Interview with EZZY Game’s key figures: Lead Developer and Lead Marketer
EZZYThe M2E/P2E game EZZY Game was launched at the peak of the bear market in November 2022 and has been steadily developing since then. This young project was launched by a little-known team of developers that wanted to breathe new life into the M2E (Move-to-Earn) sector already fading at the time. Now, this project counts over 25,000 users. It’s not a big number compared with the peak performance of the sector’s flagship — STEPN — that had about 2 million users in the spring of 2022.
Amid growing interest to EZZY Game in the community, we decided to interview Vipul Babu, the app’s Lead Developer, and Lisa Wilson, project’s Marketer, in order to understand why they selected this particular sector and what are their plans for the future.
Have fun!☺️
● What’s your job in the EZZY Game project? What was your path to the crypto industry? Tell us a few words about yourself and your team.
Lead Developer Vipul Babu:
I’m a technical specialist with 10 years of development experience. I’ve been in cryptocurrency for more than 5 years. I know this sector as a developer, tester and user. Previously, I led the development teams at CEX and DEX crypto exchanges that were among the top hundred well-known crypto projects. I have excellent workflow management skills, and I am focused on results and continuous improvement. My specialties are quite numerous — data protection, security, frontend and backend. I’m a co-author of the project.
Lead Marketer Lisa Wilson:
My name is Lisa, and I’ve worked in marketing for more than 10 years. I’ve worked with a variety of projects and companies: from small Instagram pages to social media management and marketing strategy development for large brands. I wasn’t interested in the cryptocurrency sector until 2019 when I was hired to work in a cryptocurrency project. Then, I worked for various projects, learned about marketing in this sector, and finally last year a friend offered me to join the EZZY Game team. The last project where I had worked was then “dying” due to the KSM slump (which the ecosystem was tied to) so I agreed :)
● Where does the EZZY Game team come from? What country?
Liza:
Personally, I am Ukrainian by nationality, but I have been living in Canada since I was 5 years old. As for the rest of the team, it’s sooooo difficult to say. Just because I don’t even know who lives where XD. We have a couple of guys from Turkey, 5 guys from Ukraine, 3 of them now in Poland. There’s a couple of guys from Russia, but they have not lived there for a long time. Our Lead Developer is Indian by nationality, but he lives in France. Basically, we all live online, our country is called https:// :)
● How many developers do you have on the team (the people who are responsible for the code, app, website)?
Vipul:
We have a Scrum team and we use the Scrum approach. Currently, we have 1 Techlead, 1 System Analyst, 2 Backend Developers, 2 Frontend Developers, 2 Mobile Developers, 2 QA Engineers, and 1 Devops Engineer. We also have a Product Manager who determines the project’s development path.
● Have you launched any other projects besides EZZY Game or is this your first product? Are you planning to create/develop crypto projects in the future?
Vipul:
This is not the first experience in crypto projects for our team. With almost the same people we have now, we worked on one of the well-known exchanges (we will not mention the name though). Besides, we developed crypto fast buy/sell services for DEX platforms.
● Did you write EZZY Game’s code from scratch or did you pick something up from other projects?
Vipul:
I can say that 70% of the code we have written is unique. The remaining 30% comes from the popular libraries and has been integrated in our project. Thus, the crypto wallet within the app is completely unique and uses special algorithms (based on our experience) for countering hacker attacks.
● Why did you choose the M2E concept? After STEPN and many other projects, we’ve had more than enough.
Liza:
The idea originated with the project’s founders. They wanted to breathe new life into the sector and go back to the basics so that people could really just walk and get rewarded, not play in all sorts of casinos, farm loot boxes and all that, like in other popular M2E games which became complex, comprehensive services and lost touch with the original idea.
● Why is EZZY Game unique compared to other M2E projects? Why should users choose EZZY Game, rather than Walken, STEPN or some other project?
Liza:
EZZY Game is simple. It doesn’t have dozens of unnecessary mechanics, it’s easy to start, it’s even easier to get and withdraw tokens. EZZY Game always meets users halfway in terms of all its principles and features.
In another project you would be maxing out your character for 3 months, sorting out a bunch of mechanics and counting profit in spreadsheets; in EZZY Game, you will figure everything out very quickly and will be able to immediately withdraw your reward.
