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Crypto Gaming is Thriving
Recorded: June 24, 2024 Duration: 1:22:06Space Recording
Full Transcription
GM, GM, everyone.
We are about to start in just a few.
I'd love if everyone can go ahead and share out the space.
Bottom right corner in purple, invite your friends.
We have some awesome conversations with our wonderful guests.
Let's get it going.
Let's get a few more people in here, then we'll go ahead and get started.
Let's get it.
Let's get it.
Let's get it.
Let's get it.
Let's get it.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
You know, unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the market's dumping, so we can always, you know, average in, ah, it's been difficult.
I spent my weekend touching grass, seeing college friends.
You know, they're all off in amazing careers.
And I'm like, hmm, I work in crypto, and they asked me how it was going, and I was sick to my stomach.
But you know what?
Bullish, nonetheless, and happy to be in the industry and happy to be joined by these amazing folks on the stage.
Before we dive in, thank you, everyone, for joining us.
The topic is crypto gaming, and we're choosing to pivot more towards crypto gaming.
The search is much better than Web3 gaming.
On the interwebs, a lot of people don't understand what Web3 means, but we're all here, nonetheless, building.
So the Web3 gaming industry, crypto gaming industry, has continued to demonstrate remarkable resilience and growth.
Regardless of market conditions, we've seen new milestones daily in unique active wallets.
And this just shows us that there's engagement and enthusiasm within the gaming community.
And a lot of people are playing games not for the financial incentives, but because they just love gaming.
I mean, we even saw during COVID, during the pandemic, and regardless of market conditions, people love to play games.
So the industry is certainly robust.
The Dapp Radar report showed in May a milestone of over 10 million daily active unique wallets, which was a 7% increase from the previous months, setting a new all-time high.
So I don't want to hear that crypto gaming is dead from anyone.
We also saw $108 million invested in crypto gaming.
That is a lot of money, but that's significantly down from the previous $988 million.
But we're still on track to have the best gaming quarter since Q1 of 2021.
So the stats are nice.
While investment money has slowed down into crypto in general, specifically in gaming, people are still playing crypto games.
Definitely bullish on it.
But I'm so excited to join everyone.
I want to pass it first to my co-host, Blasa.
You do an amazing job hosting these spaces.
How are you?
Give us an intro.
Yeah, I'm doing well.
First of all, let me play this to the audience, man.
For real, man.
Second, I hope all of us here are just having an amazing start to our week.
It's a beautiful, beautiful Monday here in California.
I mean, despite the hot weather recently, I mean, do we even go outside, though?
I don't think so.
That's the lifestyle of a DJ, right?
So, first of all, I love the intro here, and I can't wait to get into it more with all these amazing panelists that we have today.
But I've been doing extremely well.
Thank you again for allowing me to be a part of today's space.
But that being said, let's get these intros out of the way.
Let's go to SushiSwap here.
Sushi, what's going on?
How are you doing?
SushiSwap, oh, no.
Don't tell me.
No, my bad.
Here we go.
What's going on, everybody?
Good to be back again.
Thanks for having me.
Excited to be here.
Absolutely, man.
You had me scared for a sec.
I thought we were already going to go through a rug.
And I was like, dang, we barely just started.
But SushiSwap, I appreciate you.
Thank you for setting time aside.
Of course.
Absolutely.
Look, we also have the amazing Haven's Compass with us today.
Another gaming project that I love hosting for.
Haven's Compass, what's going on?
How are you doing today?
Hey, bossa.
We're doing very, very good.
This is Abud behind the mic.
And man, it's been a hectic day.
And it's going to get more hectic tomorrow.
But it's looking great.
We're enjoying it.
And we're very much happy to be on the spaces with you guys.
It's amazing.
Look, I will say, Haven's, it's definitely refreshing that we're speaking with each other on a different platform.
You know, so shout out to Abud.
Shout out to Knight as well.
Tell him my regards.
We also have the amazing Stardust with us today.
Stardust, what's going on?
How are you doing?
Hey, guys.
What is going on?
My name is Seabass.
I'm really excited to be here today.
Bossa, I saw that you didn't have your sound effect that you usually do when you joined into spaces.
What happened?
We got it right here.
I didn't want to disrupt people's ears.
But with that being said, here it is for you.
I think that's exactly what you're looking for.
Hell yeah.
I know.
First of all, Seabass, really cool to see you behind this amazing camera.
And you've been killing it across the entire level, bro.
So really, really proud of your growth.
Congrats on everything.
But I appreciate the intro.
Let's check in here.
Last but not least, we also have Portal up here with us.
Portal, what's going on?
How are you doing today?
Going well, going well.
Certainly not least.
Quick introduction.
My name is Ezra.
I recently joined as the head of partnerships.
Spent two years at Immutable Prior.
Very excited to be up on stage here.
