This battle-racing 3D multiplayer blockchain game might really deserve some of your attention. It combines the best elements of arcade style kart racing, mobile gaming and Play-to-Earn NFT dynamics. Let’s see what the team has to say!
Q: First of all, our community would like to know more about the Penguin Karts team. Tell us more, who are they?
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
The team is a super diverse group but what brings them together is their love of blockchain and video games. Tommy, the CEO is from Sweden and has been a gamer his entire life. He became a trader in 2017 and was at that time a major member of the marketing team that brought success to KuCoin between 2017 and 2019.
I'm the COO, Ri Ri, American, I have worked with Tommy on and off since 2017 and I am a marketing and operations Master. I hold an MBA, a license to sell securities in the US in 2010 and I’m thrilled to be combining my two passions, blockchain and video games.
Baz, our CMO comes to us from London and has 13 years marketing experience, with an emphasis on e-commerce and most recently, NFTs.
Then we have our partnership network, two different marketing agencies RGray and Dverse, as well our Game Developer, Fabwelt.
Q: What is the team's experience in game design? How far along into the game dev are they?
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
The development team that is building the game has years of experience building and designing games before they formed their current game studio. What makes them stand out is their expertise in blockchain. The studio currently has 3 games out and is working on several more games under their own brand and several for others. Our game should be considered at the early prototype stage. We're testing out what works and what doesn't for the gameplay, making sure the gameplay and functionality all work well before we move on to polishing everything.
This video is a good example of how a game progresses from the start till the end of development.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H9W_i4yEik
Q: The project looks pretty good. Marketing and publicity are extremely vital for any project, so could you tell me what marketing plans your project has in place?
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
Users will be able to try it early in Beta and we have UGC campaigns, one of which is to design your own Penguin and is now live now on Twitter.
We focus on two very important aspects in our Marketing efforts. The first is all about the community, ensuring we build and reward our loyal flock of Penguin fans - that's why we started with the 10,000 2D Genesis Penguin NFTs and will provide beta access to NFT holders and Discord members before the game is launched. The second is putting the game front and center, to excite our audience ahead of its launch. We want to demonstrate the efforts we've put into making it an incredibly fun and exciting play-to-earn battle game. Of course, we are focusing on these two but are also making every effort to ensure we have many partnerships across the crypto and gaming world to help us spread the word.
https://opensea.io/collection/genesis-penguins
https://twitter.com/penguinkarts/status/1501097156261957632
Q: Project teamwork is important for exposure. But the users and the introduction of investors is even more important. Do you have a plan for this?
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
Penguin Karts is a firm believer in teamwork and the team is already working hard to expand the Penguin Karts Network. We are aggressively pursuing partnerships with other games, guilds, GameFi aggregators and GameFi SocialFi platforms to leverage community engagement and cross promotion opportunities.
Networks of people are crucial to the success of the emerging play-to-earn industry and the network effect is the answer. You can learn more about our marketing plan and our official partners in our whitepaper. https://penguin-karts.gitbook.io/penguin-karts-whitepaper/penguin-karts-marketing-plan
Q: Why did you choose Fantom as a game and token chain?
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
Fantom chain is ideal for P2E games because the gas fees on the network are low while the network processing tasks are really fast. When collecting your rewards after a race, you want to keep as much of the reward as possible and jump into the next race as soon as possible.
Q: Cute mascot! Why penguins?
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
In all honesty, I think most NFT penguin projects out there look a bit uninspiring and lack personality, so we wanted to change this and make it much nicer. And what could be more fun than racing penguins?
Q: Can we customize them?
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
Yes, there will be all kinds of things available at the later stages.
We are talking with brands about making stickers for cars and other accessories for the Penguins, the 3D ones, not the 2D Genesis ones; those are as is, but they come with other benefits. We’ll get into that later.
Q: You are planning to attract gamers, NFT traders and gamblers to your project. I wonder specifically how you are going to attract gamers who are not used to crypto.
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
Gamers who have never used crypto are a primary target audience for Penguin Karts. We have created a Web2 version of the game that is a complete simulation of the game, right down to letting players know what kind of in-game rewards they would be earning if they were playing on Web3. Players will be invited to try Web3 by simply connecting a wallet and providing them with educational material in multiple formats to make the onboarding process easy.
Penguin Karts, by design, is an onboarding station where non crypto users are introduced to crypto in a seamless and simple way.
Q: According to Messari and Nansen, NFT traders are 70% flippers. How are you planning to make them keep hold of their NFTs?
