The founder an NFT gaming project admitted he was out of his depth prior to a botched art reveal that saw him make more than $100m in cryptocurrency, while some buyers lost thousands of dollars.
In March, the founder and man behind Pixelmon was revealed to be Martin van Blerk, from Hamilton.
Months later, van Blerk says he is committed to seeing the project through and sat down with 1News for an exclusive interview.
He said he always had a passion for gaming and the NFT space.
“I came up with Pixelmon, which in essence, it's a game where you can create, train, trade and fight with digital monsters across the metaverse,” he said.
“This started as a passion project for me it started small, it started slow. But it quickly caught the attention of a much larger crowd in this space.”
He said the Pixelmon Twitter account blew up – gaining about 200,000 followers in a month.
“Do you think you were - with the benefit of hindsight - totally out of your depth?” van Blerk was asked.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“I've taken steps not only to realise that, okay, maybe I was out of my depth, but to say, ‘OK, how can I do the best going forward and what steps can I take to bring in people that have experience’.”
1News spoke to several people that lost money.
“I lost a shitload of money,” one man based in Asia said. “Everyone bought into Pixelmon. Because everyone thought he would do well, because the team marketed it that way.”
After the public backlash, van Blerk said he did not consider refunding disgruntled buyers.
“Right now, the focus of the entire NFT project, the promise is NFTs that you're going to be able to use inside a game, so it's very premature to refer to losses or gains prior to the game actually being delivered."
He was then asked: “But many would say you didn't deliver on the artwork you didn't deliver on what was promised.”
He replied: “Yeah, what I would say to them is even though we didn't deliver on the artwork the focus is on the game and we are fully committed, on the promise of that game.”
“To those who feel let down by the artwork, we are fully dedicated to re-do the art to a much higher standard,” he said.
Van Blerk later emailed 1News with several concept art images that were being worked on.
In terms of next steps, van Blerk said he was building a team – with the most significant appointment being a chief executive who has experience leading a big company.
Due to contractual constraints with his previous employer he cannot be named, but 1News has met and spoken to him about the Pixelmon project.
“He's working with me on quite a few big things with the project,” van Blerk explained.
“We are recruiting more and more experienced and seasoned team members from gaming experts to 3D designers as well as HR and finance.”
He expected to have an early version of the Pixelmon game released by the end of 2022.
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