Connecting gamers to guilds and guilds to games at Infinity Force
Spicey | OIG:
Welcome back OIG family to another epic episode in our ama series. Today we have the privilege of sitting down with Sam Welch, who is the co-founder of infinity Force. Infinity Force is the platform that connects gamers to play their own games to guilds through features like NFT, lending, native integration, scholarships, community governance, and so much more. Be sure to like, subscribe and hit the bell notification button to stay up to date with all the latest news coming from OIG. Let’s get right into the AMA. Sam, could you give us a little introduction of who you are? And what Infinity Force is?
Sam Welch:
Sure. Well, it’s pleasure to be on the show. Thank you for having us. My name is Sam, as you just mentioned, I’m co-founder and I’m Head of Marketing at Infinity Force. Infinity Force in the simplest of terms connects gamers to guilds and guilds to games. So we are the underlying infrastructure have played an earn and see ourselves as the growth engine of GameFi. And I’m sure we’ll get into all the specifics of our functionality or features and how this works for games, guilds and players throughout this. So excited to share.
Spicey | OIG:
For sure, within the introduction of Infinity force to the space, there definitely means that there’s a void that is trying to fill. So what does infinity force aim to address within the blockchain space?
Sam Welch:
Yeah, so another great question. So within GameFi specifically, the emergence of GameFi in the last year or so, brought these players who now have access to games to play to earn. And what started out as a really beautiful thing, especially during COVID, in the pandemic, you had emerging markets, where people, their families, lost jobs, and all of a sudden, you have all these 16 to 30-year-olds playing games on their phone, and earning more income than their families were earning prior to that, which allowed, support for the family members, allowing them to continue to go to school, and even travel abroad and send back the money. So from that, what happened was, there’s this massive barrier to entry that started cropping up, as, as most of you know, some of these games require NFTs being held, let’s take Axie infinity as an example. So maybe a few months ago, three to six months ago, it costs upwards of $1,000, USB to even play the game. And so you find all these players in these emerging markets who don’t have the disposable income to play these games. So what cropped up out of that were these guilds, which for those of you who don’t know what a guild is, it’s essentially a team like an esports team. And, and they’re also micro investors. So what they would do is purchase these NFTs for a specific game, and lend them out to these players, for free, other than they now are sharing a split of the revenue. So now, not only do these players have access to play these games, you have these guilds that have a bit of a growth loop where they’re receiving revenue, and they’re building their guild by just reinvesting the revenue back into scholarships. We add Infinity Force actually built our own internal guild back several months ago, and right now we’re up to 1500 internal scholars, and we started seeing a lot of problems within guild management. Let’s just say that most of them were highly manual, and our guild served as not only a way to shape our product vision, but it also made us realise Wow, there is a gap Within GameFi, and within these games itself that needs to be served. And so in terms of player onboarding and recruitment, in terms of payment processing, extending, all the way to purchasing NFTs. Not all this was highly manual, people using spreadsheets and napkins are holy in their head, it was very, very difficult to do and almost took more time than managing the team themselves. So what we decided was, let’s come up with a platform where we can handle all of these and alleviate all of that pressure of this skill management. And so unlike many projects in the space, we actually built the product ahead of time and deployed it within our own guild. And that’s where we saw massive success. And we’re able to scale from 10 scholars to 1500 within a very, very short period of time. So I would say that, while these games are doing a great job at developing, and some have been in development for multiple years, they haven’t focused on a lot of these problems within their player base, and obviously, these skills. And so we are providing these tools and resources for these games that their players need to grow. So that in essence, is what we saw as the major problems and the gap to fill.
Spicey | OIG: Yeah, no, definitely. There is demand has been proven throughout COVID. And having a play to earn system, like Axie infinity, for example, we’ve seen the distribution of wealth to all these other countries. But like you said, the entry point and the accessibility was far out of reach for some of these countries because of the price of these NFT’s. But it sounds like Infinity Force aims to provide a turnkey solution to building and managing your own guild, can you go into more detail about the features of building a guild and managing one, and how it will work within Infinity Force?
