Bryce Johnson, higher often known as Brycent, is a number one voice in Web3 gaming. A longtime gamer, he first came across to NFTs when he heard Axie Infinity — dubbed Pokémon on the blockchain — talked about on a podcast in early 2021. It was an ideal match for Brycent, who grew up enjoying Pokémon and labored as a software program engineer.
The timing was additionally proper. A current startup enterprise had failed, and Brycent determined to return to a nine-to-five job, aspiring to play video games in his free time. Little did he know that his ardour for gaming would quickly lead him on an unbelievable journey, making him a key determine within the rising Web3 gaming panorama.
As a 2023 NFT100 honoree, nft now just lately sat down with Brycent to debate his journey to gaming prominence and his ideas on the way forward for the area.
Discovering Axie Infinity
Brycent acknowledged that builders couldn’t create a sustainable reward token and, in his phrases, “print cash out of nowhere.” As a substitute, in his eyes, success in Web3 gaming requires two essential components: entertaining content material and schooling on the worth of blockchain expertise. “I noticed that play-to-earn tokenomics wasn’t sustainable, and I obtained a number of backlash for that,” he admits.
Brycent continued to forge his personal path after signing with Gary Vaynerchuk’s VaynerSports in 2021.
Constructing a Web3 gaming model
Together with his every day streams and sharp trade commentary, Brycent shortly grew to become a data base for newcomers in Web3 gaming. All through 2022, he targeted on constructing his group throughout Twitter, YouTube, and Twitch, the place he now boasts over 300,000 mixed followers. He has amassed his following due to his dedication to iteration, soliciting suggestions, creating with consistency, and embracing the opportunity of failure.
Brycent’s dedication to his craft led him to win the Gam3r’s Selection Content material Creator of the 12 months Award. He additionally co-founded Loot Squad, an NFT Gaming Guild specializing in constructing blockchain client merchandise and yield farming in NFT Video games, additional cementing his place within the trade.
Behind the scenes, Brycent now works with a crew of editors, group managers, and extra, a lot of whom he met throughout his Axie Infinity days as a part of the sport’s scholar program. By means of this program, gamers akin to Brycent, who possess full units of Axie NFTs however had restricted availability, have been in a position to help avid gamers who had adequate time however lacked the monetary means to partake within the sport.
Though Brycent has reached appreciable success, he’s removed from complacent. He states, “I need to be a pacesetter. Not simply in gaming and never simply in Web3. However throughout web2, Web3, and leisure at massive.”
Brycent on TikTok, YouTube, and what’s subsequent
As he displays on the present state of content material creation, Brycent says, “I feel we’ve gotten to a spot the place we overvalue 15-second movies. Yeah, the metrics on that content material is likely to be good, however what’s memorable about it?”
A profitable YouTube channel, based on Brycent, has the potential to drive followers to different platforms, one thing he doesn’t see occurring with TikTok and different short-form channels. He notes, “I do know loads of creators who’ve thousands and thousands of TikTok followers and just a few thousand throughout different channels. What good does that do anybody?”
Even TikTok appears to be shifting in direction of long-form content material, recognizing, as Brycent does, that short-form content material could enhance superficial metrics however fails to make a real influence.
With this in thoughts, Brycent plans to speculate extra time in long-form YouTube content material —”previous dependable,” as he calls it — to construct a sustainable ecosystem in Web3. By way of what these movies will seem like, he desires to deal with instructional content material and broader gaming commentary as he strikes ahead.
His Twitch channel, the place he streams 4 hours a day from Monday to Friday, stays his lifeline. However he plans to develop his streaming hours to YouTube, concentrating on creating fewer high-quality, impactful movies.
Embracing the way forward for Web3 gaming
Brycent believes there’s a big alternative for different creators to enter Web3 gaming and welcomes the competitors.
He’s satisfied that challengers will push him and everybody else to enhance. “There’s a scarcity of people that need to be tastemakers in the fitting method in Web3[…]my content material isn’t predicated on whether or not or not I make a greenback off it. I need to entertain and educate.” True to his phrase, Brycent doesn’t take himself too severely. He’s recognized to do impersonations throughout his streams and freestyle for prolonged durations.
Regardless of his playful perspective, Brycent is life like concerning the challenges dealing with Web3 gaming. He envisions the area grappling with mainstream adoption for a while resulting from its area of interest nature. Nevertheless, he anticipates a couple of video games, akin to Dr DisRespect’s Deadrop, may achieve mass adoption this yr regardless of the broader market being flooded with “pixelated rubbish” and Ponzi schemes.
Brycent is decided to not be the man hyping up video games that don’t make it. As a substitute, he desires to be the voice that gaming studios flip to when the market takes off: somebody with an viewers of open-minded avid gamers desperate to discover and push boundaries in one thing new.
He positions himself as “that man” by creating significant, instructional, and entertaining content material. “Good content material is like good music,” Brycent says. “You’ll be able to hearken to Stevie Surprise in the present day, and it nonetheless hits. I need to create content material like that. The sort I can look again on in 10 years and see it’s nonetheless impactful and nonetheless related.”
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