Cambria: The Degen MMO With $1M+ Seasonal Prize Pools

This episode delves into Cambria, the high-stakes MMO merging Runescape nostalgia with significant on-chain crypto prize pools, offering a unique lens on player-driven economies, emergent behavior, and the future of risk-to-earn gaming.

1. Introduction: From Runescape Private Servers to Crypto Gaming

• Ben, founder of Cambria, shares his deep roots in the Runescape community, starting as a player obsessed with the game and quickly diving into the "game on top of the game"—botting, private servers, and in-game trading ("merching").
• He describes running one of the larger Runescape private servers as a teenager (14-15 years old), managing developers and support teams, highlighting this early experience as reminiscent of his current work building Cambria. This period was also his introduction to programming.
• Ben emphasizes the appeal of private servers: "we were kind of building our own Runescape right it was you know this community of you know uh most mostly kids you know just kind of like hacking away at the Runescape client like you know creating their own versions of of Runescape."

2. The Crypto Transition: NFTs, Wolf Game, and High-Stakes Appeal

• Ben's entry into crypto gaming began around 2022, influenced by the NFT boom and meme stocks (GME).
• Wolf Game was a pivotal first experience, capturing his interest with its blend of risk mechanics and on-chain assets. The game's structure, balancing risk and reward, particularly the ability to "steal" NFTs, resonated strongly.
• NFT (Non-Fungible Token): A unique digital asset verified on a blockchain, representing ownership of items like art, collectibles, or in-game assets.
• The "hot and fast liquidity" and massive volume potential within crypto also caught his attention, seeing the sheer volume as inherently interesting for game economies.

3. Cambria's Genesis: The Elevator Pitch and Core Product

• The host recounts meeting Ben in late 2022/early 2023 and being immediately excited by Cambria's potential at the intersection of Runescape and crypto, leading to an early angel investment.
• Ben pitches Cambria as building "Degen experiences" focused on "high stakes and chaos."
• Cambria Core: A "risk-to-earn" MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online game) featuring massive on-chain stakes, inspired by Runescape and Albion Online.
• Dual Arena: High-stakes 1v1 duels where players wager ETH (Ether), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain, on the outcome. This mode saw significant early traction.
• Gold Rush: The core seasonal MMO mode. Players mint an NFT battle pass to enter and compete over limited in-game resources through skilling and PvE (Player versus Environment) combat against monsters. It features an expedition loop emphasizing risk vs. reward—staying out longer yields more but increases danger from NPCs and other players (PvP - Player versus Player).

4. Early Thesis: Targeting the Runescape-Crypto Crossover Audience

• The initial intuition was simple: build a game the founders themselves would find cool, targeting the 25-40-year-old demographic who grew up with Runescape and WoW.
• The core appeal combined the on-chain element with genuine risk. Ben draws a parallel: "it's kind of like playing poker right like if you're playing poker with you know like uh you know just play chips right your behavior is like very much different from you know when you actually play with with real chips..."
• Real stakes foster meaningful consequences:
  • Real Specialization: Since accounts (via battle passes) aren't free or unlimited, players must commit to specialized skills (e.g., smithing), creating genuine market demand within the game for unique crafting abilities.
  • Emergent Gameplay: Specialization allows for more complex, player-driven economic interactions and strategies.
• The primary target audience remains "degens"—crypto natives, particularly traders active on platforms like Solana, who often have a history with games like Runescape. The Runescape angle provided goodwill and faster onboarding for experienced players.

5. Dual Arena's Explosive Success and Early Learnings

• The Dual Arena mode exceeded expectations, processing approximately $100 million in volume within its first three months across the Base and Blast blockchains.
• Ben notes the contract design was a permissionless escrow (a neutral third-party holding assets temporarily), meaning Cambria never took custody of player funds, reducing operational risk.
• This initial phase was a "trial by fire," dealing with volume, lag, exploit attempts, and contract hacking, but it successfully forged the core user base and community that transitioned into the main game seasons.

6. Season 2 Deep Dive: Mechanics and Prize Pool Structure

• Season 2 introduced innovative mechanics contributing to its $1.44 million prize pool:
  • Paymasters & Charters: Players bought "Charters" (battle passes) to play. They could buy multiple Charters and deposit them into the "Syndicate Vault."
  • Syndicate Vault: An "idle speculation loop." Deposited Charters earned holders a percentage share of in-game economic activity (cash-ins), creating a passive earning layer with strategic depth based on deposit timing and amounts relative to others. This mechanic drove significant early investment ($200k in the first 5 minutes).
  • Silver Backing: The vast majority (90% after cuts) of the prize pool directly backed the in-game currency, "Silver." Every action generating Silver effectively earned players a share of the final USDC payout, making the entire in-game economy liquid and high-stakes.
  • Guilds vs. Paymasters: Guilds actively coordinated players ("scholars") for resource gathering and PvP, competing for rewards and acting as a counterweight to the more passive Paymaster strategy. This created a dynamic tension between active play/management and passive capital deployment.

