Welcome back to The High Life.

This edition is a treat for you. Our CEO, Travis Wu, is sharing a few updates about what he's been up to and his favorite parts of Highstreet World. Get a peek at how the game is being built through Travis' lens as he works with multiple teams. And, you'll also get a new look at the lore behind Highstreet and an extended comic. Let's check it out.

Seven Questions with Travis Wu, Highstreet CEO

What does it take to build a massively multiplayer VR game? It's no small undertaking, especially since a lot of new ground needs to be broken not only in the gaming space, but also in terms of how players interact with each other, the new experiences that a headset can provide, and the commerce aspect that involves digital and physical merchandise. Plus, the bigger the game, the deeper the lore.

Travis has been spearheading all of this and more since day one for Highstreet. We caught up with him to find out about his latest activities and what it's like to fit all those pieces together.

It's been a while since you've done an interview. What have you been up to over the past few months?

It certainly has been a while.

Highstreet has entered a new phase of growth in 2024. Our game design team has tripled in size, with teams focusing on various components that will form Highstreet World, our VR MMORPG on the Meta Quest platform.

Serving as the bones, we obviously have the MMO design team. They focus on class design, combat, quests, and all the intricacies of progression within the game.

For the muscular structure that ties the skeleton together, we have the Metaverse Content Design team. These guys work on what goes on inside our cities, whether it's dining, shopping, or other social activities.

The Metaverse Content team works on filling the space between battling monsters and completing quests, so that Highstreet World is not a game that's just about nonstop grinding, but a place to hang out and relax as well.

Finally, we have Lore Design. They don't particularly fit into a specific team, but are a group of writers who make sure the worldbuilding stays consistent and coherent across the board. You might have seen our recent updates on Duck culture, architecture, technology and more. These world-specific details spice up the experience. Besides providing you with gorgeous visuals, they serve as the crucial elements needed for you to suspend your mind in disbelief.

At this moment, we have full design schematics for Highstreet City, along with three playable classes designed. We can't wait to share this with the community throughout the second half of 2024.

Tell me about your average day as CEO of Highstreet. Is there such a thing as an “average” day?

There isn't really an average day, but there certainly are average weeks. At Highstreet, we encourage everyone to set meeting dates only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so that the rest of the week can be reserved for deep, concentrated work without distractions.

For myself, serving also as the creative lead for the game, Tuesdays and Thursdays are generally filled with meetings with the various design teams. This leaves Mondays for Engineering and Infrastructure check-ins, Wednesdays for marketing sync-ups, and Fridays for operations checkups as well as one-on-ones with team members.

Of course, that is the ideal scenario, oftentimes I'll find myself caught up with miscellaneous external engagements, be it partnerships or strategic investment meetings. This can throw a wrench into pre-planned internal meetings and shuffle things around dramatically.

What's the most exciting part of Highstreet World that you're actively involved with right now?

I think everything we are doing at Highstreet is incredibly inspiring, from designing MMO classes, worldbuilding, to engineering entirely new technologies to make a VR MMO of this scale possible. It truly takes a team of dedicated and passionate professionals from around the world to make this possible.

One of the greatest joys I have is thinking through the sociological evolution of our FOMO Ducks—where they come from, how they came to be, their history, beliefs, customs, and of course how first contact with humans shape their future trajectories. I thoroughly enjoy seeing Highstreet City come to life with details of Duck culture plastered in every corner.

The whole city is so rich with culture that I truly see this as the next chapter of game development. Paired with AI NPCs, we are turning the page on ghost town metaverses, and replacing them with fictional cultural immersion.

Among all the zones that will be in Highstreet City, which is your favorite and why?

Highstreet City is carved up into districts. We have the Rotunda, the authority district where politicians, lawmakers, and important figures reside. The Gardens serve as the social and cultural hub. Downtown is jam-packed with finance and up-and-coming industries. Maxwell's Mega Mall is the commerce-centric hub. And finally, Oldtown is where preserved buildings from a previous era can be seen and celebrated with a walk down memory lane.

