Builder Spotlight: Kam Punia’s Quest to Level Up Web3 RPGs

Avalanche

Pixion Studios scrapped its first five games. Founder and CEO Kam Pumia needed the right game for the Web3 moment. A moment he likens to the mobile gaming explosion of the 2010s. The studio’s first major game release had to find early traction. It had to hit initial performance metrics and be built to last. Only then, Pumia believed, could it become a “a category-defining hit.”

Fableborne is Pixion’s sixth game and first major release.

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The mobile game is live in closed alpha mode, meaning you can enter the Shatterlands and start playing now. Kam describes Fableborne as a cross between an action RPG like Diablo and a strategy game, with two fundamental differences.

One, the environments players raid are made by other players. This puts players and user-generated content (UGC) at the game’s bedrock.

Two, Fableborne’s raiding is more active. In strategy games, attacking can feel like dragging and dropping units, then passively watching them fight. Fableborne lets players control when and how to attack.

“That’s what led us to greenlight Fableborne,” Kam said. “The Pixion Studios team spent 30 minutes building a base, and we watched each other raid. Everyone had a different strategy. There was so much replayability and so much to learn and master.”

Kam is a 15-year veteran of the gaming industry. He got his start working on titles like Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill for Konami. Next, Kam oversaw the growth of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise in northern Europe, a task that immersed him in licensing, merchandising, the card game, and really the whole effort. Over time, Kam learned how to architect IPs and scale them across verticals.

With this knowledge, Kam founded Pixion in 2017.

A studio of about 30 people, Pixion is loaded with veterans of other formidable names in Web2 gaming, such as Sony, Square Enix, and Ubisoft. The studio aims to make “exciting multiplayer games that are easy to understand, hard to master, but ultimately fun to play in short sessions.”

That’s where Kam’s integration of Web3 features helps.

Fableborne weaves in Web3 elements to enhance UGC, social play, live events, and ownership of in-game assets. Kam is brainstorming further blockchain elements: special in-game items for guilds, on-chain benefits for tournament winners, and much more.

To best support these elements, Pixion has taken the same rigorous approach to choosing its Web3 baselayer that it took to choosing its first big release. Pixion needed the right blockchain.

“When we think of blockchain, there are two questions,” he said. “One, does the tech allow us to improve the gameplay experience? Or two, does it allow us to create a new experience altogether?”

Avalanche had what Pixion needed. Built so that ambitious builders like game studios can customize features to power their apps, Avalanche enables Pixion to innovate, evolve, scale, and benefit from a long-term approach to capturing the Web3 opportunity.

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“When we looked at the chains, it was first looking at the best tech, especially the tech that could scale with us if we went from 0 to 100 next week,” Kam said. “And second, it was looking at the teams. Which teams were going to understand the challenges we have specifically from a gaming studio perspective, you know, not gamifying a layer on top, but really understanding games and mobile games?”

For Kam, a Web2 gaming veteran and a Web3 gaming pioneer playing the long game, the answer was Avalanche and Avalanche gaming.

“When we looked at Avalanche, Subnets were really attractive and being able to scale as your player base scales,” Kam said. “You’re able to obfuscate UX friction by having a native gas token, so from a Web2 player’s perspective that’s important. And of course, there was also the Ava Labs team.”

Now, Pixion has a Subnet on its roadmap. The studio needs tech that can scale to the viral potential of gaming, meaning tens of millions of active monthly users – or even more.

This post is based on materials provided by Fabelborne For more information, visit Fableborne’s website.

Provided for informational purposes only, without representation, warranty or guarantee of any kind. None of this is as an endorsement by Ava Labs, Inc., the Avalanche Foundation Limited or any of their respective subsidiaries or affiliates, nor is any of this investment or financial advice. Please review this Notice and conduct your own research to properly evaluate the risks and benefits of any project.

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About Avalanche

Avalanche is a smart contracts platform that scales infinitely and regularly finalizes transactions in less than one second. Its novel consensus protocol, Subnet infrastructure, and HyperSDK toolkit enable Web3 developers to easily launch powerful, custom blockchain solutions. Build anything you want, any way you want, on the eco-friendly blockchain designed for Web3 devs.

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