In the spring of 2015, HamletHub was fortunate to welcome Jack Kuveke as a Ridgefield High School intern. Fast forward 18 months: Jack is now a sophomore at Syracuse University in the school of Information Technology where he has found fun and games beyond the classroom. Jack has positioned himself as a guru in the world of gaming as a Community Manager at the startup company, GameCredits (dot-com).
We met up with Jack today in our HamletHub office where he filled us in on his work with GameCredits, a new payment gateway for the gaming industry. Here, Jack talks with his GameCredits colleague and answers some questions about his passion for gaming, his industry knowledge, and his role at GameCredits.
This interview was preprinted with permission.
What’s your background?
Starting in 2011 I got involved with game servers. I realized how lucrative the gaming industry could be, even as an amateur. By 2012 I had created my first server in the popular sand box game Minecraft. Within a year I had over 300,000 unique players and was averaging thousands of dollars a month in profit.
During that time, I learned the intricacies of customer relations and self-promotion/marketing. After about a year and a half I was ready to take things to the next level. I took what I had learned with my first server and created a new Minecraft server, creating a Grand Theft Auto world that targeted the younger Minecraft audience who were enthralled by the violent game, but weren’t allowed to play it (in Minecraft you can essentially create pretty much anything and coders are not expensive to hire). After about a month the server started to pick up. Quickly it grew to over 500,000 unique users and I began to establish partnerships with incredibly popular YouTubers who helped popularize my servers. The journey ended in 2015, and I began to transition into the world of cryptocurrency. This whole experience occurred over my high school and university years. Right now I’m finishing up a degree studying Information Technology and Management and Economics.
How long have you been involved in crypto?
I bought my first bitcoins in the summer of 2015, although I had been doing research on the subject for some time. My first altcoin purchases were Ethereum and gamecredits, and after making a few hundred dollars my first day of trading, I was perplexed and addicted. I have been trying to learn as much as I can about the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency ever since.
How did you become involved with gamecredits?
GAME was one of the first cryptocurrency purchases I made. I was still new and it was hard to wrap my head around many of the exciting coins I was reading about. I kept saying to myself, ‘How are normal people going to use this coin? What value does this coin have?’ To me gamecredits made complete sense. My biggest problems when I ran servers were chargebacks and fees. These ended up costing me thousands of dollars. If gamecredits were around I certainly could have saved myself a lot of trouble. This summer I joined the GameCredits slack and began speaking with many of the loyal members. Jon Comer, GameCredits CMO, provided me with insights and answers that I had never gotten anywhere before in crypto. The community I saw was small but incredibly dedicated and passionate. I began talking to Jon, telling him my interests and what I could bring to the team. I started officially working with the team in early fall, but again my sights had been set on GAME for a long time.
So as Community Manager it’s my job to be the first point of contact between the community/investors and the team. That means answering questions on Slack, Bitcointalk, Twitter, Facebook, and whatever else comes our way. I also do a fair bit of marketing ranging from Twitter campaigns/promotions, managing aspects of our blog, and planning various ways to engage our community. Recently I’ve been learning about search engine optimization and working with other team members to write press releases. I would say the large portion of my job involves patience and being a GameCredits evangelist.
What one development coming in the next 6 months excites you the most?
I’m incredibly excited for our advancements in the mobile gaming sector. As many people know, mobile gaming is the largest and fastest growing sector of gaming. Now obviously I can’t give out any specifics as to what is going on behind the scenes. But what I can say is the ability to bring cryptocurrency to mobile gamers is not far off. To me this advancement will be an incredible win for game developers, gamers, and the entire cryptocurrency community alike. I see the work and passion going on behind the scenes every day, and I see that work paying off, and I can’t wait to show the entire community what the entire team has been pouring countless hours into.
Where do you see the GameCredits ecosystem being by the end of 2017?
By the end of 2017, I see an incredibly large and thriving GameCredits community serving hundreds of thousands to millions of gamers around the world. Perhaps what I’m most excited for is when our community gets a hold of our API. To me gamecredits becomes powerful when the indie community/small time developer can begin to use our platform. I can’t wait to see loyal community members starting new projects and reaping the benefits of their devotion. With these projects and the rapidly growing number of games accepting GAME, I see gamecredits surprising the entire crypto and gaming industries.