Deep dive into the Parallel vision and ecosystem
Deep dive into the Parallel vision and ecosystem
An interview with the co-founder of Parallel
Welcome to the alpha please newsletter.
gm friends, it’s been a while since I’ve brought you an interview, but I’ve got a killer founder and project for you today.
Kalos is the co-founder of Parallel, which is, in my humble opinion, the strongest blockchain gaming project out there right now.
Kalos breaks down Parallel's approach, including:
• Their flagship Trading Card Game that's already attracting 1-2k new players weekly
• The innovative AI-driven game "Colony" that could be a new genre defining gaming experience
• Wayfinder, a groundbreaking tool bridging AI and blockchain
• Their strategy for engaging traditional gamers and overcoming NFT skepticism
Kalos also shares insights on their distribution strategies, upcoming features, and his vision for the future of blockchain gaming. Whether you're a TCG enthusiast, an AI aficionado, or just curious about the cutting edge of blockchain gaming, this interview has something for you.
Added a referral link at the end so you can download the game and get started with a couple of free packs for your deck.
If someone was hearing about Parallel for the first time today, how would you describe everything that you're building?
Parallel is a story. And, you know, as a result of that story, there's a game that's out in the market today, which is our trading card game. Our objective, ultimately, is to make that story—or that IP, however you want to refer to it—playable in multiple formats.
As a studio, our goal is really just to create multiple ways for people to play games using the same IP across different formats. Not everyone plays trading card games. Maybe they'll play our AI-sim Colony. Not everyone loves idle games, so they might play a third-person shooter instead.
The way the studio is set up is to create these assets and make them deployable and usable across multiple games. So, Parallel is a game studio, but it's also a story, and that story is meant to be interacted via multiple formats. That's the goal.
For people who are maybe not as familiar with your work, are there any inspirations you can point to that have influenced what you’re building?
I’d say maybe it's not necessarily a game studio. It's probably something that's been created organically over a longer period of time —something like Marvel's X-Men or Star Wars.
There are multiple versions of Star Wars games, trading cards for Star Wars, multiple games for X-Men, and trading cards for X-Men too. One of the things we've seen happen in gaming as a sector is that horizontal expansion has been a very successful strategy.
Having more ways as a studio to bring customers into the IP through different game formats they enjoy is key. One difference to note, is that some of those games aren't created by the studio itself—the IP is licensed, and another studio creates it. We're starting to do that ourselves now.
But if I had to pick something to aspire to, I'd probably look to the TCG side. I aspire to reach the collectibility of things like early Marvel masterpieces or Magic cards. From an IP standpoint, what we're really aiming to do is create something more analogous or closer to X-Men, a Marvel series, or Star Wars. I think it's almost a two-pronged answer.
How has the traction with your TCG been so far?
It's going well. I think we haven't really clicked into gear on the growth side yet, but that's about to start happening. We’ve got a large sponsor, like a Formula One driver, who’s going to be playing and promoting the game, and we're negotiating deals with several high-profile people, both in India and the US. So far, we're in a good spot.
One area we could improve on is the pace at which we grow week over week. I think we didn’t quite align ourselves with where we wanted to be in that regard. But on a weekly basis, we’re seeing around 1,000 to 2,000 net new players. When we reach about 250,000 to 300,000 players, the studio will become net profitable. It's interesting because people might assume we’d need millions of players to succeed, but that’s not accurate at all.
Also, I think it might surprise people that most in-game spending is done by credit card.
The key focus now is whether the game is good enough. That’s been a big issue for us—whether the game is ready to start spending money on, rather than pouring money into something that isn’t converting. We're now in a spot where we feel confident the game is good enough. The Rakuten deal is starting to kick in, and I think they will begin distributing packs and comics with inserts promoting the game by the end of this month.
We've got several sponsorships and partners who are working to promote the game in different regions. I believe we’ll soon start seeing the results we’re aiming for, helping us reach our ultimate objective of being a sustainable business again, without relying on mints.
Could you talk a bit more about your distribution strategy?
Distribution really comes down to two formats. One is the ability to leverage platforms, like the importance of mobile and the reprioritization of mobile, which obviously makes game distribution much easier. Then, you have the non-conventional paths, and that’s where Rakuten comes in. With them, you get really low customer acquisition costs and very high targeting value, which is what we were looking for.
We were asking, ‘How do we find people who love card games, collect physical cards, and play these types of games? How do we reach them at the lowest cost possible?’ The answer was, if we could get in front of everyone who buys Magic, Pokémon, or One Piece from Rakuten—which is basically the Amazon of Japan, the largest TCG market in the world—then the cost of customer acquisition would essentially just be the cost of a physical pack of cards. Inside that physical pack, you’d have an insert that says something like, ‘Scan here to download and play the game.’