7. Season 2 Performance Metrics: Engagement and Scale

• Prize Pool: $1.44 Million USD.
• Players: ~10,000 players cashed in at least one artifact; ~20,000 created accounts and logged in.
• Peak Concurrency: 4,500 players online simultaneously.
• Retention: High engagement, with 60% Day 7 retention for the core cohort and players logging extremely long sessions (e.g., 16 hours/day), sometimes even exhausting available content.

8. Emergent Player Behavior and Exploits in a High-Stakes Environment

• The high stakes created a "Darwinian environment" where players relentlessly sought edges and exploited mechanics.
• Guild Tactics:
  • Blocking resource spawns (e.g., in dungeons) by having members stand strategically to deny access to top farming spots.
  • Internal guild drama, including theft from guild chests and managing player productivity (tracking resource withdrawals vs. contributions using sophisticated analytics).
• Exploits & Clever Mechanics:
  • Using in-game items like the Ballista (similar to Runescape's Dwarf Cannon) combined with fireplaces (zero energy cost) for low-effort boss killing.
  • "Ragging": Groups of low-gear players overwhelming others.
  • World-switching tactics to ambush players with coordinated groups.
• Insight: High financial stakes dramatically accelerate emergent strategies and necessitate constant developer vigilance and adaptation. The environment becomes a live testing ground for economic and social exploits.

9. Managing Game-Breaking Exploits and Bug Bounties

• Ben confirms they encountered bugs, including at least one item duplication ("dupe") exploit and scenarios allowing unlimited resource farming.
• Bug Bounty Program: A crucial defense mechanism, offering 5% of the total prize pool (scaling with its size, reaching $60-70k for Season 2) to players who reported exploits responsibly.
• Monitoring: Constant monitoring of the in-game economy, gold flows, and player actions is essential to detect anomalies indicative of exploits, alongside analyzing top player behavior.

10. The Challenge of Bots and Economic Integrity

• The host highlights the persistent botting problem in games like Runescape (7 million bans in 2023) and asks how Cambria manages this, especially as prize pools grow.
• Current Approach: Cambria's in-game items and economy are currently off-chain (stored in a central database), allowing the team to analyze data post-season, freeze accounts/assets, and correct distributions if exploits are found.
  • Insight: This centralized control is currently deemed necessary for managing the risks associated with high-value economies, representing a trade-off against the benefits of full on-chain transparency and composability.
• Future On-Chain Plans: While acknowledging the benefits of on-chain items (composability, DeFi integration, trustlessness), Ben stresses the immense risk ("instantly rock all the liquidity") if exploits occur on a fully immutable ledger.
• Bot Management Philosophy:
  • Ben initially had a more lenient view but now sees the need for control.
  • Arbitrage bots (e.g., between general store and auction house) extract value. The planned solution is not outright banning but taxing their actions (API calls, trades) to ensure value flows back into the ecosystem.
  • In higher-risk zones, the goal is for player skill and PvP threats to make botting negative EV (Expected Value) – meaning bots should lose resources over time due to player actions or complex environmental threats they can't navigate.

11. Balancing Risk, Reward, and Player Types

• Ben admits Cambria currently caters more to "hardcore" players but aims to introduce more casual loops in Season 3.
• Pay-to-Win Concerns: The team experimented with mechanics like "Arcane Research," allowing players to sink vast amounts of Silver for significant power boosts (e.g., attack speed).
  • This was designed with exponential costs, making it highly negative EV but fun for players wanting to spend their earnings.
  • Because it sinks Silver from the total supply, it effectively increases the value of remaining Silver for other players, mitigating traditional "pay-to-win" issues within their closed, zero-sum prize pool model.
  • Insight: In closed economic systems with shared prize pools, "pay-to-win" mechanics can be reframed as "pay-to-support-the-ecosystem" if designed correctly, though clear communication to players is vital.

