Polygon’s Michael Blank leaves EA for Web3

Why Michael Blank left traditional gaming for Web3

When Michael Blank left Apex Legends and Madden publisher Electronic Arts in March, he was celebrating his 20th anniversary working for one of the oldest, largest game makers in the world. At EA, Blank had done it all: He had been a producer in the game development trenches in Vancouver; led major initiatives at EA Sports and the company’s Origin platform in California; and until this year was senior vice president of the company’s player network, overseeing a team of over 400 people.

But earlier this year, Blank stepped away from the traditional industry for a role as chief operating officer at Polygon Studios. The Web3 company oversees blockchain gaming, NFT and related metaverse projects on the Polygon network, a sidechain of Ethereum dedicated to helping blockchain networks work together and scale. Blank told Protocol in an interview that the promise of Web3, for gaming and beyond, is far too great to ignore.

Leaving EA was difficult, Blank told me. “I worked at EA most of my adult life,” he said. “I felt like I was part of a family. I love games and I loved the people I worked with, and it wasn’t easy to make this shift.”

• The decision to take the plunge came as Blank tried to figure out the next big shift, not just in gaming, but for the entire internet.
• “How do I help a game company, whether it was EA or another, to think about the future of games? There are a lot of companies out there, including EA, that are constantly struggling with what’s the next thing,” Blank said.
• “I felt that I had the opportunity at Polygon to do this beyond games … to help create the future of the Internet – this expansive view at a company that made it possible not only for games, but also movies, music, financial marketplaces on across the experience of what people do on the internet,” he added. “That was the direction I started migrating down.”

It was never a “now or never” moment. Instead, Blank said his work at EA thinking about the early stages of the metaverse, and what it might mean to develop entirely new platforms and definitions for games, led him to Web3.

• “I was drawn to Web3 based on the reading I did about what was going on with NFTs at the time,” he said. “I thought these were new engagement vehicles. I was excited, and the excitement snowballed, and I felt like I needed to try to do something not completely different, but different.”
• Blank turned to a friend, Phyl Terry, who runs an organization called Collaborative Gain, a kind of professional community oriented around business management. Blank said Terry helped him go through the deliberation process to arrive at his decision to leave EA and join Polygon Studios.
• “I started following Polygon because it was making significant progress in blockchain technology and the adoption of blockchain technology in collaboration with both Web 2.0 and Web3 companies,” said Blank.
• “Polygon was one of the natural companies to look at if they wanted to make a leap into this world, and frankly, this has only accelerated in the last six months, despite what we’re seeing in the crypto market.”

Blank is not worried about the current crypto battles. While 2021 was a breakout year for NFTs and the crypto market at large, 2022 has been a harsh wake-up call for Web3 enthusiasts.

• “I think there are many things we need to do better. There are things that have been done that are not good for the crypto world and the blockchain world,” Blank told me. “We’re creating something new here, and in the creation of something new, there’s so much learning that needs to be done, and game companies need to drive that learning.”
• “With any new innovation, there are highs and lows, just like with mobile and free-to-play,” he added. “We’re seeing today gaming companies across the board, Web3 and the larger Web 2.0, thinking about how to engage in the blockchain gaming world … they sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, but we’re learning a lot.”

For Blank, the role of blockchain gaming is not to revolutionize the gaming industry and replace the old guard, but to turn more people around the world into gamers and expand the definition of what it means to play a game.

“All these innovations in distribution and delivery and connectivity and social … they expanded the market, they created more opportunities for play,” he said. “I expect what we see in blockchain will be another tool to help expand and create new experiences for players in games, just like mobile and free-to-play did, and just like streaming and subscription will. I’m super excited and can’t wait to see what the gaming companies create.”

– Nick Statt

Sponsored content from Modern Treasury

Software is changing payments, and banks should care: At Modern Treasury, we built a platform to complement banks’ existing products to help them prepare for a software-led future. We are here to help them future-proof their business so they can participate in and lead the next phase of financial services.

Read more from Modern Treasury

Zero Latency’s CTO on why location-based VR appeals to older gamers

Location-based VR startup Zero Latency is bringing another well-known video game to its more than 50 venues in 24 countries: The company is adapting the 2011 title Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine for free-roam VR. Zero Latency is developing the title in-house with help from Focus Entertainment, which is providing some of the game’s original assets.

Using well-known, slightly older IP has worked well for Zero Latency. The startup previously adapted Ubisoft’s Far Cry 3, which was first released in 2012. The title has been a big part of Zero Latency’s recovery from the pandemic.

• The company has seen ticket sales increase 191% in the past 12 months, according to CTO Scott Vandonkelaar. The number of games played on the platform even increased by 288%.
• Zero Latency launched Far Cry about a year ago, and Vandonkelaar told me that the company has seen a lot of older players come to their seats since then.
• “A real common thread is people who used to play games when they were younger and they still want to come in and re-engage with those games,” Vandonkelaar said.
• “They’re people who haven’t used a controller or maybe sat at a PC and played a game in a long time,” he said. “They remember back in their earlier days, when they had free time, they could sit down and play a game.”
• Part of the reason location-based VR is so appealing to these players is that they don’t need to memorize the exact controls of a game to have fun.
• Instead, they can just walk around inside the game and fight enemies with their friends. “It really resonates strongly with the older gaming audience,” Vandonkelaar said.
• Bringing these titles back to location-based VR also means players can share them with their kids and have fun as a family together.

At least some of these players will likely buy their own VR headsets as well. However, Vandonkelaar told me he wasn’t too worried about it from a business point of view. “As more people have bought headsets, it hasn’t hurt our business at all,” he said.

Vandonkelaar argued that location-based VR is not like movie theaters, which have struggled with people watching movies at home. Instead, he likened it to basketball courts. If people buy their own basketballs to practice at home, it only increases the chance that they will visit a court one day. “Playing VR at home is very different than doing it in a dedicated location,” he said.

— Janko Roettgers

In other news

Take-Two Confirms Grand Theft Auto VI Leak Hackers have gained access to the company’s internal systems and leaked dozens of development videos of the unreleased game, Take-Two Interactive announced yesterday.