Build a Startup in the BlueLight Multiverse With Founder Andrew Frost Moroz
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
crypto, game, people, startup, gaming, aloha browser, play, gamers, blockchain, san francisco, world, Cyprus, blue, build, listeners, fun, take my muffin, blockchain gaming, new to crypto
SPEAKERS
Andrew Frost, Crypto Travels Michael
Michael 00:00
Welcome to the New To Crypto Podcast designed to guide you through the crypto landscape with pinpoint accuracy created for the new and intermediate crypto investor. Join your host Crypto Travels Michael as he takes you through the different facets of getting started and succeeding in your crypto journey. New To Crypto Podcast brings you new episodes daily Monday through Friday with surprise bonus episodes sometimes on the weekend. Let me ask you, Are you new to crypto and don’t know where to start? Are you more experienced but have questions? Then you’re in the right place. This podcast is designed for you coming at you from the trading center in the lifestyle design studio. Here’s your host Crypto Travels Michael. Hey, welcome to today’s podcast, and Happy New Year Happy 2023. By the way, I’m excited about today’s interview. Today I have a phenomenal guest. He’s the founder of Aloha browser and viewpoint labs. He has launched over 100 web and mobile international projects in the US, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. And today we’re going to talk all about his latest project. Blue light is an economic strategy game about building your own startups in a multiverse. And today we’re gonna dive deeper into this. Do me a big favor and welcome Andrew frost to the show. Andrew, thanks for coming out. It’s a pleasure to have you here.
Andrew Frost 01:32
Thanks, Michael. Hello, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here. Happy New Year, everyone. And I hope you will enjoy today’s podcast.
Michael 01:40
Awesome, man. Hey, before we dive into everything about blue light, and everything you have going on in your as well as your team. Can you share just a little bit about yourself with our listeners?
Andrew Frost 01:51
Sure, sure. No problem. I’m the founder of Aloha browser. And some of the companies and the viewpoint Labs is that ties them all. Just to give you a brief idea of Aloha browsers, one of the first private browsers out there primarily focused on mobiles. But we also have desktop versions as well. And we do a lot of things with crypto on the browser, with wallets and chains and everything. And I was traveling a lot to different events, crypto-related and not. And what I’ve actually seen is that whenever you go through crypto when it’s like it’s extremely boring, unless you like these graphs and numbers and everything. Everybody’s like, so bored there. And we thought that a little bit more fun double crypto need actually. And then we met with a nice guy from toon box, which is an animation studio based here in Cyprus as well. They do a lot of animations. They are pretty famous, they have billions of views on YouTube. And that was the day they came up with a new animation series called Take My Muffin. It is available for free on YouTube as well right now you can go check it out. It’s basically Rick and Morty about startups. And it’s so amazing. It’s so funny, and it’s absolutely crazy. And we thought we have to turn it into a game. And that’s going to be like a super fun crypto project that we have to bring to this world. And that’s basically how blue light started. And it was almost over a year ago. And during this time, we’ve been working on blue light for quite a while. And we’ve reached a lot and we hopefully will talk about it today.
Michael 03:42
Fantastic. So you’re in, by the way, you’re joining us. You’re living here from Cyprus at the moment. Yes.
Andrew Frost 03:48
Yeah. Yeah. Assigning Island and Mediterranean, not the one in Texas.
Michael 03:52
Yeah, beautiful place. Yes, where you are. So Andrew, can you just share with our listeners just like an overview about blue light before we you know, notch down and go deeper into some of the different aspects of it?
