Interview Dom Hofmann Nftnewtonplatformer: Dom Hofmann, CEO of this company, is a rare individual with a long history in the gaming industry. From his beginnings as the founder of Vine and cofounder of Tiny Speck (the company behind games like Glitch), he has always been drawn to video games as an art and storytelling medium. He fell in love with the idea of making games for an audience and in reading their comments and seeing their videos, which inspired him to create this new form of gaming.
At the recent CryptoGames Conference in San Francisco, I was able to speak with Mr. Hofmann about his new game, Loot. It is a mobile-first game that focuses on digital items and the potential it has for gamers and blockchain technologies alike.
How would you describe Loot?
Loot is the world’s first digital items marketplace. We’re building a consumer-facing brand, and we’re creating NFTs — non-fungible tokens — more commonly referred to as “cryptocollectibles.” We believe that gaming is the most exciting place to use blockchain technology today, because it is an industry where digital ownership can be incredibly meaningful to players. In gaming, you have [often] spent hundreds of hours working towards a goal or skin for a particular character. By adding blockchain technology, we can make your items more meaningful and can give you ways to trade those in ways that are relevant to you.
How did Loot come about?
I’ve been interested in creating digital goods for consumers for a long time, and I’ve always thought that there was an opportunity to disrupt the market through digital goods. I also have a history of creating games for mobile players — Tiny Speck made Glitch. We were a very small company, and we were able to embrace the idea of building a company on mobile because we felt like it was our mission and because of the marketing strategy we had for Tiny Speck.
I then started focusing on creating my own games as an entrepreneur, and I went back to focus on digital goods. I was looking at different ways to create digital goods that would be more valuable than other ones in the marketplace — especially NFTs. I started focusing on digital goods as an art form, and we started developing Loot.
What are “NFTs” and how do they differ from regular cryptocurrencies?
NFTs are items that you can own in a very tangible way — you can hold it. It is like a physical object that you physically own. These NFTs function differently than other cryptocurrencies, because the ownership aspect of them is extremely meaningful to the player. You put time and effort into creating something, and it becomes part of your whole identity.
