Lots of fun stuff happened in today’s AMA! Heidi went over to her birthday map to host a giant energy party (complete with her own pink energy), participated in Heidi’s Birthday Bake quest (live until Friday), and hungout with the community. She also visited some cool lands like 1171, 3752, 850, and 951 while Luke answered questions.

Questions from the AMA

What’s the role of the $PIXEL token in Stacked? Why is it needed?
$PIXEL will still be a reward currency in Stacked for a little bit, then will slowly transition to a stake-only token. Long term, staking rewards will switch to USDC or USDT and will tied into the performance of the games.

You probably know that Lootrush is slowly being shut down. Perhaps you could integrate land rental into the game?
It could work, but we’ve been deep-diving more into having the code base be open source.

What are some ways you like the idea of AI being used in/for Pixels and ways you don’t like it being used?
A game is a work of art and act of love, and we haven’t done AI art in the game because we have amazing artists. The ways in which we could use it in the game would be open-sourcing the front end so the community can be bigger contributors, since AI has gotten better with helping build apps and softwares.

Do you still reject UGCs you suspect of being created with AI? How do you determine what those might be?
We only reject UGC art that isn’t up to our standards.

To the AIs I have access, they aren’t that crazy, but are good teachers. I’m learning faster…but I doubt they will get your level of production soon… Low-tier AI models aren’t that great, but the higher plans are.

How do you combat bots in Stacked? (If there’s anything that could be botted like $/view)
With Stacked we’re doing large-scale data science based on large historical data sets that we also have at Pixels, with bot identification. Everyone will get different offers that are very precisely targeted.

How do you get mass adoption of web2 types into the game when at the moment to find lands you need a third party browser login?
This is the highest priority for core Pixels next. Pixels is one of the most sustainable native Web3 games out right now, so before we want to start doing adoption of Web2 users, we had to figure out a sustainable model. Now that we’re getting there, we can focus on growth.

I understand that sustainability is very important. But core product misses so many things. Feels incomplete.
We are always open to feedback on what the game could use, but we had to get the model right because you can’t just make a fun game and expect it to success just from that. Pixels is the best-performing game in the ecosystem now, and now is the time to give it more attention and love.

We also asked users to give suggestions in chat for what they believe is lacking. Below are a series of related comments ⬇️

Direction is missing. Most other games give you a sense of progression, Pixels doesn’t really have that because all goals you have are longterm goals.
There will have to be significant reworks to the game to make it feel better. Maybe for a mobile version we’ll strip back a lot of the complexity and make things make sense more in certain areas.

The game lacks a lot of features that are in other games and are important for a game with so many products to craft. In comparison with crafting Web2 games I’ve played it’s just not that fun. I don’t see a reason why a person would play Pixels instead of Web2 game, when there are tons of them
The key differentiator between Pixels, Stacked and Web2 games are earnings. It makes the gameplay different, and not everybody plays for that, but it does make the game more compelling to a lot of people. If you have all the Web2 features and not have any Web3 components (and vice versa) we won’t grow. First step was to figure out the model, and now we can transition to working on features.

But gamers aren’t into crypto that much. Gaming is about playing. People are spending money in Web2 games and own nothing. Token isn’t attractive but not as much as great as engagement
The strategy with Chubkins was building with a Web2 mindset at first (tracking engagement, sessions, etc.) and what’s great about Stacked is it has an easy SDK to have earnings into the game. There is opportunity inside of the gaming market when it comes to ownership.

Not only Pixels that are “not great” but the whole Web3/crypto is really bad recently
The whole Web3/crypto space is in a bad spot and it’s not the most fun place to be right now, but I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe in what the Pixels ecosystem is doing, the tech we have, and the possibilities that are here.