Ex-Zynga Web3 team D20 Labs unveils social casino poker game

D20 Labs, a startup spawned by the former Web3 gaming team at Zynga, has unveiled its first social casino poker game.

The company is releasing Royal Nutz Poker Club, a non-gambling social casino game built on the Base blockchain (from Coinbase) and optimized for both web and mobile experiences in the near future, said Matt Wolf, cofounder of D20, said in an interview with GamesBeat.

The game will be the first multi-table poker championship game brought onchain that is powered by rewarded sponsorships, he said. It will be available at the outset to fans who bought the Oras non-fungible tokens (NFTs) issued for the Zynga game Sugartown, which was the team’s first Web3 title.

Zynga launched the Oras NFT collection, which initially had 9,999 NFTs, in September 2023. At Zynga, Wolf was the vice president of blockchain games and D20 cofounder Tommy Ngo was part of the group.

Wolf said the game was developed while the team was at Zynga. And D20 acquired the poker game and Sugartown as well as part of the spin out deal. He noted the poker game is a standalone product. Wolf said the team, which is less than 10 people, has about 70% of the people who were on the original Zynga team.

On top of that, there are contractors who are helping with various tasks.

Wolf said the spinoff of D20 from Zynga was an amicable process.

“All of Sugartown is with us. All the games that are within Sugartown are with us, including some unpublished games, of which RNPC is one,” said Wolf. “We also have the entire Oras collection, so all our of the entire NFT collection as well, as well as all of the assets that support and go along with it, and the code base and everything else.”

Wolf didn’t say the exact reasons why either party favored the spinoff. He noted that his team wanted to move fast, which is not easy in a big company.

“It was a copacetic conversation. It’s kind of the best of both worlds. We have the brand awareness and the style guide of Sugartown, which was successful. RNPC itself is a big product because it’s a multi-table tournament poker game, Wolf said.

“It’s a standalone product, but it pulls from the lore and ethos of Sugartown, and it uses some of our tech like our leaderboard system,” he said.

Reaching bigger audiences

In addition, the game will also be available to selected partner communities, including Apechain. Players will be able to participate in multiple poker tournaments during an event period, climb leaderboards, and win rewards.

D20 said that poker is the perfect bridge to link players, gamers, and users from all worlds of gaming — offline (in real life), online (through Web2 games), and onchain (via Web3 games). Oras will get first access, partnered communities come next, then the company plans to scale to Web 2.5 audiences. Wolf believes that will be the path for the company to perfect the game and then reach the masses.

“Our Oras holders will have the first shot at playing,” Wolf said. “And then our first partner is Apechain. If you’re in that ecosystem, you also will have the ability to come in and play poker with us. You can look at it like our poker game is a little Disneyland, and there’s a there’s a gate around it. In order to get into play our poker game, you have to show your ticket to get in. And that ticket is a digital collectible. It’s an NFT.”

While the company is gating access at first, it will come around to focus on growth. It isn’t, for instance, adding any in-app purchases at the outset. Over time, it will add them.

“As a relatively new company, we’re focus more on growth,” Wolf said.

He also noted that the model is sustainable as the incentives are supported by partners, creating more durability and sustainability with the products, Wolf said.

“The product will enjoy, I’m hoping, a much longer life, and people will be able to play and have a good time with it and really experience true rewarded play while they’re still having fun playing our poker game and enjoying each other’s company through this social casino model,” Wolf said.

Wolf thinks the game will resonate with a native Web3 audience as well as a traditional gamer and poker fan, as the title has its own spin on poker. Some of that is the unique lifestyle branding on the game.

Zynga never disclosed the numbers of players for Sugartown. Wolf said his division spun out so it could focus on its own plans.

As for the mainstream acceptance, Wolf said he and his cofounder Tommy Ngo believe it will come for Web3 games.

“These products have to sustain for a while and people have to get comfortable playing these games,” he said. “The future is bright here. I think the market will explode and really get big. And I think it probably there will be a day where the innovations that we create here will be either adopted in more traditional games.”

He added, “In just a couple days, community has shown us that it’s just so loyal and supportive. So we’ve got this really great, loyal community,” he said.

Wolf said the company also has another game coming up soon.

“These games are designed for growth and fast adoption. That’s really important to us. We really like the concept of incentivized play,” he said. “We think that is really powerful.”

While the space is sometimes fragmented, RNPC will link communities and users across the space together through fun, competition, and sustainable rewards, the company said.

Oras token holders will get first access in a teaser event. An event for the core Sugartown community to play RNPC with the energy system they’re familiar with in a new leaderboard structure. This will give Ora holders a chance to learn the ropes of this style of play.

Using Base

Wolf said the team has been in talks with Coinbase about using the Base chain for a long time. He noted the Base chain has a lot of activity on it, and it has compelling systems aimed at reducing friction. Many Web3 players churn out of the process of signing up for a cryptocurrency wallet. That wallet is used to pay for transactions, but it can be quite intimidating for ordinary users to set up.

“Friction is something that needs to get solved to be able to have Web3 scale, and that we think they’re at the forefront of that at Base,” he said.

While Sugartown’s numbers weren’t huge, Wolf noted that Sugartown tokens tend to trade in the top 10 in crypto marketplaces.

“We see a real future in experimenting and innovating with these Web3 games. We see it as real blue ocean compared to more traditional game markets, where it’s a pretty red ocean,” Wolf said. “Many of these publishers can lose 10 cents on the dollar for user acquisition. It’s really hard to find breakout hits in that mobile game space.”

An active schedule

This is a pretty active schedule for a startup that separated from its mothership Zynga only two weeks ago. Wolf said the company does not need capital at the moment, but it will likely raise money later on.

Powered by Base, RNPC will incorporate airdropped access passes to Oras and partnered collections. These passes will come in tradable or soul-bounded versions and can be burned to enter Poker tournaments in a fun gamified way.

RNPC will lead the future of social casino to onchain gaming and provide real rewards without real wagering, meaning you can buy chips will real money, but you can’t cash out your winnings.

Wolf said the team playtested it on Friday and he believes it is a release candidate, to be available soon.

“Its multi-table tournament poker system works great and it uses digital collectible NFTs in a really cool way,” Wolf said.