Andrew Frost 04:06
Yeah, so as I said, the idea behind blue light is to bring a crypto game. That is also fun. And that is something new because if you take a look at everything we had on the market, before, they were kind of boring, they don’t have any gameplay. You just click one, or two buttons in the hope to earn something. And It more looks like a low-pay job than actually a game. You don’t get a lot of fun out of that. Plus, it’s really, really hard to onboard. And, for example, if you are not a very tech-savvy person get all through this hell with a setup in your wallet and connect it to change and everything. It’s extremely complicated. So that’s why these games are not very popular. And from our point of view, they’re not very good at gameplay at all. And also from the economic point of view, as well, sometimes they are quite mixed up. So we tried to bring a level of game experience to crypto. Okay. And, but talking more about the game, as I said, it’s based on our take on my marketing animation series. And it’s all about a group of people who tried to run a startup in a virtual world of a virtual copy of Silicon Valley that we called Sun crypto, which is basically San Francisco with a little bit of twist. Okay, if you haven’t been to San Francisco, you’ll be walking around and be like, ah, yeah, I know that. So it’s kind of fun. And the main goal of the game is to build your own startup. And of course, there’s every startup, you want to become a unicorn or a DECA corn, or the biggest company in the virtual world. So you will have to fight not only your competitors, okay, not only trying to find some investment opportunities, but also complete, a very complicated project, and you will face a lot of let’s call it daily challenges, right, like internet outages, or like bugs in your code, or something like that. And it’s like, every time you play in it, it’s like, you’ll launch every new startup. And if you ever had a startup in your life, you’ll be like, that was my day in the office once. Yeah, it actually happened to me. So it is all powered with a, a lot of crazy humor. Okay, and it’s like, it’s very funny. I hope everybody will try it and will like it.
Michael 06:47
Absolutely. Thanks for sharing that. Andrew. I’m actually involved in a company helping to build the next unicorn in, in tech in the blockchain space. So there’s more, more to come about that this year. So I’m very interested to dive into, you know, your blockchain game. I love the fact that you designed it in that way, where, you know, the goal is ultimately to build, you know, a unicorn and go through all the struggles that all of us have gone through and trying to build a startup, you know, startup companies, I wanted to ask you, how did you actually get into gaming and blockchain-based gaming.
Andrew Frost 07:25
So we’ve launched a couple of games before, a couple of years ago, and before a local browser, we had worked on a couple of mobile games, we worked on some projects in terms of marketing, helping some other companies grow. And in the viewpoint labs team, we had plenty of people who came from the gaming world. And Cyprus is a major gaming development hub. So basically everybody talks to everybody. And that’s why the game as for crypto as I said, we work with crypto a lot in our browser, being a web three browser. We support everything and we try to be on the edge, bringing new technologies as soon as they appear. So we communicate with all the major companies in the blockchain sphere. And there’s still a lot of FinTech in Cyprus as well. And even by Nance is coming very soon, they opening something here, we got a visit from CZ recently. So it’s gonna be a good place for crypto as well.
Michael 08:32
Excellent. So always the core audience, you would say for blue light.
Andrew Frost 08:41
I would like to see that. What we tried to do is not to cover only blockchain gamers, who already tried some other competitor games, either like them or not, or who try to earn a lot of money just playing a game. But first of all, from my point of view, the game has to be fun, right? It’s like, you pay basically with your time. And you’re not very enjoying when you spend a lot of your time and you’re not happy about it. We don’t want to be the time waster. We have to have some enjoyment and you’re in our lives, right? And video games are kind of a big part of it for a lot of people. But so far what we’ve seen on blockchain gaming, or game fi or overall, is that it’s very low fi if you know what I mean. If you bring in a gamer who played PlayStation all his life, to blockchain games, he’ll be like, what’s going on this like, what the 90s or 80s or what? Right, so it has to be a very, very good product. Yeah. And we committed to that to make it look good and playable. and bring joy basically to people. So to answer your question, we’re trying to target the whole audience of games, not only crypto games, in particular but trying to bring onboard everybody ease in the onboarding process. So basically, you will not need a wallet just to start playing at some point, you might want to have it. But for crypto, of course, for hardcore crypto gamers, we also planned a lot of stuff. So if you are already into crypto gaming, it’s going to be a whole new world for you, but it’s going to be a familiar world.
Michael 10:39
Okay, and how and where can our listeners go, to dive into your game?
Andrew Frost 10:46
So currently, currently, we’re at the private alpha stage, you can actually go and play but you have to be approved because we don’t want to put a lot of people in right now because we’re still polishing. Okay, and we want to bring a very good impression. But your listeners can go to blue light dot IMC, okay? And just sign up on the forum, and they will receive access very, very soon, okay? And in a couple of months from now, we’ll be launching a public version that everybody can just join and play straight away.
