Hello everyone, this is Cointime's "Blocknow Big Guy Interview" column, and I'm Laura, Cointime partner & Nail co-founder.

In this column, we will invite the leaders of various industries in the blockchain industry to discuss various propositions about the blockchain, including the development status of the industry at home and abroad, policy trends, technological breakthroughs, and some welcome everyone to continue Follow the Cointime website and official Twitter for more information about the interview. In this issue, we are very honored to have Garrison Yang. Garrison Yang is responsible for team growth at Ava Labs, the team behind the Avalanche network and products such as Core, Ava Cloud, and Enclave.

Laura：

As a senior professional game player, what kind of games appeal to you? And what do you think is the most important factor that determines the success of a game?

Garrison Yang：

My favorite games are absolutely still competitive PVP games. I played CS 1.6, DOTA, and Starcraft growing up and I still believe that esports is going to keep on growing bigger, even though it’s been going through challenging times.

Games need to have the right balance between accessibility and depth. It has to be easy to start playing - that is how we share with our friends and play with them, but it also needs to have high skill caps, which allow competitive gaming and replayability to grow.

If games can get this right, they can driveboth strong user acquisition and retention.

Laura：

At present, the development of AI has brought new opportunities to many industries, such as the game industry, even many game companies have used AIGC to develop and build games, then in your opinion, what will the combination of AIGC and games bring about the development of game industry?

Garrison Yang：

We’re very excited about AI at Ava Labs. We’re actually the first ecosystem to develop an AI chatbot called AvaGPT for our Core product which allows users to ask questions and learn about Avalanche.

Laura：

Various blockchain games are pouring out, but the life cycle of many games is very short. In your opinion, What are the problems of GameFi games currently facing?

Garrison Yang：

A lot of GameFi is still highly experimental. Many of the teams that are building in Web 3 see crypto provides opportunity to break out of the traditional game development pathways. Many are tackling problems for the first time and it means that we’re going to see a lot of these teams run into walls and projects just simply not work. It’s a natural cycle for early pioneers to fail more often than not, but as people find working strategies the rest of the industry will follow.

Some themes I see in projects that aren’t successful today are:

- Developing projects that are TOO innovative. The market and players just aren’t ready for it.

- Ignoring operational and business basics. Great game devs don’t always know how to run companies, raise capital, and build teams.

- Playing in overly competitive markets. If you’re developing a MOBA, you’re competing against League of Legends. That might be a huge uphill battle if you aren’t as well capitalized and don’t have the same speed to market

Laura：

The concept of "Web2.01" you put forward in your speech this morning: developers can maximize the use of Web3 and blockchain technology while minimizing the impact on users' game experience, and realize Web2 game experience with Web3 technology. At this moment, we should focus more on improving the Web2 experience and not doing things that players are not ready for. Can you elaborate on your concept for us? And can we just understand that you are not optimistic about the development of Web3 games？

Garrison Yang：

To be completely honest, I am VERY bullish on Web 3 gaming. But there is a timing consideration. Just because we can make great crypto native games with great tokenomics doesn’t mean players are ready for that experience.

It’s a lot like VR. I think there are many hse cases but the truth is most people just aren’t ready to incorporate VR into their everyday.

Web 2.01 is the concept that game developers should be honest with themselves of where the players are. We all want to build hyper innovative projects, but not every team has the funding to build something AND wait for the market to catch up. There has to be teams who ease players into the world of Web 3 gaming. Even many Web 2.5 projects put crypto too front and center, thats why I call it Web 2.01. We have to start with a small step and build gaming experiences that players understand, with just a little bit of blockchain enhancement.

Laura：

What do you think of  the idea that AI + Blockchain = Web 3.0?

Garrison Yang：

I couldn’t agree more. AI is already enabling us to interact with digital products in a way that we never would before.

Similar to blockchain, there is a lot of enthusiasm to stick AI in everything. It will take some time and experimentation to find the most optimal way to incorporate both technologies into user experiences that truly can become a mass adopted Web 3.

Laura：

Recently, because of the airdrop of $WLD, WorldCoin has became a very hot topic, at the same time, with the glamour of the project founder—Sam, WorldCoin can be said to have stirred up a storm in the entire crypto world. So, in your opinion, is WorldCoin a utopia or a disruptive revolution in crypto? And what do you think of its iris collection mechanism?

Garrison Yang：

Honestly I haven’t formed a conclusive opinion on WorldCoin yet. Like a lot of crypto, it’s an experiment, and I personally agree with some of the thoughts presented by both supporters and detractors of the project. I have to say the Iris mechanism is definitely unique. It’s very sharable on social media and definitely has stirred up some controversy and discussion. I haven’t tried it out yet or seen it in person though!