Last week was a great AMA with Hector Mayorga joining us to answer some of your questions! As always, here is the recap:
Q: What is the most challenging thing you have faced with the team?
Being in operations, I have to work with all departments, get them the right resources if they need it. So I guess when someone comes to me and says, “Hey, we need this software or this resource,” to complete this task from the sprint, then I have to meet those requests. Some of them are pretty easy and there are some where I had to set up an account. It could take a few hours, or it could take days for verification. It doesn’t happen often for every sprint, but when it does, it does hinder me in a way where it affects my tasks, too.
Q: What challenge/s keep repeating weekly or even daily?
It’s probably meetings every day, every week. There are always set meetings that I have, but there are those new meetings that just come up. I have to adjust because our team is basically around different time zones. So when something like that comes up, I have to either find a way to wake up early, adjust, and again, this hinders my things on my calendar because I like to keep everything organized. I can adjust very quickly due to my background but it’s still a challenge when meetings get rescheduled, changed, or a new meeting comes up since I have to find a way to balance my schedule.
So you’re saying your favorite part of the day isn’t meetings jumping around your calendar?
Yes and no. I say yes, all of it, all of you guys, because it’s a video meeting. I get to see who I’m working with but when it gets changed, I’m just like, “oh man, I gotta do that over again.”
Q: Are you involved in the human resources part? What qualities do you look for in people from the dev team?
I am heavily involved in the human resource part. As you can see, that’s how it fills up my gap in calendars. What I normally look for in a dev team is social behavior and experience. Of course, it depends on the department too. I will give you an example. For the art team, I tend to ask more creative questions versus technical questions to developers. I know some people get nervous but I always give them the ability to have a comfortable room because I’m easy to talk to. If they meet those requirements, the next step is giving them a certain test to see the experience. That’s normally my process when it comes to hiring.
So there we go. To everyone who’s listening, you have a cheat sheet if you intend to apply for a role at Polker in the future. The next question is could you comment on deadlines that are challenging?
Lots to say there. One thing I notice is that deadlines for developers and marketing do not go hand on hand as we all see. From the dev side, we are able to meet deadlines via sprints but the challenges are in waiting for a third party, for alterations, or external approval that is outside of our ability to control. I believe that’s the biggest challenge we have when it comes to meeting deadlines. The last one was the pen testing, which we are still waiting for. The things where we have no control make it very hard to meet the deadline versus where we are in control and we are able to execute as quickly and professionally as possible.
Q: Can you share a bit of the vision behind PKR from your perspective (in regards to the game and to the token)?
Hector: Currently we have PKR for staking and buy back and burn and we do want to increase the use cases in our universe or metaverse. The use case seems limited in the consumer aspect because of our model and the way we have set it up as non-gambling. There is a very gray line when it comes to regulations for each country. They hear the word poker, and they automatically think of gambling. That’s why we are developing mini-games — non-casino related games = so we can increase the use cases of PKR.
Q: Can you share your vision about the gameplay experience you are trying to offer and how will you exploit ue5?
Hector: The gameplay experience we want is to gamify poker, and build relationships through Polker. I believe we can do that to a whole new level — you will see a lot more coming in the next update.
Is there anything that concerns you with the fast evolving tech in this space?
No concerns, we embrace it! There’s always something new and exciting coming. As long as we always embrace the positive sides, we will be ahead of it and riding the wave.
Is there anything in particular you are trying to achieve with the game? (Like a particular design, a particular feature that leads to a “wow” effect)
When you guys play the game, we don’t just want ‘wow’. We want a whole new level of poker, we’re trying to completely re-make poker into a non-gambling gamified fun game.
Why should investors invest more in $PKR and what steps do you think will be beneficial to increase the price of $PKR token, other than game release, marketing and buy back.
This is related to the utility of the token, and a lot more is coming for the utility of the token! With a brand new website and whitepaper — keep an eye out for this! This is about all I can say now (legally). But A LOT is coming, and we are looking to tap into this untapped potential. *legally we must say, this is not financial advice*
How are other projects in the crypto industry offering money via tokens while being decentralized and $PKR can’t do it? At the end of the day, all big and small players want money or very rare NFTs.
We are a poker platform, we fall under the regulation of a social casino. However, as soon as we start using a financial aspect, whatever the token is — we become a gambling game which means we have lots of financial regulation so it’s just not possible. This is why we are implementing the new mini games to allow players to win $PKR.
If we are offering NFT as a reward for Polker, why would anyone want to spend money in an unknown NFT from Polker when they can spend the money to buy or invest in famous casino NFT projects, in Sandbox or another platform?
Before we get to that part, respectfully and professionally, I would ask, how many people invested in those casino projects before they were famous. That is one thing you want to also consider. Obviously, our NFTs may seem unknown to us but that is because it is brand new. Once you start playing the game, you start understanding how the game model works, how the study guide works, our game structure — and the value of our NFTs increase. Once these mini-games come out, you get to use these NFTs in those mini games as well. I know Sandbox; I know Ice Poker and to play those games you have to buy those NFTs. So many of these projects require people to spend an outrageous amount of money to buy an NFT just to play. With us, you do not have to buy any NFTs to play the game. You just download the game and play it; that’s the biggest thing.
