Let me begin by saying I participated in the Kickstarter for NovaBlitz and check the website periodically for it's arrival on Mobile. When I saw the announcement for the token I was really excited and intrigued.
Awesome, glad to have you with us! One thing to know is that as a Kickstarter backer, you're automatically getting some Nova Tokens as a reward for supporting the project over the last two years.
If you already own cards in Nova Blitz what happens after NovaTokens get tied to the game. Do your existing cards get transferred on to that platform or will this be only new sets going forward.
We're keeping Set 1 as a free-to-play set, so that new players can more easily join the game. All future sets will be ownable cards on the blockchain.
Can you discuss more about providing a Stake in a card game. Being new to cryptocurrencies I am not familar with the concept.
Does this mean you will be spending those tokens? Or is it more of a distribution of funds like in a mutal fund, so you're tokens would be allocated towards specific development teams as time goes on?
With proof of stake, you still own the tokens that you stake. Your "mutual fund" example is a reasonable way of thinking about it. How it works is that you stake your tokens on a specific game/team, and then you'll get the cards that team creates. If you change your mind, you can pull back some or part of your stake and use it for something else (spend it or sell it).
For the token exchange, I read that you would be exchanging ETH for the Nova Tokens. Does this mean you need to own ETH to participate in the exchange or can you purchase with US Dollars at an ETH exchange rate equivalent?
Yes, you need ETH to participate - the Nova Tokens will be transferred to your ethereum wallet when they're distributed, so you have to have a wallet too. We recommend MyEtherWallet for creating a wallet. You can buy ETH with USD on many major exchanges (but make sure you transfer the ETH to your wallet BEFORE contributing to the token sale - if you contribute from an exchange, you won't receive any Nova Tokens).
A couple more philosophical questions on the token and market. Can you share your thoughts on the market's appetite to going back to a TCG model versus a CCG model. As you pointed out in the white paper the current digital ccg market does not support what the nova token will provide, I think the closest we come is Magic the Gathering Online and even there you do not actually own the cards, although there is buying and selling of them.
The question is whether or not that is something the market wants to go back to since I would speculate a large portion of the digital ccg market never actually experienced the model of it's paper-based counterpart. The concept of card "printing" and scarcity is another topic I wonder if the digital market will be able to wrap their heads around.
A follow up question to that is assuming this is something the market is looking for, why would a bigger company not just create their own token rather than using yours, Blizzard for example, although I would assume they are committed to their current business model at this stage? I believe this is great for indie developers and studios not looking to sink R&D time into this area. I am just wondering if there are concerns with success if competitive coins will arise to achieve the same thing.
I think the digital gaming market as a whole understands scarcity very well - we're exposed to it on a daily basis, in games and beyond. There's rare item codes and top-end raid loot for MMOs like Word of Warcraft, legendary weapons in Destiny, and many more examples. What we know is that ownership is an incredibly powerful driver for people, and that's something that the recent crop of CCGs haven't succeeded at. And one of the reasons scarcity is confusing in paper TCGs is the fact that print runs aren't known. With Nova Tokens, the print run is recorded on the blockchain, so it's public information. That lets even the most casual player understand just how rare a given card is.
Bigger companies tend to be risk averse. So that's why we haven't seen big companies jump into token creation and blockchain. Also, big companies have shareholder responsibilities, and so tend to be very private in what they talk about. They're just not good fits for the more open communication required to run a token sale project. Smaller companies most likely both won't be able to create their own token, as they don't have the required skills on board, and won't want to, as the effort, risk, and investment required is considerable. Being able to jump on board an existing, developed, and supported platform is a much more sure bet for them.
