Web3 gaming has been on the rise in the past month, with big companies making news through partnerships, game releases, and milestones. Then came word through the grapevine: Burn Ghost was planning to release an NFT collection. We couldn’t resist doing an interview.
For those who don’t know, Burn Ghost is a Web3 gaming platform that hosts mini-games with cryptocurrency prizes. It uses blockchain and is now integrating NFTs to become a full-fledged ecosystem: one that blends fun with this new age tech.
We had the fortune of catching up with Steve Curran, the founder and CEO of Burn Ghost, for a quick interview. Enjoy.
Hi, thank you for agreeing to do this interview. First, could you identify yourself and the role you play at Burn Ghost?
My name is Steve Curran. I am the founder and CEO of Burn Ghost.
Could you provide a brief overview of the games you offer and their unique features?
Burn Ghost is a play-to-earn platform for casual and hypercasual games, where players compete to win prizes. We have a pipeline of games that we will be releasing over the next year. Currently, we have Pinball Frenzy, Ghost Run (An Endless Runner), and Slaygrounds – a horde game. All of our games are based on familiar mechanics, are relatively short games (under 5 minutes) and most importantly, are fun to play.
You recently had an NFT mint, which is very exciting. Could you talk about that mint and why Web3 gamers might be interested in purchasing one of your NFTs?
As we have been in beta for several months, and as we are moving out of free-to-play to a pay-to-play model, we wanted to have a way for more players to learn the platform and play for free to get familiar with our games, and how competitions work. We also wanted to create some buzz and interest around Burn Ghost, and NFT drops are a great way to be part of the conversation. So we created the Bounty Box as a freemint, with random amounts of our currency awarded, that can be redeemed for play on the platform.
Your roadmap has shown quite a bit of innovation. What are the next steps in the map and how do you plan on accomplishing them, especially in this (still) bear market?
Beyond introducing more games, and a variety of prizes, we plan on adding head-to-head play, tournament play, and are looking at expanding to a native mobile app.
What was the inspiration behind starting Burn Ghost – and how do you believe it will fit in in the landscape as Web3 gaming evolves?
Burn Ghost was created because we saw what we felt was an opportunity to focus on competitive casual gaming in web3. We saw many projects with lofty metaverse ambitions, but the engagement simply wasn’t there. By focusing on the more simple and familiar casual side of gaming, we felt that there was an opportunity for us to occupy the middle ground between casual and casino gaming.
We feel that there are players who like the experience of playing to win, like you do in casino games, but would prefer to have a bit more agency over how well they can do, vs pure luck. Our goal is to be the leading platform to play casual games and win prizes, in Web3 and beyond.
You raised $3.1 million in a seed round that included Draft Kings and Bitkraft. Could you talk about what it means to have the support of these investors and (perhaps) how you plan to use the money in the future?
Each of these investors brings in so much value in the form of the areas of their expertise, their mentorship, and their connections with other portfolio companies as partners. Bitkraft is one of the leading Game Industry VCs in the world, and Draft Kings has become one of the leading gaming brands in the world. We lean on their experience and relationships in the industry extensively.
What separates your games from others out there?
The way that we have structured our platform around competitions and sweepstakes means that no player is eliminated from winning big, even if they are not a top-player. At the same time, good players have a better chance of winning, so there is a great balance of incentives for both “shark” and casual competitors that we feel makes us unique.
We also have flexibility on game types and prize types, and will have end-to-end experiences, designed for specific communities and partners to have custom experiences on Burn Ghost.
How do you incorporate Web3 elements like blockchains, NFT, or crypto into your games?
We use the blockchain for payments, for delivery of prizes, and for delivering “provable fairness” in our sweepstakes. In the future, there may be a token that provides utility on the platform as part of our on-platform currency.
Moonshot question: Would you be interested in or how do you envision external platforms or tools could be integrated with your game to provide added value?
We envision a marketplace feature on the website, where players can sell what they’ve won. We want to make the platform friendly for outside game developers and publishers to be able to generate revenue share by bringing their games on the platform
What’s your philosophy surrounding game creation, especially within in the context of Web3? In other words – when you create your games, what is the process and what is the goal in mind?
We call our litmus test for reviewing game ideas as a fit for our platform “the four Fs.” For a game to work on Burn Ghost, it has to be fair, fast, and familiar so that it does not take long to figure it out, and most importantly, fun. We don’t think of games on Web3 being different vs what would work elsewhere. We want the gaming experience to appeal to anybody regardless of the technology involved.
What is a day in the life for employees at Burn Ghost?
We are an entirely remote organization, with team members all over the world. We have our team meetings every morning to recap what we are working on and unblock any issues. Then the rest of the day, we mainly communicate via Slack. Of course for all of us, there are breaks during the day where we play our games that are already on Burn Ghost, as well as games that have not come out yet.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Now is a great time to play on Burn Ghost, as there are a lot of prizes to be won. And it’s not too crowded yet, so it’s a great time to play and win! We also have a great community of gamers on Discord who love to compete with each other. We’d love to have more players join us.
Thank you for the interview. Where can our readers find you?
I can be found on Twitter at @steve_curran and Burn Ghost is on Twitter at @burnghostgames. You can find our tournaments at play.burnghost.com.
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