Making a Mobile Game Engine

Q&A with Smirk Co-Founder Preston Attebery

Jan 11, 2024

Welcome to MINDS AT PLAY, where we delve into the intersection of blockchain technology, the anthropology of play, and digital sanctuaries for self-expression, self-care, and fun. In this edition, we are in conversation with Preston Attebery, Co-founder of Smirk Software Company. Smirk is dedicated to democratizing game creation by introducing accessible game design tools for mobile devices.

Our discussion with Preston explores Smirk's approach to overcoming technical challenges in developing a mobile game engine and social platform, the future of social gaming and the meme-like potential for user-generated games to gain virality as cultural artifacts.

Preston is a visionary and his ideas on creativity can prove to be applicable for nearly everyone. Smirk is actively shaping a more open and regenerative game creation ecosystem, setting itself apart from the (often extractive) Web3 gaming landscape. Let's dive into the conversation:

CYNTHIA: As you know, I am a writer exploring the intersection of games and Web3, and I don’t know if you are in Web3 – but in this space I don't hear many people at all talk about game engines. And I've always thought game engines were just one of the coolest things ever because they're tools for collective dreaming, you know. I was really impressed that you're working on a game engine and not only that, but a game engine that we can use on our phone – insane!

PRESTON: I actually was in Web3. I was working on a crypto game called Block Cities. So Smirk is not explicitly Web3, it's purely social and games. But shares a lot of the same ideas, I guess.

So what we're doing now is essentially trying to bundle a light version of Blender and a light version of Unity into one app, and then building all that UX from the ground up for the phone.

We basically call it a game design tool, which pretty much doesn't exist today.

With engines you still have to bring models and your materials and everything from somewhere else. Unity doesn't really allow you to model within the app. So [the existing engines] are kind of incomplete tools. And then even in Unity, you have to bring your own code editor to even code your game. So the engine sits at a certain place in the stack. And so we're trying to bundle all that together on the phone because if you're on the phone, you don't have a workflow. So you don't have a code editor. And you don't have a modeling software. There's no market for that currently. So no one's made them really, so we're basically trying to bundle all that together into one product. And that's just the tooling side. The other side is the social side. Where you're actually posting your games and then the consumers are actually playing it. The consumer pitch for the app is: TikTok for games. And the creator pitch is: Blender and Unity on your phone.

CYNTHIA: That is insane. TikTok for games is an awesome idea. I know the App Store is trying to do something similar, but I don't know how culturally relevant it is. I mean, I don't know the numbers to be honest with you, but it’s not TikTok level relevant. I think what sets TikTok apart from other platforms is that a lot of its content becomes memes — they become inserted into culture, and I know you talk about memes a bit on your Twitter. So I think that's what you're intending to build.

PRESTON: Yeah. Well, I guess the more a medium moves away from being dominated by large companies, as it was with games years ago; there were very large companies making games. Then, over time, we see smaller companies making games. And now, Roblox enables individuals and small teams to make games, and we're aiming to enable any individual to make a game. The further you progress down that path, the more interesting, diverse, and unique the content becomes because a company can't get away with certain types of games. The bigger the company, the less they can get away with, for instance a kid can make something that's very edgy, maybe offensive to some people. But what is offensive to one group of people might be very interesting to another group of people — and a company is going to avoid that all together. So the more you kind of individualize the entire thing, you get to those mimetic things happening.

CYNTHIA: What are your thoughts on AI game engines?

PRESTON: I think there are two things here. One is, AI generated assets for a game. And then, it's a traditional engine beyond that, so you have to code your game and stuff. I've also seen people are trying to have AI actually generating the frames, instead of the traditional way of programming. So, basically, the AI is trying to figure out every given frame instead of an engine doing that with physics and shaders and all these other factors. I don't know what to think about it, and honestly, I don't know what will work.

CYNTHIA: Are you neutral towards AI game engines, or are you optimistic about it?

PRESTON: I'm definitely optimistic about the cogeneration side and maybe the construction side. Roblox just introduced an assistant that helps you write scripts for your Roblox games. So that makes sense to me. Engineers are already using ChapGPT to help them code. But I don't really like AI aesthetically, I don't enjoy looking at those images. I don't think I'd want to play a game that has that aesthetic.

