Interview with @dbofficial125

Hello everyone!! 👻👻👻

Loyal to my tradition of Friday's interview, this week I've had the pleasure of interviewing a communication crack who is helping new and experienced players survive in the jungle of #play2earn in #Splinterlands. With more than 2k followers on his Twitch and more than 10k on YouTube, surely the vast majority of you will know him: he is @dbofficial125. What you may not know is how he started and what his path has been towards the professionalization of content creation. Apart from highly recommended that you subscribe (if you haven't yet), I hope you enjoy the interview!

Hello DB!! I've seen your content and looks fantastic to me. Would you like to celebrate an interview? As you are the biggest content creator that I will have interviewed, I would like to add a little bit of your path story. So what were u doing B4 being a streamer and why did you decide to change to content creation?

Hey! I'd love to do this. I had a lot going on before accidentally falling into the world of content creation. I ran a successful business trading gemstones that I've just restarted. I was also a competitive mixed martial artist. So it was quite the change when I began playing video games for a living.

Wow, I think we have a great story to be told. Did u have the freak/gamer version? I mean, when I was younger my games were Magic, Starcraft then jumped to Clash Royale. What has been brought to you today?

When I got started in streaming? Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes was my game. It's a little mobile strategy game, collecting and training characters. I got my start there purely because it was all my old pc had the power to stream haha...

I played a lot! when was released? Do u still play? Maybe 6 years ago?

I'm casually playing it but no longer making any content for it. Splinterlands is my Youtube focus now, Galaxy of Heroes pops up now and then on my Twitch channel but that's about it

Ok let's focus on Splinterlands then! When did u start playing it and why?

I want to say it was in November 2021? I'm pretty sure it was then anyway, just as the Chaos Legion hype was reaching fever-pitch.
Honestly, it's a game I've looked at several times after getting into cryptocurrency in 2020. I remember seeing ads about the pre-sale for Land and everything but hesitated on joining. Eventually my friend from a previous game we both covered, @bulldog1205, also suggested it and I finally had someone I knew and trusted to give me some information on it.
I now really wish I had joined sooner as I'm an enormous fan of card games and an avid Pokemon card collector.

We've got the same feeling of having joined b4! I am an old Magic the Gathering player at school. I was born in 81 and played 3rd edition at the school's playground

Magic is good fun, I preferred Pokemon's trading card game though. Content creation for me was honestly an accident. I had a couple of weeks alone at home, had seen my brother do a couple of streams, and figured I'd give it a go because I was bored. I had no previous knowledge of the industry and didn't even know who any of the big names were. I never went into this expecting to be doing it full time.

And that was in 2017-18?

I believe my first stream on Twitch was in December 2016, but Youtube was more late 2017, early 2018 when EA pushed for me to cover a game of theirs on that platform too.

So could we get back to these times. How was your learning process, your first subscribers, your ups and downs, did you feel at any moment just like giving up? and if you could tell me some mistakes that u made, and some hot points also...

It was a little difficult when I first began on Twitch. I wasn't previously a fan of anyone, so I had no real knowledge of the technical aspect of setting up a stream or anything. Thankfully my brother, Dan, was a fan of several big creators and helped me configure the software required.
From there it was all about marketing and performance. I have a performance background in the music industry so both of those things came quite naturally. I was able to grow a regular viewership very quickly on a completely un-established game, not even listed in Twitch's game catalog.
Youtube was a little different. I did it so casually and it just rapidly grew with little effort. I was fortunate to be one of the very few people covering my primary game at the time, so I gained a big market share quickly and a lot of subscribers.
I was lucky to not ever be affected by ups and downs or even consider giving up, as I didn't get into this to be a big creator or anything. I was just having fun and it all sort of accidentally happened for me. The stress and self-doubt came later on once I realized I was now a full-time creator and needed to maintain growth and success.
I'd say my biggest error would be the fact I didn't recognize the potential sooner. If I had realized the growth and success, I could've gotten serious with things from the beginning and probably have been even bigger by now.

That's inspiring!! What would you tell to a <500 subscribers in youtube or a <100 subs in twitch as advice? I mean to a person that is beginning with few subs..

You have to love what you're doing from a creative perspective. People chasing this as a way to get rich or famous will often give up very early on. You don't need the most expensive hardware, you need the ability to look at ways you could improve.
One bad bit of advice I see on Reddit is people telling creators to not pay attention to criticisms or what other creators are doing. This is nonsense. Looking at what bigger creators are doing, their methods, their patterns, it's well worth doing. You don't want to copy them from a performance and creative perspective, but you will often see trends of being consistent and entertaining in the bigger names.
Watch yourself back and ask would you watch that performance if it was somebody else? What's missing? Where could you be better? Perhaps you don't engage the viewers enough, maybe you don't give the camera enough eye contact? Perhaps you just need to get a bit more energy in your performance. It's always worth looking at ways to improve.

That's exactly it. Some so many people do this nowadays that competition is high. If you're not a fan of your content, why would anyone else be? Make the content you would watch and challenge yourself to get better all the time.

Kinda sort of mix between being your #1 critic but at the same time opening up your mind to everything that surrounds you

That's exactly it. Some so many people do this nowadays that competition is high. If you're not a fan of your content, why would anyone else be? Make the content you would watch and challenge yourself to get better all the time.

Turning back to splinterlands.... how do you feel about the game situation right now? With the market going down... Half middle sale is done, Chaos legion arrival...

