Moving Away from Free to Play with First Light Games CEO Neil McFarland

First Light Games CEO and Co-Founder Neil McFarland talks to Ishan Pandey

Ishan Pandey: Hi Neil, welcome to our series “Behind the Startup” Please tell us about yourself and the story behind First Light Games?

Neil McFarland: Before co-founding First Light I was at ustwo games where I founded the original games team. Happily, for us, our first game, Monument Valley, was a huge success. This allowed me to create an independent studio with the backing of the larger ustwo company, teaching me a huge amount of invaluable lessons when moving into the start-up world. First Light is the first company I’ve been a shareholder of and one in which I’ve been pouring all my learnings from my years in games and prior to that the creative design industries I’ve been a part of.

Ishan Pandey: Can you please tell our readers what distinguishes the metaverse play-to-earn model from the current play-to-earn model existing within the mobile gaming space?

Neil McFarland: The big shift is from a system where wealth flows exclusively from the player to the developer, to one in which some of that wealth is shared back with the player. This empowers the player, through ownership, to benefit from the economy and through their activity, to benefit the economy as a whole. Free to play makes the developers money in exchange for their provision of entertainment value but locks players out of participation in the ecosystem. I doubt we’ll look back on the model with much nostalgia.

Ishan Pandey: Please tell us a little bit about First Light Games and the F2P and P2E model?

Neil McFarland: Blast Royale is part of a new movement where players own their own in-game items. We wholeheartedly embrace this new way of approaching games and digital assets and believe it will not only change the way people interact with games but revolutionize huge swathes of how modern society organizes itself.

Ishan Pandey: While the web3 gaming industry is known for its play-to-earn models, a handful of crypto gaming companies are now giving free-to-play opportunities for players who wish to try before committing entirely. In this regard do you think we are approaching mass adoption of GameFi across the gaming community?

Neil McFarland: We hope so! We’ve never enjoyed the phrase play-to-earn and really always focus on fun and ownership. Central to Blast Royale is the low barrier to entry and as a result, we’ve always planned to offer a free-to-play element to the title. Games are all about mass adoption, as the scale of the F2P industry obviously proves. GameFi is clearly in its infancy and as a result, there are going to be so many new ideas experimented with to bring in and retain players.

Ishan Pandey: How can we successfully build a sustainable gaming economy where the token rewards are sustainable in nature?

Neil McFarland: We expect players to contribute to a healthy economy by just playing, enjoying and interacting with the game for an extended period of time, e.g. we concentrate on making a fun, compelling game! We’ve been overwhelmed by the support that the token sales have and will provide to us and look forward to providing utility in the game for all our players. We believe that by operating with this sentiment we will all build sustainable economies in this space.

Ishan Pandey: When it comes to the crypto ecosystem as a whole, there's a lot of regulatory uncertainty, especially when it comes to stablecoins and cryptocurrencies. According to you, should DeFi be regulated?

Neil McFarland: I’m sure it will be, we know that it already is regulated to some extent and we will support regulations as and when they are presented to us. Businesses need certainty in order to operate successfully.

Ishan Pandey: Gaming companies with virtual currency-based products are on high alert following the recent fall of TerraUSD (UST) and Luna. What are your views on the latest developments and concerns surrounding the Luna and UST token?

Neil McFarland: We’ll be watching Luna 2 with interest! Again this is a nascent industry with many moving parts, there clearly will be mistakes and teething troubles. An event like this doesn’t stop the forward momentum of an entire industry.

Ishan Pandey: According to you, what new trends are we going to see in the blockchain industry?

Neil McFarland: Without a doubt wider adoption of the notion of digital ownership. It will touch upon an unimaginable amount of industrial uses. Beyond that, it has the power of revolutionising social movements and ‘people power’. Hopefully, it will be as powerful a shift as the formation of Building Societies had for banking and trade unions had for the workplace. For games specifically, it will drive higher engagement and crucially more public support from players. It will create a new golden age of gaming as players become even more attached to the IPs and projects that they choose to deeply engage.

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