CYNTHIA: I know what you mean — there's something unnatural about it, for lack of a better word

PRESTON: Yeah, it's kind of uncanny. It's high fidelity, but misses the mark. I would rather have lower fidelity but it kind of captures the essence better. And so I like blocky stuff or low poly stuff. And so that's the kind aesthetic we're gonna enable with our tool set.

CYNTHIA: I think some game companies feel the need to make themselves a bit more professional and sleek and cold and I liked that you took a more relaxed and simple approach.

PRESTON: It is a bit ironic that making games is kind of a serious business. And it's just kind of brutal work in some ways. We're building tools to make it easier, but it's still tedious and difficult work. We're trying to take the edge off, but you still have to kind of want it enough to get into that mess.

CYNTHIA: Right? It's difficult and for a lot of people there's not a lot of reward in it, you know?

PRESTON: Yeah, that's the second issue. The first problem is that it's challenging to design a game. There isn’t a single obvious thing you can do to make it easier without losing a lot of power, but there are a bunch of small things that add up. This involves focusing on the tooling side or dedicating 100% focus to network building. The second problem is, let's assume you're creative, technical, and have learned the tools, and you've invested time in creating your game. Now, the challenge is finding people to play your game.

So, a lot of indie devs learn game development out of passion because they play games and want to make them. However, they then have to go and market their game and sell it. So, the second problem we're solving is giving everybody an audience. If we build a network, it becomes very easy for us to do that. It's simply a matter of putting effort into it and being creative, eliminating the need for you to go out and find the tools. We're going to give you an audience.

CYNTHIA: How do you go about building the toolkit for this and then also thinking about the marketing side of things and building the community? How do you balance the two?

PRESTON: Well, it definitely comes from the tool, so we've focused on the idea that the only kind of marketing that makes sense is viral marketing. At first, it's us talking to users. Before that, it's us being the user, assessing the product to see if we like it. Then, we give it to a small group of friends, observe their response, and gradually open it up to see the actual results. We firmly believe that marketing and the community will revolve around the tool, as emphasized in one of my tweets. Creating a unique culture around the tool is crucial. There's a temptation to mimic cultures from platforms such as Roblox or Fortnite, but it rarely works because each tool has its specific culture. Roblox, for instance, has blocky characters and a low-poly style. People adopt games that fit this culture over more polished ones because it fits with their cultural understanding of what Roblox is. It all starts with the tool, and that gets very specific. We're building a tool for creating and texturing models, addressing challenges like painting specific colors or adding details. This specific tool will shape the culture of games on our platform, forming a feedback loop that evolves into something distinct.

CYNTHIA: That's awesome. So walk me through how you got to this idea. How did you determine that you want to work in gaming and beyond working in gaming, you want to revolutionize gaming? How did all that come about? Where did that start?

PRESTON: Well, it actually starts in crypto. The start of this journey for me was observing CryptoKitties, which I found really cool at the time. I believed that it could be the future of online art and graphics. Now, there was a way to monetize raw art digitally, unlike physical art, which is easier to monetize by selling physical pieces for homes. It’s very hard to do that digitally because of zero margin and the reproducibility of everything through screenshots. I thought NFTs could be a solution to this. So, I went all in and started working on BlockCities, essentially building generators on-chain. I loaded up this software with various files, and they were mixed and matched to create unique buildings, minted as an NFT. It evolved into a simulator game, initially aiming for something like SimCity. However, I realized I wasn't interested in the financial side of the game. Viewing our user base, I felt it didn't represent the future. To play, users had to spend tens, if not hundreds of dollars, so I knew that young people were not gonna be able to play it. I really became much more interested in the social aspect rather than the financial, moving away from NFTs to create a social platform around 3D or games. At that point, I pivoted from BlockCities to something of a 3D social space.

CYNTHIA: What’s a 3D social space?

PRESTON: It was somewhat similar to the first version of Eternal. You had an avatar, you had audio – you could talk. But I realized something crucial was missing—you could show up in this 3D space, but there was nothing to do, it was quite boring. All you could do was talk, it was essentially a high-friction phone call, with being in 3D space offering little to no benefit and possibly detracting benefits. So then I realized, okay, if it's 3D, if it's a social space, it has to explicitly be games. And that's when I arrived on the idea that there's an opportunity for a new social media app.

