Curious about the world of web3 projects you can earn with, but short on time? Look no further than our Meet a Builder series.

In these short format interviews, we speak with the teams behind your favourite projects for their insights on what they’re building behind the scenes and what’s next. Join us for an inside look at the projects shaping the future of the web3 earning ecosystem.

In todays episode we chat with Len, the CEO of Saltwater Games, to discover Celeros, a game merging real-world physics, diverse environments, and challenging AI in augmented reality. Its multi-layered NFT ecosystem integrates gaming, governance, and real-world connections, prioritizing longevity and meaningful engagement. Leveraging gamification and blockchain, Celeros aims for a positive impact through social initiatives and environmental projects.

Transcript

SARAH, web3earner: Welcome back to our Meet a Builder interview Series where I have the pleasure of talking to the teams behind your favourite web3 earning projects.

In today’s episode, we have an exclusive look at Celeros, a game that offers an extraordinary experience by combining real-world physics, diverse environments, and challenging AI opponents in augmented reality.

What sets Celeros apart is its multi-layered NFT ecosystem, seamlessly integrating gaming, governance, and real-world connections. This innovative structure reflects their vision of creating sustainable gaming experiences that prioritize longevity and meaningful engagement. By leveraging the power of gamification and blockchain, Celeros aims to make a positive impact by incorporating social initiatives and environmental projects into their economic model and digital experiences.

Joining us today is the CEO of Saltwater Games, Len. How are you?

LEN, Celeros: I’m fantastic, great intro, thanks, Sarah.

SARAH: Thank you. A bit of a mouthful, but we got there.

LEN: Behemoth of a thing we’re trying to do, so it’s actually quite good to see it come together in sort of shorter sentences as well and like how to sort of try and summarize it because we always struggle. It’s complicated, bringing real-world economic factors into a game.

SARAH: Can we start off by you giving us an explanation as to what Celeros is?

LEN: So depending on the edge of the audience as well. So for me I like talk about it as Star Wars meets Formula One, but a lot of the kids today will maybe more aligned to Track Mania, so Track Mania meets Formula One. It’s taken was essentially an arcade competitive experience of risk, reward, and competition and then wrapping around what is essentially a real-world Motorsport that we’re then bringing into this digital experience. 

SARAH: Beautiful, very brief, very good.

SARAH: Can you explain to us how people can earn with Celeros?

LEN: Okay, so sort of mentioned a little bit of the economic factors around Motorsport. The first one being flying race cars, but if it’s okay with you, I’d like to share something.

At the center, what you have here is, you have what is essentially the content IP and data is then owned by the gamer, and we create these value exchanges, that come from here out into these different sections. So, for instance, bringing it out into things like tribes, identity, community. This happens in Formula One, it happens in all Motorsport as well. So, out into things like rental, if you own assets, how do you then get extra additional, reward for the utilization of those assets when you’re sleeping? Rental configuration, all these kind of things.

Then you’ve got events and publishing, social streaming that then has a value exchange as well back to the gamer. Of course, there’s governance,  everything we do there where it gets really interesting is, obviously, we’re about Motorsport, we’re about risk reward competition, so the teams, leagues, tournaments, talent, and Dao is a really interesting space.

Infrastructure is where we start to look at things like facilities. So, the first big facility that we’re actually doing the mint for in August, and by the way, to get access to this mint, you need to come through the Champions Pathway, to come through the Champions pathway, you need to then register on Discord, so there’s a few different steps there to do that as well, but we’re looking for advocates that want to basically understand what we’re trying to do, help, what we’re trying to get involved. So we’re launching this first tournament this month, this racetrack is the first game experience that we’ve actually built already, and we’re going to run a mini-tournament on it.

The teams and leagues, if I come back now through to the teams, leagues, tournaments, and talents, I’ll specifically talk about talent. If you’re a phenomenal racer and you’ve been winning a lot and it’s all recorded, it’s on blockchain, it’s immutable, we can see the performance, we can see the historical data, then the ability to take portions of your future earnings, fractionalize that, and allow your fans to contribute to your career but also support you, but then also reap some of the rewards from your successes, this is another aspect that we’re bringing into this game.

