Hey folks can you hear me okay? Yep loud and clear.
All right, welcome, everybody.
Bryce, Sam, Jack, welcome, glad to have you guys.
All right, well, we are one minute away from our official kickoff.
So, but we'll just get started because we're all here and we're all excited.
So, yeah, my name is Jeremy, VP of Marketing here at Magic Labs.
We're very excited to be talking about the future of Web3 Gaming with CapGames and our fantastic partner, Arbitrum.
So, yeah, just as you see, as you hear things that are of interest to you,
feel free to tweet them out or ask the questions or what have you.
If you want to request a talk, we might all do that as well.
But why don't we get started with you, Sam?
Why don't you give us a little bit of insight into what CapGames is all about,
what you're working on with your new project and what makes it special for those interested in Web3 Gaming?
No, stoked to be up here with you guys.
We have had a ton of fun building with the Magic team and the Arbitrum teams.
I am the creative director over on Captain & Company.
So, Captain & Company is a 128-player naval battle arena.
It's a game where we've taken the best parts of Sea of Thieves and some of those really cool econ loops from spots like Eve and Puzzle Pirates back in the day.
And we've mashed that into a really palatable, hugely multiplayer experience.
And so we're really excited to be bringing that over into the Web3 space and enabling tons and tons of players to hop into the game as quickly as possible,
leveraging magic on the back end there.
And from a big picture perspective, what we want to do is really usher in the next 100,000, potentially 100 million players into Web3 Gaming using these really, really easy onboarding routes and really compelling gameplay loops.
So we're stoked to be here sharing the message and finding more pirates for our launch, which is coming up next week.
Yeah, well, what day is that? Let's make sure everyone puts it on their calendar.
Yeah, so we are telling people that it will be in January.
We have not released the actual date, but it's probably going to be on January 31st.
So that's a small bit of alpha.
Tell us a little bit about, you know, I mean, you alluded to some of the games that inspired you for, you know, those people who are thinking about the difference between Web2 and Web3 Gaming.
What are the interesting elements or the kind of Web3 capabilities that you're integrating?
Yeah, so the core game loop of Captain & Company and what we have tried to lean into as what we see as novel inside of blockchain gaming is that the ships that you're piloting are NFTs.
So they are fully owned by the players themselves.
For us, this is a really, really important perspective to take on the kind of Sea of Thieves type, you know, first person pilot or pirate battling genre, because traditionally those types of games have actually lacked progression loops entirely.
And so what we've done is we've taken the ownership of the asset and we've given it directly to the players so that they feel like they are piloting something of immense value.
And it's not only important from the NFT owners perspective, but it's actually important from the crew members perspective.
So it's the hint is in the name of the game itself, Captain & Company.
We really see the Web3 space as bifurcated into two different audiences.
We have an audience which is really compelled by, you know, high level user ownership and actually being able to, you know, trade and speculate on assets.
We call those our captains and those are the people who own the NFTs.
They're the ones who will actually be taking risk.
And then we also see a huge number of folks in the space who don't want to take any risk at all.
You know, the airdrop farmers and the groups that are really just looking to, you know, kind of earn a little bit of cash on the side.
And so inside of Captain & Company, we've taken both of those two groups together and the big riskers, the people who own the assets, they own most of the upside.
So when you win a battle in Captain & Company, the person who owns the ship, they walk away with, you know, 90% of the cut, of the loot, whatever it happens to be.
And then the, you know, five or so crew members that they have on board, they all split the remaining bit.
And we think this is really novel because this ties in, you know, asymmetric economic risk into Web3 gaming.
But in a way where Web2 type players who come in and they move up to the progression loop, they're not forced, you know, to buy into the game or to be at risk.
You can just invite your friends on your ship. They can have a blast. You know, you all can hop off and you're basically just in the next great, you know, pirate MMO at that point.
So that's our, you know, kind of unique perspective on it and how we want to tie in really what's the most important component of blockchain, which is obviously digital ownership, into a method where Web2 people can actually be part of that without knowing that they're even part of that.
You know, I've done a little research on the game before and I know we talked, but hearing you talk about it now has gotten me even more jazz because it sounds like, I mean, you're and the whole metaphor around the ships.
Like, you're going back to the days of like profiteering pirates out there, like you put up the capital for the ship, you deserve the ROI on whatever you get.
