CEO Kevin Lee on how Verse8 permits legacy IP and AI-based UGC to flourish

Within the newest episode of the Blockchain Gaming World podcast, editor-in-chief Jon Jordan talks to Kevin Lee, the CEO of AI game-making platform Verse8, which not too long ago introduced its $5 million seed funding spherical.

BlockchainGamerbiz: We beforehand caught up with Verse8 once we spoke to JC Lee in episode 204 [YT] so six months on, it’s nice to be speaking to its new CEO Kevin Lee. However earlier than we get into Verse8, are you able to give us an introduction?

Kevin Lee: My identify is Kevin Lee and I’ve been working as CEO of Verse8 for about eight months. Previous to that, I used to be a part of an organization known as Planetarium Labs, which is the dad or mum to Verse8. At Planetarium I ran a web3 enterprise fund for about three years, primarily targeted on deploying capital to early-stage web3 gaming studios. Earlier than becoming a member of Planetarium I had a background in personal fairness, and earlier than that I used to be in M&A. So I’ve been in finance for a while after which made the transition over to web3 and gaming.

What was your first response if you noticed the Verse8 tech and received your arms on it?

Really, with what grew to become Verse8, we first began off by constructing our personal WebGL sport engine. That was purported to be for our newest title at Planetarium. However in late 2024, we rapidly realised that with the newest LLMs, the engine interacted very well with these main fashions. It might probably really spit out absolutely playable video games in a few minutes.

We realised that in 2024, and we have been like, that is going to vary the sport. That’s once we determined this could possibly be an enormous mission. Verse8 is now a separate firm, a completely completely different model. We imagine this could go actually huge and turn into a world model. From 2024 to now, it’s been a heck of a journey.

That’s attention-grabbing as a result of in 2024, LLMs weren’t that nice, in comparison with what they'll do now.

You’re completely proper. Within the early days — 2023, 2024 — LLMs and the instruments on the market couldn’t make video games. However in 2025, we began seeing merchandise like Nano Banana, Veo 3, all these high-tier generative AIs.

Now, if you happen to go to our web site, verse8.io, you’ll come throughout video games which have greater than 100 hours of development and new creativity that you just’ve by no means seen available in the market. We’re very early, and it has enormous potential, similar to Roblox did 10 years in the past.

We haven’t really defined how Verse8 works. As a client, you go to the web site and you may kind in a immediate and it builds you what most customers would name a hypercasual sport. However there’s additionally a model for skilled builders too.

Additionally, there’s actually nothing incorrect with hypercasual video games. We'd like snack video games in our lives. However so as to progress, we'd like to have the ability to provide you with much more complicated video games, the place we are able to combine various things like crypto, like webview options. We’re serving to our creators implement completely different strategies of monetization inside their video games so that they’re incentivised to create video games the place folks can are available and follow it. It’s a giant problem and we’re consistently making an attempt to unravel it.

One attention-grabbing factor you’re doing with the expertise is encouraging folks to play and remix different folks’s video games.

We’ve received some good early traction. Only for the document, the platform at present has about 3.5 million MAUs and greater than 200,000 DAUsm so now we have a participant base prepared to check out video games on our platform. What which means is, in case you have artistic concepts, you'll be able to come to our web site and begin creating video games of your personal, and you should utilize our platform as a testbed. You possibly can see in case your sport works or if individuals are enthusiastic about enjoying it. This can be a game-changer.

If you happen to have a look at larger-scale sport studios lately, you’ll discover there are specific formulation to creating video games. That’s as a result of the upfront price of making video games in a standard method is so excessive you'll be able to by no means take dangers. Instruments like ours permit people or small-scale groups to truly take a look at their concepts, and if it really works, they'll broaden on it.

To your second level, if you happen to don’t have any authentic concepts, you'll be able to check out others and begin from that by doing the remix, what we name the spin. What we discovered most attention-grabbing was that we did every kind of selling, and we didn’t need to spend that a lot to draw 3.5 million customers. There have been demographics from all completely different areas prepared to come back to our platform and check out new kinds of video games. It seems to be unbelievable and we see plenty of potential in it.

After all, you allow creators to combine web3 too.

Web3 is in our DNA. We by no means supposed this to be a web3 product, however I feel there’s enormous potential in integrating web3 options. Now we are able to provide you with video games and let particular person creators create one thing that’s artistic and really web3 degen. We did a hackathon with YGG, and we’re received greater than 100 submissions in a few days.

[The winning game was Bank or Plank.]

We’re seeing plenty of artistic concepts come to life, integrating options and ensuring there are onchain mechanics carried out inside their video games to draw extra gamers to come back in, play enjoyable quick video games, commerce cryptos and hopefully win one thing again from their performs.

One factor introduced pretty not too long ago was you raised $5 million. We’ve not seen plenty of funding not too long ago in web3 however you may have variety of well-known South Korean sport corporations as buyers. What are the issues they like about Verse8?

We ended up elevating our seed spherical from largely strategic buyers. Names like Nexon, Netmarble, MarbleX and Neowiz. These are all large gaming studios primarily based in Korea. As an example, Nexon owns quite a lot of legacy IPs and it’s all for utilising them for secondary creations. For all these huge gaming corporations, their principal curiosity is how they'll utilise their legacy IPs — IPs which were round for 20 or 30 years — to unlock extra income.