Michael 11:24
Fantastic. And we have all those links in the description below this video, as well as the YouTube link for tech, my muffin, as you mentioned, and Aloha browser. So they’re right, right below this. So you mentioned the virtual Silicon Valley. And I just wanted to ask you like, where did that idea come from? Because I actually grew up 90 minutes from San Francisco. I have cousins in the bay. And you know, I will recognize all the landmarks from San Francisco.
Andrew Frost 11:53
Yeah, I spend a lot of time in Sunnyvale, California. So yeah, why Silicon Valley is because every startup is dreaming about being in the Bay Area. That’s all well, VCs are. That’s where all the fun is. And even if you like, I don’t know, read a book about startups, they probably will be mentioned in San Francisco at some point or another. So it’s a place to be. So there were no long thoughts about it. It’s like it just has to be there. Okay, plus, as you know, it’s very beautiful. Yes, San Francisco is one of my favorite cities in the world. It’s absolutely gorgeous. And it has lots of landmarks. And every one of them is super unique, which I like. It’s like it’s very diverse. So it’s perfect for gaming.
Michael 12:42
Yeah. And it’s a foodie city as well. There are some delicious restaurants. And there’s a little side note. So I wanted to ask you about your regional focus for Bluelight, you know, you’re primarily targeting the EU. The goal for us, Asia, into Africa, is what is the blue lights rollout look like this year in 2023.
Andrew Frost 13:06
So initially, we launched it in the English language and targeted an English-speaking audience. We don’t want to put borders on the map. Because basically, everybody can just go and play. Primarily, we believe that European gamers will be the closest ones to us because we are also Europeans, but a lot of Asian people will add in and try it again. They really enjoyed it. So I don’t think it’s a problem. And we don’t want to specify a specific marker that we focused on. Okay, so English based at the beginning. First of all, for a couple of reasons. Well, first of all, take my muffin is also in English right now. Okay. And it’s basically the universal language for everybody. But of course, we will bring other languages as well. Okay, gradually, they all be there. Just to give you an example, in our browser, we have 53 languages or so. Wow. So we use a lot we, yeah, yeah. And also browsers are pretty popular worldwide. Yeah. And we don’t see limits. We don’t see limits.
Michael 14:21
Okay, fantastic. So it’s worldwide an English language. And, man, that’s exciting. I wanted to ask you as well if you could just shed some light on your basically your vision with tokenomics for blockchain gaming in general.
Andrew Frost 14:38
Right. It’s a there’s no, I would say the right answer because every game is unique and every token omics is unique. And there are some probably smart people behind it. But from my point of view, blockchain gaming just jumped on us so quickly. If there were not a lot of research made, and people who were making games, were not thinking about, like a lot. They were probably thinking, Okay, I’ll have I don’t know, 100,000 people in. But as soon as they went viral, everything’s get broken out. Because, yeah, one person, they try to make fun. Other people try to make money. And third, people try to find loopholes to make more money. Yeah. And all together, it doesn’t work very well, unless you have a very stable economy and like trying to analyze everything from every angle. Okay. And I don’t think a lot of companies do that to be sure.
Michael 15:41
So you feel so may not be balanced enough in that area?
Andrew Frost 15:46
Yeah, I think so. And probably, there are some factors to it. Well, first of all, there are still not so many gamers in a pure crypto game. They it’s a very small amount of people plus lots of boats. So trying to get some statistical data and analyze it properly. And do a fine balance. And here and there. It’s a bit tricky thing, even regular games have lots of special trading people like game designers, who like basically dedicate a whole their life, just to be able to balance a game with virtual currencies. As for real currencies, that’s a whole different story. So it’s very, very new. And there are not a lot of people on the market who can actually do it. They either come from real gaming, or they come from crypto, where they’re basically like a mathematician trying to do stuff, but they’re still like a people behavior that has to be considered what we tried to do with blue light, we tried to come from both worlds. So we have amazing game designers that already worked on a lot of games, and they know how to balance it properly. We have lots of mathematicians who can analyze everything, okay, and try to fine-tune it. And we even had some consultations from guys from a real economy sector, who worked with like banking and stuff. And just trying to understand how being basically crypto is just closer to real money than a virtual currency, and how it will affect this model. And that’s one of the reasons why we like a soft launch in the game, we don’t want to bring it to the world. Like, there you go, go and play, right? So we want to let smaller groups in try to analyze how they will play. And like how their money flows inside the game. So we can fine-tune it before the public release, which will be available to everybody. And that is the day we can say okay, the game is complete, we have everything we want it.