So I love it. That's so innovative.
Yeah, it's funny that you actually mentioned the, you know, the OG pirates.
I don't know if a lot of people know this, but you know, in the venture capital world, there's a term called carry, right?
You split, you know, 80-20 with the winnings.
That's more or less what we've modeled this after, right? Is that you have your big owners and they take, you know, 80 to 90 percent of the winnings.
And then the people who, you know, support them on the ground, they end up taking, you know, 20, 10 percent of that.
So, yeah, it is back to the OG privateering, which is where that carry term came from.
Oh, I didn't know that. That's really so it's basically so now we have like a game of representing what VCs do anyway.
So there you go. Fantastic. Yeah, exactly.
Let me flip it over to Jack for a second. Over on the Arbitrum team, Jack, you're seeing a lot of development on Arbitrum in terms of this Web 3 gaming.
What are some of the themes that you're emerging with kind of innovative, you know, games or sort of mechanics like Sam was describing are sort of the things that are coming across your guys desk these days.
Yeah, absolutely. Stoked to be here, by the way. Thanks for thanks for having me on.
Just to give a quick intro, I guess, for folks who don't know me, I'm Jack Fitzpatrick on the partnerships team at Offchain Labs, focused on gaming and NFTs, joined the team last May.
So stoked to be working with the great folks like Captain and Company.
But yeah, I mean, I'm happy to touch on some trends. I think Captain and Company has done a great job carving out a pretty interesting implementation with their on-chain strategy.
Obviously, the owners with these assets is excellent. I think they've done their approach is quite cool because, you know, it starts with like these ship owners, but then you don't necessarily need to, you know, be an owner to get involved in the fund.
So it's a very collaborative nature. But those ship owners also rely on those, you know, more free to play users, so to speak, because if they don't have a good crew, they're going to be so well out on the seas.
So I love that implementation. I think it's great to see these more collaborative games coming to market. So I've really enjoyed that.
Some other things that I'm seeing, you know, one trend that I think is just gravely overlooked is just the ability for on-chain games to improve fairness in games.
So like one way that folks are leveraging this is with like on-chain VRF. So using solutions like Chainlink that allow you to have verifiable and transparently verifiable on-chain random number generation.
So if you're doing things like drawing cards in a game or rolling for skills, things like that that are pretty customary for games. Typically, like, you know, with the Web2 system, you're trusting this black box behind the scenes to handle that computation.
There's, you know, probably a good chance that it's all random and nothing suspect is taking place. But it's, I think, a really interesting differentiation for on-chain games to have, you know, an ability to really push fairness at the forefront of these games, particularly with more competitive game experiences.
So that's something I've been paying attention to.
So that's really, yeah, that's really interesting. In terms of the games that are coming to you guys to build, you know, you obviously bring a lot of competitive offerings to the space. What are some of the reasons why people who like Sam, I mean, I will let Sam talk for himself.
But what are people like Sam who are saying we want to build an Arbitrum? What are sort of the primary reasons that they're giving?
Yeah, absolutely. It's a great question. I'd say, you know, one of the largest selling points for Arbitrum's ecosystem as a whole is just how mature the ecosystem is.
So Arbitrum has a very serious amount of liquidity and there's a significant amount of daily economic activity that takes place on the network. I think that's very attractive for gaming teams that are, you know, bringing their in-game assets to a chain.
They want to enter an environment that has robust economic activity so that they aren't just kind of doing it completely on their own, helps to, you know, take advantage of network effects in that sense.
And also is another important consideration is just cheap fees effectively.
So Arbitrum has two public chains, Arbitrum 1 and Arbitrum Nova. Arbitrum 1, it typically costs 5 to 25 cents on average to transact, which is obviously a significant improvement compared to ETH mainnet.
But other teams that have even heavier on-chain footprints, so like, for example, if you're using on-chain VRF as part of your game logic, you're going to need a solution that has even cheaper fees.
So you've probably heard this term, like, alternative data availability popping up more recently in the context of solutions like Celestia and whatnot.
We do have a public chain that has Alt-DA, you know, equipped natively, so it uses a solution called antitrust to deliver sub-cent gas fees.
So we're seeing an increasing number of teams, particularly that those would have, like, these very robust and deep on-chain integrations gravitating towards Nova and taking advantage of those extremely cheap fees.
