Doctor Who Meets Blockchain : How Aethir and Reality+ Transform Web3 Gaming

BGA : Tony, this partnership with Aethir feels like a milestone. In your view, how does Instant Play redefine the onboarding experience for games like Doctor Who: Worlds Apart?

Tony Pearce (CEO and Co Founder of Reality+) : It’s a great way for players to ‘try before you buy’ using Aethir’s Instant Play streaming technology. This integration removes the need for downloads, enabling players to instantly access the game, explore Doctor Who: Worlds Apart strategic deck-building mechanics, and experience gaming with zero friction.

Why was it important for Reality+ to be among the first to integrate decentralized cloud infrastructure into a live blockchain game?

By allowing users to stream the game instantly within Aethir’s cutting edge decentralised cloud infrastructure this “try before you buy” approach significantly boosts player engagement and retention, reduces acquisition costs, and provides a scalable, secure way to onboard new players. The game is a trading card game initially aimed at Web2 gamers that love CCG games. By targeting the mass market first we then introduce players to the trading aspect of the game. Launching soon, we will allow players to connect the game to our website where we will mint the cards as NFTs on the Hedera blockchain allowing players to own their cards as collectibles and trade or sell them.

How do you see this frictionless gameplay model influencing adoption rates across the Web3 gaming space ?

Aethir’s decentralized cloud infrastructure removes many of the traditional barriers in Web3 gaming — heavy downloads, platform restrictions, and hardware limitations. By enabling instant, frictionless gameplay via streaming, it dramatically lowers the entry barrier for users, especially in emerging markets or on lower-end devices. In the Web3 space, where onboarding friction is one of the biggest challenges, Aethir’s approach could be a game-changer for scale and accessibility.

Can you walk us through the technical magic behind the integration? How does Aethir’s tech work under the hood for players jumping into the game instantly?

Integration is as simple as integrating a weblink that we provide into an iframe embedded in your web experiences. The key is Aethir’s distributed GPU network or DePin as it’s known, which is a network of over 400,000 GPU’s in 95 countries worldwide. This allows Aethir to deploy our game to a game streaming container on the edge close to the end user thereby providing low latency game play. Essentially the game executable runs on Aethir’s GPU infrastructure and their game streaming technology handles user input and streaming of the game video.

Latency, asset ownership, wallet connectivity — how are you handling the complex Web3 elements in a streamed environment?

For Doctor Who: Worlds Apart it’s only a limit ‘timed’ version of the game that is streamed. If players want to connect wallets

and trade cards then they connect separately to our web site. However, for other Web3 games asset ownership and wallet connectivity can be integrated seamlessly into the streamed experience. Users can connect wallets within the iframe window just like they would in a native app or browser, with secure authentication and transaction signing handled on the edge. This allows full Web3 functionality — NFTs, tokens, on-chain progression — without exposing users to technical friction or performance drops.

Doctor Who is one of the world’s most iconic franchises. How do you balance innovation in blockchain with maintaining brand integrity and mainstream appeal?

Balancing innovation while respecting the core of the IP and keeping it accessible to mainstream fans is delicate but totally achievable. Every character, card, storyline, and visual feels truly authentic. Doctor Who: Worlds Apart is aimed at mainstream first, blockchain second. Most fans don’t understand NFTs or blockchain so we make the blockchain elements invisible unless the user wants to go deeper. We allow casual play without requiring Web3 knowledge. You automatically get a blockchain wallet when you set up an account, the cards are Digital Collectibles (Not NFTs) and you can easily trade cards within our market place without knowing its connected to the blockchain.

Do you believe decentralized infra is essential for the future of Web3 gaming , or simply a bonus layer?

Decentralized infrastructure is the key to low latency which provides the performance to deliver even the most complex and demanding of games to any handset or browser device as all of the processing is performed by the server, in the cloud, and the local device just has to render the video stream. It also removes any friction for the end user since they don’t have to download the game client.

This means the user experience is incredibly smooth, allowing users to become engaged with games instantly – on ANY device, globally. Decentralized infrastructure is necessary for this since one of the biggest challenges in gaming is hardware. There’s 3.4B gamers worldwide, and 2.8B of them play on LOW END devices. Aethir helps make games accessible and available for everyone, and this is the key to increase web3 gaming adoption globally.

Any other elements you would like to share about the game and its exciting community and gameplay ?

Doctor Who: Worlds Apart is a collectible card game with a unique blend of fast-paced yet strategic gameplay now available in ‘Early Access’ to stream via Aethir or can be downloaded via the Apple and Google app stores and on PC via Epic Games Store. A Web2 game that integrates Web3 via Reality+’s blockchain platform allowing players to trade cards minted on the Hedera blockchain. The game is routed in Doctor Who lore where you can build custom decks from 150+ iconic Doctor Who characters.