Sam Welch:
Yeah, of course. So let’s start with players. Imagine you’re a player who’s really interested in getting into the space and playing to earn, and they have a game that they love, there’s a lot of interest around it, but they just don’t have access, they can register on our website, go through an automated interview process when we have bots deployed that ask them a random amount of set questions. And then from there, they move on to a personal interview with one of our account managers. And after that, they can even be further vetted by the guilds that are selecting players. The process isn’t as intensive as I just laid out. Our goal here is to try to get as many players on our platform to play essentially for free. So, then move on to guilds. So guilds come onto our platform, they go through a similar process of registration. But the questions that they’re asking are essentially, how much are you looking to invest? What game do you want? Do you want to play? How many players do you want on your team? And how, how much participation do you want in the management of the guild itself, because some of our tools are really catered towards people who want to have complete management over their team, but some of them are just people who want to put in some investment and have it run on its own. So there is where we’re connecting these guilds to players, where the guilds are purchasing the NFT’s for specific games that are on our platform, through our NFT treasury, which we’ve already built out. And then they lend these NFT’s to the players, and they can play to earn. And so when I’m speaking about the manual overhead that we’re we’re conquering is like this, this platform that we have connects to the backend data of these games and their in-game economies and powers a system where these guilds can track performance, they receive, you know, 24/7 triggers and can see players who are not living up to expectations who are over exceeding expectations, they can design an incentive structure Where’s, you know, it’s 50 50% of revenue or 6040. It’s benefiting players who are doing much better. And from there, you have all these skills that are now proliferating on the platform itself, and then comes an even trickier part. How do you pay all your players how do you pay off these guilds? While we do have a native token into Infinity Force, it is not involved in the payment process, the payment comes within the actual end game currencies. So a simple one with again, Axie Infinity with SLP, you collect all that SLP. And then every 15 days, there’s an automated payout to your players into the guilds themselves. One thing I haven’t touched on, which is really, really crucial is our player development and guild development and the resources and tools that we give them to be the best that they can possibly be. So we have an Infinity Academy, where we’re partnering with all the games that have different game mechanics, developing the resource and providing the resources to not only use our platform but how to be most successful in the games. So that’s accessible to everyone who joins the platform, I would say that that covers the bulk of it. For games themselves, we already have partnerships with some of the largest triple-A games coming out the games that have a tonne of hype around them. But we also have a registration process for games that, you know, may not have as much exposure, but players may love. And so when I speak about us being the growth engine of GameFi, if all the players and guilds live on our platform, then these games have access to those players, which sometimes is the biggest roadblock for them, where they focus so much time on the development of their game, they haven’t spent enough time on, you know, attracting players to it. But now players are here. And they can and these players have the choice of playing on that game. And they have a way of attracting those players to multiple marketing initiatives and so forth. So those are, you know, some of the key features of our platform, I would say,
Spicey | OIG:
Yeah, and, you know, it’s clear to see that you’re bridging the gap between gamers and the games itself, by creating this underlying infrastructure for guild development management, all the things that people struggled with in the past, which really like it comes down to just, joining infinity force and having this turnkey solution, as we mentioned before, but you did touch on the native token with Infinity Force, could you give us a little more detail of what kind of utility it would provide?