Each pair of game Sneakers now “live” for 10 days during which you get back all the tokens used to get the Sneakers + get more on top. This is a very convenient mechanic.
Plus, each new user can get trial Sneakers as a gift, which will allow them to get real tokens. It’s a very nice feature for beginners.
● We’ve recently added a coin-catching game to the project. Why did you do this if EZZY Game is an M2E project?
Vipul:
We want to make M2E as simple as we can. We added this simple game because we are focused on users around the world, with some of them having long rains or snow and -40 ° C outside. In such bad weather you do not want to leave the house at all. Besides, the user can just get sick. What should they do in this case? Lose the opportunity to earn tokens? No, we don’t want that! That’s why we came up with a similar mechanic — a P2E game where everyone can achieve 100% success with minimal effort.
● Do you plan to add more mechanics in the future? If so, what will they be needed for?
Vipul:
Mechanics that would simplify the processes in the app, some of which have already been added — namely, the wallet with EZY, USDT and BNB support, exchange feature within the app and token withdrawal to any external wallet.
Game mechanics — creation of tournaments aimed at both those who walk actively and those who like to play more.
Mechanics aimed at increasing liquidity on PancakeSwap for the users who want to provide liquidity (between you and me, we are working on adding farming). We have already posted an updated roadmap with all our plans on the website, you can review it here — https://ezzy.game/.
● What will be the most important update of 2023?
Vipul:
2023 has just begun, but in the first quarter we already released two major updates to the app and website. We do not plan to stop there! We have a lot of ideas to implement: Sneakers as a gift to another user, development of a Partnership Program, mechanics of EZZY boxes and many others.
● Do you plan to increase the Sneakers Durability? Or other parameters, such as the price (amount to get the Sneakers)?
Vipul:
Durability, and other parameters of the Sneakers, is calculated by artificial intelligence using a special algorithm based on a variety of parameters. For example, in the March collection, Sneakers Durability is 6 days instead of 10 (CryptoPizza News Editor note: the interview was recorded before the release of the collection which is no longer available).
● Are you planning to change the Partnership Program? Would you maybe consider the referrals also benefiting from it?
Vipul:
Yes, in the next quarter already, we plan to upgrade the Partnership Program, and it will actually be aimed at giving bonuses to those who register using a promo code. We will tell you more about the new Partnership Program in the news.
● The EZY token has been trading around $0.05–$0.06 for a long time now. How have you managed to achieve such stability?
Liza:
Well-developed tokenomics, correct mathematical calculations and sustainable development. I don’t understand tokenomics that deeply — it was developed by other specialists. But in terms of development, I can say that EZZY Game, unlike other projects, simply does not pursue hypes, pump prices or engage fake audiences. We are developing gradually, even in terms of marketing — we do not advertise immediately and everywhere, we do so evenly and smoothly. First of all, we showcase the advantages of our product to earn users’ trust; we do not “drive” people into the project saying “JOIN NOW AND MAKE A BUNCH OF X’s”.
● Liquidity of the EZY token is now just over $100,000, do you plan to increase it in the near future?
Liza:
Yes, the team is dealing with this issue. We’re developing a few mechanics that will allow us to increase liquidity over time. What are they? For now, it’s a secret :)
● EZY liquidity is locked up until September. What happens next?
Vipul:
We do not intend to shut the project down in September — if that’s what you’re implying. By that time, we plan to release a number of new features aimed at increasing the token’s liquidity — not only by our team, but also by those who will be ready to send their EZY and USDT tokens to the PancakeSwap liquidity pool, including the “whales”.
We have already received various requests, including one for the purchase of a large package of EZY tokens, but we refused intentionally because we want to create a decentralized and profitable tool for all players, including “whales”. We expect that our new solution will not only improve liquidity, but also greatly reduce the likelihood of steep falls of the token price on DEX, thus making the project even more interesting for the community!
● Why was the token created on the BNB network? Was it hard to write smart contracts and develop a Web3 project in BNB Chain?
