Stephen Bennett

be me be 7 living at my grandparents' place discover runescape low poly world, terrible graphics, no idea what i'm doing somehow it's the best place i've ever been log in every day after school the world is always there that turns out to matter more than i understood at the time be 13 mum passes away world outside gets very quiet world inside runescape does not log in keep logging in log in more than was probably good for me it was the place that still made sense i don't really recommend the amount i played i also don't know what i would have done instead start messing with runescape private servers zubersoft 508 source, open in notepad no tutorials, no stack overflow, no idea what any of it means just scroll until something looks like it might be the thing find a thieving stall find a number 385 that's a shark change it to 11694 steal from the stall armadyl godsword an actual armadyl godsword from a food stall i am 13 and i have just performed magic nobody told me how i found it myself that's the moment everything after this is the same trick at larger scale code is horrifying keep going anyway turns out grief and a compiler have a similar amount of patience for you none 25,000 hours in runescape by the end i tell people now it was market research it was not market research at the time also playing world of warcraft 5,000+ hours fall in love with something different this time the world itself the ambiance walking somewhere and it feeling like somewhere the combat the mounts WASD your body actually being in the place realize i now want two games that don't exist at the same time runescape's skilling, economy and freedom grind a skill for weeks because you chose to make something, sell it, matter to the economy no quest telling you to wow's world and feel nobody has made that file this thought away for roughly a decade 2013 go study game design properly tell my teachers i want to build an MMORPG "don't" "too big" "you won't be able to" hear this for four years straight 2017 graduate anyway still want to build an MMORPG nine years later still building the thing everyone told me not to build turns out "you can't" and "nobody has" sound identical from the outside start an ICT bachelor third year have a decision to make finish the degree, or build the thing leave the degree grandmother has questions fair questions honestly build the thing be 20 grandfather passes away the house i learned to play in isn't the same house anymore be 21 move to leeuwarden live on my own for the first time very quiet apartment very loud plans known luca for 27 years been building things together for 15 of them most companies don't survive one funding round we've survived each other's ideas since before we could drive covid arrives everyone bakes bread we build a mafia game mafialeader players immediately begin betraying each other working as intended 2020 luca: "have you looked at crypto" me: "no" luca: "look at crypto" look at crypto luca introduces me to a project called degentoken meet pat ~20 years of experience, endless patience for a kid with questions teaches me more than any course did gives me something i didn't have yet full focus everyone who makes it had a pat most of us forget to say so out loud luca redesigns the degentoken UI i integrate it in reactjs first time i ship something into crypto that real people touch then we build RSGP yield farming is everywhere and all of it is spreadsheets nobody is making it feel like anything so gamify it earn tokens buy a key open a chest get an NFT NFT boosts your multiplier and cuts your lock time the loot drop is the yield strategy now turns out 25,000 hours of opening things was applicable knowledge after all build two more web3 games on the side for larva lads flappy bird and angry birds except you play as your own NFT this is a normal thing to have on a CV now apparently freelance web3 websites to keep the lights on build someone else's site by day build RSGP at night self-funded means your own money and your own weekends RSGP has 50 followers fifty chainlink notices chainlink co-marketing with the people whose oracles i'd been reading docs about at 2am stare at screen for a while could have launched a token everyone else was would have raised more in a weekend than i made in two years of freelancing didn't the people who'd show up for that aren't the people i wanted to build for two years into RSGP jagex updates their terms no NFT or crypto projects on their IP project is over two years, gone in a policy update sit with that for a bit then realize something we'd been building on someone else's world this whole time because we loved it but loving a world isn't the same as owning the right to build in it so fine we build our own alerith 3D medieval fantasy MMORPG runescape's skilling and economy train what you want, make what you want, sell it to someone who needs it the grind is the point, not the obstacle wow's world and feel WASD movement a world bigger than runescape's mounts instead of teleport spam, because teleporting everywhere means you stop living in the place you live in you travel to the dungeon you do not queue into it second home, not second job no play to earn no extraction if you have to be paid to play it, it's not a game, it's a shift blockchain as a trust and persistence layer, not a casino bolted to a fantasy world no classes train whatever you want your build is a decision, not a menu you picked before you knew anything flat power curve level 80 barely stronger than 75 your old gear never becomes garbage your old effort never becomes garbage economies die when the past stops mattering monetization line set on day one nothing you buy makes you stronger nothing you buy skips a grind cosmetics and account services name changes, that kind of thing nothing that touches progression this costs us money