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Simon Davis is the co-founder and CEO of Mighty Bear Games, a multiplatform game developer in Southeast Asia creating accessible multiplayer experiences in Web3.

Davis has spent almost two decades working in the gaming industry, but he never planned to actually work in this field.

Before crypto, he was a professional guitarist who made ends meet by playing in metal bands and cover bands and by teaching guitar. But after his money dried up one summer, he scored a six-week gig as a professional game tester — and he’s never looked back.

Mighty Bear Games' Simon Davis' guitar collection
Davis’ ever-growing guitar collection. (Simon Davis)

During his time in the gaming industry, Davis has held management and product lead positions at gaming companies including King Digital Entertainment, Ubisoft, Bigpoint, AKQA, Empire Interactive, and Laughing Jackal. 

In 2017, Davis teamed up with some friends and fellow industry veterans to launch Mighty Bear Games in Singapore, where they intended to focus on creating traditional games — before pivoting to blockchain in 2022. And in 2023, the firm launched an open beta for Mighty Action Heroes, its first Web3 gaming title.

Davis, who also goes by “Papa Bear,” said every Mighty Bear employee receives a “bear title.” Some of Papa Bear’s employees include “Arty Bear,” “Bear-Abel,” “Excel Bear,” and “Bear McNumbers.”

Why the pivot to blockchain gaming?

I was lucky enough to kind of get into Bitcoin by accident in 2015, so I’ve been in the space for a few years. In 2021, I started playing with NFTs, and I’m lucky enough to be also based in Southeast Asia, so I could see firsthand what was happening with Axie [Infinity]. I think, for me, as someone who lived through the transition to free-to-play, it felt very much like a moment, kind of like when Farmville came out on Facebook. 

I think that for live service titles [games like Fortnite, League of Legends and Apex Legends], a dominant business model is going to emerge to revolve around player-owned and operated economies. Because I don’t believe you can have virtual worlds without digital property rights, essentially.

And I think that does enable a lot of new things that we’re really starting to scratch the surface on. So, I think that really was the pull factor.

What format do you think serves as the best way to attract users to blockchain gaming?

The Mighty Bear Games team
The Mighty Bear Games team. (Simon Davis)

I think mobile gaming is going to be the dominant platform because of geography. You see this if you look at the charts for the countries that have a great slope of interest in crypto or Web3. They tend to be countries where existing payment rails are not super developed.

People are largely unbanked in places like Indonesia and Brazil. These markets are mobile-first. Like, people in the Philippines and India are not necessarily using high-end PCs. 

So, you need to go where the users are. And this is a bit of a spicy take, but this is why I’m very bearish on people making super HD high-end Web3 games because it’s just not where the markets are today. So, you see a lot of these teams raising, like, mega bucks to make console-quality titles, but if no one can play them, then they aren’t going to do very much.

What do you think the current hurdles are for large-scale blockchain gaming adoption?

A lot of people talk about it in terms of silver bullets, right? Like, “Oh, we need one good game,” or like, “We need to solve the wallet problem.” I don’t think it’s any one of those things. I actually think it is just a lot of lead bullets, a lot of small things that need to happen. 

What I’ve experienced today is still pretty terrible, and scary, like social recovery. And it’s starting to become a thing, but that needs to become a lot easier.

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I just think, in general, it needs to be as easy and as brainless to use as a Web2 experience. And so I think there is an inherent conflict today with how people think about Web3, you know. They say things like, “Oh, you need to educate the users,” or, “Train people to hold their private keys.”

But you know, my mom doesn’t want to hold her own private keys. She does all her trading on Crypto.com. We need to make it essentially idiot-proof so anyone can do it.

I think we’re still quite a long way away, but I am seeing meaningful improvements, actually. I’m seeing products that are going to go to market next year which are going to help a lot. 

I don’t know how old you are, but I’ve just turned 40 this year. I remember in the 90s setting up a home internet connection on dial-up. It took me two days of calling technical support and someone telling me like configs. I was having to go in and change manually and stuff. And now, you know, we solved that, right? And then, the internet became a mass market, and then people could just put a CD in their computer, and it just worked. I think we need to get to that stage.

Mighty Action Heroes. (Game website)

Do you think the bad rap blockchain/NFT gaming gets is a big issue? 

