From managing a mini retail empire in China to opening a yoga and wellness retreat in Costa Rica, Geoff McCabe’s entrepreneurial endeavors have been nothing if not diverse. Over the last decade though, he has mostly been captivated by the web3 world of blockchain, NFTs, cryptocurrency and games.
“I started in blockchain in 2017 full-time and was really focused on wanting to make crypto easier,” the 55-year-old explains. “I got my first bitcoin and some other cryptos before that, in 2014.
I actually remember talking to the guy who worked on the first NFTs, he was the lead developer of Namecoin and became part of our team. So I knew about NFTs very early, when we were talking about Colored Coins. Then CryptoKitties came out while we were doing our ICO [the cryptocurrency McCabe founded, $DIVI, generated $2.6m]. We were kind of at the tail end but we ended up in the top 10.
While the ICO era represented the crypto industry’s first major bull cycle, with bitcoin closing in on a then-ATH of $20k at the close of 2017, McCabe was less interested in the “price go up” narrative and more intrigued by the potential of blockchain technology to do, well, all kinds of cool stuff.
“At the time, I remember talking about comics and the problems Marvel and DC were facing when it came to publishing,” he recalls. “When I saw CryptoKitties and Colored Coins, I was like, Wow, we could have a token like a Colored Coin, instead of a CryptoKitty it could be a comic book, this is gonna be huge! Of course, everybody thinks you’re crazy when you tell people this kind of stuff or they just don’t get it. People were focused on launching cryptocurrencies at the time and here I am talking about comic books! It was way ahead of its time.”
The Lure of a Good Story
Comics, and storytelling more broadly, are another of McCabe’s passions and his desire to combine absorbing, visually enticing narratives with blockchain is what brings him to Alien Worlds. But more on that later. What is it about stories themselves that he finds so hypnotic?
I was raised on storytelling by my mother, who was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for her first poetry collection. So, I was brought up by someone who really valued the written and spoken word. She would explain, in the old days before television, that this was what you did for entertainment: you sat around the table and the elders would tell stories.
Telling stories comes naturally to McCabe: his most recent startup, LightningWorks, released the interactive comic (Siege Worlds Zero) he penned earlier this year, alongside a sister video game. Featuring artwork by DC Alfonso, who co-created Avengers Unlimited, the comic and its first-person-shooter, play-and-earn game provides an insight into the potential of web3 to deliver a digital entertainment UX like no other.
“We actually have 21 comic books right now in production in the art stage and another 20 in the script stage,” says Geoff.” And what makes a good comic – or story? “Stories need characters, character’s need a hero’s journey,” he explains simply. “And you need to tell the hero’s journey in an interesting way.”
This topic brings us, once again, to Marvel and DC, the superhero franchises that have raked in billions of dollars milking their heroes for all they’re worth; three of the four Avengers movies are ranked in the top 10 list of highest-grossing movies.
“Right now we’re in this situation where Marvel and DC have really destroyed their movie universes, their comic universes. They’re trying to retell stories and capture a more global, diverse and young audience but they’re doing everything wrong. But it’s fantastic for anybody in the comic book world and particularly in manga. Young people are looking for new stories and they’re all into manga.”
The evolution towards new types of storytelling is a topic McCabe could talk about for hours. We have come a long way from spooky tales told in hushed tones around a crackling campfire yet a good story remains a good story. McCabe’s belief is that impactful narratives can be potentiated through community participation, provable asset ownership and blockchain-powered video games.
“People are open-minded, they’re looking for new stories, new characters. And there’s an incredible opportunity to layer on the potential of web3 and NFT technology with new forms of storytelling, video games, all this kind of stuff we’re doing at LightningWorks and trying to bring to Alien Worlds.”
Galactic Grants and Cosmic Comics
McCabe was recently the recipient of support from the Galactic Hubs Grants Program, with assistance to produce a five-page demo comic set in the Alien Worlds Metaverse. The result, Starblind, seeks to draw the game’s community into “the creation of the largest collaborative story universe ever envisioned,” building on Alien Worlds’ new Tokenized Lore framework unveiled in November. “It’s gonna feel like a Disney movie,” its creator vows.
“The way I believe we’re going to get very large numbers of people into blockchain and web3 is through manga, anime and comics. Blockchain allows us to make comics scarce in a digital way. People have been collecting comics for decades, they have value, and we can produce them digitally with NFT technology. It solves a real problem because all the comic book companies are losing money. It’s too expensive to ship all that paper, print in multiple languages. So what we want to do is layer on the best aspects of manga and US-style comic books, storytelling and collectability mainly, and make it all digital with millions of creators.”
But why Alien Worlds? Why not just continue promoting interactive, blockchain-based comics through LightningWorks?
Alien Worlds is famous as far as dApps go, you’ve got this sort of staking game with multiple DAOs that are all just set free, and it has several million fans over the lifetime of the project. Now it’s just a matter of getting them all back by making comics and all kinds of amazing content. I’m super excited to be a part of it, there’s gigantic potential here based on what I've seen with Alien Worlds’ killer Lore team and creating this sort of foundation of a world and a way to tokenize it all.
Although he has only received a grant to produce a demo comic, McCabe’s hope is to receive additional funding to create a Stars Wars-esque trilogy that uses elements of Alien Worlds’ foundational lore and introduces new material. “The idea is to basically have three movies, each movie being four to six comics, and there are six planets – so we have two planets maybe for each of the movies. The idea is to make a story that’s compelling enough that Netflix or one of the big networks will take this and make it into a show, which will in turn bring more people into Alien Worlds.”
Community as a Cornerstone
Although a driven storyteller and imagineer who likes controlling the levers of a narrative, the LightningWorks founder appreciates the beauty of a game like Alien Worlds, where everyone can participate: community is the lifeblood of the multi-chain metaverse, as evidenced by the six Planetary Syndicates’ management of Trilium budgets and the various creative endeavors pursued by regular Explorers.
“When you have several comics in a row and the stories are developing and there are more characters, then the whole community gets behind it and starts to write side stories and interact with our team and the Lore, the ecosystem will grow and create a network effect,” he predicts. “You’re gonna see a Cambrian explosion of excitement and energy that will come out of this.”
McCabe’s passion is palpable, and if he gets his way a series of scarce blockchain-based comics replete with dynamic characters, collectible NFTs and rich sci-fi Lore will lead inevitably to wholesale community participation in Alien Worlds: spinoffs, games, novels, podcasts and, somewhere along the road, a big-budget cinematic spectacle that is “like Guardians of the Galaxy mixed with Game of Thrones.”
Wouldn’t that be something?
Alien Worlds offers a truly unique decentralized platform where players are more than mere participants; they're active stakeholders influencing both the present and future of the game. Whether you aim to create services, tools, games, or other platforms, the community stands ready to embrace and utilize them.
Developers, you can access our API toolkit here.
Innovators, breathe life into your project by applying for a Galactic Hubs grant today.
Leaders, step into the Planetary Syndicates and propel your ideas to the forefront of the community.
If you need assistance with any of these endeavors, please visit our official Discord or Telegram channels.