I'm super happy with the game situation right now. I think a majority of the fud came about from those new to the crypto market, joining the game during the unsustainable highs of the Chaos release hype and then panicking in the Bitcoin crash.
Anyone who has been around in the market a couple of years knew what was going on. I purposely didn't buy an SPS when I joined the game, I sat and waited until the release when it dropped to about 0.14 and again at 0.10.
The market itself within Splinterlands looks very healthy. Beta has grown in places, Untamed's former metals have dipped a bit and some promising cards from Chaos already hold good value despite not being out of print yet.

Don't u think guilds are a bit underrated and tournaments should be better explained to new players?

100%. I touched on this in a recent video. When I came into the game I had no idea how either of these worked, the tutorial didn't teach me a single thing. It sort of played itself and then threw me to the wolves lol.
Tournaments need a full breakdown and probably additional options in the setup. There needs to be ACTUAL rookie Bronze and rookie Silver tournaments. I think the first Bronze one I entered, I faced nobody will less than 200k power and all sorts of premium cards, one opponent has 2m power, it was incredibly off-putting and would be to a lot of new players trying out tournaments.
Guilds also need a lot of work and breakdown. More promotion of brawls and its cards benefiting your power would be a great selling point, yet I didn't even know this until recently! It took a guild member to explain things as the game failed to do so.

Completely agree with you. Some strengths to be developed yet. Do u think it's easy for a new player to begin? Compared a year ago?

Compared to a year ago I feel Splinterlands is in a good place. The road map for this year sounds promising, the game has matured more which will give investors confidence in the game's longevity, and Chaos Legion is very available.
I remember being somewhat disappointed when I joined and Untamed was sold out. So new players arriving now are getting to have some fun in the market and opening packs. Lots of fantastic cards are available at low prices as they're still in print. I mean a Level 2 Xenith Monk is practically Cerberus but look at the price difference for a new player! Haha
The NFT gaming space is very new and sadly full of rug pulls. Splinterlands has been going for ages in comparison to the average game, so the more it ages the better off it should be at retaining and attracting new players

Let's hope my friend! Which are ur hidden treasures about cards, ur best common rares. And how do u feel like kinda meta sneak and speed?

One of my absolute favorite cards is Antoid Platoon at Level 3. I saw the potential in this card super early on, it's also low mana for little league rules and much cheaper to play/own than Living Lava. I play it over Lava in almost every single battle and own 6 Gold cards I bought during the pre-sale.
Xenith Monk at Level 2 is fantastic too. As I said earlier it's practically Cerberus. I use it for little league/poison or either of those rules when Fire is banned.
I'm a big fan of Djinn Apprentice used with Delwyn and Void Dragon. River Nymph is excellent fun too.
The sneak meta is very easily countered once you're experienced. If I face someone whose history shows they spam it, I just stick Lava or someone on the back wall. Speed is a little tougher to handle but tends to be in higher mana, as fast cards tend to be costly. So I'll play my Dragons with Delwyn to be just as fast but hit a lot harder.

How do y feel about the new OP summoner and legendary ones? Will she be game-changer?

Waka looks quite intimidating, I was sad to see him well out of my price range due to being released as a maxed card. Legendary summoners tend to be pretty overpowered but I feel they affect the higher leagues more than the majority of the player base.
I have had the chance to play with Yodin, Llama, and some others thanks to Bulldog, Yodin was huge fun but I skipped Llama a lot of the time anyway. Yodin however was a dream to play with and I wish I owned him haha.
I fully expect the new ones to make a big dent in the top leagues and I will be keeping a close eye on their values, as I'd like to get one early before their prices inflate out of my reach. You only have to check Splintercards to see legendary summoners get very expensive once out of print.

This delicious interview is reaching its end. Before it, I've seen that you've got personal merchandise and gadgets on your shop. Don't you think it's another path to explore for personal creators that can connect with their audience?

I've got a couple of designers I hire, at work on new Splinterlands focused logos, merchandise, and things too.
I first stepped into merchandise when my fanbase on Twitch started requesting a T-Shirt. It sold out fast, then mugs got requested too so I looked up a platform that could provide these things rather than me having to ship them out and reduce shipping costs for my international viewers in particular.

Wow! I will buy Splinterdlands for sure! A couple of last questions? When do u think CL packs will be sold and how many players do you expect by the end of 2022?

Chaos packs are hard to predict right now. We had a crazy fast start to the sale, as expected. Many feared they'd instantly sell out so a lot of panic buying happened. I was one of many who sat waiting 2 hours for my credits to come through haha. Sales have slowed off. That said there are only 7.4m packs left roughly and we're averaging near 400,000 players, that's, not even 19 packs a player, so it's very reasonable to assume they'll be gone by October in my opinion.
New players arriving could accelerate this. For example, my brother is new and bought like 200+ packs already.
As for player growth, looking at the on-chain activity of the tracked smart contracts, the game has exploded. 344,000 active players in the last 24 hours alone. I'd expect this to double by the year's end. The devs are pushing for an Esports scene which is exactly what needs to be done. Content creators are starting to get noticed as the game grows and new players search for advice. All these things will snowball and help each other.

Thank you very much to @dbofficial125 for your time and kindness. It has been a pleasure to share this time with you. Hope you all have a nice weekend. Greetings from Barcelona!

Special thanks to @trashyomen @wilhb81 @dalz2 @nateaguila-spt @travelgirl.spt @brofund-spt @libertygame27 @egistar @sm-silva @marianaemilia @sharkmonsters @abh12345.spt @cryptojiang @scooter77.spt @ph1102.spt @butterb @flauwy-1up @shaddrak @brofund-1up @stoptory @abrockman @oomrniceoo @broxi @ivarbjorn @bear.oneup @uygames @udontknowm3 @ph1102.one @chel-koby @mmunited @dbuzz @arcange @pouchon @bscrypto your support encourages me to keep working

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