Launching a successful crypto project is challenging, really challenging to be exact… Add in the complexity of DeFi gaming and it takes the challenge to a whole new level.
As part of our upcoming releases, we wanted to give the community some insight as to what that journey has looked like for Klee Games and provide some transparency around some of the challenges we have faced in the project. We may have seen quiet over the past 3 months but hopefully this article will help provide some clarity on what has been happening in the background and the huge organizational change we are embarking on to ensure our future roadmap is achieved.
When starting a project such as this, two of the biggest challenges is having the capital to get the project off the ground and finding the right team to make it happen.
For a lot of crypto projects, capital can be the biggest limitation which forces the project to look at creative ways to achieve the required goals. Common among crypto projects is to find developers that are prepared to carry out work for token supply once the project gets off the ground. This reduces the outlay of initial capital however it significantly limits the talent pool prepared to work for you, creates compromises on skill level and a lot of the time the work is completed in a developers spare time so the project is never given too much priority.
This was the case for KleeRun in it’s infancy. It took longer than expected and there was a lot to iron out but we eventually got to the stage where we had a minimum viable product that we could release to the masses and prove that the concept had merit.
Seeing the overwhelmingly positive response to the project, we knew we had carved out our own little corner in the crypto-verse and quickly started planning further development and look to the future as to where we could take the project.
Unfortunately one of the big limitations here was the consistency and availability of the old development team. Although we had a working product, the project was reliant on a variety of external parties who all contributed their block of work but had since become very difficult to communicate with and some disappeared altogether. An example of the previous setup is explained below.
The game was built by one developer, the pay-out system another, then there was separate developers for the client-server API and contract with servers scattered all over the world.
Coming into the 2nd round of development, the one thing we had on our side this time was the project had started to generate capital which provided us with more options for who we engage and how we move forward. Being the focus of the project, the decision was made to focus our efforts and capital first on the continued development of the game and work towards an Android and IOS release as well as overall general improvements to gameplay.
We found an Eastern European game development team that appeared to tick all the boxes and had previous experience working on crypto projects which we saw as an asset so we engaged them to start working on the improvements and mobile launches.
The first few blocks of work completed were successful and delivered on time however during the first half of 2022, coinciding with the increased unrest and instability in eastern Europe, we noticed that work started to drag on with excuse after excuse as to why it had not been completed or why there would be delays and additional expenses incurred. We persisted as best we could to get the project to a stage where the latest developers work could be published.
As we approached the middle of the year we knew the project required additional resources and oversite so we started bringing on board staff including a Chief Technology Officer, Application developers and content creators / designers to assist in bringing the Klee roadmap into fruition. We talk about these staff additions in depth in our previous article.
With the additional resources onboard, we were able to more closely track the progress of the game development team and introduced procedures to create better transparency around billing and the completion of work. Unfortunately milestones and targets were still being missed with payments being demanded prior to the completion of agreed work.
Against our better judgement, we paid what was supposed to be final invoices with the promise that the game developers would complete the scope shortly after. Weeks went by with little progress until we received a blunt message from the developers essentially demanding large payments be made that were never discussed previously before any code would be released. The explanation for this was out of scope additions that were never discussed and we never approved.
The Klee team has taken huge pride in always paying what is owed and allocating over 90% of all funds raised back into the investment of development but it became clear that we could no longer hold a working relationship with this company and given their track record of deliverables, did not feel confident that the scope would actually be delivered even if we met their demands.
As a result, we had to walk away from several months of work, tens of thousands of dollars paid and start fresh with the upgrades. We discussed a way forward at length and came to the realization that in order to ensure we don’t end up in the same position, we needed to look at the investment of an internal game development team. Being our third iteration of gaming development, we knew we had to find the right person that brought the right set of skills, with the credibility to back them up. After meetings with a number of candidates we found the perfect fit in Sweetie!
Sweetie is a full stack game developer with over 15 years experience in the gaming industry. She brings a wealth of experience to our team including previously working on AAA and Indie titles including the Call of Duty franchise. On top of her pedigree history as a game developer, one of her biggest draw cards is that she is a veteran in the crypto space and has been the backbone to several DeFi gaming projects.
Bringing Sweetie onboard, we felt the need to really take stock of what state the game is currently in and her first job was to conduct a full code audit on all work previously done on the game, identify vulnerabilities, improve user experience and plan for upgrades. Although she has only been with us for around 2 months now, her productivity has been better than we could’ve hoped for and we are getting very close to releasing the fruits of this labor in conjunction to our IOS launch.
As mentioned in some of our past releases, we have also started work on 2 brand new games that will join the Klee ecosystem, KleeKarts and KleeBlast in which Sweetie will be taking the lead. This will represent a significant change in the roadmap and focus for Klee, moving from a 1 title utility into a DeFi gaming launch pad which we will cover in much greater detail in a near future.
It is very humbling to have such a strong community behind the Klee project. The road to where we are now has certainly presented it’s challenges but with the communities support and our continued investment, we have been able to bring the project completely internal managed by a focused team and no longer bound to rely on external parties and broken promises. A huge milestone we set out to achieve.
In the next article we will focus on the new Klee pay-out system so stay tuned!