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
Most NFTs have no true usability cases outside using them as your PFP on social media and are based on trends. Also it is lucrative to snag limited collections that are hyped so flippers will always be there, but we believe our NFTs will end up in the hands of people that want to customize their experience inside our game and future ecosystem, not for a quick gain or to flip them. (But we welcome flippers regardless, they bring in volume and spread the word – we might flip flippers into gamers!).
Q: What are the unique mechanics for your kart race? Any plans for other game types?
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
We provide unique in-game utility for our NFT's. This means our NFT's are not just collectible items but can actually be used within the game. This makes the NFT's popular amongst our players. And less subject to flippers.
Q: Is there any game pass other than an NFT purchase?
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
The NFT's provide exclusive access to Penguin Karts Beta testing. As of now, there are no other types of game or seasonal passes. However, we were approached this evening by a potential partner that could change that, so please watch this space :D
Q: Does the team have other private funding?
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
Our CEO kicked off the startup with his own funds and invested $35,000 right off the bat to begin the Genesis NFT series and the game’s development. These are not returned to him in tokens, this is pure investment on his part as he believes fully in the power of gaming to revolutionize the way people can earn money. Penguin Karts is focused on the players so the majority of the funding is in the IDO round. Of the total raise of $1.3m, $800,000 is loaded into the public.
The private rounds were broken up into 5 different rounds with a maximum allocation size of like only 30k for even the largest VCs. Penguin Karts wants players to be the investors, so the tokenomics is turned on its head, in the same way that play-to-earn should work. The majority is reserved for the players and not for whales to get fat off your skills!
Q: Can the team share their full tokenomics breakdown and token vesting schedule (not just IDO tokens)?
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
There is a full overview of our tokenomics in our whitepaper with tables, an easy to understand pie chart and a vesting schedule. It can be found here: https://penguin-karts.gitbook.io/penguin-karts-whitepaper/finance-token-economy-and-tech/pgk-tokenomics
Vesting Schedule: https://penguin-karts.gitbook.io/penguin-karts-whitepaper/finance-token-economy-and-tech/vesting-schedule
Q: You are going to have staking pools. If the reward token is PGK, don't you think this will cause bad inflation?
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
All 200 million PGK will be pre-minted upon the TGE. This means PGK is not subject to inflation. There will be staking in locked pools. This will help lock liquidity away, also making the price less susceptible to sudden pumps and dumps.
Q: The only deflationary model for the project is NFT sales for PGK. Are you sure this is enough?
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
The NFT sales for PGK is not a deflationary model. For now, there is no burning mechanism setup for PGK, there is also no additional minting of tokens for PGK. This means PGK is not subject to inflation or deflation, meaning that the token price is driven by demand. As more players enter the game and are exposed to the same amount of tokens, the price will naturally increase.
Q: 2 more questions on the tokenomics:
1. I can see that you only plan to use 2% from 2.65% for liquidity. Do you think this is going to be enough when investors have their unlocks?
2. Do you have any plans for market making?
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
The actual amount allocated to liquidity is 2.65%. At first it was 2% but later it increased. As for the investors, they have their own separate allocations, so tokens paid to the early investors will NOT come from the liquidity allocation.
We made sure that the liquidity is sufficient to handle any presale investor sell pressure because as you can see in the vesting schedule presented earlier, our project tokenomics are designed for long-term sustainability.
Q: Will the Penguin Karts game use the Shadow Layer 2 solution that is being developed by the SpaceSwap team?
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
We find this Shadow Layer 2 solution technology innovative and interesting and we will delve deeper into how it can benefit the loyal Penguins of the Penguin Kart Metaverse.
Q: Will a "Space Cow" kart be created for SpaceSwap backers?
Ri Ri Blockchain Wordsmith:
We would love to incorporate a Space Cow into the game, whether it be in the form of a kart or perhaps part of a sticker pack available exclusively to Space Cow backers. Maybe we could even create a special NFT kart skin to auction off to SpaceSwap, ooooh or maybe a contest where your community designs a kart skin and the one with the most votes would be featured. There are so many possibilities for fun collaborations!
Once again we remind you that the Penguin Karts IDO will be conducted on our platform on March 18th. All the details about the time and number of participant slots will be coming soon.
Author’s grammar left.
Follow the Penguin Karts socials:
Website | Twitter | Telegram | Discord | Medium | YouTube
Stay tuned!
Website: https://spaceswap.app
Telegram: t.me/SpaceSwap
Twitter: https://twitter.com/spaceswapdefi
Blog: https://blog.spaceswap.app
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/4hvxZNWGHP