So, we approached it pragmatically. We don’t have mobile fully up yet, though we’re working toward that, and we believe it will unlock a lot of downloads based on our current conversion rates. But in the meantime, we needed to find a way to reach the right audience—people who care about these types of IPs, who read manga, read comics, and collect cards. The solution was to print a series of cards that we could distribute through a company like Rakuten, providing them with incentives so that for anyone who converts, they benefit from the economics of those customers.
Rakuten has done deals like this before with great success, and we already had an existing relationship with them, so it felt like a great fit. It's the right market, with very low customer acquisition costs and high targeting value, and they have access to the exact customers we want to reach. That’s how it all came together.
Streaming is such an important part of games now. How are you thinking about this in regards to your TCG?
We started by making sure the competitive scene was strong, and I think we've done a good job with that. We’ve got large groups watching the competitive tournaments. The next step is likely to add more consistency around streaming, which is something we were actually discussing just yesterday.
I think there’s an element of value that’s often overlooked—streamers are really educators, right? They’re being watched not just by people who already play the game but by those who want to learn how to play. These viewers may not fully understand how the different cards work and don't want to jump in until they feel more confident. We're looking at it from that angle, and I expect that in the next month or two, we'll put more effort and incentives into getting more people involved in streaming.
We will also be releasing skins that will really breathe more life into the playfield. That was something we thought of as a nice-to-have, and now we’re in a position to actually implement it.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen these, but I tweeted about it, or maybe Parallel’s account did. There are some cosmetic skins that bring the field to life more—not just card backs, but actual 3D, moving, screen-on-screen elements. I think that’s something that will further differentiate the game and make it more attractive to stream, especially for streamers.
Is there anything else in the pipeline for the TCG?
There are a couple of things. First, the “Aftermath” expansion will add more cards, which is a huge element in making the game more diverse and balanced over time. Having another set of cards available will be great for adding more variety to gameplay.
Another key element is deepening the Prime ecosystem. Just like in Counter Strike, where you have crates and you pay a fee to open them, we’ll have crates where you can use our token $PRIME to open them. We haven’t announced what they’ll contain yet, but it’ll be something similar to cosmetics—like rare gloves in CS, with varying levels of rarity and desirability. There will also be more basic versions, and all of these items will be NFTs, mintable from the Battle Pass. Adding more sinks and ways to use $PRIME and interact with the ecosystem is a good thing for the game.
I'm also excited about larger and larger tournaments, building up to an actual world championship. That’s something to really look forward to for the TCG. Outside of that, we’ll have cosmetic enhancements and, most importantly, mobile.
From a growth standpoint, what really matters in my mind is mobile. Being able to play on the go, whether you’re on the subway, a train, or have some downtime, will deepen the engagement of current players and bring in a whole new cohort of people. These might be players who are looking for something more strategic, moving beyond games like Marvel Snap, which are more RNG and click-focused.
Outside of the TCG, I’m really looking forward to Colony. We’re deep into UE5 development there. There’s also Wayfinder, which has an entirely different set of capabilities outside of gaming. And we have another game coming later this year, built by a third-party studio using our 3D Asset Library. We’ve worked with them to integrate $PRIME into the game, but it’s not developed by us directly.
Parallel also announced this new first person shooter game since this interview was recorded.
You mentioned the game Colony. Why should people be excited about this?
A whole generation grew up playing games, from Nintendo to Super Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox, and the newer consoles. That’s not going to stop, but now those people are coming of age and have less time. So, we need a game format that’s still engaging but allows players to dial up or down their engagement as life permits. I think this really resonates with people aged 30 to 35 and older. You can see that gaming is one of the most-watched categories on YouTube, so the timing and place we’re in right now is important.
Colony, for example, is something entirely different from anything anyone’s ever seen. We’ve created a game where you're not actually the player. We like to call it a 'one-and-a-half player' game. You’re the voice nudging the character to do different things, but you’re not directly playing.
This idea came from looking at what games could look like, especially with AI. We saw an opportunity and thought, 'Hey, this is something really different.' In Colony, the character has the ability to own and trade digital assets. This resonated with us because we felt digital intelligence should have digital money and possessions, and Blockchain is the perfect technology to achieve that.
When you combine that with current demographics and content consumption, the problem with watching someone play a game is you can’t really influence what they do. But if it’s an AI, you could talk to them and adjust your level of engagement depending on how much time you have. We thought that was really compelling, and it’s a whole new kind of game.