Sam Welch:
Yeah, of course. So our token, which has yet to launch our IDO, the date is upcoming. And we’ll keep everyone posted on all of our social channels. So follow our social channels on Twitter, Telegram discord, you’ll know when it’s coming ahead of time. But the utility, as I mentioned before, is separate from all the payments, where the INFF token for standing for Infinity Force it does a lot of things that drive values for the token holder. So the first major thing for investors, that they care about is all of the transaction fees for our management platform where we take a small percentage of everything that takes place on our platform, that is provided back to the token holders in forms of rewards and incentives through staking. So that’s a lot of what people care about is, you know, putting a token within something to earn passive income. The NFT assets in our Treasury have obviously begin to appreciate in value based on the game’s growth in the games performance. So if we have some of the top games within the platform, and by the way out, maybe I’ll touch on this later, But we’re doing native integrations with these games. So imagine Infinity Force not just on the platform itself, like your mobile or desktop, but actually on the front end of the game that you’re playing, which is something that’s so cool, and one of our biggest differentiators. So the NFT assets that we’re holding, obviously, they appreciate value, and that increases the value of the token and the value of those assets over time. We also operate because we operate our own internal guild, which we expect to scale from 1500 scholars to we have a lofty goal, but I didn’t achieve level one of 20,000 scholars by the end of 2022. They are generating income for Infinity Force, the Dao to not only facilitate more growth for the platform, onboarding more games, because as I said when we’re bringing more games on, they all have different endgame in-game economies, different mechanics, and requires a lot of work from our tech teams and their tech team. To support the game on the platform, so the income that we’re generating from there will allow us to grow the platform grow features grow functionality, make sure that everyone’s taken care of and the more we grow and the more game partners grow, the more value the token will have there. And then, of course, owners, if you’re a gamer, or a guild manager, owning the token itself, allows a specialised access to our part of our Infinity Academy. So the Infinity Academy is not gated by any means. But there when I say specialised access, there are these games that have the best players in the world playing them. So imagine you’re playing your favourite game, and then all of a sudden, the number one player or the top 10 players in that game, can come on and do tutorials and teaching your team exactly how to play. So holding the token brings that value to the x, the actual games and guilds. And then, you know, our token is also a dao token. So it will allow, you know, the governance aspect of it will allow people to decide on the strategic vision of the platform itself. And we can get into the sub-Dao sections of that too because I think that’s also a really interesting topic if you want.
Spicey | OIG:
Yeah, for sure. And, I mean, it’s just the ambitious things that you aim to achieve with regards to the native integration. I think that’s the first time I’ve heard of it. And surely, before we get into the sub Dao I’d like to hear you know, where your team originates from to accomplish these ambitious goals because it seems like, you know, you got a lot on your plate.
Sam Welch:
Yeah, we certainly do. So we’re a very decentralised team. We have. I’m a co-founder, I’m based in San Francisco. Like I said, I head of marketing. But we have other co-founders, like from the founding team. I mean, they live in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia. They come from very different backgrounds. So we have people who work in traditional finance, JP Morgan for 15 plus years. We have a partner, we have a partnerships lead or head of partnerships that, you know, comes from traditional gaming, like as in he worked for Atari and Activision Blizzard for the majority of his career, and is very well versed in gaming. And then we have, you know, say my marketing team to talk about them. Not only are they all crypto native, but they come from backgrounds that are more traditional corporations, and have product marketing expertise. Some of them have written for major news publications in the United States. So they’re great copywriters. I myself worked for around 10 years within a digital marketing agency in San Francisco. And then I transitioned over into I went to in house@blockchain.com. From there, I started advising early startups within DeFi on, you know, say, on Solana, for example. And that was really cool. And that’s actually how I landed at Infinity Force. And when we come to the tech team, they are all experienced blockchain engineers, and our especially our, our tech, Head of Technology has an extensive background in blockchain engineering, and it’s building out the product team that is making sure that everything is functioning the right way, and that we’re building out the right products. The product roadmap is set, and we’re functioning at top capacity. So we have a really well-rounded team that I’m super proud of. And again, as our company grows, we will continue to hire the best talent around the world. And like I said, decentralisation of blockchain has allowed this sort of beautiful ecosystem where you can draw from different regions of the world. And I find that really special coming from the United States where I’m not gonna trash on my country, but they’re, you know, especially in Silicon Valley, everyone thinks that they know everything, right And it’s just not true with my exposure to you know, to other regions across the world. There are there’s so much talent out there and so many people interested in building products and projects that matter.