So, there’s a lot of different ways for gamers to earn in this world, but in the same way that there is for any Motorsport, either legend, team manager, race track owner, anything that happens in the real world of Motorsport advertiser, it’s all there.

SARAH: What you guys are building is just super exciting, all the abilities the users can actually earn and participate within the ecosystem, it’s great.

SARAH: And finally, can you, tell us what you guys are working on that will bring more value or create more opportunities for people earning within the website?

LEN: Apart from the fact there is reward and all these factors that are coming from the economic systems. Of course, I mean, this is at the core of what the business is, we actually call the play-to-impact, we’re taking a lot of the treasury functions, we’re investing that in environmental sustainability projects that generate a yield. That yield is how we help create balance within the game economy, so we’re not just relying on gamers coming in and funding the development of a game and funding the next gamer leaving. We’ll actually have all these other economic factors that hydrate the treasury, so to speak.

For other opportunities to earn, there’s participation, contribution, so when the AAA launches, which is somewhere in 2024, mid to back end of 2024, we will be a free-to-play to start with. We want people to come in and experience what it is to be in a smaller sport, either earn their way into the levels where the tournament and the bigger prizes are through contribution participation in various different quests or, they can buy their way in a little bit higher up to get them access to that because they can already back themselves. They have already played the free-to-play, they know that they’re pretty good, they can see where they’re at with as far as competition is concerned, and obviously, we’ll be right-sizing tournament and competition structures around skill sets to try and create almost a level-up opportunities for these kind of drivers and pilots. So at the same time, we’re also then contributing to their success through the academy too. So it’s not just, “Hey, let’s just go and play”, there’s a lot of complexity in how to make the real flying race cars work or any of these future Motorsports. We’re going to be teaching people on the way through. But it basically means that there are lots of ways to earn through just participation and contribution alone, not necessarily just winning tournaments. Management, ownership, and contribution to facilities, facilities management, and tournament rules and DAO governance, and all the things that we can map across into the real world but keep within the game world as well. So yeah, hopefully it answers that one as well.

And the one thing that I will say, and this is for the very rare, rare few, the best pilots and some of the ones that actually want to go on this journey, and you’re going to see in the tournament that we’ve launched, we’ve got someone that’s relatively famous, has been a gamer and become a driver in the real world as well. So they’ve come across from the game and then come across and learn how to remote pilot one of these these, uh, these crazy vehicles in the real world and then potentially that in to one of them as well and actually then get signed up to a team and go and have an amazing career in the real world outside of the career that they’ve already got in the gaming world. So, that’s the real unique opportunity within this.

SARAH: I really like that you guys are baking in that sort of environmental sustainability piece, and not necessarily making it a focus but just having it as an engine that runs underneath, and people don’t even necessarily realize that they’re doing it, but they are helping to make a difference, and I think that’s a really beautiful thing.

LEN: Absolutely. I’ve always sort of found that Motorsport gamers, and this is not to diminish anything around any other type of gamer whatsoever, but I’ve always found Motorsport gamers specifically are almost like engineers. They tinker, they tweak, they sit in the garage, they’re looking at engineering things generally a lot of the times. I’m definitely one of those, so I look at these complex engineering challenges in the real world as well, which basically means we have this aggregate brain across our Motorsport community that when we are looking at environmental sustainability and investing for yield to bring back to the gamer, we end up with this great fantastic aggregate grain of oversight. They can actually go, you know what, “that’s a great project” because of this particular yield conversion that you’re getting from power or from solar to power, or they’re looking at biofuel and going, well, actually, harvest is going to be slightly off on that one because we’re researching this stuff all the time. So, that’s another big win in this.

SARAH: Yeah, love it, educating people as they go as well, just. Honestly, I am just very energized by that, by the whole thing. I’m so excited for you guys, and it’s so impressive what you guys are doing, especially the fact that it’s AAA.  I know how challenging it is to bring these big AAA games to blockchain, and I think you guys are doing an amazing job with the economic model underneath it.

I’m personally extremely excited for the future of Celeros, and it’s been an absolute privilege to have you on here today and to interview you and just converse and discuss what you guys are up to. So thank you so much for joining me.

LEN: Thank you, Sarah. See you later.

Learn more about Celeros, how you can participate in quests and start earning today!