Interview: CEO Emilian Ciocanea on GoldFever, and How it Blends Realism and Skills to Offer a Fresh P2E Experience

GoldFever is a play-to-earn game that stands apart from the rest by offering a completely new gaming experience in combination with plenty of monetization opportunities. We recently caught up with GoldFever’s CEO Emilian Ciocanea to learn more about the game. In the interview, Emilian explains their vision and the journey so far.

NewsBTC: Hi Emilian, let us begin by introducing you to our readers. Can you please tell us more about the journey that led you to GoldFever?

Emilian: First of all, a warm hello to your readers – we are really glad we can bring the Gold Fever story to your audiences. I have been a business builder, an entrepreneur, with Product & Business Management for over 20 years now; and a blockchain investor since the very beginning of this industry.

I am from those who have seen Ethereum valuing 5 USD. The conviction that the world can be improved and seeing the reality from different angles helped me tap into different emergent industries – at that moment –  with the purpose to take the innovative side and create valid business models that would generate value and change perceptions.

Gold Fever started off in 2020, amidst the Covid lockdown. It was a bootstrap project in the beginning, like most of the projects I started, building up on the idea reiterated by CZ  Changpeng Zhao, head of Binance, saying, back in 2019, that “Gaming will be an early adopter of blockchain technologies.” Inspired by the Gold Rush and how gold digging impacts the economy of a region, I developed the MVP using my own resources and pitched it to investors along with the idea that an MMORPG on the blockchain would bring in the best of the two worlds, would remain a fun game, but also a relevant platform for savvy traders.

Two years later, I look at the genesys moment with a wiser and grateful eye – the complexity of an MMORPG in terms of gameplay influenced the way we envisioned the game economy and the way we approached the go-to-market: first, allow settlers to buy the game assets and allow them to learn the economy, then invite passionate players. Of course, everyone is welcome at any time. In between, there were a lot of hurdles given to the complexity of the game and the complexity of our smart contracts.

We opened our kitchen for our early adopters so that they know the exact status of the development, we have a team of loyal players that have been with us from day 1 and helped with constant feedback and playing, we are now in beta and planning to launch end of Q2/Q3 2023 the mainnet website version.

NewsBTC: Tell us more about GoldFever. How is it different from other P2E games?

Emilian: GoldFever is different from several points of view.

• Gameplay based on realism and on skills, with a free-to-play

The gameplay is based on realism and it mimics real life, which opens the gate for a more refined and maybe mature approach. The graphics are beautiful – it’s a dark-themed game built on Unreal 5.1, with action happening in the rainforest. Some parts are so real you can’t tell what is what.

• Game-Yiled-Generator (GYG) NFTs – created thanks to Ownership and decentralization.

We decided to go that extra mile that was on everyone’s lips. Rethinking ownership and actually doing it on blockchain allowed us to go beyond the P2E model, a revolution in itself.

We decentralized the game – really decentralized –  took the main game assets and changed their ownership. Give them to the players. Lands, buildings, transportation, shops or any type of commercial buildings. We turned these vital assets for the game into NFTs. Soon, we realized they will produce yield only if players would interact socially. So, considering the importance of social interaction for the economy, we created the GYG NFTs – as they are digital assets that can produce in-game yield.

The purpose of the decentralized ownership system is to generate a stable in-game economy and rely on a balance between “makers” and “takers” to keep things flowing. Such an economy needs a roughly equal mix of players who invest time and effort into generating assets to sell and players who want to spend real money to buy the product of that work as a shortcut to in-game success or status.

The term we coined for Gold Fever is the Game-Yield-Generator model.

So, in this challenging Gold Rush, you can not only grind for gold and earn, stake, lend or lease items, but also – and this is the GYG, the novel part – you would interact with each other to develop and trade the items you need within the game. You can work smart as an entrepreneur: either employ people that will help you increase your revenues or just set some fixed prices and let your NFTs, like buildings or planes, produce.

Therefore, Gold Fever opted-in for decentralization – selling the GYGs to players, meaning all game assets and infrastructure – will stabilize the economy and create the base for the “makers”. The next step, being to “invite” the “takers” – the passionate players to actually play an attractive and juicy game, with a stable infrastructure.  