Spicey | OIG:
I couldn’t have said it better myself, you know, drawing inspiration from all these other countries, it’s different cultures and lifestyles that are bringing up this new idea which in for in your case is called Infinity Force, that wouldn’t really have happened with, you know, in regards to Silicon Valley, everybody thinking the same way, right? So it’s good to see that and, you know, you guys do have an ambitious roadmap ahead. But with a well-experienced team to match, there’s no doubt that you can definitely achieve everything that you set out to do. So let’s get back to you touched on the sub-Dao for infinity for what is it? And how will it work?
Sam Welch:
For each game, as I touched on, they all have different end game economies and mechanics. And so what you really need are these sub-Dao leads, who drive the strategic vision of how those games function on the platform, from an operational standpoint and a strategic standpoint. So the sub Doa’s allow for governance over specific games. And, as I said, the functionality within Infinity Force. So anyone who’s, you know, an INFF token holder can participate and vote on specific needs within the platform itself. So that’s, that’s one thing that is on the roadmap, especially once we start onboarding more and more games. That will be a core functionality within Infinity Force and make sure that the players, the guilds, and the games are all served. And everyone is aligned and in what they want and what they need.
Spicey | OIG:
Yeah, and creating almost like a level playing field. As you said, there are just so many games with different mechanics, all in one ecosystem, there is a need for sub Dao to make it all work to provide a cohesive experience. Excellent, no, that’s great. So let’s, let’s switch gears here for a bit and go on to our Twitter questions segment. This is questions that were asked by our community, we usually post our announcements, five days in advance of our ama sessions, and we pick three of the best questions. And we’ll start with question number one. And question number one comes from@Balma322 who asks, Infinity Force is releasing their own NFT’s for the community with very limited supply, owners of Infinity Force NFTS will get very special access to many incentives. What incentives will Infinity Force NFT holders have access to? And what other benefits of holding the Infinity Force NFT? Will they have?
Sam Welch:
Yeah, so that’s a great question. First, I want to clarify, though, if you haven’t done so already, is that the NFT’s within our treasury are all tailored to the games. So when a guild comes on, they purchase NFT’s related to the game so that they can loan them out to the players, the Infinity Force NFT’s there’s a lot of creativity behind them. Right. So let’s take, for example, you are a player, or a guild that achieves a certain rank or within leaderboards it, like we can say, earned the most SLP in a month, or in a year, they all of a sudden, get a first minted Infinity Force NFT that recognises their accomplishment. And that gains them access into things special things like the tournaments that will facilitate within these games, to all sorts of things and for guilds themselves, achieving these things will also provide them with lower fees for using the platform. more access to say the specialised training that I alluded to, the sky’s the limit for these NFT’s. And while they are, you know, limited supply the values there because it’s, it’s really treating it like gamers earning rewards separate from just income. And everyone as a gamer, myself, you know, I’ve managed a guild back in the day for in world Warcraft, but we’re always trying to achieve server first with all the endgame content, right? And that when you’d get that you get a little reward for it and it’s cool that recognition but it didn’t doesn’t really translate to anything of value. Here we were working on the NFTS for better specific to Infinity Force and of course, listening to our community what they would want, but there’s a lot on the roadmap and a lot of decisions to make, but we’re really excited to have it very community-focused and making sure that the NFT’s aren’t just cosmetic, and they actually serve a purpose
Spicey | OIG:
Yeah, no, definitely sounds like there’s a lot of utility with those NFT’s. And yeah, I can’t wait to hear what other incentives like you said. I mean, a lot of games have done this in the past, like World of Warcraft, where they provide awards for meeting, you know, certain goals, but now it’s actually validated on the blockchain. So it has value, right? And it’s, it’s excellent to see in Infinity Force. Let’s go to question number two. And this person asks, without a maximum marketing system and large capital, the project will die? How do you convince us that you have or have a good marketing system, and the large amount of capital to build this project into a bigger and bigger one in the future?
