5 Questions For Xborg

For this next part of our ongoing '5 Questions For' series, we managed to get some time with Louis from Xborg, who helped answer some burning questions about gamefi, eSports and the future of Web3 gaming, all in under 10 minutes!

As always, the full video interview can be viewed at the bottom of this article, but for now lets dive in to this wealth of information here in text format.

Who are you? What is Xborg?

Thanks a tonne for having me here, I’m Louis - the founder of Xborg.

A few points about my background: I am deep into tech, decentralized technologies and gaming, I went to some tech companies, some traditional finance companies and now I have the pleasure to be at Xborg - the gaming venture of Swissborg - the crypto wealth app.

We are one of the most invested gaming communities in web 3 and we are also building some cool tech to empower players and that includes a way for players to build their digital identity in web3 via soulbound tokens but also a system of quests whereby players can trade their contributions to a game against monetary value.

We currently have 3000 players and we have partnered with permanent ecosystems in crypto like Ultra, Zilliqa or even Polygon.

How did you get into Web3 Gaming?

Oh that's a great one. I first got into crypto back in 2017, at the top of the bubble pretty much, but then got really interested into the technology and the ability for decentralized technologies to add value to gaming.

I am a true gamer at heart and game design to me has been pretty much the same for quite some years and I now find that Web3 has this ability to re-invent game design with new aspects of tokenomics and actual ownership and quite naturally I got interested into the games that were coming out. You know we have Axie Infinity where I played the earliest version available then The Sandbox but also Cometh and yeah - pretty much got into web3 gaming via my passion for decentralized technologies and also my passion for gaming.

Which game keeps you up at night?

EV.IO is very interesting.
I don't have time to play it as much anymore - we’re very focused on what we do at Xborg and I honestly can't afford to spend that much time on games - but back in the early days of Xborg that was the phase where I was always playing so much games trying to understand which game had some eSports potential and which game was truly enjoyable and then I remember at this time I was pretty much hooked to EV.IO and could play this game for like - you know - hours and I think with the sense of fun and gameplay that it’s one of the contenders for the best web3 game.

So I’d say - yeah - EV.IO - and if you guys don’t know, it’s an FPS on Solana that resembles some of the well known first person shooters and that’s quite similar to Call of Duty.

Which problems does Xborg solve?

I mean, that’s a great one. There are a couple of aspects to it.

First on the community aspect: when you get into Web3 gaming and you look for communities, most communities are around speculation and - you know - if we look at some of the most well known guilds you get into this community and it’s all about the price, it’s all about speculation, people complaining about the price of the token dropping or the rewards dropping and we believe that in order to be that community that helps on the mass adoption of Web3 gaming, to a classic Web2 audience, this community needs to resemble traditional gaming communities - which we are.

In our community pretty much no one talks about speculation or price. It’s all about gameplay, fun and competition.

Now if we look at the bigger scope of what we are trying to achieve - it’s to change the way eSports functions.

Currently you may know that esports as an industry is doing poorly, at least in terms of financials, and there are ways in which Xborg will change this.

This is through the ability for eSports teams to earn additional revenues via the protocol whether it is via the quest system or via the NFT placements which are pretty much a brand buying into your team.

It’s also the fact that fans… I mean there is a disconnect between fans and teams, like in football you are a fan of the team. In eSports you are more a fan of the players and there is this lack of loyalty between fans and teams which we implement via a governance system for the teams where fans directly have a say.

Also one big issue about eSports is that it’s not transparent. There is a lack of transparency on the process to get into an eSports team - but also the lack of transparency with regards to players contracts, which we implement by hiring through digital identity - where you see the players performance but also having the players contracts put directly on-chain where you have the fee split or a cash prize.

How do you see Web3 gaming evolve in a sustainable way?

I think first this comes down to the way you market games. This applies to both games but also influencers.

Now as long as we present games as an opportunity to earn revenues, that’s not going to be sustainable, because the underlying question is - the tokenomics is not figured out yet in a sustainable way.

You know, if you type on Youtube: ‘Play-to-earn games’, the only videos that you would see are people saying “Hey! Earn like fifty bucks a day by playing this game!” and I don’t think that this is the narrative that we should follow.
So the way I see Web3 games is positioned differently, more as a way to own your in game assets and also to pitch the composability and interoperability between games which I think is where web3 games will ultimately thrive.

Once again we would like to thank Louis for taking part in this interview, it was a great delve into the inner workings of Xborg and its partners and we look forward to having him return for a deeper look into the whole ecosystem at a future point.

What do you think? Do you agree with Louis' answers? Let us know on Twitter with the hashtag #fivequestionsfor and stay tuned for the next instalment where we will be speaking with another big name from the world of Web3 and eSports. Or as we like to call it, 3Sports.

Peace out apes.