A lot of this came from curiosity around the Simulacrum paper, which sparked conversations about AI and emergent behavior. After reading it, we felt like, 'Yeah, but let’s actually try this.' Many people are curious about AI and want to experience it firsthand rather than just reading about AI agents organizing something like a Valentine’s Day party. So, we decided to build something where people could interact with AI and maybe even gain monetary rewards if they succeed.
Colony’s smart contracts are another exciting aspect. There’s a limited subset of contracts that the AI agent can interact with because the game sets boundaries on the AI’s interaction with smart contracts. This led us to ask, 'What happens if we don’t limit it to the boundaries of the game?' That’s where Wayfinder came from—a happy accident in our discovery process.
The whole thing has been very organic. We started with cards, which had 3D assets because the artists were working in 3D. We collected those assets, polished them, and Colony became the first game to use them. Then, we thought, 'Wait, these agents can own and trade assets. What happens if they can access everything on every blockchain?' That led us to Wayfinder. It’s been a process of utilizing new technologies and combining them in unconventional ways to create compelling products.
We’re really excited about it. Our general goal is to launch on mobile, and we’re working with Solana for some on-chain aspects. Ideally, we’d like to see a consumer-ready product by Q4, but as with all game development cycles, that could change.
With the TCG, Colony and Wayfinder all in the works - how are you handling this as a studio?
A lot of the heavy lifting on the TCG is already done. Yes, we’ll keep updating content by adding more Paragons, skins, and cards, but the core infrastructure is stable and strong now.
The focus from a UE5 standpoint has shifted to Colony. The team that created the LLM for Colony has completed their work and has now moved over to Wayfinder. So there’s no real competition for resources within the studio. The team working on the game is different from the one updating assets, which is different from the card team expanding the TCG, and different from the AI team.
In addition, we do a lot of work with Electric Square, a partner of ours that's helping develop the game. We augment our teams as needed, but we’ve never found ourselves in a position where progress isn’t lightning fast on any of the pieces.
There was some pushback from the community that splitting your attention between Wayfinder and your games may have had a negative impact on the $PRIME token’s performance. How would you respond to this, and what exactly is Wayfinder?
So, I think it’s important to clarify that there’s the Echelon Prime Foundation, and all games we create (using parallel IP) will always run on Prime. Then, there’s this tool with its own unique utility, separate from games, which also has its own ecosystem and foundation. The key thing to understand is that there are two separate foundations. The goal was always to ensure that the community supporting us along the way got the lion’s share of the tokens.
Whether people interpret that as splitting the value is something I didn’t expect. But, in hindsight, there’s always room for improvement. I’m a big believer in constantly making things better than before. There was a lot of back and forth between the foundation and the community to ensure things were done smartly and correctly. There was some ambiguity in the paper about introducing future modifiers to the curve, which might have been overlooked. On the other hand, people don’t like when things change after they’ve formed certain expectations. So there’s some fault on both sides.
The key objective was putting tokens into the hands of those who supported us, similar to how people locked up their Prime Keys for a period of time and got Prime as a distribution mechanism. It’s not perfect, and yes, we could have been clearer on some things, but I think it achieved the goal of benefiting those who supported us.
When evaluating whether it was successful, I’d say, objectively, it was a huge success. About 42% of the total supply is now staked or deposited in the Wayfinder contract for an average of 500+ days. There will always be market speculation, but when you see that kind of dedication, especially the long-term commitment, it's a big win. Compared to other farms out there, Wayfinder stands out because of the transparency around how much of the supply is going to stakers and depositors.
I’ve been focused on AI and blockchain for a while, and I want to ensure that the community that made me successful—and I’d like to think I’ve made them successful too—has a large piece of something transformative.
If the AI thesis is correct and in the next few years, most transactions will be handled by agents (with humans behind them), agents could do things like scheduling transactions, identifying opportunities, bridging to new networks, or farming yields. If we can simplify that and offer it as a service, we’ll solve a huge problem.
A lot of this stuff is hard to use—it takes time to learn how to navigate different wallets, bridges, and DEXes, especially with new networks constantly popping up. This week, we’ll demonstrate Wayfinder deploying smart contracts through natural language prompts. You’ll be able to say something like, 'Create a token on Base Testnet,' and the system will handle it if your wallet meets certain conditions. This means everyone can contribute with simple language, moving beyond just moving value between networks and identifying opportunities.