Thank you to our wonderful partners at SCALE for having us.
Absolutely, man.
Shout out to SCALE for putting aside, putting together these panels.
And again, a reminder to the audience, guys.
I'm going to pin the space link.
Or it's actually already pinned at the very top of the Jumbotron.
If you guys want to throw me a like, throw a repost, throw a bookmark, even a small comment.
Anything you guys can do to show love around today's space.
That would be very, very much appreciated.
And look, we already kind of heard a very soft intro regarding, is crypto gaming thriving?
We 100% think it is.
Like I said on a space last week, those who claim that Web3 Gaming is dead, I feel like they're just emotional.
Or they're just not even really tapped in to the whole gaming narrative that's being developed here in Web3.
But this is exactly a healthy topic to kind of discuss.
Because, again, we're kind of building off from what we've seen last week and maybe even the weeks beforehand of this ongoing narrative of people claiming Web3 Gaming is dead.
And I know we just covered it that, you know, if we were to pull up statistics, if we were to pull up, you know, the receipts from a lot of these gaming projects, they are doing just fine.
Right.
But it's funny because one thing that I at least pay attention to is like, what are we looking at when it comes to monthly active users, DAUs, et cetera?
Right.
What about the quality of these games?
Are there enough high quality games in Web3?
Right.
I feel like just recently we started seeing a lot more fully developed games versus, you know, games that are still in beta mode.
Right.
And so, again, this is a healthy topic and I'm really glad we get to tackle it today.
But I want to toss it back to scale and maybe some, you know, scale.
I would love to hear from you from your perspective.
Right.
How do we exactly gauge when, you know, the thriving, I guess, aspect of crypto gaming?
Right.
What are some metrics that we are paying attention to in order to really tell, OK, this game is going to go far or, OK, this narrative gaming is going to perform extremely well.
Right.
Scale, what are your thoughts on this?
Yeah.
So it's an interesting question.
And I ask this often when I talk to, you know, game developers and studios about how are you measuring success of your game?
A lot will say, I say a lot of new games will say, oh, well, how many daily unique active wallets are actually playing the game while more experienced studios are saying things like stickiness.
What is my user retention?
And there's actually a really big debate right now happening in gaming is like, is that about user acquisition or is that about retention?
Which one are we looking at?
And I think both.
I think if you do have a solid game and you have, you know, we talked about this on The Space the other day, but what is the user funnel when they first download your game?
If you keep it short and you keep them attractive and you keep it attractive and appealing, the users will stick.
But, you know, anytime I read like a Dapp Radar report or, you know, CoinGecko or anyone that's doing like these gaming theses, they always look at how many unique active wallets are actually playing the game.
So, I mean, I think it's like any game, even in Webtoon, we're like, oh, my God, how many people play like the new Call of Duty, for example?
Oh, they have like six million people within the first hour.
So it's just like a volume game currently to measure success.
But I'd love to pass this one to Haven's Compass and figure out from them, like, as a game, how are you guys measuring success in terms of metrics?
Aboot, go ahead, man.
Well, there's one point that you just mentioned.
It's, you know, user onboarding or user retention.
This is a very good thing.
I think it's all being mixed up.
And currently in this market that we're having, we're having a lot of onboarding, but little to no retention, actually.
So keeping the users entertained is one of the harder things to be able to do.
But in the end, if your game is a fun game to play, then it's going to work automatically.
The other thing, apart from user retention itself, is how seamless is it to play your game?
And this is also something that Scale just mentioned.
So if you download Haven's Compass from Epic Games, you don't need to do anything.
You just download the game and you play it.
In the back end, we have a wallet created for you.
Obviously, our game is, or our token will be based on Scale Network.
So that means it's gasless.
There's nothing that, you know, the user doesn't need to do anything.
You can just download the game on Epic and play it.
And then you're already playing a Web3 or a crypto game without even feeling anything about that.
So I think this is a very important part in onboarding the users.
And eventually the game is very much fun to play.
We've been seeing that over the tournament that we've had the past six days now.
And it's looking awesome.
Everyone's enjoying the game.
So that's our thing with the retention.
Absolutely.
And again, I know we're kind of asking like the surface level questions, right?
But to your point of accessibility, right?
Maybe this is why mobile gaming has, you know, somewhat of an edge to your, you know, typical, maybe PC gamers or whatnot.
Because everyone's on their phone, right?
Anyone can just kind of, you know, set up or open up an app and then boom, they're already playing the game.
But very, very true, right?
And maybe this is just a question that we kind of just keep breaking the eyes at.
And I want to hear from other people here as well.
I'm going to toss it over to Stardust.
And Stardust, a very similar question, right?
Is how do we gauge and how can we tell when, you know, a certain gaming or a certain game is going to do well in the market, right?