Sam Welch:
I love this question. Well, any research into our project, you’ll see that we’re, we’re backed by the best, our lead investor for our seed round was Animoca brands, and Animoca brands is pouring tonnes and tonnes of capital within GameFi right now. So we had the support of them, along with probably around 30, other key investors who all provide different strategic value for our platform, from access to games, to access to technologies to access to external marketing support, I will say that the capital investment is not an issue for us. And it’s something that we don’t take for granted. But we are utilising to the best of our ability and being very strategic around how we take that capital and how we deploy it. The other question around marketing, yes, as someone who’s been in marketing for, gosh, 12,13, 14 years, I don’t know, don’t forget how old I am. I have a babyface, but I was born in the 80s. So, my marketing team, I’m very confident, and not only how they work internally on the project, but also how they handle a lot of our strategic partners who are not necessarily in the investors that I just laid out, utilising their networks, as a global product, we are trying to reach out to regions all across the world. And so accessing marketers and people with large networks and places, you know, like India and, and Latin America, and, you know, the United States, for example, you begin to sort of extend out your, your reach and your audience. So in terms of us failing, we’re not going to fail. Um, we have too many too much expertise, too many people supporting us. You know, I’m not hyping myself up. But frankly, I only hire people who are smarter than I am. So I’m really confident about it. And if you have any more questions around that, please reach out to me, and I can assure you better.
Spicey | OIG:
One of the biggest roadblocks for any project in the development stage is capital. And hearing that you are well off in terms of capital. That means, and you’re not taking it for granted means that, infinity force will grow and has a bright future ahead.
Sam Welch:
Yeah, and one thing I do want to clarify on that is that, as I mentioned earlier, is that our product was built essentially early, as we lead with product, we didn’t lead with marketing. So a lot of our core functionalities are already built out. And so the development typically comes later after fundraising after marketing after driving huge audience and engagement, that’s another reason why we’re really confident in our long term success.
Spicey | OIG:
Very well said. Couldn’t agree more. Let’s move on to question number three. And this is our last question from Twitter. And this person asks, the most important thing is the player when players are satisfied global partners increase, the price and value of the token will naturally increase? What plans does Infinity Force team have in mind to make the player ecosystem more robust and attract players to infinity force?
Sam Welch:
Yeah, great question. Well, first and foremost, we care deeply about our communities and our players. One of the things that are evident with this platform is providing access to anyone anywhere who wants to be a player or once own a guild a free way of doing so. So that in and of itself will attract players to use the platform. Number two here will be the access to games. So with our partnerships with a lot of these games that already have massive player bases, or people interested in playing their games upon release, when we onboard them onto our platform And as I kind of spoke to earlier, there will be native integrations as in not only living on the front end of those games but also tied because we’re chain agnostic, Tying the off-chain data to the on-chain data of the game through technology, like super Oracle’s will power the platform. And naturally, I mean, when you think about it, if you’re a player in that game, you have to use the Infinity Force platform, right? So that will have its own growth effect and network effects where a game start to see Wow, okay, this platform is actually part of this game. And this game has tonnes and tonnes of players. So in order for us to gain players, we probably should pursue something like this, or you know, a platform that offers all this functionality. You know, the other thing about players is just we frankly, care so much about the player experience, and taking care of individuals. And that started with our own guild, I sometimes go within our guild and host amas, that is totally irrelevant to the Infinite Force product, that is just more focused on community and love and empathy. And they asked me whatever questions they want, you know, from advice on dating to things about my own life, it’s hilarious, right, and a lot of fun. And so we’re very tapped into not only what our community wants and needs, but it lets it guides us on our mission to, to really empower these communities and raise them up. And it’s part of our core mission.
Spicey | OIG:
yeah, and, again, just touching on that same point about native integration, that is definitely the gateway to mass adoption. And I can’t wait to see that in action. Really, that’s something I’m most excited about. And you also recognise the importance of community by holding these amas that are off-topic, but still engaging, right? So it’s good to see that, you know, as the co-founder, you recognise that, and basically, Infinity Force is in good hands, and everybody that joins it, but great answer once again. And that concludes our Twitter questions segment. So, Sam, you’ve told us a lot of the development to date. But could you tell us more about what’s coming up on the future roadmap for Infinity Force?