And then lastly is, you know, just entering an environment ecosystem that's excited about gaming.
Arbitrum's bread and butter has historically been in the DeFi world.
That's what, you know, a lot of people's journeys that started out in the DeFi context on Arbitrum.
You know, we do have a really strong gaming ecosystem here.
We've had folks like TreasureDAO building in the ecosystem for a long time.
TreasureDAO is actually the largest delegate in the ArbitrumDAO, which I think speaks to just the extent to which gaming is being taken seriously in the ecosystem.
So I'd say all those reasons are kind of top of mind for me.
So let's flip it now. Those are the reasons why people are coming.
What are some of the, I mean, you know, we've all been in the space for a while.
We've seen the good, the bad, the ugly. We've got the scars to show it.
What are some of the biggest challenges that you're seeing now from your side in terms of really driving significant adoption of some of the Web3 games that are being built?
Yeah, another great question.
Yeah, so, you know, there's, I don't think I'm going to be saying anything that's completely new here or that folks haven't already probably thought of to some extent.
But, you know, one of the biggest things from my perspective is just like onboarding complexity.
They get a gaming context. The assumption a lot of times is that, you know, somebody, a new user who perhaps has never used crypto before, engaged with the blockchain, hopefully finds a game like Captain & Company and is so excited to play it that, you know, they don't care about whatever friction may be involved to get going.
But the reality is that, you know, game developers have a real responsibility to make it as easy as possible for those gamers to get involved and jump into the fun.
One of the big things is, you know, just onboarding complexity and trying to improve and make it easier for folks to just jump right into an experience without having to go through 10 steps to get to the actual game and potentially losing funds along the way.
That's obviously not going to set anybody up for success.
So that's one of the reasons why I'm so excited to see you guys collaborating with Magic on this front is, you know, Magic has a very excellent solution for onboarding with social logins.
People can very quickly get set up with a crypto wallet in a way that is much more familiar to them.
And Magic also does a great job of alleviating other pain points that come along further down the road.
So like, just in terms of driving consistent engagement for more traditional gamers, gas fees are going to be a completely new behavior for them.
And that's like, that's a very important thing to keep in mind.
And so it's important to try to make it possible to either A, you know, limit the extent to which transaction fees, you know, get in the way of engagement or B, find a solution that makes it easy to, you know, abstract that away entirely.
Magic, I believe, has, you know, gas subsidization on the wallet, which is excellent. It's live on Arbitrum as well.
So solutions like that that just effectively make it, make on-chain gaming experience much, much closer to that, which traditional gamers have already come to expect, I think is really important.
Well, as the head of marketing at Magic, I'm very grateful for your shout out and you're welcome to the Magic marketing team will totally take you, but not necessary, but grateful nonetheless.
But Sam, coming back to you, like, you know, if you want to talk about how great Magic is, I'm certainly not going to stop.
But at a higher level, like, talk about when you were thinking about the game and all the unique things you could do.
Like, how did you start to think about some of the onboarding friction points, especially because you're going after more traditional Web 2 users?
What were some of the things that sort of popped up?
And how did you sort of break it down so that you said, OK, this is, you know, here are the ways we're going to go reduce friction so that we really can drive that mainstream adoption and people don't even care that they're actually using a Web 3 infrastructure.
Yeah, I mean, look, we have we have a crazy difficult remit, right?
Our objective is to create a 128 player browser based naval game. And that's insane.
It's so many technical directions already. Right. So even in a Web 2 space, right, that's already a hard problem.
And, you know, you layer on on top of that, the fact that a lot of games in the Web 3 space would go and ask people to make a wallet.
And we would never we would never take off if that were our approach, because, you know, we're not going to get 128 Web 2 people to make a wallet and join the game at the same time.
So what we've done instead is we've taken two really, really important approaches to user acquisition and the onboarding process in general.
So first of all, all players inside of Gatsby and company, they log in with an email. All right.
And when you log in with an email, you are assigned basically a default backup cap wallet, which is powered by magic on the back end.
And if you do not then go later into your user settings and connect your own wallet, then you're just going to use the default cap wallet throughout the entire game experience.
And so what ends up happening here is that every user who joins our ecosystem has exactly the same onboarding experience, which is they just logged in with an email and password.
