Big Time Studios Founder Ari Meilich on Building the Next Generation of Web3 Games

Pulse 2.0 recently interviewed Big Time Studios founder Ari Meilich to learn more about the company. Here's a summary of the interview and some of the key highlights:

Ari Meilich’s Background

Ari Meilich is an entrepreneur in the Web3 gaming space. In April 2020, he founded Big Time Studios to bring quality game entertainment to crypto. Previously, he was the founding CEO of Decentraland, a decentralized metaverse where users populate their virtual land with interactive 3D content they build. Decentraland lets users create, experience, and monetize content and applications. He led the project until April 2020, when he moved into an advisory role.

Formation Of Big Time Studios

At Big Time Studios, they set out to address the massive and unnecessary friction between players and web3 and the lack of engaging content. Meilich believed there had to be a better way, so he brought together a team of AAA gaming veterans to create a platform to integrate crypto assets into video games seamlessly.

MMORPGs have had thriving game economies for decades, and crypto assets (scarce and transferable by design) would unleash their full potential. This vision led to the creation of Big Time Studios, intending to make web3 games more accessible and enjoyable for players. Big Time was our flagship game, and the rest is history.

Favorite Memory

Our offsite retreat in 2024. We founded our company as a fully remote startup, believing that the best talent knows no boundaries and can be anywhere in the world. Some of us collaborated for years before we got to know each other in person. So last year, months after Big Time became a hit, we brought our entire team to a resort off the Mayan Riviera to decompress and have face time.

Core Products

Big Time Studios enables developers to launch quality multiplayer games that seamlessly integrate blockchain technology. Our flagship game, Big Time, is a free-to-play multiplayer action RPG in which players engage in fast-paced combat and adventure through various eras of time and space. The game features a player-driven economy, procedural generation for unique experiences, and the ability to customize a personal metaverse. Players can also switch character classes during gameplay.

Besides Big Time, we offer Open Loot, a Web3 gaming distribution platform and marketplace. Open Loot supports game developers and publishers with their go-to-market, game economy design, payments, asset custody, and compliance. The platform’s native cryptocurrency, the $OL token, fuels its growth and provides exclusive user benefits, such as marketplace transactions, discounts, rewards, and in-game spending.

Open Loot supports games like World Shards, Boss Fighters, The Desolation, ShatterPoint, and Clockie Chaos, a mobile-only game available through Telegram, where players blast away rogue Clockies to restore the balance of time while collecting valuable Time Shards.

We also recently announced our $150 million Open Loot Fund, which aims to provide financial backing, marketing expertise, and development support to game developers on the Open Loot Platform. By offering strategic guidance on in-game economy design, sales strategy, monetization guidance, marketing, and community building, we ensure developers on or coming to our platform can focus on crafting engaging gameplay while seamlessly integrating blockchain technology.

Evolution Of Big Time Studios’ Technology

We built our custody system initially on top of Ethereum, but since early 2020, most second-layer blockchains have not been mature enough. Over the years, we’ve enabled asset minting, deposits, and withdrawals on several other blockchains.

Significant Milestones

Here are some of our milestones:

a.) $443,386,952 in total marketplace volume

b.) 28,820 average $BIGTIME grant to players

c.) 60,342 unique purchasers

d.) 1,389,096 unique platform users

e.) 1,980,398 digital collectibles sold

f.) 310,681 players in Preseason

Customer Success Stories

In addition to Big Time, Open Loot has launched two highly successful games: WorldShards and Boss Fighters. WorldShards is a sandbox MMORPG for endless exploration, offering players an immersive world rich with discovery. Bossfighters invites players to dive into an exhilarating gaming universe where Bosses and PC Fighters clash in futuristic battles for glory, fame, and real tangible; every match is a high-stakes showdown where performance can earn valuable tokens and digital collectibles.

Together, these games generated a combined $6,535,174.32 in NFT sales last year while investing minimally in marketing; Open Loot users originating from Big Time primarily driven sales. I genuinely believe in our community and ecosystem, as all these sales occurred before the formal launch of the game economies, indicating strong anticipation for both titles. This early success highlights that WorldShards and Boss Fighters are