 Imagine a move to earn game that's a mix of Pokemon Go and Tamagotchi that you can start playing completely for free on the Solana blockchain. That is exactly what Geno Pets is. Because the community has been so interested in this project, we decided to reach out to the Geno Pets team and do our very first projects AMA slash interview directly with the team. Almost every single question in this interview came directly from the community. So if you dropped a question under my Twitter post, you might have a shout out in this video. Now the interview is over an hour long, so we decided to break this down into a five part series where we cover what Geno Pets is, Geno Pets gameplay, how you can earn money playing Geno Pets, some of the exciting new features come into Geno Pets like skill based battles, and of course our favorite tokenomics and sustainability for this project. In this five part series, we will be talking with Geno Pets COO Kevin Kim, who goes into great detail on everything that you need to know about this new move to earn game, or should I say the original move to earn game, including some major alpha on what he thinks the demand is going to be growing for in the future. They're going to be the most important and necessary ingredient. Oh, and one more thing, Geno Pets was nice enough to give me 100 activation codes. So stay tuned to the end to find out exactly how you can get one. Let's jump right into part one of this five part series where Kevin will introduce himself, Geno Pets, and share some background on the team who put it together. Alrighty guys, I am here with the surprise guests that I have for today's video, which is Kevin, and if you guys don't know who Kevin is, he is the COO of Geno Pets. Kevin, how are you doing today? How's everything going? Doing well, man. Things are hectic, but super exciting. Very excited to be here, and thank you for having me on. For those who don't know, I'm Kevin. I actually joined the project, I think, as the first full-time employee after the three co-founders, and that was back in November or very early November of last year. So a long time ago, but also a very short time ago, all things considered. Wow, that's amazing. And how did you get involved? How did you hear about Geno Pets? How did you get involved in the project? Personally, I've been a crypto enthusiast since, in fact, back in 2013 or so. Back then I didn't realize I had no idea how big the whole category would ever become, but that's when I first started to sniff around Bitcoin and learn about things. I never thought it would become a professional pursuit. My background over the last eight years has been in a different sort of gaming, the sports betting, online casino, and online skill games. I worked in that industry for between seven and eight years. Around last year, a very close friend of mine who I had never worked with professionally, but had always been a close friend, kind of floated this idea by me of a startup that he was starting to raise for that individual as Albert Chen, our CEO and CTO. And he started describing the concept to me. And even before we even talked about the crypto or NFT side of it, I was immediately intrigued because I'm a gamer, much like many other people on the team. And they were hiring. It was a big change for me to shift not only industries, but enter essentially a startup environment versus a more established corporate environment that I was at. But you know, that was about 10 months ago and I haven't looked back. So for someone who is completely brand new to GenoPets, they've never heard of GenoPets. What is GenoPets and how did it come about? We're at the intersection of many things. And there's a lot of different phenomenons, concepts, technologies that are coming together for our game. But if I had to start somewhere with and I was explaining it to someone who had never heard of it before, I would describe it as a free to play game, a free to play mobile game that makes it fun and rewarding to live an active lifestyle. It is a virtual pet care and evolution game where the GenoPet is your digital pet. It's your own spirit animal. It's a representation of you and your efforts within our game universe. And, you know, just like any other virtual pet care game out there, the game is about evolving that pet, building a bond with it, going on adventures with it, customizing it, battling it, and really just progressing through the game experience and the journey provided by the game alongside this virtual animal, this creature that really represents all the work that you've put into pursuing an active lifestyle. And the way we've done that is by integrating step counting so that the app tracks the number of steps that you take and ports it into the game as energy for your pet. Basically, if you want to do anything within our game, you need to move first and generate that energy so that your pet can evolve, battle, explore, become customized. And for you to unlock any feature in the game, you have to move. And so in some ways, it's like a Tamagotchi or a Pokemon Go. But the way that I like to kind of frame it for people is that it's a Tamagotchi. If you've ever heard of this game where you take care of a pet, it's a Tamagotchi for the 21st century. It's for us today. As in, it's a Tamagotchi you take care of by taking care