Sam Welch:
Yeah, of course. So wow, we have a lot coming up. And a lot of things for everyone to be excited about. Let’s tackle development first, right? There are still features that need to be built out and fine-tuned. There’s the actual onboarding of games, which will require some time because all these games are at different stages of their development. And we need to connect our tech teams with their tech teams. But that is why our global product launch will probably come in alignment with some of our major gaming partners like planet quest, for example. Then, outside of the development of the product itself, we have our IDO, which is coming up and our public sale and listing of our native token, which is the INF F. So keep a lookout on that, that will be announced way ahead of time. And then, you know, some other cool things will be partnerships. We’re partnering with some major guilds, and not only games, so guilds and technology that will really shine a light on not only our capabilities and our functionality, but also guilds can onboard that are existing onto our platform. And so they will naturally bring their players and their guild managers over onto the platform. So I’m excited I can’t announce this right now because we have a marketing calendar. But you know, just stay tuned and follow our Twitter and our telegram and our Discord, and you’ll have it all covered. One thing I also want to point out is that In regards to our are testing of these features that are coming out, and those NFT’s from that last question, we will be doing beta testing with games. And so early access to the platform will to our platform will be available to holders of our token to owners of our NFT’s. And they will get to experience the platform for all it’s worth before the global product launch. So that’s another thing I’m really excited to see. Because from there, obviously, things will break. And we’ll fix them. And then we’ll realise that there are other features that are demanded, and we’ll build them. And so it’s just going to be iteration after iteration until we get something that is running smoothly and is perfect for a full release. So really, really stoked on everything.
Spicey | OIG:
A lot of things on your roadmap, and it sounds like you’re excited about everything. But is there something that stands out above the rest? What what are you most excited about?
Sam Welch:
I’m most excited about GameFi In general. Yeah. We’re really in our infancy here. And I’m starting to see a lot of negativity around it. And it’s just, I would encourage people not to pay attention to that noise. The gaming industry is a 200 billion-plus industry as it stands right now. The market cap for GameFi is lower than some of the market caps for meme coins. So there’s a lot of space to grow. And with all the capital investment I’m seeing across the entire world from major VCs, and save the aggregation that we’re seeing across major corporations like Microsoft purchasing Activision Blizzard, they’re all in development of these games. So it’s something that’s not going away. And it’s something that operates independently of traditional cryptocurrency, right, and you don’t need to think about that in that same light. Because web three, the beauty of it is that there are so many verticals, business models that are about to crop up in the next two to five years, that will displace a lot of the traditional web two solutions that exist. And so again, not something that’s going away Infinity Force is a very long term vision. We touched on the product roadmap for this year, but we intend to expand out and support ecosystems within other business models as well.
Spicey | OIG:
And, you know, it’s very good to note that, as you said, it is in its infancy and a lot of the gaming genre in the blockchain industry is dictated by the VCs not necessarily the gamers themselves because they just haven’t journeyed into the played earn and GameFi space yet. So yeah, I’m very eager as well to see what’s going to happen. But to all our viewers, the official links for Infinity Force will be in the description. Be sure to subscribe and follow all of their social platforms to keep up to date with all the things coming out from Infinity Force. This year is bound to be one of the greatest for GameFi and you can’t miss a thing. Thanks again, Sam. And we’ll be in touch. Yeah,
Sam Welch:
thank you for having me on board. Pleasure.
Spicey | OIG:
Well, OIG family that wraps up another episode in our AMA series, be sure to like subscribe and hit the bell notification button to stay up to date with all the news coming out from all OIG. Until next time, see you soon.
Infinity Force
Twitter: https://twitter.com/InfinityForce_
Telegram:https://t.me/InfinityForceO
Website:https://infinityforce.com/
