[Coinlive Interview] Corey Wilton, Co-Founder & CEO of Mirai Labs

Coinlive: Good morning, Coinlive is at World Blockchain Summit 2022. And today, we are talking to Corey from Mirai Labs, creator of Pegaxy. For the audience who is unfamiliar with you, could you briefly introduce yourself and Mirai Labs?

Corey: My name is Corey, from Mirai Labs, one of the co-founders. We launched long ago, for crypto terms, in March 2021 and launched our first game Pegaxy around November last year.

Coinlive: Can you share more about Pegaxy?

Corey: Pegaxy was one of the first mainstream P2E (play-to-earn) games at the time we launched back in November. As i mentioned it was a pretty hot market at the time as well was kind of peak Axie Infinity hype. We launched then, it's just a very basic 3D auto racing horse game and that's about it.

Coinlive: Alright. In the current bear market, how is the project coping and what is the company focusing on right now?

Corey: Currently for Pegaxy itself, we have a bit of a shift in focus over the last few months, after looking at the market and industry trends in the general sense, looking at what is working and what definitely isn't working. And for Mirai Labs, I guess the easiest way to look at it would be an outside view in gaming in general, just looking at P2E as one type of industry but also looking at areas that will help us survive, so looking at the free-to-play industry as well.

Coinlive: You mentioned something is working for you guys but something is not, could you share more about that?

Corey: For sure, I think it's not so much for us but there's just the industry in general, we were all quite early at the time and when we launched, there was a couple of things. Looking at Axie Infinity at the time, we assumed it was working which clearly doesn't work now. So things like the rental market or just the general consensus of scholarships, that type of stuff enabling that type of stuff, seems to not be the best route to go, so we looked at that. We definitely attracted a lot of speculators during the early days which is fine, however again our transition is moving towards the fundamentals of gaming, learning the ropes, learning to keep the game around and to keep the game industry interesting for the next five years or so.

Coinlive: All right. Can we dive deeper into the rental system? My question would be, rental system is quite a strong part of Pegaxy itself. What do you think does not work and how do you feel that blockchain gaming in general should be moving or target rental features?

Corey: I wouldn't say renting is like is the main cause of it, generally the entire ecosystem as a whole and renting is just an enabler. I believe initially with Axie Infinity again, quote and quote renting and scholarships were done through a loophole, we were one of the first ones to enable it on chain and what we found initially is that it's great for user acquisition through organic growth, however that's unsustainable. I think it's just one part of a bigger pie but again it's just a small feature of an assistant that just generally isn't working.

Coinlive: Alright. Could you share one huge obstacle that Mirai Labs or Pegaxy is facing right now?

Corey: I think something that all studios and games will face is probably user on boarding friction and distribution friction, more so the fact that the users that we want to attract are just everyday gamer, like you and I or literally anyone. Wherever you look, they're generally going to play some form of a game. Now the friction that is encountered with blockchain, NFT, token in general, is enormous and most people aren't going to go through the entire process of on boarding. In-app purchases as well having to own a wallet and all this type of stuff is basically ‘unoptimizing’ or deoptimizing the entire process that has been optimized over the last twenty years for mobile gaming. For us, it's more so looking at where blockchain really does work and where blockchain is causing more problems and solutions for us.

Coinlive: In this case, do you feel that certain features should be centralised and certain features should remain decentralised?

Corey: Yeah, I think the concept of decentralisation is great in theory but we are so far from anything like that, like probably decades. That it's causing more issues and we would rather not be a statistic that is a past company that did try to do something with blockchain ten years ago that people can talk about, we would rather still be alive in ten years time and then be able to leverage blockchain. So what we really need to do now is just weigh up what actually is working, and not be the industry sacrifice. Those things don't generally need to happen if we can come to an agreement that something isn't working.

Coinlive: Right. On Twitter that was supposed about something is cooking at Mirai Labs, could you give us any hints or sneak peaks?

Corey: Yeah, for sure. It's actually been put on aside if I'm honest with you, we did boast it and we actually took that one down because after a couple internal discussions, I think we'll discuss a little bit later as well, but we've had a company reorganization. There's been some structure changes and stuff like that, we've decided to put that one on the side, so might have been exciting but basically what we were doing is exploring another game. But for now, that one we put on aside because we want to put more resources into another plan that we have.

Coinlive: Okay, so we just stay tuned am I right?

Corey: Yeah, it still relates to Pegaxy basically, it just comes down to a different thesis which will explain on in the future.

Coinlive: I see, because my next question I'm going to ask is there any plans to do something or launch something different? Like a totally new game from Pegaxy? Are you okay we're sharing more about that?

