Dialogue with Sui co-founder Koh Kim: Why will blockchain games become the main stage for the MOVE public chain?

Author: Sui World

Original: “Why is the Move Language Particularly Valuable for Blockchain Games? | Sui Co-founder Koh Kim”

Translation: Wanxiang, Mysten Labs

This article comes from an online AMA with Koh Kim, the head of the Mysten Labs ecosystem. During the interview, Koh introduced how the Sui public chain, based on the Move language, empowers blockchain games and how it attracts game developers to learn and apply the Move language. We look forward to a prosperous blockchain game ecosystem built on the foundation of the Move language.

Basic Introduction

Jen:

Welcome to the latest episode of Sui AMA. In this episode, we will introduce the head of the Mysten Labs ecosystem.

Koh:

I am Koh Kim, responsible for handling all external affairs at Mysten. So I often think about:

• How do we grow the community?
• How do we incentivize developers to bring cool experiences to our platform?
• How do we empower the broader community to learn and become excellent developers?

I studied applied game theory and statistics in college and once aspired to be an academic. However, my university mentor advised against it, so I tried to experience the real world by interning at Motorola, researching future hardware and software trends. After graduating, I worked for a few years at a consulting firm focused on quantitative marketing before joining Google.

Starting with product marketing, I began collaborating with Google's emerging products. My most significant achievement was expanding the Google Play games team and business globally. I am also an angel investor and advisor for many consumer tech companies, particularly in the gaming sector. I have helped Web3 projects like SkateX and Panzerdogs.

Now, I work at Mysten Labs. All signs pointed me to jump into Web3, join Mysten Labs, and build for Sui; there’s no better place to be.

Q&A Session

Question 1: Why should games be built on Sui?

Koh:

Sui assets are now modeled to define the properties of items or to combine different items into new ones.

In games, you can have a sword to collect experience points to level up, where points and levels are defined as properties. You can also combine different items, like a sword and a gem, to create a new sword. All of these records can be put on-chain.

Outside of gaming, it also impacts distribution, payments, and marketing, as these activities always have intermediary platforms taking a cut from the revenue.

Our technology is so different from other "competing" public chains that it reminds me of the transition from dial-up to broadband internet. Although dial-up was slow and clunky, it was so magical that you could talk to someone in Sweden using a keyboard and mouse. Now that we have broadband, the internet is vastly different.

A common question we get is, "Why create a new Layer 1?" There are already too many different Layer 1 public chains on the market.

For developers, this is very confusing. Currently, most developers view each Layer 1 as an object to acquire users rather than utility. Therefore, it is crucial to focus on which use cases will bring value to end users, and I believe Sui is the only Layer 1 that can deliver those experiences.

Sui and Aptos are often compared because both founding teams come from Facebook's Diem. On the surface, they do seem similar, but I always recommend digging deeper into the team's background and their actual contributions, especially regarding deep technologies like infrastructure.

Unfortunately, many people do not conduct enough due diligence, and it is challenging to assess early companies like ours with limited public information.

When it comes to competition, while many opinions exist, the "reality" beyond opinions is more important. For me, I let the product speak for itself and focus on the builders. A year from now, things will be very different.

In the long run, Meta has far more engineers than all the Solidity engineers in the world combined. If you look at the application of programming languages like JavaScript, I wouldn’t necessarily say Ethereum (Solidity) has won or that anyone has won. This is because blockchain is still in the "dial-up era." Once we enter the "broadband era," things will be very different.

Jen:

It will lure you in without a doubt; you are enjoying the gaming experience rather than thinking about the mechanics.

Koh:

If you think about it, everyone has a mobile phone. But you cannot compete with the distributors (app stores) and must comply with the rules of Apple and Google, which is quite painful.

If players feel they are investing time rather than spending money, they will feel valued; therefore, you must first convince them that this experience is worth their time.

Why set up all these unnecessary barriers, such as having a wallet, obtaining NFTs, and acquiring tokens? Once everything is ready, maybe things won't work out. You will only have an ever-smaller potential market. That said, I do believe some games will be very perfect and sustainable. With many ready-made solutions, there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

Question 2: What is game development like on Sui? Will we release game engine SDKs similar to Unity and Unreal in the future? What will the game roadmap look like?