of yourself. That was definitely a very popular game back then. And Pokemon Go, I think everybody's heard of Pokemon Go. And that was a phenomenon, like a few years back, that took the world basically by storm. I'm sure that you know this, but there's a lot of projects all of a sudden that are, you know, move to earn. What is it true that GinoPet was the original move to earn game? Yeah, I mean, look, we didn't file a patent and I don't even think you can trademark stuff like this. Certainly when you're a startup, that's not what you're thinking about. But if I look back on the documented materials, if you look back at our initial pitch deck, that we were floating around to our, the people that would become our seed investors as early as summer of last year, you'll see that the term that was there, and I mean, it may have been used before, but as far as we're concerned, we actually went through the process of coining that term. And the way we got there was initially we were inspired by the success or the meteoric rise of, you know, games like Axie and others that really led the way in the play to earn space. But what kind of really attracted us almost separately was this idea of move to play. So this idea that, you know, it's a game that requires you to be away from the screen in order to progress. And from there, combining move to play and play to earn is what got us to move to earn. How's GinoPet's differentiating itself from its competitors in both move to earn and the player in space? I think the first point I'd make is that we don't actually view the other players or projects in the space as competitors, or at least not as direct competitors. For one, you can, for move to earn, you can play all the games at the same time. I will say what makes us unique is first and foremost, it's a pet care RPG. It's an actual role playing game or similar to it where this pet is an NFT, yes, but that and the NFT technology is basically what allows this pet to evolve and grow and take on mutable and immutable characteristics as a result of the work that you've put in. And I think that's a little bit different from what anyone else is doing in the move to earn space, maybe even to a great extent in the play to earn space, because we're essentially leveraging the time-honored gamification mechanics from these traditional RPGs and virtual pet care games and subverting them for this process of pursuing a more active lifestyle. Most other plays in the space that I've seen are more centered on how can we get you to walk more or how can we reward you for this very specific behavior? We've taken a less direct path. We focused more on creating an end-to-end game experience that leverages what games can do to change behavior for something like pursuing a more active lifestyle. And the best way we've, and the way we've landed on is by pursuing this idea of the NFT is a pet, a living breathing pet within our world that you have to take care of by taking care of yourself. And that distinction is important because I think when it's all about the individual and the individual walking more to earn more, it's a very self-centered sort of journey. Whereas with this pet, this avatar that you're kind of taking care of, sometimes you do things, if there are any pet owners out there, you do things for your dog, your cat, you'll get up and walk your dog, you'll do things for them that you wouldn't necessarily do for yourself. And that idea is sort of central to what we're doing. Can you elaborate a little bit more on the rest of the team's background and experience prior to GenoPets? Yeah, absolutely. We've got a very eclectic mix of experience, specialties, expertise within the team, as well as in a more narrow sense within the leadership team. And my other C-level officers are Albert, he's our CEO and CTO. He comes from a long and very established background of e-commerce, as well as, you know, participating in and leading software projects, mostly passion projects, because that's where I think that's really what drives him, his interest in the technology and the possibilities they're in. On the product and design side, we've got Ben, who has had an award-winning career, actually, I should call out, in product design and UI and UX design. And so he's the artistic mastermind behind the look and the feel of the game. And then we've got Jay, our Chief Marketing Officer, who, you know, he's a crypto veteran, oversaw and contributed to the rise of Block 1 and just has been involved in a number of crypto and token related projects and has a number of successful token launches to his credit. I hope you guys have enjoyed part one of this five-part interview with GenoPets COO Kevin Kim. If you guys want a free activation code, I have 100 to give away. Drop a comment below referencing your favorite part of this video with your thoughts or comments on it. And of course, make sure you subscribe to the channel, goes without saying. Now make sure to watch part two of this interview where we talk about GenoPets gameplay. We go through the entire process of getting started and creating your unique GenoPets, including a personality quiz that you have to take in order to create your GenoPets. I think it is going to blow your mind. If you're not already, make sure to hit subscribe. I'll see you on the next one. Peace and love.