Vipul:
BNB was not a network we just picked at random. There were a few reasons behind this decision — we were looking at the largest blockchain networks with smart contracts support, minimal commissions and reliable smart contracts currently in use. In addition, at the time of EZZY Game creation, we already knew how to write a Web3 project with NFT tokens and MetaMask integration (CryptoPizza News Editor note: After the March update, the MetaMask wallet is no longer needed for the game, all transactions are now carried out directly in the app). That is why we could easily do the same and even improve the process in the EZZY Game project.
● In which markets (countries/regions) is EZZY Game most popular right now? Where are you registering active development and where are you planning to make a move in the near future?
Liza:
Hard to say. At the initial stage, it was Eastern Europe and Asia. Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Russia and so on. Currently, we are also developing the Chinese community, we have a large inflow of English-speaking audiences from around the world. We do not plan to enter certain markets in a particular country, it is 2023 after all — we are all online now. So we are developing everywhere at once :)
● Multiple crypto projects have recently been experiencing problems with Apple due to their complex policies. Are you having difficulties working with the App Store?
Vipul:
I’m not going to hide it — we’ve had such cases which is why we were forced to transfer part of our functionality to the Web platform (CryptoPizza News Editor note: after the March update, all transactions are carried out in the app, users do not need to work on the EZZY Game website), we had to abandon some features, such as the use of NFT’s in Sneakers. For a very long time, we’ve been figuring out the requirements for iOS app publication. The problem is that the requirements are often modified and supplemented, sometimes it seems it’s finally perfect — but they add new things again. Many users know that our app has the Delete Account feature. In a nutshell, this feature appeared solely because of the App Store requirements. Despite our rich experience in dealing with iOS, a successful publication in the AppStore is always a holiday and a micro-victory for our team!
● Many GameFi projects try to start brightly, on a grand scale, so that everyone can immediately learn about them. One can’t say the same about your app. Why have you chosen a more moderate marketing approach?
Liza:
As mentioned above, we are focused on sustainable and long-term development, not on pumping and dumping. Besides, when many people’s trust in M2E is undermined, such a strategy is no longer that relevant. Therefore, instead of aggressive marketing, we chose to gain the trust of our users.
● The past few years have shown there are interesting GameFi ideas and solutions (such as Axie Infinity, STEPN), but the token pricing displays faults and shortcomings in their tokenomics. To put it simply, all such projects only “live” as long as there is a stable inflow of new users. How have you solved this problem (and have you actually solved it)?
Vipul:
Let’s try to sort it out step by step.
- Our project is not built as a “pyramid”. This was our main condition — the motto of our team! The project is based on game mechanics that allow players to both receive a nice reward for walking/running or playing and use tokens within the app in the future for entertainment and satisfaction of human needs, for example, to compete. In addition, the project is aimed at promoting a healthy lifestyle all over the world because movement is life!
- We’ve designed the project tokenomics for many years into the future, with the goal not being to earn x’s on the project’s profits, but to create a unique gaming ecosystem.
- Currently, to expand the community, we naturally need an inflow of new users, but this dependence will gradually decrease as we strike some sort of balance between the inflow and outflow of players and their engagement.
● In your opinion, what are the future prospects of the GameFi market and of your project within this ecosystem?
Vipul:
Personally, I think that the GameFi market is nearly limitless because it is based on the human need for games. The use of tokens in the games is certainly progress because the transactions have become easier and more secure to run. Our project fits perfectly into the GameFi projects ecosystem and, I hope, will continue to attract the attention of players and will introduce new users to our community.
● What do you think about metaverses? Is this our future or utopia? Will EZZY Game have a place in the metaverse world?
Vipul:
Oddly enough, we’ve had some experience in a project that combined VR and GameFi — which is why I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, gaming processes and mechanics are unique in VR; on the other hand, they are more complex. We could, of course, dream a little about EZZY Game’s VR metaverse and imagine a VR game replacing the existing game, with training in different parts of the world — with the opportunity to walk through the streets of Paris or run through the back streets of Bangkok. However, only time will tell what’s going to happen in the future!
That’s all we got. Thank you for your time, EZZY Game; we wish you further development. If you are interested in the project, you can download the app here: https://onelink.to/8p6zv9. Project’s website — https://ezzy.game/.