Stardust, we'd love to hear this from you.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
I think I kind of take a little bit of a different approach to it, right?
I think right now we're kind of basing games off of, like, where they're launching at for us, which is very, very early on in the development process, right?
I think if me personally, if I kind of had to look at what games are probably going to be successful, right?
I'm really looking at the teams that are kind of, like, building this game.
While it's true, right, new teams could emerge and build something, you know, phenomenal, like the most recent, you know, Lethal Company or, you know, other games on Steam that have been built by just smaller teams, right?
I think a lot has to be said about the people that are actually here, you know, showing up and, you know, building these games.
For example, you know, like Paul and Katie Bettner, right?
Or Robert Bowling from Midnight Society or Koji from Parallel, right?
And I'm really looking at the people that are building these games to kind of see what their track record is or what they've kind of done before, right?
The Bettners working with Words with Friends, right?
And Age of Empires and Robert Bowling from Midnight Society, right?
Working on some of our favorite Call of Duty games, you know?
And I think I could go on and on on this track here for other games as well, you know, like Trapanoor, Nyan Heroes, Pirate Nation, Bloodloop, Haven's Compass, you know?
You could kind of go on and on on this talk track and think about, like, the teams that are really putting in the work for these games.
Because when I'm looking at these games, yes, we can see them now for how they are.
And we can kind of see the vision for where they're going to be.
But, like, many of these games, too, they're really kind of getting judged by their very, very early skeleton build.
And I'm excited to see where these games are going to eventually be at within the next year to two years.
So I know it's kind of a little bit of a different answer to your question, but I'm really looking to bet on the teams and what their experience kind of is as well.
But I'm also looking to give, you know, those teams that have, like, one to two people building the game, I'm really looking to give them a chance as well.
Because you never know, some greatness can happen from the smallest teams, too.
I mean, look, I mean, it is a very different answer, but it's valid, right?
It's very valid.
And maybe, like, something that I've been noticing, at least from my perspective, is I see a lot of, like, game developers come from these industry giants like Ubisoft.
I think Jeremy Horn over at Exterio, he has, like, 15 plus years at Ubisoft, right?
People that over at Persona, right, they've worked on gaming titles like Tom Clancy's The Division.
I love that game, right?
And so we're seeing these individual members come from these, you know, giants like I was just mentioning.
And, you know, they're kind of entering into this space to essentially build a similar concept.
Now, why I think blockchain and gaming fits so well together is because of this concept of asset ownership, right?
I mean, this is exactly what NFT's work were kind of created for was this purpose, right?
And so to attach gaming to it as, like, this entertainment layer, right?
And funny enough, a space that I was just hosting previous to this one, we were mentioning how gaming is such an easy onboarding tool because regardless of demographic, age, experience, right, you can almost, you almost know what a typical game looks like.
But it's this idea of tucking the Web3 infrastructure behind this product is what makes games a little bit more digestible compared to, you know, shilling your common, typical NFT collection to an average, you know, Web2 consumer, which most may not really right away connect with, right?
But Scale, I see your hand is up.
I would love to toss it back to you.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Yeah, so controversial take, I know we, we're all contributing to building a blockchain gaming, but I think the games that are going to be the most successful.
Well, first, let me just step back and say that the gaming industry isn't broken, like the way that games are developed, it's not broken.
So we don't need to fix something that's not broke.
Like, um, so to have your entire game and everything on chain is completely not necessary, at least not now until we have mass adoption and like all the infrastructure behind all our technology is blockchain based, then okay, that makes sense.
But that's so many years down the line.
I'm not to feel too hard, but that's why I'm bullish on Haven's Compass is because it's just a game.
It's an amazing game and there are certain aspects of it that are on chain and it's only the aspects that need to be on chain.
So I think it's important for, you know, people that are developing or marketing these games is not to go too deep into the tech.
I was even just kind of a tangent, but I was on a space with a bunch of, um, uh, crypto gaming content creators.
And I was like, guys, the content isn't so great because everyone's starting off like, Hey, what's up?
I'm playing this game.
It's on this blockchain.
It's this many transactions.
And you have to sign this to do this.
And like, that's not what gamers want to hear.
And so there's like, um, a huge marketing disconnect that's happening for, you know, crypto based games to reach an audience.
We just need to like call it gaming and let people know you can earn a passive income on it.
And I feel like that's going to bring the masses, but we just haven't unlocked that fully.
Anyways, somewhat of a tangent, but I did have a question for Ezra on the, on the portal account.
Ezra, you know, with your time at Immutable and now at portal,
I just want to pass it on to you and kind of get your perspective on that as well.
On the metrics piece or the, the ownership piece or which, uh, I don't want to go down too many rabbit holes.
Yeah.
I'll have Bossa re-ask the question.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, we, we started this conversation regarding metrics and whatnot, but we'd love to know your, your, your thoughts on just this idea of asset ownership.