• Really cool graphics

I believe we are among the few – if not the only, MMORPG PvP survival blockchain game based on realism. And you can tell just by looking at it, it has cool graphics.

NewsBTC: Please provide an insight into the GoldFever tokenomics and in-game economy.

Emilian: If there is one single thing you should know about the in-game economy is the fact that Gold Fever is evolving the play2earn economy. How? By giving full ownership to the players – vital in-game assets like boats, planes, merchant shops, buildings, lands, mining claims, blueprints – are turned into NFTs.

We will sell them to our community or to any savvy trader as they are very important for the game to actually happen, but, the more popular the game becomes, the more valuable the NFTs become – for the players, for the crypto traders, for the free market.

Another important detail is the fact that we created new use cases for the NFT technology.

The investment logic behind this is quite obvious if you are a gamer, less likely to be grasped if you are a crypto investor.

You see, gamers are well aware of how much money they spend in-game to buy the skins, the weapons, the transportation or the food their character needs to survive. At a certain moment, they all considered how it would feel if they received a share of that money.

Survival games are supposed to allow players to survive inside the game without having to spend money, right?

If you want to eat Coconuts all day long, we won't stop you, but don't expect your characters to be strong in battle.

Eat a good breakfast from the Bar! pic.twitter.com/yg63PtF1qu

— Gold Fever (@GoldFeverGame) December 2, 2022

All we did was to turn the assets that, in-game, produce this sort of items into NFTs.

Basically, when you buy it, it brings along several “perks” thanks to the ownership – you own it, you set the prices for the items it produces, you put it to work by investigating the in-game offer-demand.

So, apart from the default set-up and the NFT – very much similar to yield farming – you have the possibility, if you choose to get involved and put in some effort, to multiply the basic revenue this NFT can produce you.

A small example of how this works. Do you know the stores from Diablo Immortal? You went there and bought things because you needed them to play better. The money went to the game developers. Well, in Gold Fever, the item store is an NFT you can own and turn into a profitable business.

It produces a fixed number of items and services daily that could be increased by hiring other players to do tasks such as bringing wood, hunting, transportation from building to building, or special quests.

YOU, as a business owner, YOU set the price and you decide what service your building offers, you decide the prices or the items your building is selling.

An example: you decide the price, but for the sake of simplicity let’s consider 1 USD price per item/service.

Say…you sell 5 different items per day at 1USD/item with a minimal stock of 5 pieces from each and 30 people need your services – parking, hotel sleeping, sharpening, repairing etc and you charge 1USD/service.

This means an income of:

• 25USD/day – 750USD/month from items;
• 30USD/day – 900USD/month if one person needs only one service
• 55USD/day – 1650USD/month in total

NewsBTC: Walk us through the gameplay

Emilian: Gold Fever is a free-to-play multiplayer strategy game. It hosts an enormous playable area that is covered by dense and dangerous jungles, tall mountains and, rivers filled with gold.

The action takes place in a generic Oceania island, at the beginning of the 20th century, around 1930. The world is still reeling from its previous global conflict. Maps have been redrawn, riches have been reallocated and colonies have changed hands. And after all of that, there is still so much to explore.

Far across the oceans, there is an island that hides a dangerous secret. Rumors speak of an untapped source of gold and precious minerals. This has lured various brave Adventurers to the Island to try their luck at seizing fame and fortune. As if battling hunger, fatigue, the elements, and the hostile fauna of the Island wasn’t enough, the Tribal natives relentlessly defend their homes and holy golden remnants of their ancestral gods.

The danger is ever-present on the island whether battling human enemies or being hunted by predators. Surrounded by the never-ending ocean, no one can escape the siren call of the Gold Fever. Players can craft tools for survival and combat, forage for plants and herbs, and compete with other players for dominance in the search for gold.  

You can play the game as an adventurer seeking gold or as a tribal defending the native gold. Being a survival game, the confrontation is thrilling, dangerous, and full of surprises, but it leads to a most-wanted reward – the golden nuggets in the form of an in-game currency called NGL.