We’re solving a complex problem, and while everything we do is ambitious, it works in our test environments. I believe in positive-sum games. Limiting the community’s exposure to AI just to Colony, which is groundbreaking in its own right, would leave too much opportunity on the table. The team is excited about building, and if I can benefit the community in a material way, I think we should be involved. This is a new paradigm, and new paradigms create incredible opportunities—along with a lot of noise, of course. But my AI team wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t let them build this. If there’s an opportunity to benefit everyone, including the studio, we should seize it.
There’s a strong analogy to Prime Keys. While it’s a different structure with similar durations, I believe it will provide a significant benefit to those who believed and supported us, with an impact that’s magnitudes larger.
How do you see the current sentiment around blockchain gaming in general?
I think a lot of people have different perspectives here. Limiting ourselves to existing wallets and people who already understand these economies isn’t the way to go. That’s like competing within a small space instead of going into the broader field of traditional gaming and looking at how to improve the games. For example, you don’t own your cards in Hearthstone, Magic, or Pokémon. If we can crack the messaging about why owning your cards and having the ability to exit an ecosystem matters, we can stand out against traditional market incumbents.
What’s going well is that a few studios have actually put the money to good use and are building solid games. We’re still early in that, and we haven’t fully realized the potential of our game yet, but I believe we’re frontrunners in terms of quality and competitiveness.
The hard truth is that a lot of bad actors took in a lot of capital and never delivered. There have been countless NFT drops and tokens where huge amounts of capital were deployed, and they went nowhere. It’s also important to remember that making games is expensive, and growing them is even more costly. The amount spent to grow a game often dwarfs what it took to create it, based on customer acquisition models, conversion rates, and retention rates.
I think some of the current pessimism is a bit overblown. What I’d look for are teams that have kept building through tough markets, are well-capitalised to achieve their goals, and have the grit to push through bad times. It’s not about being the biggest web3 game but about solving the problems blockchain can address in gaming. We need to bring these benefits to traditional gamers in a way they understand.
Look at past examples in gaming. When horse armour cosmetics were first introduced, people rioted, saying, 'I can’t believe they’re charging for this!' Similarly, free-to-play games were called predatory, and people were sceptical of AI. But over time, those ideas became mainstream, with cosmetics now a primary revenue source and most games being free-to-play. I think blockchain and AI are the next legs of technology that will impact gaming. Blockchain allows ownership of digital assets, and AI adds depth to games in ways that were previously unachievable. Nvidia’s demos in UE5, where you can talk to a bartender in-game, show this evolution.
The general sentiment I have is I think people should be optimistic about the right projects and the right teams focused on the right things. And I think as a whole, we should not be fighting each other. We should be looking at the opportunities of traditional gaming and offering something new to that space.
How have your interactions with traditional gamers been so far? Do you see any positive sentiment towards NFTs and blockchain?
There are a ton of traditional gamers crossing over, but for many, their first NFT was Parallel. I think a lot of people are opening their minds to it and starting to understand the benefits. Initially, they assume NFTs or crypto are predatory in general, and while that’s beginning to change, there’s still a lot of work to do in proving otherwise. Many people want to see it proven first.
For example, when the Hearthstone community engaged with ours, there was inevitably some conflict. Their largest streamers were playing our game. The biggest Snap streamers, Marvel, Magic, and Hearthstone players were playing Parallel. I think their community is trying to reconcile their feelings about collectibles while the people they respect are saying, ‘Hey, this is actually a good game.’
In one particular case, a Hearthstone developer led the criticism, which was ironic. One of the rules in gaming is to never punch down, and they made that mistake by taking a shot at an indie development studio like ours. We're still a startup, not a big game studio like Hearthstone. The irony is even greater considering the ex-CEO of Blizzard is an investor in Parallel. Over time, I think more people will listen to the voices they respect—those who play traditional games—and they’ll start to talk more about games like ours, where you actually own the cards or earn rewards like Prime.
It’s a challenge when you’re creating a game that exists alongside traditional incumbents. It’s hard to explain the difference between a game with non-ownable assets and the one you’re playing. Colony has it easier because there’s nothing to compare it to. There’s less reason to argue, ‘Oh, I don’t need to own my cards,’ or any other typical pushback.
Right now, only a small percentage of gamers fully understand the benefits, but over time, like with horse armour as a cosmetic, what was once new and controversial will become the norm. I don’t think this is any different.
How to get involved with Parallel
Download Parallel and start playing for free. Click the below button and you will get 300 credits after signing up, which will allow you to get 2 bonus apparition packs to get you started with a deck instantly.
And that’s your alpha.
Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Crypto currencies are very risky assets and you can lose all of your money. Do your own research.