keep it anyway everyone asks the same question "wen token" no token "but wen token" still no token second project now where we've said no to the easy money we are not funding a game by selling a coin and hoping the game shows up later the whole point is building something people choose to stay in you don't get that by taking from them on the way in build the game first this loses us a lot of attention keep it anyway "wen launch" asked during a week where we shipped updates and posted about all of it i understand the question MMORPGs are not a weekend you get updates every week because the alternative is a trailer and two years of silence we'd rather you watch it get built write the programs arena, escrow, marketplace, guild, passport, achievements, shop, loot VRF eight of them on devnet eight different ways to feel extremely confident and then extremely wrong at 3am duel arena has to feel instant chain says "well actually" so don't ask it to fight pull a seed from @magicblock VRF game server rolls the damage from it results posted straight back with their ephemeral rollups fight resolves at game speed provably fair, verifiable afterwards combat feels like combat, chain does the part it's actually good at players get .alerith.sol names set it as your in-game name checkmark next to it in chat everyone can see it's actually yours and you can sell it on the marketplace a name becomes a thing with a history somebody had it before you, somebody wants it after small feature not a small thing solana privacy hackathon 1st place, RADR track 10k prize they rug no prize win first place and get paid in experience could have taken that as the sign to stop ship the next build instead also meet kai there he stays builds the world with us now lost the 10k, gained the person building the thing the 10k was for fine trade backend is .NET 9 native AOT, postgres, redis streams unity game client unity game server a launcher the website an admin dashboard for running an actual MMO dashboard, analytics, user management, game config, server config, commerce, trust & safety, website portal, infrastructure and the studio editor tooling to build the world with because content doesn't make itself you build the tools, then you build the game with the tools none of that is the game all of it has to exist before the game can studios have a department for each of these we are three people fair question how three people build what a studio builds the honest answer is we don't do it alone anymore claude opus, fable, gpt astra a decade ago this project was not possible for us it is now not because the work got smaller because the distance between knowing what you want and having it built got shorter still have to know what you want that part nobody can do for you still have to know when the thing it handed you is wrong that part took 15 years to learn the other half of the answer is less impressive 16 hour days sometimes 30 straight when something has to get fixed sleep schedule dies flip it back with an all-nighter lasts about two days dies again this is not a productivity tip this is what it actually costs i'd like to be the person who tells you there's a smarter way haven't found it yet colosseum frontier 5,400+ projects 1st place, RPC fast gaming track 5th, superteam NL sidetrack okay maybe this isn't just a delusion luca and i have been sharing since we were kids toly quote-tweets us then follows two people from friesland refresh the notification a couple of times just to be sure SNS partnership 2,500+ playtest signups actual on-chain revenue before launch, from names people wanted to exist in the world before the world was finished that one gets me still an enormous amount left audits before anything touches mainnet but the part people expect to be hard is already done escrow, marketplace, the whole ownership layer list something on the marketplace, someone buys it, it's theirs no wallet popup no signature request no "approve transaction" just a sale the chain is there, doing its job, and staying out of the way a steam build where you never have to know a chain is involved because you shouldn't have to the best technology is the technology nobody has to hear about people ask why not just make a normal game or just launch a token both are faster both are easier neither is the thing the thing is this when i was 7 a world let me in when i was 13 it was the only place that still felt survivable somewhere right now there's a kid logging in for the same reason they will not tell anyone i'd like the world they log into to be good and to still be there tomorrow and for the things they worked for to actually be theirs that's the whole mission everything else is implementation detail my teachers said it was too big jagex said not on their IP a hackathon said congratulations and then disappeared everyone said don't build an MMORPG still building the MMORPG still in leeuwarden still building with the same best friend i've been building with since we were kids still no token still not done still early and luca 27 years you've seen me at my worst more than once the weeks where i wanted to stop, you didn't let me no sympathy speech either just told me to keep going and then kept building everyone needs one person who refuses to accept your worst day as your final answer i got lucky with mine to everyone who signed up for the playtest, joined the discord, registered a name, or just said it looked cool on a day where nothing worked you're part of how this exists thank you the world is there you can walk around in it most of the core systems are done what's left is polish and content which is its own kind of endless more of it gets built every week that's the part i want you to see follow me and @PlayAlerith if you want to watch an MMORPG get built in public the good weeks and the broken ones come help us fill it