Michael 17:57
Awesome. I see you’re working with world-class talent you mentioned to inbox earlier, and then dragons lakes development studio, and then you and your team, you guys are dealing at a world-class level in this area. It’s an exciting time. Can you share with us some of the roadmap for 2023? As to and even beyond?
Andrew Frost 18:17
Yeah, yeah, of course. So as I said, we are working on a Bluelight for almost over a year now. So we’ve come a long way. We have this alpha version now that you can actually play, we will soon release the public beta version, where people go and play the net will represent most parts of the game, but not the whole game. Because the whole game, it’s kind of a very, very complicated thing. And as I said, we wanted to do like a fast change quickly. And probably closer to the end of the year, we will have something that we will call release candidate, which is the game that the way we see it. Okay, in between there is still a lot of things that we want to work on. So first of all, San Francisco is still a big city and sound crypto in blue light is also quite big. Okay. And I don’t know if you ever tried to play CD, CD or something. It requires a lot of time even for a person just to put like already houses on the map and it’s quite a while and you spend a lot of time doing it. And we don’t want to let people leave the boring city. So it has to have like all the fancy houses like in San Francisco, right? It’s a lot of content to create. So we expect the community to help us with that. We of course have our own team who creates content and 3d modules and everything. But what we also want to do is creator tools, which is basically a super simplified 3d editor. that allows you to customize, cities, characters, and various items that you play in a game. So you will basically have more unique items in a game. And it makes it more exciting. And by the end of the year, when we will have a public release when new people will jump in, they will see a beautiful CD and all its glory. Nice. And yeah, and of course, we want to reward this creator at some point. So we will work something out. I don’t know. So either with tokens or NF T’s. But anyway, okay, these creators, will love it as well.
Michael 20:40
My son will love everything you were just saying about how he can basically the tools that you’re building to enable the gamers to build out more insight. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Frost 20:53
That’s why I’m saying it’s like it’s for everybody. Because if you like hardcore gaming, and you like fast-paced action, then there is one part of the game for you. You love card games. There’s another part of the game for you to love city builders. There’s another part game for you. So we try to cover a lot and it’s a pretty complex thing. That’s why we have to bring a lot of as you said the world talents onboard. Yeah. I don’t think anybody ever tried to do something like that in a blockchain yet.
Michael 21:24
Man, this is exciting. You mentioned earlier, you know, take my muffin. You’re you kind of got the idea to build this out from that. But I wanted to ask you what games were what other games were like your inspiration for construction? Basically, the gameplay for this?
Andrew Frost 21:42
Yeah. So at some point last year, you probably also did, everybody was talking about metal versus right. It’s no longer a very hype word. But still, some people will not point fingers. They still talk a lot about it. They put a lot of money into it. But basically what Metaverse is, is a big virtual world where you can do some stuff. It’s either just enjoying it, playing games, or doing something else. Just name a few or fortnight or Minecraft. So or when you try to leave in the metaverse. There are a lot of things involved besides like just walking on the streets and just going around, right, you want to have some action. But there are still some people who don’t like super fast action games like fortnight, because they will be killed within 30 seconds from the game start date to have fun about that. So you probably know that a lot of gamers play Sims, especially women because they also like to play games, but they like more calm games. So I would also put Sims in there because when we talk about a simulation of a startup, you probably know startup is your life. Yeah. And seems like a good simulator for life as well. Also, building a city is a very exciting process. Oh, yeah. So Sim, sim city is definitely one of those. Okay. Especially if you’re not just building a CD, but you can actually earn some money out of it. So I’ve seen the CD, you just build a house, but in blue light, it can build an office and you can rent it to another player, really build a startup in this office and will rev share their revenue with you. You’ll be just a real estate mogul.