It’s funny because gaming got a pretty bad rap in the 90s. You know, everyone was talking about how games were making children violent. There was a big moral panic, just like there was in music a few years before.

But I think that when you start to get these things in people’s hands and experience them, perceptions change. I do think a lot of the reputation that we have in crypto and Web3 is deserved. There are a lot of bad actors exploiting the lack of regulation, but the things that excite me: I’ve seen some games, for example, that allow players to earn small amounts of Bitcoin, And this sort of thing’s retention numbers are very strong, like the initial metrics are very promising. And I think that’s a really nice use case.

Reddit is also a great example, right? They put NFTs in the hands of huge numbers of people. A lot of people didn’t even realize they were interacting with NFTs. So then they had their first taste, and yeah — there are some stats that have come up, and not a huge amount of them have transacted on-chain.

But I actually don’t think that’s such a bad thing. If people are not dumping the assets on day one, I don’t see that as a negative. So, I think onboarding through stealth is pretty good.

What kind of adoption metrics are you looking for with your games?

So, people talk about installs and sign-ups — it’s just a vanity metric. For me, I’m interested in how many people are coming in every day, how regularly they’re coming back, and what the growth curve of that looks like initially.

And then once we do the mobile launch [of Mighty Action Heroes], which will be around August/September, how well are we doing on attracting non-crypto-native people into the game as well? That will be very interesting, and to see how they play together. It’s a different angle, but it’s one that I’m pretty bullish on.

What are some ideas or tech upgrades that could help blockchain gaming?

ERC-6551 tokens. 

Essentially, they give a smart contract account or a smart contract wallet to a 721 [token]. So, you know, a traditional NFT would be a JPG with some metadata attached. But essentially, the JPG or the asset, whatever that is, is then bound to a smart contract. 

And this is pretty cool because it means that assets can communicate directly with each other. So NFT to NFT, without using MetaMask. And it could also be compatible with other smart contract wallets. 

I think the really cool thing is that, essentially, your asset becomes a wallet and can have its own logic as well. So you could have a base character in a game as the 6551 token, and then all the clothes or the items or everything that that character has, the kind of sub-assets, can change within, each with its own logic.

As a game developer, you start thinking of how your characters could evolve and how you can attach new assets without updating the core.

Then as a dev, I think it’s really good for reputation management as well. Like, if you did a soulbound version, you could have achievements, proof-of-work, proof-of-play, social identity. I think it’s pretty cool. […] It’s more secure because it’s not just an asset within a wallet like it is on smart contracts with its own private key.

Brian Quarmby

Brian Quarmby discovered crypto in 2013 and instantly fell in love with the idea of decentralization. Brian has since lived and worked Asia and returned to Melbourne in late 2019. Brian is a lover of sport and art and is bullish on the potential for NFTs to transform artists lives in the near future.

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Trump says Musk ‘off the rails’ for forming political party to rival GOP

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Trump says Musk ‘off the rails’ for forming political party to rival GOP

Trump says Musk ‘off the rails’ for forming political party to rival GOP

US President Donald Trump has blasted Elon Musk’s plan to start a new political party that could splinter the Republican vote in the 2026 midterm elections.

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MP recalls childhood abuse as he calls for law change to make domestic abuse a specific criminal offence

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MP recalls childhood abuse as he calls for law change to make domestic abuse a specific criminal offence

An MP who decided until recently to “never speak” about the abuse he suffered as a child has shared his harrowing story so that “no kid has to go through” what he did.

Josh Babarinde describes being physically abused by his mother’s former partner from the age of four, and remembers crying himself to sleep under the covers “hearing shouts, hearing screams and things smash”.

He says he became hypervigilant growing up and felt safe at school but “like he was treading on eggshells” in his own home.

The Eastbourne MP, who is also the Liberal Democrats’ justice spokesperson, says his experience has driven his politics. He is calling on the government to stop abusers “slipping through the net” and being released from prison early.

Opening up about his story in his twenties was “difficult” but looking back, Mr Babarinde says, he is “so proud of the resilience of that kid”.