Do we have any partnership with big famous NFT projects or clubs?
I am not quite sure what that exactly means — if it’s referring to other NFT games. I mean, we work closely with a lot of them. We have sponsored events alongside Ice Poker. I know a lot of people assume that they’re a competitor. They are not. We actually sponsored an in-person poker tournament in LA. Partnerships with NFT projects are definitely something that we can look at, and if there’s a demand for it and what the community wants. As for our current partnerships, you can check the list at our website, Polker.game.
Do you think we need to build a community for Polker NFT? Otherwise how will Polker NFTs be valuable?
Yes, we like that as an idea and it’s something we will develop in the future.
From the last AMA, you mentioned that Polker will break even or be profitable at the end of 2024. What are the chances of that with the delay in game release, bug testing, or any other unseen delay?
Conor : Obviously, I cannot predict the future. No one knows exactly what is going to happen in the world in the next few months. Everything is a little bit upside down but I would be very, very, very surprised if we do not go to that point before the end of 2024. If we are not there at the end of 2024, I will try to eat a pair of sunglasses.
Does the airdrop idea still exist? Is it going to be through referrals only?
I do not remember mentioning an airdrop or there being an airdrop suggested, but the referral system has been updated. You can earn more Spades as well as NFTs. The updated referral system will be coming out with the release as well.
Any thoughts on VR? Apple’s AR/VR glasses are being released later this year. It would be amazing if one could play polker with a headset on.
It’s in our roadmap! You can already use headsets within the game to chat to each other and we look forward to VR coming down the road — next stop, mobile!
Any thoughts on interoperability with other NFT collections such as Cryptopunks? I think it would incentivize a lot of influencers to come play poker on Polker with their friends for the flex.
It is something that we can offer, however, it does create exclusivity. I do understand , it may incentivize people to come in and play. However, it’s a very small group of people and there are IP rights and legal aspects to consider. We want to make sure that the project stays accessible.
Is the supply also considered REVENUE which includes tokens intended for operations, the team, marketing, etc.?
Conor : We’ve never even considered them as revenue. We have not reached the point that we sold tokens when we needed money. Instead, we left them locked, and they’re useless while locked. If we got to the point of unlocking them and selling them — it’s not in anybody’s interest to do so.
I can mention that there may be a PKR Foundation, which may allow grants for other people to build utility for the PKR token down the road. That will be dictated by the DAO. As for the allocations that are currently intended for operations team marketing, — we’re still not moving them. We’re definitely not selling them. Most of it will likely end up being burned, reallocated, or moved towards this foundation. So keep an eye for the new website cause there’ll be more information on that.
Is the revenue from card purchases? And how can a profit be made without the sale of tokens?
The current revenue that we’re talking about is from purchase of our in-game currency, Spades, and the PKR Pass. If you look at Zynga Poker, they do not have a token. They only rely on the purchase of play chips. Their revenue was over 2.1 billion in 2021. Although they have other games, Zynga Poker was the biggest contributor to that. We don’t have the exact number, but if we’re assuming there was over 50%, that’s 1.05 billion just from people buying play chips they cannot cash out. There’s no play to earn value and it’s a small mobile game that doesn’t have any of the other features. So revenue is possible.
Are only the purchase operations on the platform considered? like pkr pass? the cost of the pkr pass that can be purchased in pkr, for example pkr bronze 5$, is it the value in pkr at the market price?
Look at Zynga poker for example — another social casino
Isn’t there a risk of reducing PKR’s use case to a simple token swap?
No, not at all, with the mini-games coming out, the staking portal, Spades, and we have the PKR pass purchase, the store. We will be introducing the DAO and launching the PKR foundation from that as well.
There will be a lot more information on PKR in the new white paper. I could see from your perspective that it does look like we’ve reduced its utility by adding the card functionality there.
With regret, we have learned that Melody’s leaving the team. Will you hire any “replacement” for her?
It’s been great having her here but she’s moving on to her own. I know that she’s been good to everyone, so we do thank her for all of her time. Tanya and Caleb will be stepping up on the social media side.
Since we’ve mentioned the new PKR website, we have mentioned that there is going to be a large game update and a full map coming out in a few hours. I do believe we may as well mention the last bit of news we have for everyone here.
So one more news for you guys. We are in the process of listing our game on the Epic store. You heard it here first. Not only is PKR getting a new website, new white paper, the game is getting updated. We can look forward to having the game available to the 230 million current users of the Epic Store for the launch too.
If you have not yet joined our Community Launch then download the game now here! Questions? Reach out on Telegram, Twitter, Discord, or contact us by email at hello@polker.game