This brought interactive elements and the potential for user-generated content (UGC), allowing me to create and share these experiences. And so at that point, I just dove into social apps —- started reading about the histories of different social apps. And at that point, I just changed my mind. That's what I really wanted to work on. So we've gone through almost two years of iterations on basically the core idea that you have an endless feed of games, and you have a game engine on your phone to make those games. And, yeah, it’s taken a bunch of different iterations to get to this point.

CYNTHIA: I want to echo what you brought up regarding mercenary capital in crypto games. They are essentially financial instruments marketed as games. I really do hope that improves in this next cycle because it’s an issue. However, It seems that studying social networks and mimetic ideas is driven by identifying not just who can give you the most money but what groups of people or what kinds of things would seed the most ideas or have the most viral impact. I find that so interesting; it's different.

PRESTON: It’s kind of the opposite approach to crypto games or the ethos that games should make players rich.That's the [current] pitch for crypto games. And then the pitch for social games or user-generated content (UGC) games is that the games become so cheap that they're free to play. Everybody's making them because making them is free, and there's substantial benefit to doing so. You can get popular and be seen as cool for making games, and eventually, we'll have a direct way to make money by creating games.

So they're kind of on the ends of the spectrum where crypto is, you know, “play our game to get rich.” What we're doing is — play as many games as you want for free. The moment you want to make a game, and if you want to be that guy in game development, you could do that. And it's all right here on the phone. That seems like a more open world to me. We will create this creative tool, then anybody can make a game, and it's going to look a lot like Instagram and TikTok, but the medium being games.

CYNTHIA: The model that you're inviting us into is a lot more regenerative, and eternal — we brought up the word earlier, because no matter a person's capital or station in life, we're always gonna have ideas. And so creativity becomes a form of social capital.

PRESTON: Yea, it is a social currency. It is free to give. And it eventually turns into real currency.

With games, you're able to basically charge for direct benefits within the game or run ads just on your game, allowing you to make money from that. So I believe, for a creator economy, games offer a direct benefit and are easier to make money making games than other mediums.

CYNTHIA: So if I’m a Smirk game creator, and I create my own games, I will have the option to turn on ads to then make money through the game that I created?

PRESTON: Yep! We have to build up that network. But that's going to be our business model: ads, and we'll probably also include microtransactions that you can incorporate into your game. For instance, if you wanted to sell an ability, someone can buy that to progress through your game faster. So, you could sell that – that's one way – and then through ads. And yeah, that, to me, is putting money into your craft, and money comes out.

It's way more tangible compared to being an Instagram influencer, for instance. Putting money into your craft for them probably means securing a deal with a product, promoting it, and getting paid by them. It's a messier process because those on Instagram or TikTok aren't directly paying. In games, it's a very close relationship where people are actually directly paying for things, creating a much more connected relationship. So I think that it'll be at least satisfying for game creators to not have to do a song and dance to monetize. They can just be really good at making games and eventually they'll make money from that.

CYNTHIA: What do you think the learning curve will be from transitioning from being just a social gamer to using Smirk to create your game?

PRESTON: To start, a basic understanding of how games function is necessary. Many gamers grasp the next steps in gameplay but might lack a precise understanding of the mechanics, which is often part of the gaming experience. Making a game requires at least that level of understanding. The next step involves mastering two core skills: modeling assets and laying them out. If you're familiar with design tools like Figma or have experience in video or photo editing, these skills can be quickly acquired. Scripting is likely the most challenging aspect, but we offer a library of scripts, and you can also use code and our API. For those with coding experience, it should be easy to pick up.

A fundamental grasp of how games incorporate physics is also essential due to the multi-medium nature of games. Our long-term goal is to provide libraries for each skill set, allowing users to focus on their strengths. Whether you excel in scripting or modeling, there will be resources to enhance your game. You can express unique concepts through code or focus on aesthetics with modeling tools. Our aim is to build a robust library of assets, minimizing the need for users to create everything from scratch. At the core, you can start by modeling from a cube, writing code with Lua and our APIs, providing you with the freedom to create whatever you desire in our app.

Thank you for reading!

— Cynthia ౨ৎ ⊹ ‧ ♱