Once I had the chance to pitch them the concept of Verse8, they have been very excite. All of them have a separate contract with Verse8 for IP partnerships. You’ll see extra legacy IPs being rolled out on Verse8. That has enormous potential, as a result of clearly people and small groups can create their very own IPs utilizing Versate, however they'll do it a lot sooner with legacy IPs. They'll utilise working IPs, IPs with a fanbase and a neighborhood, to provide you with their very own authentic concepts and creations and begin producing income proper off the bat. This spherical was formed by these strategic buyers, and we’ll perform experiments with them on the right way to make these IPs come to life much more.

Nexon and its web3 arm Nexpace, which is making MapleStory Universe, appear very within the alternatives.

Sure, it did a separate press launch on their funding. It’s all about sustaining and operating the builder neighborhood for MapleStory. It maintains enormous communities of builders from Japan, Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere and its intention is to broaden the ecosystem. I feel Verse8 is a superb match. We’re in dialogue to roll out a separate touchdown web page for MapleStory Universe, and we’re going to ask all of the builders from MapleStory to check out Verse8 and provide you with their very own creations. It’s going to be nice.

There are many AI instruments, so what makes Verse8 completely different?

Kevin: I’ll attempt to watch out right here, however I feel for our buyers our largest moat was the truth that now we have our personal engine. We’ve been growing our engine and constructing our libraries for about three and a half years. Utilising our engine, creators can simply provide you with video games which are complicated sufficient to implement no matter they need, versus different instruments on the market which may be good for making a easy side-scroller or a easy puzzle sport. Our platform is extra outfitted to create a wide range of video games.

How are you dealing with the prices of operating a platform that’s utilizing AI corporations’ very costly compute?

For full transparency: if you happen to join as a brand new consumer to Verse8, you’re routinely given $10 free credit score. You should use your tokens for Claude, Gemini and so forth. We offer all choices for our creators. If you run out of that $10 you’ll must high up together with your bank card. We attempt to decrease the limitations so builders can put in a few prompts freed from cost and see what comes out. We run pretty sophisticated budgeting schedules to verify we are able to afford that going ahead.

For the foreseeable future, our plan is to let all people are available and check out our instruments at no cost, a minimum of for the primary couple of prompts. In the event that they prefer it, they'll high up. In the event that they actually prefer it, they'll apply for our creator programme the place we give out credit at no cost. Our first precedence is to decrease limitations for everyone.

Do you hope that Verse8 turns into a client model? It’s a very great distance off however you can be like a Roblox.

Branding-wise we’re actually bold. Roblox, Steam, Epic Video games, these are the manufacturers we go after. We wish to be platform for all players and gamers who're enthusiastic about spending a while. Within the broader sense, I feel our opponents embody YouTube, as a result of we’re all preventing for display screen time. That’s our ambition.

Whether or not the video games are created utilizing AI instruments or not, I don’t suppose that’s a difficulty. Clearly we’re all for offering a device that works very well and has zero failure charge, however on the finish of the day our platform wants to supply video games that folks wish to play. Whether or not AI-generated or not isn’t the difficulty. So we’re all for attracting good IPs, good creators and gifted people who're prepared to make use of our instruments and provide you with engaging content material for our mass viewers. That’s the imaginative and prescient.

Many western sport builders are towards using AI. Is the angle completely different in South Korea?

I see the very same factor in Korea. I discuss to all these studios, and the core improvement groups are actually towards growing video games utilizing AI. A few of the builders and designers aren’t utilizing AI in any respect within the course of. I feel it’s slowly getting higher, simply due to the efficiencies. You possibly can draw the bottom in your belongings, however with out utilising AI it’s simply going to be too gradual. You possibly can’t sustain with the tempo of the business shifting ahead with out utilizing the most recent applied sciences.

So I feel it can take a while, however adoption is unquestionably happening. If you happen to discuss to executives in huge sport studios, they clearly have blended emotions about video games being developed utilizing AI instruments, as a result of the hardcore gamers for his or her video games dislike belongings, pictures and gameplay designed by AI. They like to take a look at the entire sport as an artwork piece, so the human contact and the human improvement must be there. I feel there’s steadiness we are able to discover shifting ahead. So I’m not notably too fearful in regards to the present pushback towards utilizing AI.

What ought to we be looking for from Verse8 for the following six months?

Internally, the workforce is laser-focused on proving the income circumstances for our creators. We’ve secured good early traction. The subsequent problem for us within the subsequent quarter or two is to verify our creators really monetize by way of their content material, and that gamers maintain coming again to our platform with extra stickiness.

We must be serving to our creators, our sport studios and our buyers provide you with extra engaging content material. A part of that's utilising the legacy IPs that they’re prepared to supply to the platform. As soon as we begin seeing significant income circumstances — “I made this sport and I made $100,000 in a month or two” — that’s when the platform actually takes off.

Within the subsequent six months or so what you want to look out for is how we provide you with content material that’s engaging sufficient for our gamers to come back in, after which we’ll begin working extra aggressively on retaining customers on the platform. That’s the primary problem.

Discover out extra on the Verse8 web site.

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