My favorite is probably The Gardens, which were created accidentally after a biotech experiment went wrong. While trying to control the growth of certain deadly vegetation, Duck scientists inevitably created a wild and dense jungle in the middle of the city. For years, it was abandoned after multiple efforts by various departments to contain its invasive growth from reaching other parts of the city.

However, a young generation of Ducks have taken it upon themselves to reclaim the heart of Highstreet City by coexisting with the dangerous vines within The Gardens. Now, we have fine dining restaurants that put you closer than ever to the wilderness, we have provocative art and rebellious art galleries challenging the authorities, whose negligence created the district in the first place. We have cinemas and meditation rooms, with intricate transportation systems taking visitors from one attraction to another without exposing them to the dangers lurking everywhere.

I feel like there is so much life within The Gardens that when we release it to the public, it'll serve as a place where the community can help influence the next era of Duck culture.

Can we expect any new phygital drops in the near future?

Ideas have come and gone with regard to phygital items. We have a few in the pipeline that we can launch when timing permits, but the toll it takes on our operations team to ensure proper logistics and delivery usually stops us from moving plans forward. Our goal now is to focus on building the MMO game and metaversal space such that when we have a stable buildout with a more consistent player base, we can continue with product drops. Only then would the reward and benefits balance out the cost of running a drop campaign.

Highstreet is at the intersection of the metaverse, gaming, VR, and crypto — to say the least. Being CEO of Highstreet must be like leading several startups at the same time, toward the same goal. What's the biggest lesson you've learned by living at this intersection?

I think rather than a lesson, a virtue we've developed over the past few years is resilience. Everything stated above works in cycles, there are years when crypto would be roaring with new narratives, liquidity events, and new users, then there are years where hawking critics fill the papers with I-told-you-so's and big red candlesticks. There are periods when the gaming world would be blessed with back-to-back releases from AAA publishers, but also periods when layoffs are reported on a daily basis. There are days when VR is claimed to be the future by every tech reviewer, and of course days when every media outlet reports that VR is dead.

Cycle after cycle, we have persevered, and will continue to do so. We focus on what we've set out to build from day one, and never let any outside force shake our resolve to deliver it. No amount of negative news can batter a team that has built itself on the virtue of resilience. The team's ability to deliver consistently every single week is one of the greatest joys and pride I have from running Highstreet.

Is there anything about Gudchain that you'd like to tease?

Gudchain is something that the Highstreet team has been incubating as a tool for ourselves. We've decided to share it with the world recently, after seeing the demand it has from other game studios we've invested in. This past month, we've brought on a pantheon of new investors for the project to help us take GameFi mainstream.

For us, as a VR experience, targeting the existing web3 community was never going to be enough, so we've devised strategies and products to remove all traces of friction in today's on-chain gaming experiences, blending the web3 component silently into a regular game. Our campaign that's coming up has a bunch of these elements baked into it. In general, Gudchain was created to propel games like Highstreet forward, so we really look forward to seeing the community interact with it.

Lore Fragment: The Gloom

Few have a true understanding of the primordial forces that shape our existence. In the case of Solera, The Gloom is a mysterious dark force that is ever present, drawn to the negative emotions of living beings.

The Gloom eventually gravitated toward Solera, where civilization was advancing and transformations were taking place. The Pelicans did all they could to repel it. Their outlook was to decelerate and uphold their old ways. Eventually, this led to the formation of a spiritual doctrine—the Church of the Soil—giving the Pelican society the creed to worship all things natural.

Even though The Gloom has been relegated to the stuff of legends, bedtime stories, and campfire tales, the threat persists—just beyond perception. There are Pelicans who still believe The Gloom exists and influences Solera; their sect is devoted to spreading that belief, although many Pelicans have moved on, tales about The Gloom lost in time.

Thanks for reading!

We're thrilled to announce that Gudchain has secured US$5 million in funding. The investment was led by Mechanism Capital, with Morningstar Ventures, Manifold, SkyVision Capital, and many more top crypto investors taking part. Watch out for our upcoming announcements about Gudchain's partnerships and farming opportunities!

That's all for this edition of The High Life. We're adjusting the dates when we send out this newsletter—to the 15th and 30th of each month. That means we'll be back on July 15. Keep an eye out for our next edition with more about the latest from Highstreet.

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