And if they want to opt in to deeper Web 3 mechanics, which specifically would be taking the NFTs or the tokens outside of the Captain and Company ecosystem, all they need to do is connect another wallet in their user settings.
And so this is really cool because this basically enables us to run the entire game loop, which does rely on people having NFTs, both as cosmetics and ships and crafting resources.
But from there, they can play the entire game experience using a wallet, which we host for them.
And then at the moment that they want to upgrade into Web 3, it's all already set up.
They're actually already on rails. They can even send the NFTs directly out of the cap wallet at any point they want.
And so from a first-time user experience standpoint, what we built is so smooth that you're going to be able to just send the URL to the game itself, to any friend of yours.
They'll click join, and they'll immediately be teleported onto someone's ship.
And all that they've done is enter their email and password.
And we're rolling this out, not just on one platform, but we're actually looking to put this on all platforms.
So that's iOS, Android, PC, and browser.
So it's a phenomenal tech feat to get all of this multiplayer work together in a way where we can get these first-time users to actually have a brilliant, seamless experience without having any of the Web 3 hiccups that are ordinarily associated with joining the Web 3 game.
Jack, I hope you can just answer the question of when this game goes mega, mega viral, that the network's going to be able to support this kind of thing at scale.
You got to give me something on that, man.
Oh, you bet it will. It'll be just fine.
We're excited for that day.
Yeah, we're crazy excited to be doing it.
I mean, look, we picked Arbitrum because they're doing a good job with the scaling tech, right?
And yeah, we're optimistic.
We think that this game honestly has a phenomenal shot at bringing in a ton of users from all walks of life.
Anyone can play this thing.
You don't need a crazy big PC.
This is the next kind of big pirate MMO on Rails inside of browser, mobile, and PC.
So yeah, we're stoked we're bringing it over there.
I think we're going to have Captain and Company Day at Magic next week when you guys launch.
We're just going to shut down and let's go all play for a couple hours.
So I think that that sounds like a winner.
Speaking of which, I want to introduce Rice, who's the gaming lead at Magic.
So he's got a really interesting perspective on what's happening across the industry.
And what are some of the innovative things that are happening.
So Rice, I'd love to get your thoughts on what Sam's been talking about,
what Jack's been talking about in terms of Arbitrum.
What are some of the things you're seeing in terms of these innovative new game mechanics that people are doing industry-wide?
Yeah, well, thanks for bringing me up.
Yeah, first off, I appreciate the panel that's on here.
I mean, you have Sam and Jack, smartest folks that I've talked with,
and learned a lot from them as I've talked with them, of course,
and kind of figured out what we can do in the Web3 world to really promote that mass adoption that we believe in,
bringing the Web2 folks into the Web3 world, and just call it Web, right?
It doesn't have to be Web2 or 3.
But in terms of what Jack and Sam talked about is that easy onboarding.
And the fact that gamers want to play a game because they love to play a game,
not because there's going to be a value to it, right?
That could be icing on the cake or cherry on my cupcake, whatever you want to call it.
But it's really about the gameplay first, right?
And what Captain and Co. are doing and Cap Games and what Arbitrum Gaming folks are doing is really providing that,
not only the game, but the infrastructure for them to play, for gamers to play games that they love and can grow up with, right?
We all grew up with games that we would say, hey, that's a game that when I look, when I think about it,
whether it's Legend of Zelda, whether it's Rad Racer, I'm out dating myself, right?
Super Mario Brothers, Street Fighter, when you think of that, you think of your childhood,
and that you get is what really gravitates you to continue to be a gamer and want to continue to play games.
So I guess what we're seeing in the market is, one, having a great gameplay, and two, having that easy onboarding.
And that's where magic really shines, right?
We're the most battle-tested wallet-as-a-service solution provider in the Web3 Market.
And why do we say that and why we're so proud of that?
With 25 million plus wallets we've created, and the fact that we have companies like Cap Games, Immutable, Decentraland, right?
As our customers and much more.
And these are just gaming customers I'm talking about.
We're not even touching upon the enterprise customers like the Mattel, the Macy's, the 7-Eleven, Starbucks,
all those guys that we're supporting.
This is why I'm so proud to be a magician.
And at the same time, I'm so proud of working with Cap Games and Arbitrum on this project.