NewsBTC: What are the different monetization opportunities available for a regular user within the GoldFever ecosystem?

Emilian: Gold Fever has several angles when it comes to monetization.

• Since it is built on a P2E economy, you can make money from the P2E strategies such as grind for gold, speculate NGL, flip our NFTs, participate in quests and tasks coming from the people who own the in-game assets and are developing the in-game economy.
• Another monetization opportunity comes from owning NFTs, of course. We called the GYG NFTs – game yield generator NFTs – meaning, as I described above, that, if you own such an NFT and you get involved in the game economy by following closely the offer-demand ratio, you can become a very wealthy business owner. Otherwise, the GYG NFTs can provide you with a basic income based on the default items they produce and are sold depending on the number of players.
• Another monetization opportunity is trading via our exchange – you can stake-burn, buy-sell, borrow-lend, offer collateral. Renting NFTs out for a limited period of time to other players or employing the NFTs to perform specific automated tasks for an appropriate fee is another way to earn money in Gold Fever.
• A fourth monetization opportunity is our affiliate program – which has a unique trait – you get to win constantly from all the purchase actions the person you bring in is making – you win from onboarding a new user, from the NFTs that user is buying acquisition, from the in-game taxes that user is generating or from all the taxes generated by that user when using the website exchange.

NewsBTC: Would you like to share some information about your team at GoldFever?

Emilian: Currently the team has 55 experts, it’s an international team, with a gaming background, as follows:

• 11 Game Developers Unreal Engine C+++
• 6 Backend & Blockchain Developers
• 14 Artists 3D & Concept Artwork
• 4 Technical Artists
• 3 Environmental Artists
• 1 Animator
• 4 Sound Designers
• 5 Game Designers
• 5 Marketing Specialists

NewsBTC: The P2E gaming segment is gradually becoming a heavily contested space, with lots of new projects entering the market. How do you intend to keep up or overtake your competition?

Emilian: I’m happy to say that, from what I’ve seen, there is actually no competition in our niche. There is no Survival-RPG realistic PVP video game out there and I’m afraid they won’t come anytime soon. There are other games out there, some interesting, some pure crap, but there are enough players for everyone.

The truth is that we are looking forward to some competition that could actually help us learn something, but until serious studios decide to adventure in this realm, we will have no competition. Making an MMO takes 3-5 years and millions of dollars and that’s if you have experience. Doing a crypto MMO will take even more.

Personally, I like what Star Atlas is trying to do because I like Eve Online and Star Citizen, but also because we, as a studio, are planning to add two more games connected to Gold Fever. One would be a contemporary GTA-like game and one would be a Space Conquering game. Your character would start in Gold Fever and your great-grandchildren will inherit your genes and wealth in these 2 games

NewsBTC: We are curious to know about GoldFever’s investors, partnerships and collaborations, if any. Would you like to shine some light on it?

Emilian: Of course. Gold Fever was vetted early on by the DAO Maker which incubated us. I would add here Huobi, Matrix Capital and LD Capital, along with somewhere around 200 KOls and influencers which put their faith in us and became initial token holders.

NewsBTC: How does one get started on GoldFever?

Emilian: It’s very simple.

• Right now, if you have a mask NFT attached to your character.
• You get the character for free, while onboarding.
• You get the mask from OpenSea, mid-January.

Otherwise, once we go to the mainnet, you will have to create an account on our website and you will instantly get the wallet and the free character and you can start playing the game.

NewsBTC: What is in store for GoldFever, and the gaming community at large in the coming days?

Emilian: As stages of development, after setting the game core loop – the gold grinding, we will start, from Q1 2023  the decentralization and sell all the NFT infrastructure to settlers/entrepreneurs willing to develop the economy.

Around mid-January we are planning our first NFT sale – the Genesys Masks – which will be available on NFT marketplace OpenSea. It unlocks a premium beta of the game that will go live from the end of January up until the end of June.

The premium beta has installed for the players prizes up to 1 million USD in NGL and NFTs. Players won’t be able to access the mainnet until Q3 without a mask, a very special NFT that gives you super perks and bonuses.