Koh:

Compared to Unreal, Unity might be a more interesting target for me, but I think both are important in different ways. Unity has a more diverse community. It is definitely more practical and independent. I hope game studios looking to transition to Web3 will use Unity as their engine, especially on mobile devices.

There is also another developer tool and application ecosystem like a marketplace built on Unity or Unreal, allowing game developers to build.

Unity plugins will be quite simple, especially when adding them to our SDK. It will provide the broadest range of game types and genres we intend to seek. There are many cool ways to support a broader community and bring them into the Sui ecosystem, but I can't reveal that just yet.

On the other hand, Unreal is interesting because it truly focuses on AAA games. For me, this is definitely a longer-term view, as these games often require at least 5 to 7 years of development time, usually 10 years, to achieve the desired quality, which is certainly a greater risk.

That said, we are exploring some game products on Unreal and building toolsets to evaluate how Web3 can operate within their games, especially in the MMO RPG genre.

Jen:

I know that for AAA games, the roadmap is much longer because developer studios encounter many issues during beta testing, especially in blockchain Web3 games.

Koh:

We are very aware that building games takes time and may require multiple attempts; more importantly, it will be constrained by the effectiveness of your user acquisition and community-building strategies. Ultimately, it depends on whether you can achieve distribution.

If no one knows about the game, it may never succeed. That’s why the community aspect is crucial, especially: how blockchain technology will enhance and support the gaming fanbase. Having transparent blockchain technology to support the game, while players introduce the game to their friends.

Game developers and companies will have more transparency with the players themselves, allowing them to build more direct relationships, which will be very interesting.

Question 3: Are there plans to create a store or marketplace for people to discover Sui games?

Koh:

Yes, we are working with several marketplaces. Our store strategy is:

We are collaborating with more third-party projects. We have reached out to many non-Mysten/Sui companies that are looking to build marketplaces, either to support Sui like they do with other chains or to create an exclusive destination, similar to what Magic Eden does for Solana NFTs.

We also have some marketplaces and projects seeking to integrate multi-chain, but I think we should be a platform rather than an application developer because building a marketplace is one thing, while managing and developing it is another. This is where we want to collaborate with third parties and new developers.

Question 4: Have you found developers concerned about building on Sui due to unfamiliarity with the Move programming language?

Koh:

Move was initially designed as an object-oriented smart contract programming language, and it was designed this way because most Web2 object-oriented programming languages are like that.

If you are starting from scratch, it is indeed a challenging language to learn. I always say, don’t blame the developers; lazy code already exists, so why reinvent the wheel? I think a big part of the reason is that if the code is reviewed for minting NFTs, after a while, it will look very similar.

We have also received feedback from experienced Solidity developers who evaluated Move against Rust. For experienced Solidity developers preparing to migrate to Move, we heard they only took five to six days.

Moreover, Move is designed as a cross-platform language, where some of the basic functionalities of chain EDM should still apply, covering both smart contract development experts and Web2 newcomers, making it very flexible. It’s exciting to witness how many people become Move developers because Move is more accessible and intuitive.

Question 5: Is it possible to build blockchain games on Android mobile clients rather than computer browsers?

Koh:

Especially for games, you may need to create a mobile game version. Based on the understanding of user acquisition and distribution, a mobile version would be more effective.

Think about it; to some extent, people live in a world composed of mobile clients rather than a world made up of computer web pages. I think it’s hard for people to learn new behaviors.

You need to figure out what users are doing and under what circumstances you can slightly adjust their behavior without adding obstacles. That’s direct product integration or starting with the behaviors users already have.

Summary Review

Koh:

In conclusion, Sui is under construction but not ready yet—it's not fully prepared, but we are exploring many cool things.

I want to say that the most important thing is to truly thank everyone in the community who is excited about the Move programming language and Sui as a Layer 1. We are genuinely thrilled to build all of this together and help developers succeed. Because ultimately, we aim to build a platform to empower builders to succeed.

This is not just about us; it’s about the broader builders, and we all believe in a decentralized future. For those interested in the gaming world, I think blockchain games are a great Trojan horse to get more people excited about Web3 technology. Therefore, I am very much looking forward to how the ecosystem will develop!