Sam, I want to turn the topic a little bit in terms of, you know,
since you're going to have a massive opening day and an opening week,
and you're going to break all kinds of records that everyone's going to be playing,
and you're going to get that big boost because it's so freaking innovative.
I'm wondering, like, what are you guys thinking in terms about building a community around this game?
Because obviously Web 3 offers all types of community building capabilities that Web 2 doesn't.
So how are you thinking about sort of building that community, sustaining that community,
and what are some of the thoughts you have about, you know,
for other people who might be interested in building Web 3 games that they should be thinking about?
Yeah, you know, we really break this down into three pillars.
So we've got, you know, our creators, we've got our players, and we've got our collectors.
On the creator side, obviously, you know, there's your traditional streamers,
which we've collected a decent number of that are really passionate about, you know,
streaming this game live with their friends,
because any of their friends can, you know, just pump onto their boat with a simple click.
And that's a super powerful, you know, viral organic loop.
But we also have a really dedicated contingent of fan art and fan fic writers,
which I think is awesome.
And so we've tried to really lean in on, you know,
the fact that, like, a pirate theme and fantasy is awesome.
And so we've got a really, really active contingent of fan fic writers
and fan artists who produce a random content that they drop in the Discord all the time.
And then secondly, we obviously have the NFT collectors themselves,
So these are the folks who have, you know, the ships.
They are really the ones, you know, going out there,
blowing up the other ships and the ones that we really owe, you know,
any of the games success to.
And so for these guys, we try really, really carefully to make sure that they're involved
at an intimate level on, you know, knowing when next big gameplay decisions are coming up
so that they can, you know, position themselves well ahead of time
so that they're not super caught off guard.
We've seen a lot of ecosystems, unfortunately, who communicate very slowly
with their players and their holders.
And it usually ends up in a situation where the players are just, they're frustrated.
They love the ecosystem, but they're frustrated that people are just not communicating quickly enough.
And so we are really, really trying to go that extra mile to make sure that our players,
you know, the shipholders are super well informed about what's going to happen next,
what exactly to expect, when it's going to happen, et cetera.
And then finally, we have the collectors.
Those are people who soon, when we launched our PFP collection, actually,
we expect those guys to just be ones who, they like the art.
They want to show off, you know, parts of the captain and company story.
And for those folks, you know, we're going to be doing things like catering to the, you know,
the PFP community around ensuring they have the best whitelist spots, et cetera,
and making sure that they're involved in all the best, you know, collaborative events.
So it's really, you know, a holistic approach to capturing each one of those pillars of community.
And each one is so important inside of Web3 Gaming.
And so that's, you know, at a high level, kind of how we view the space.
You see that people are going to, I mean, each ship, I mean, is it possible that each ship will become like a sports team
and develop a fan base following, like surrounding it?
And there's all community possibilities of that?
Or is it sort of, I mean, that just seems like if I'm a fan of your ship,
I mean, I may not even be honest, but I might be rooting for you.
Oh, man, I'm actually going to go one further.
I can't disclose everything here because this is actually a new partnership
that we're going to be spinning up here over the next month.
But what we're going to do is cruise, which we call individual assort,
like kind of like guilds.
So a cruise of guilds, 50 players max.
First of all, they can have their own independent flag.
And so you can fly it on top of your ship, you know, who you're playing with.
But even more importantly than that, we're going to be exploring certain tech pieces
that basically allow people to buy into a crew or sell out of a crew
or even buy like fractional winnings from a crew, et cetera.
And so those are kind of avant-garde pieces that we're exploring
because we think that this notion of kind of almost promoting like micro
esports teams, which are guilds in some capacity,
we think it's crazy important.
And it's something that's a multiplayer's captain and company
where you hop onto your ship and these are your five most trusted buds.
And so like maybe you're streaming with these guys every night.
It's a whole character crew, right?
You got the funny guy in the back.
You got the serious guy in the front, whatever.
We want to cater to exactly that audience so that people can fall in love
with not just the characters of the universe,
but they also fall in love with the actual players too.
So there's a ton actually that's under wraps in specifically that direction
that I can't talk about just yet.
But we are a hundred percent paying very close attention to how do we let
people be even more involved in that kind of multiplayer experience?