Corey: Of course, initially I think we were looking at just exploring novel concepts, things that people were launching like move-to-earn and other stuff like that, as well like interruptibility. However, the reason we wanted to explore that as well - we weren't gonna do any token raises or NFT sales or anything – that we're just gonna be blockchain-based games so people could have a lot of freedom enable by blockchain because they haven't really been explored that much. And we don't want to run too many massive experiments with Pegaxy because there are so many players on there, we were going to take that route however we decided that the resources were likely not worth it looking at the global economic situation. Experimenting right now on top of being a start-up is probably not the best route to go, so we will leave the major experimentation to the larger companies who have twenty years of runway and we'll try to stick to the fundamentals of surviving. And once we get to that point, for sure we can explore it but I would say in five, ten years time, things are probably eyeing themselves out.

Coinlive: Excited to be updated on what's going on. Alright, how do you foresee the crypto gaming industry changing in the next few years?

Corey: I think, it will be pretty drastically. A question that I’ve been wanting to ask people, when I go traveling and stuff like that, I tried to speak to as many people as possible that are also building and that's in the traditional space or the Web3 space. And just kind of ask them what problem blockchain is solving and gaming beyond ownership, I think a lot of us have come to the assumption that blockchain, I mean ownership, is a big problem. However, I'm not sure where we got that from. So let's assume that it is a big problem that is solved by blockchain, but then what else? So that's what we're really looking at right now and I think a lot of people are going to get to that stage as well, where they recognize that blockchain is causing a lot of friction and those areas of friction is more detrimental to the benefits. Probably I feel likely a lot of things will come back off-chain and we'll have some sort of a hybrid where the game itself is similar to a premium game, pay-to-play or a free-to-play game, and then there'll be blockchain, aspects to where there's a peer-to-peer trading market of specific assets and stuff like that, but I don't think everything is going to go trend towards on-chain, it’s likely going to trend off-chain.

Coinlive: Besides crypto gaming, what is the next big thing or narrative your are looking to in crypto?

Corey: Just finding real use cases, solving some real problems. When we look at NFT, it's similar to what happened in the ICO days, there's a lot of literal or trending directions that people will go to, but the ones that really seem to come to fruition a couple years after that hype, the ones that generally do solve a problem. Things with NFT is like actual contract, just everything kind of being on-chain and approvable is going to be probably something that we see in a couple of years. Hopefully NFT or soulbound token, I think they're gonna be pretty interesting novel concepts to where there's participation and there's proof of participation through your wallet. Your wallet is really representing you and what you've done. I think there's going to be an interesting direction there but for gaming I honestly have no idea.

Coinlive: I see. With so much decentralisation or focus on ownership that is affecting adoption, for centralised gaming companies, they can actually help with ownership for the players, for in-game items. It all has to do with the transparency of the company. Do you think that we can move back to centralised gaming companies but give ownerships to the players? What do you feel about that?

Corey: I think we need to look at what's actually happening, like the only thing that matters here is the end user, our opinions don't actually matter if they're wrong. And our opinion should be based on data. Looking at gaming in general. the mobile gaming industry that's where we're focused on, it is growing every single year, year-on-year about 8%. That would make you assume that trust generally isn't an issue and the perfect example of trust really not being an issue and people not actually caring too much about the blockchain, is Axie Infinity. On your Axie, it has previous owners. People look at the previous owner's name but don't go and verify that on-chain. You know some people do but if it's 1% of people, why cater and create a lot of friction for 1% when 99% of people don't actually care. I think quote unquote transparency is fine, but transparency where people don't really care is likely going to be a waste of time. And when they eventually do care, of course we can cater for it. However right now, Axie is a good example because they've got basically unlimited money, but for start-up studios, you're going to have more friction, more use on boarding friction and difficulty earning money, which means you will die before it becomes easy. I think it's just important for start-up studios to weigh up.

Coinlive: All right. Last but not least, for your supporters listening to this, is there anything that you'd like to say to them?

Corey: For us, I guess we'll have a lot of news coming out eventually, the restructure and stuff like that we still need to release. Being obnoxiously stressful on the back end. but we need to make sure everything is aimed at and good to go. We have something pretty exciting that I think that we are working on that will take a lot of resources, but we hope that eventually you guys will see the fruit of that labour as well. I guess in general just stay tuned, we appreciate your support no matter what. Hopefully you guys are not too attached to just the crypto industry in general because it is a little bit crazy and if it's your first time, I’m sure you're recognizing that now but we appreciate your support either way.

Coinlive: Alright. Lastly, where can our audience find you to learn more and support Pegaxy?

Corey: Pegaxy is just basically @PegaxyOfficial, kind of everywhere or at pegaxy.io. Myself just @RealCoreyWilton on Twitter and that's about it.

Coinlive: Alright, thank you very much! This is Coinlive at World Blockchain Summit 2022, do follow us for more crypto content. Thank you.