be done through adding a lot more story and lore and purpose into Honey Land. We'll be launching a second universe this year. We're building a lot of just abilities for players to interact and flex and, you know, communicate with other players. We'll have colonies this year where players can start to group into certain colonies to achieve certain things and move into player or team versus team type of, you know, gameplay, and so I think that's where we're going to go this year. It's going to become much more social, much more interactive, much more what I would call just making the player, you know, the hero, and so I think that's for Honeyl and.

Corey: 25:47

When I look at Web 3 gaming in general like where is Web 3 gaming headed, I think that it's going to be a focus on the player. Experience is the thing that's going to really start to lead the most successful games, and I think a lot of games have been focused on the Web 3 mechanics and I think most players don't care about Web 3 more than they care about just their overall experience, and so you know some of these things that we've been putting up with over time. You know just the friction to log in and create an account and bring in assets and all these types of things. I think if the player experience that they're like, we can put up with that for a period of time. But eventually there's going to be enough games that solve those problems that people are going to flock to the greatest player experiences. And I think where early on, profits are what you know, people led with the Web 3 gaming provides profits.

Corey: 26:35

I think that that's fun.

Corey: 26:37

There's a lot of ways to make money in Web 3 that don't require a game, and so when you find the games that allow you to whatever your motivation is, whether it's profits or happiness or community or fun, when you can do all of that, but it's done through a seamless player experience those are the games that are going to win.

Corey: 26:53

I think we've figured out that we've got to build fun games. Everybody's starting to do that now. I think we've figured out that we've got to, you know, build mechanically sound Web 3 components, but I think the player experience is kind of the thing that's still lagging. It's a lot of games that are in alpha or you've got to download through a certain thing and you've got to. It's just very difficult to. There's just not a great player experience and I think those are going to the games that start to win and we're going to see that the games rising to the top have a really, really great focus on player experience and all of the other Web 3 components become parts of that player experience, not the only reason that they're actually putting up with kind of this game.

Joeri: 27:33

Well, yeah, like I said, I like your enthusiasm and I think my listeners will feel your enthusiasm too. If they want to find out more about you, Kori, and everything that you're doing and the game and so on. Would you like to send them?

Corey: 27:47

Yeah, honey. l and is kind of our., hat's our website. That's where you can get downloaded to the game. You can also search Honeyl and and the Google Player iOS Store. But Honey Dot Land has all of our social links. It's got Discord. But we're on YouTube. I do stuff. Every single week I post new videos. We're also on Spotify. We've got a medium for all of our weekly announcements that go out there. We've got a Discord. We've got a great Twitter account. That's a lot of fun. So we're kind of all over the place. Depending on where your listeners most like to engage or interact online, we're most likely there. I would say go to honey. l and. That's where they can find everything. And then I personally am at Philbert Steiner F-I-L-B-E-R-T-S-T-E-I-N-E-R on every social. So you can find me there on Discord, twitter, youtube, anywhere that you want to find me. I'll be at Philbert Steiner online as well.

Joeri: 28:40

Great. Maybe you know that, Corey, but every time for every podcast episode there is a blog article, there are show notes, so all your links will be in there. So people are now listening to this episode in the car. Maybe they can find all the links on the yeah, through the description of the podcast episode and also on my blog. So thank you, Corey, it was really a pleasure to have you on the show.

Corey: 29:04

Yeah, jery, it was just really fun to talk with you, Some really thoughtful questions and I hope your audience learns a little bit and can fall in love with it. I would say go play Honeyl and. It's a really, really fun experience. I think your audience will love it. It's accessible. Anybody can play, whether you're just a super hypercasual gamer or there's a ton of strategy if you really want to start to, if you're like a mid-core gamer that wants to spend a lot more time and spreadsheet warrior, really start to interact. So there's really a lot of fun for just about anybody in Honey Land, incredibly accessible. We'd love for them to go try it out and let us know what you think.

Joeri: 29:39

Yeah, guys, surely do that. Like Corey mentioned, it's both for Web 2 if you can call people like that and Web 3. And 2 is just so check it out. It's always interesting to see what is possible and I really think it's. Yeah, it will be an adventure like a game. So, guys, and if you think this episode with Corey is interesting for people around you, like maybe your friends or your colleagues or other entrepreneurs, other gamers, maybe, be sure to share this episode with them. If you're not yet subscribed to the podcast, this is a really good moment to do this and, of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care.