Dude, the arbitrum, the DJs on arbitrum are going to love this
because you can start building diversified portfolios of ships
that you have and just like invest across multiple ships
and take the winnings from there and like high risk index funds or whatever.
Yeah, we're building out some really, really, really crazy
economic experience over here.
But honestly, we think that this is the best time
and the best gameplay dynamic to do it in
because it really does touch on each one of those elements that's so important.
Are there things about arbitrum in particular?
I mean, we talked about scalability.
We talked about liquidity, which is obviously huge.
Are there unique kind of capabilities of the network
that really were persuasive for you?
You know, it's a great question because from a pure commercial standpoint,
obviously, you should always choose the network with the lowest fees
and the most transactions per second.
That's a relatively simplistic approach.
But from our perspective, what was actually even more important
was ensuring that the assets are also properly public and properly secured.
And we actually think that arbitrum is probably the foremost leader
in this very specific regard in actually having a fully public chain,
which inherits the proper security methodologies of the underlying L1.
And so from our perspective, it struck the correct balance
between it has proper liquidity on chain,
it has proper security and consensus,
and it obviously is fast enough to support gains.
So all of those together were really important considerations for us.
Jack, that's kind of the music to your ears, man.
Anything you want to add to that?
Definitely music to my ears.
You hit the nail on the head.
Something else I'll just call out that I didn't mention previously,
which is particularly relevant in the gaming context.
We're very much building for the future.
So the goal with arbitrum is to deliver the best possible experience you can
and not stand in the way of how you choose to do so.
So one exciting development along those lines
that we expect to hit the public chains by hopefully the end of this quarter.
But it's ultimately dependent on approval by the arbitrum DAO.
It's something called Stylus.
And Stylus is effectively,
it establishes a second VM on arbitrum chains
that allow developers to deploy contracts in other languages
as opposed to just solidity.
So it starts out with Rust C and C++.
So you can deploy contracts natively in Rust
that interoperate with standard solidity contracts.
And it starts with just those three languages,
but over time it will be additional languages that compile down to Wasm
should be able to be easily added.
So that's super exciting.
I think it just speaks to kind of the robust offering
that arbitrum offers its developers
and the extent to which we're really trying to empower folks
to deliver very, very robust applications
without kind of limiting them with one specific option.
So just another call out.
I mean given the flexibility to choose different languages
and code and something they might be more comfortable with
is obviously going to be big.
So if you're thinking about web 3, building a web 3 game,
it's definitely a pretty compelling value proposition
Let's, you know, we're closing in.
Oh, we're just over the hour.
But just to kind of round robin this thing,
like okay, let's have some maybe some predictions
about what's happening or what could happen
in the world of web 3 gaming.
Let's say we get together this time next year.
What would be sort of something that most people
would not expect that you think might be likely
to happen in the world of web 3 gaming?
I know that's kind of a wild pitch out there.
But, you know, just go blue sky for us for a second.
And where do you see this market evolving
or some of the unexpected surprises?
So, Rice, I'll start with you.
And then we'll go to Jack and then we'll end up
with the captain himself.
So where is it going this time next year?
So I think user experience would be even better, right?
That's top of mind for us at Magic.
We're always constantly improving user experience.
We feel we have the best user experience.
And Jack touched upon this, how important it is
for developers and customers to look at how they can get in
and how they can utilize a tech,
especially which is so complicated like web 3
and make that user experience that much more seamless,
frictionless and, you know, simple, right?
And I think it will happen where the infrastructure
that we're putting together, all the tools
that we're putting together from Magic to Arbitrum
and of course more games are launching,
that user experience is just going to get better.
It's going to get faster.
And a lot more people are going to realize
they're playing a wonderful game,
but they're also being maybe rewarded
because as gamers, we want to be rewarded.
That's where we level up in games, right?
We're rewarded for playing that game.
Gotcha. Gotcha. All right.
Jack, what's your wild card prediction?
A couple things come to mind.
I know I touched on like this idea of kind of fairness
for on-chain gaming as a potential differentiator.
I still think that that is an element
that is like heavily slept on
when people talk about why web3 gaming.
The conversation typically revolves around like ownership
and whatnot, which is obviously excellent
But I just I feel very like you can kind of pontificate
ownership is completely necessary for gaming
and you can have philosophical differences on that topic
and that's perfectly fine.