The MP recently found his childhood diary containing Star Wars drawings alongside an entry he wrote from the bathroom. The diary, he recalls, wrote: “I’m really going to try to go (to the toilet) but I can’t. Oh my goodness, I’m gonna be in so much trouble, I’m going to get smacked so hard.”

Then an entry five minutes later: “I still haven’t done anything, I’m going to be in so much trouble.”

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He says reading the entry reminded him of how “helpless” he felt.

“It was mortifying,” he says. “An abuser takes away your sense of self-worth.”

Josh Babarinde speaking to Sky's Ali Fortescue.
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Mr Babarinde says he wants the government to ‘properly recognise domestic abuse crimes in the law’

The 32-year-old is calling on the government to change the law to make domestic abuse a specific criminal offence. The change would mean, he argues, abusers can no longer effectively disguise their history under other offences like assault.

He says the Ministry of Justice’s early release scheme, which has seen thousands of prisoners released early to ease overcrowding, has failed to exclude domestic abusers despite government promises because there is no formal categorisation for offenders.

It is impossible, he argues, to know exactly how many domestic abusers are in prison currently so perpetrators are “slipping through the net” on early release.

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January: Rising violence against women and girls

Mr Babarinde says the uncertainty means victims and survivors are not able to prepare for their abuser’s release.

He said: “They might need to move house or move their kids to a new school, shop in different places. All of these kind of things are so important, and so that’s why that commitment the government made was so important.”

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said: “Our thoughts are with all victims of domestic abuse – it takes immense courage to speak out.

“We are building a justice system that puts victims first – strengthening support, increasing transparency, and giving people the confidence to come forward and be heard.”

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Another tantrum from the Labour backbenches is inevitable

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Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

In common with many parents across the country, here’s a conversation that I have with my young daughter on a semi-regular basis (bear with me, this will take on some political relevance eventually).

Me: “So it’s 15 minutes until your bedtime, you can either have a little bit of TV or do a jigsaw, not both.”

Daughter: “Ummmm, I want to watch TV.”

Me: “That’s fine, but it’s bed after that, you can’t do a jigsaw as well.”

Fast-forward 15 minutes.

Me: “Right, TV off now please, bedtime.”

(Pause)

Daughter: “I want to do a jigsaw.”

Now replace me with the government, the TV and jigsaw options with axing welfare cuts and scrapping the two-child cap, and my daughter with rebellious backbenchers.

Politics latest: Former Labour leader calls for wealth tax on assets above £10m

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Rachel Reeves’s fiscal dilemma

That is the tension currently present between Downing Street and Labour MPs. And my initial ultimatum is the messaging being pumped out from the government this weekend.

In essence: you’ve had your welfare U-turn, so there’s no money left for the two-child cap to go as well.

As an aside – and before my inbox fills with angry emails lambasting me for using such a crude metaphor for policies that fundamentally alter the lives of some of the most vulnerable in society – yes, I hear you, and that’s part of my point.

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Welfare U-turn ‘has come at cost’

For many in Labour, this approach feels like the lives of their constituents are being used in a childish game of horse-trading.

So what can be done?

Well, the government could change the rules.

Altering the fiscal rules is – and will likely remain – an extremely unlikely solution. But as it happens, one of Labour’s proverbial grandparents has just popped round with a different suggestion.

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Welfare: ‘Didn’t get process right’ – PM

A wealth tax, Lord Neil Kinnock says, is the necessary outcome of the economic restrictions the party has placed on itself.

Ever the Labour storyteller, Lord Kinnock believes this would allow the government to craft a more compelling narrative about whose side this administration is on.

That could be valuable, given one of the big gripes from many backbench critics is that they still don’t really understand what this prime minister stands for – and by extension, what all these “difficult decisions” are in aid of.

The downside is whether it will actually raise much money.

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Is Corbyn an existential risk to Labour?

The super-rich may have lots of assets to take a slice from, but they also have expensive lawyers ready to find novel ways to keep their client’s cash away from the prying eyes of the state.

Or, of course, they could just leave – as many are doing already.

In the short term, the future is a bit easier to predict.

If Downing Street is indeed now saying there is no money to scrap the two-child cap (after heavy briefing in the opposite direction just weeks ago), an almighty tantrum from the backbenches is inevitable.

And as every parent knows, the more you give in, the harder it becomes to hold the line.

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