Kenshi Arasaki: Psychology of Games and NFTs
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Episode Summary
The best games are often built by those who have developed a mastery over human psychology and motivation and Kenshi Arasaki one of them. He is the creator of multiple hugely popular mobile, free-to-play games, and he shares his principles and insights on what makes games enticing to players and sustains traction.
Firstly, creating an environment that is conducive to emergent behaviors is important, and it’s not as complex as you’d think. Implementing a collection of systems and mechanisms that would otherwise be simple for a single player game, turns into sophisticated behaviors when applied to a group. For example, simply setting a common goal for a group of people will result in alliances, rivalries and formation of clans.
Second, enabling players with the freedom to express their full emotional spectrum lends itself to true social bonds. While many social platforms restrict expressions to only be positive as a prevention mechanism from adversarial behaviors, it instead causes isolation and pent up aggression. Conversely, Kenshi argues that positive relationships come only by contrast to how negative circumstances can get. By allowing outlets for emotions in games, such as the ability to fight and defeat someone who pissed you off, or showing gratitude and loyalty to an ally who just saved your life, it helps develop deep bonds that mimic real life relationships.
Finally, it’s important to build a perfectly competitive environment where there is incentive for everyone to progress. This requires having the right combination of different types of players that acts as checks and balances. Kenshi’s framework is the following:
Sheep: player who want to have fun and cooperate, but must be protected
Wolves: player who is super high spending, super competitive, want to kill all the sheep
Dog: powerful, but protects the sheep, will bark at wolf, but won’t fight them
If there’s only sheeps in a game, there would be zero stakes. If there were only wolves, everyone would be dead. By maintaining a healthy balance, there is a sustainable community and ecosystem.
When it comes to the future of gaming, the most interesting concept for Kenshi is play-to-earn games, which is made possible by NFTs. The beauty of it is that it allows the time spent playing games to be a real investment for people. Not only can you have fun, you can also spend time growing and nurturing digital assets that will accrue value. Furthermore, it can be sold in the future, whether it be in the game, through secondary marketplaces, or via fiat gateways where you can exchange it for real life currency.
About the Guest
Kenshi Arasaki is the CEO and Co-founder of A Thinking Ape Entertainment, a gaming company that has produced some of the top free-to-play mobile games It was recently acquired by the Embracer Group. He is an angel investor and jpeg/nft enthusiast, and is the primary author behind US patent 8918725 for systems and methods to support real-time chat on mobile devices.
Show Notes
[4:30] How to create initial traction for games and effective mechanisms
[11:00] Importance of helping people express their full emotional spectrum in virtual experiences
[17:00] Maintaining a balanced virtual economy
[21:10] Tapping into fundamental human motivations
[27:20] Play-to-earn games
[29:50] NFTs, digital ownership, and interoperability
[33:20] Creating native containers for NFTs
[37:40] What NFT would Kenshi want to build