Michael 23:40
Oh, that’s super cool. That’s even inspiration for new entrepreneurs that want to you know, simulate. Yeah, you know,
Andrew Frost 23:48
so are we trying to do? As I said, this whole experience. Uh huh. Because a lot of young people, want to have a startup, but it’s, it’s part it’s really, really hard. You have to spend a lot of money, and a lot of nerves, and it changes your life. In blue light, you can just go there. You can feel whole this experience and you will understand is this life for you.
Michael 24:13
Man, that’s exciting. That’s how can our cow can our listeners around the world reach out to you and your team. Where should they? Yeah, I assume you guys have telegram you know like cetera
Andrew Frost 24:27
Yeah. Yeah, we have an extensive community now Around 20,000 people. We have discord telegram have Twitter of course. Okay. And we have like, basically every day, somebody from our team is on every day of one of these channels. Okay, and they answer questions they communicate with the audience because we try to be as close to people as possible because in the early stage that we are right now feedback is very important. Yeah. So the more we talk with people, the better is for us and for them, as well. So yeah, feel free to just come and join. Okay, as I said, our website will be in the description there, it’s Bluelight And sees, yeah, there are all the links to our community, so feel free to communicate. Awesome.
Michael 25:21
And yeah, in the description below, there’s the episode Blog Post page with all the information about today’s episode and the links that you just mentioned. And we’ll, we’ll actually have all of those, for people to be able to reach directly out to you and, and join the community. You know, I really liked how you’re creating a balance between having fun in the game, and earning or, you know, creating, creating ROI or profit in there. You know that’s, that’s, that’s really important. It takes it, it takes people through the learning process, as well as having fun, you know, so I, I definitely tip my hat to you and your team for everything you create in this, you know, this is, this is gonna be a great year for, for all you guys, and in all the other community around the world. What else? Andrew, what else would you like to share with our listeners? You know, you have their undivided attention in about 170 countries at the moment. So what would you like to share?
Andrew Frost 26:21
So, I would like to share that. Some people still think that crypto is some kind of scam. And sometimes that’s true. But do your own research. Just go and check the people behind the projects. And there are still a lot of very, very nice projects out there. Blue light or not? Anyway, we’re still wanting to support the whole community, because web three and crypto gaming is not going anywhere. They will definitely be there. And we’re in this exciting time when it’s just that everything is just starting. And if you do your own research you read through and check for red flags. And you’ll find a very good project, just go for it.
Michael 27:09
Well said, and thank you for taking the time to create a lot of browsers. It’s much needed in the industry and all of those languages that you mentioned, man, that’s, that’s, that’s fantastic as well.
Andrew Frost 27:22
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Michael, for having me today. And I also just want to mention that a lot of browsers are also one of those browsers are very open to the community. Okay. And if any of your listeners are wanting to add something or the field at some features, is not there that you really want. Feel free to connect and our great support team, they will do everything in their power to help you.
Michael 27:50
Oh, that’s awesome. Awesome. Yeah, we’ll definitely be sharing all the links with her law browser, and how our listeners can get started if they’re not already using it as well. Andrew, man, it was a real pleasure to have you on the show and I welcome you back anytime, man.
Andrew Frost 28:06
Likewise, Michael, and thanks, everybody. Thanks, everybody. I hope I’ll see you in the streets of San crypto in a blue light very, very soon.
Michael 28:14
Absolutely. Hey, if you like today’s episode, definitely like and subscribe to the podcast. Show your support and chime in here tomorrow for another special episode. Until then, make it a great day. Thanks for tuning in to New To Crypto Podcast. If you liked the episode, be sure to follow and subscribe. You can listen to every episode on all major platforms and have an interest in being on the show or one advertising reach out at newtocrypto.io. Head over to our site newtocrypto.io to access the resources mentioned in each episode. Until next time, remember to navigate the crypto landscape with pinpoint accuracy.
