"Current P2E Gamers are drawn in on the earning aspect, which is unhealthy" - Ethan Ng

Ishan Pandey: Hi Ethan, welcome to our series “Behind the Startup.” Please tell us about yourself and the story behind WonderHero?

Ethan Ng: Hi Ishan, thank you for having me. It’s an honor to be part of this series! I’m Ethan, Co-Founder, and CEO of WonderHero. WonderHero was founded from a spark of luck. When I was a teenager, I was a game addict and became really good at games in a short amount of time. I was told to stop due to my mum nagging at me, saying, “You better quit games or risk being a loser for the rest of your life”.

I believe a lot of folks can relate to this. So when my co-founder approached me for this project to lead as the CEO, after playing the alpha game for 3.5 hours, I knew this was it.

Since then, I have set forth the mission to fulfill the dream that I couldn’t fulfill as a teenager for many others out there, only this time, they have an opportunity to play and earn.

Ishan Pandey: Please tell us a little bit about WonderHero and the P2E NFT based gaming model.

Ethan Ng: WonderHero is a Play-And-Earn RPG for iOS & Android, where players control a team of 4 heroes in tactical turn-based battles to win NFTs and Crypto Tokens. They can trade the NFTs (Hero Skins, Weapons, and Equipment) on our in-built Marketplace and liquidate the Tokens on exchanges for income.

Besides trading NFTs on the marketplace, players can also stake NFT to earn more Token rewards.

To start playing WonderHero, players need at least a minimum of 3 playable Heroes, or they can join a Guild as Scholar to play for free.

Ishan Pandey: Can you explain to our readers how crypto gaming guilds differ from traditional gaming guilds?

Ethan Ng: That is a good one. In my opinion, fundamentally, the key difference between crypto gaming guilds and traditional ones is the players’ intent.

Traditional gaming guilds are formed out of pure passion and interest in a particular game, where players thrive by partying up to progress faster in-game. Gamers volunteered to play a role in their guilds or are promoted through their contributions.

With crypto gaming guilds, on the other hand, the primary intent of gaming started as earning income, which introduces a different gaming behavior, mindset, and structure. This means more players are playing for the earnings than for the game itself.

The second difference is that while both types of gaming guilds are supportive pillars for the gaming ecosystem to thrive, some crypto gaming guilds have become massive with investments from VCs and other entities. Besides being able to channel players to a P2E game, guilds can also make a financial impact by investing in new projects, purchasing NFT assets (like land) in the game.

Ishan Pandey: How can we successfully build a sustainable gaming economy while the industry is undergoing a pragmatic shift in light of the budding popularity of the NFT gaming model?

Ethan Ng: It is truly exciting to be in this space, as we are so early on and everyone is figuring out what is the best way to build a sustainable gaming economy. Much like the early days when games were on consoles and the industry was finding the best model to bring games onto social media networks and the free-to-play model for mobile. Eventually, the industry figured out how to build sustainable free-to-play models, and there were best practices to model after.

The P2E space is undergoing such a transition too, and every project is experimentation and trying to figure out a sustainable model, but I believe player retention is at the core of a sustainable gaming economy. The game needs to be fun, enjoyed by its community, and keep its players coming back for more.

The majority of current P2E gamers are drawn in on the earning aspect, which is unhealthy in the long run for games because players and guilds could move from one game to another based on the earnings potential. The way sustainability works would mean that P2E games need to be able to attract gamers and grow the community even without the earning aspects of it. The earning aspect is more of a means to amplify the growth.

Ishan Pandey: OpenSea, currently the largest global NFT marketplace, was hacked, and consumers lost their NFTs. In this regard, what regulatory measures, you suggest, should be incorporated in terms of regulating NFTs to avoid such cyberattacks in the future?

Ethan Ng: I think there are two parts to this:

Firstly, the majority of the consumers who are victims of hacks are relatively new to the crypto space and are unaware of the possible phishing hack scams. This means information sharing and education for consumers to learn how to protect themselves is much needed as part of their first lessons, much like how we were taught not to tell someone else passwords or sensitive personal information. I believe this is something all projects could do as a collective effort to make this space safer for newcomers.

Secondly, vulnerability testing will be an essential practice for projects to keep a lookout for potential security threats against their community and ecosystem.

Ishan Pandey: What does the roadmap ahead look like for WonderHero and the NFT-based gaming ecosystem as a whole?

Ethan Ng: For the NFT-based gaming ecosystem, I believe we are entering a consolidation phase. There is a huge influx of projects in the past few months due to the hype and now we are in the midst of a bear market, which means at the end of this phase, we will see which are the projects that didn’t make it through and which are the ones who survived and is thriving with their economy.

There are also many exciting new projects with promising potential, exploring various mechanics and economic models, which will be interesting to watch how it will turn out. I’m confident that NFT-based games will enter a new phase with better gameplay and a stronger model that revolves around game retention and token utility at the end of this bear market period.

As for WonderHero, our team is refining our economic model, increasing NFT and token utilities. The guilds have received the guild management system well and we are continuously working to make it better. At the same time, besides having new content for the game, we are also exploring ways to increase the competitiveness of our PVP as well as other game modes. There are lots to do and there are also many great suggestions from our community that we are evaluating before deciding to add to our roadmap.