12. Cambria Roadmap: Season 3, Dual Arena V2, and Token Plans

• Season 3: Focus on improving skilling, adding casual loops, expanding region tiers (smoother difficulty curve), deepening economic complexity (more supply/demand dynamics), adding new content like PvPvE (Player versus Player versus Environment) dungeons (similar to Dark and Darker), and improving guild systems.
• Go-to-Market: Expanding reach to Web2 players, particularly the Runescape audience, via streamers and content creators (e.g., TikTok). Early tests show promise ("Chinese Runescape" meme).
• Dual Arena V2: Launching soon, likely on Ronin and potentially Abstract, featuring improvements like session keys (reducing transaction pop-ups for smoother UX) and the return of the "Excalibur" mechanic (a jackpot pool built from fees, granting winners bonus rewards).
• Token: Planned for "soon," viewed as "rocket fuel" for mainstream growth. Prerequisites include ensuring the game can scale and refining the Web2 go-to-market strategy.
  • The token's utility is envisioned around the significant on-chain volume (Dual Arena, Gold Rush flows), potentially as a medium of exchange or value accrual mechanism tied to game activity, rather than being directly sunk within core gameplay loops.
  • They may experiment with a "pseudo-token" first to test mechanics.
  • Insight: Cambria is taking a cautious, utility-focused approach to its token, ensuring product readiness and clear value accrual mechanisms before launch, avoiding premature integration into gameplay loops.

13. Multi-Chain Strategy: Pragmatism and Tribalism

• Cambria has deployed on multiple chains (Base, Blast, Ronin, Abstract planned). The strategy is pragmatic: "follow the Degen liquidity."
• Challenges exist: L2 UX can be poor, hindering onboarding. Managing multi-chain deployments is complex.
• Benefits: Tapping into distinct ecosystem strengths (Ronin: strong gaming community, guilds, player liquidity via Axie/Pixels veterans; Abstract: Degen liquidity, strong product/engineering). Potential for leveraging chain "tribalism" (e.g., chain tags in-game).
• Insight: While multi-chain offers access to diverse liquidity pools and communities, it adds significant technical and UX overhead. Success depends on a strong core community willing to follow and pragmatic choices based on where target users reside.

14. Vision for Future On-Chain Economies

• Ben envisions massive ($5-10 billion) on-chain "war games" where player actions have lasting significance recorded on the blockchain.
• Key Elements:
  • Significance: Games where actions feel meaningful and are permanently recorded.
  • On-Chain Guilds: Guilds operating like on-chain corporations with treasuries, asset management, and complex coordination, potentially integrating with DeFi (Decentralized Finance) protocols.
  • Composability: Interoperability between game assets/systems and other blockchain applications.
  • Prediction Markets: Speculators betting on in-game outcomes (e.g., guild wars) and potentially intervening to influence results.
• The high stakes will drive creativity, diplomacy, and complex emergent social and economic structures, akin to EVE Online but potentially far larger given crypto's capital scale.

15. Evolving Thesis and Competing with Web2

• Ben feels their core assumptions about high-stakes appeal held true.
• Unexpected Learning: Players initially cared less about the pure "on-chainness" (immutability, ownership) than anticipated. The focus must be on leveraging unique crypto advantages (liquidity, high stakes, novel economic models) rather than just replicating Web2 games with blockchain elements.
• Focus: Cambria isn't trying to rebuild Runescape's content depth but focuses on the sandbox, the economy, emergent social dynamics bred by risk, and unique crypto-native mechanics.
• Insight: Crypto games must identify and lean into their distinct advantages over Web2 competitors, focusing on areas like player-driven economies, high stakes, and novel incentive structures, rather than competing solely on traditional metrics like content volume or graphical fidelity.

16. Closing Thoughts and Recommendations

• Most Impactful Digital Experience: Playing Runescape for the first time as a kid, experiencing the immersion and sense of danger/discovery.
• Favorite Games: Runescape, Age of Empires 2.
• Recommendation for Devs: The "Critical Path" YouTube series interviewing various game designers, emphasizing that fundamental game design (creating emotions) transcends Web2/Web3 distinctions.
• On Reading: Admits difficulty reading books lately due to attention span, but values the cumulative impact of childhood reading on shaping thought processes.

Conclusion: Key Strategic Takeaways for Crypto AI Investors & Researchers

Cambria's success highlights the potent combination of familiar gameplay loops with high-stakes crypto economics, driving intense engagement and emergent player behavior. Investors and researchers should closely monitor Cambria's iterative approach to balancing on-chain elements, managing sophisticated exploits, and scaling player-driven economies as a leading indicator for the future of risk-based Web3 gaming.