But I don't think there's a single gamer out there
who would argue that people don't like fair games
and would not value some sort of system
that allows them to sort of authenticate that fairness.
And I think that's one way that blockchain gaming
really has a way to serve users
is to inject that transparent
and verifiable fairness into gaming.
So that's something I have my eyes on.
I also think mobile gaming,
I'm definitely excited about that particular slice of the pie.
Just think that there's, you know,
strong overlap for those types of gamers
and their kind of willingness to experiment
I think they're probably less concerned about
what's happening on the back end
and maybe a little bit less likely to kind of react adversely
to mention MFTs and stuff like that.
So excited that, you know,
Captain & Company is building for that future as well.
A third kind of trend that I think will catch people or make
has the potential to catch people by surprise
is just the proliferation of these
more dedicated chain solutions for games.
That's a trend like I'm definitely seeing on my end
increased interest in dedicated orbit chains for games
or, you know, gaming platforms.
So that's something I've got my eyes on too.
And magic is also, you know, well positioned
to serve a lot of those teams, which is exciting.
You know, Jack, that's a really,
I'm coming back to your Sharon's point.
I'm often, I'm kind of a big sports fan,
but I'm often like I marvel at how much time
energy is spent now on like instant replay, right?
Like they spend just so much time looking like
who touched the ball last and all this kind of stuff.
And I was thinking once upon a time that wasn't there,
but now it's like a given in gaming,
sort of the actual games, right?
And I wonder if that transition that's happened
sort of in the pro sports world is the kind of thing
that might really sort of people start to wake up,
like, wait a second, there's a fairness element here
we now have this new technology instant replay now web three
to allow us to really have fair, you know,
provably fair outcomes that once upon a time
we just accepted was the ref made a mistake
or, you know, the company just kind of did whatever they wanted.
I'm just speculating here,
but that's a really interesting observation.
Yeah, no, that's a great peril to draw.
That's a great peril to draw.
Like it's just something that seems so like
people are resistant to change.
They don't understand the technology.
There's plenty of fine reasons that I can rationalize
for why people wouldn't like, you know, immediately get it.
But like the ability to kind of prove fairness,
I think is just something that will really resonate
Well, Sam, since obviously I'd love for you to finish up
and I mean, we know that captain companies could be
like the game of the year at GDC 2025.
So we can leave that one aside,
but other predictions that were other things
that you think might catch the industry off guard
Look, I think it's really important to keep in mind
that game death cycles are two to four years, right?
Actually came on and blew up the scene in 2021 ish.
So we are approximately right on time
for a huge wave of new games.
actually the most important thing that's changed since then,
it's really as simple as UX and user onboarding.
I really think that's the killer app here,
which is great to be with you guys here on magic.
But I think that the change in the space is that
as soon as someone doesn't need to go create a wallet
and wade through bridging across 10 different chains
that is where the space is going over the next year.
And that's going to bring in,
not just thousands of players,
actual millions of players.
You pair that with the fact that
we can put these games on Google Play now.
We can put these games on Epic now.
Some sneaky companies can even get them on Steam.
So there's going to be a massive wave of new entrants
coming in over the next year,
almost entirely enabled by the new onboarding paradigm.
And so with Captain & Company, obviously,
because we are building this in such a cross-platform
and user-friendly onboarding direction,
we think that we're going to be getting players
We're going to get players on browser, on mobile,
from Epic PC downloads, et cetera.
Our expectation is really just that
we have made the most available
and the most enjoyable multiplayer game
And we've tied in some of the most interesting
economic models that we've actually spent years
And all of that is going to come to a head here shortly.
So we honestly could not be more excited
to be partnering with both you guys here
to bring this thing to life
and honestly just stoked to see
through the rest of 2024 here.
Awesome. Well, with that,
we will wrap this up with the one caveat
that everybody listening,
everybody who hears about this from a friend,
you need to jump in and play this game
and explore all these great game mechanics
that these guys have put a lot of effort to.
And obviously, we're really grateful
to you Sam and to you Jack
and then the Captain Company and Arbitrum teams
for joining us today just to talk about this.
And we'll come back in a couple of months
and talk about how things are going.
But thank you guys very much.
Have a wonderful, safe weekend
and we will catch you in the Twitterverse.