Do you think this is essentially what gaming has been needing?
It's kind of been missing.
And, and blockchain is kind of like the solution for this, right?
What are your thoughts on this portal?
Yeah.
I mean, I, I think there's like a, it's actually, it's a good question.
There's like an interesting lawsuit going on in like California state court right now around, uh, uh, it was like a 2k, like everyone knows 2k.
Um, there was, uh, like a, a regular player of 2k who had spent quite a bit of money on virtual, like in-game virtual currency.
It's actually suing the, the, the publisher for theft because when they deprecate the game servers over time, obviously then like the assets that you've spent money on go away.
Um, and so I think like slowly, we, like we, we will start to see some interesting things around that start to look like consumer protection where, you know, players are clearly spending lots of time and lots of money, um, and are tired of, I guess, getting for lack of a better word,
they're tired of getting rugged by their web to, uh, game developers.
And so I do think there's like an interesting narrative, um, to play out over the next couple of years that like, as these, as these experiences built on blockchain start to replicate and just feel more like typical games, that there will be a point of differentiation and that players will feel more comfortable spending more money, especially like high spending players.
They'll feel more comfortable spending more money, um, um, on games where they know that the, uh, like the ownership of those assets lives like beyond the life of that game itself on like the third party server, which is the blockchain.
So like, for me, I think it's like a very exciting innovation, um, and I think just kind of around what everyone's talked about, like the marketing that to players kind of needs a good proof of concept to then go and take that and show the traditional gaming world, you know, what it's really all about.
And I think we're, you know, slowly moving there.
So yeah, to me, ownership is a huge piece and portal, like a fall question to you, right.
And this was a question that, that I got from another space is, and I loved it is what I want to ask it here is, do you think asset ownership only stops at, you know, the cosmetic side of gaming?
Right.
Cause I feel again, we look at all these games, right.
When people buy skins, even I, myself, man, when I buy skins, like I wish that this was kind of like a one of one skin, meaning that I'm the
only player that owns this, right.
But do you think we can extend this, right?
Like where, where, where can we cross the boundaries and, and explore this outside journey of going beyond cosmetics?
And what does it really mean to own an asset in gaming?
Totally.
Like, I, I guess it's sort of game dependent, but like, you know, I'm a, I love racing games.
Um, and I imagine, I love, you know, they're the games that allow for sort of like UGC.
And those types of experiences.
So, you know, if I wanted to spend a lot of time designing a racetrack, uh, for a game that anyone could then go and buy on the marketplace, the way in like 2k golf, people can build golf courses and spend money on those golf courses, um, and play them, you know, and then you can attach royalty fees to the usage of those, you know, racetracks or golf courses over time.
Like there's, there's, there's a, a really interesting way to continue to reward the, the, like the creators of content through like what the kind of permissionless pieces of the technology enables.
Um, so yeah, I think it, it goes actually becomes very functional at a certain point where the functionality could be cosmetic, the functionality could be something else, but the degree to which you as a user can, or like a creator can create something of value that other people want.
And they even want to reuse in different ways, um, becomes like a really interesting thing.
So if anyone's building a racing game where you can make your own track, let me know, because I will be, I'll be the first person there setting one up.
Um, Ezra's calling dibs guys.
Uh, I hope everyone here is listening.
Um, no, no, I love, I love this take.
And maybe this is a question that I do want to pass over to Haven's compass as well.
Um, a boot, man, we'd love to hear your thoughts on this, considering that, you know, you guys have been here for quite some time, but how are you guys utilizing the whole cosmetic marketplace around gaming?
Right.
Can we, can we look beyond this narrative and how do we essentially integrate this blockchain asset ownership?
and a little, and proliferate that, that concept, right?
What are your thoughts here, Abood?
That's a, that's a great question.
So, I mean, definitely starting off with, with things, it's always about skins and characters and weapons and whatnot, but we're definitely looking into adding even more things.
So what, um, I believe was it, was it a Stardust that was speaking just before me, um, about a racetrack, let's say that you can customize.
Is it, I mean, this is definitely something that we're thinking about, but obviously not a racetrack because we're not a racing game, but that you can customize your own weapon and, uh, create that as an NFT for yourself.
Right.
So you'll be the only one that owns that, uh, when it comes to the characters, same thing, obviously our plan is to launch the full game by the end of this year.
Um, so what we have currently is we do have cosmetics, we have NFTs that are out on scale.
Um, these are mainly, uh, character skins and, and weapon skins.
Um, so these are the things that we currently have, but further down the road, we're definitely thinking of a lot more things to add to it.
Um, and apart from the cosmetic things, we're also thinking of adding a lot more, um, into this, um, let's say blockchain technology side of a game.
Originally we're a game development studio.
So what we really focus on is the game itself.
We build the game, we make it fun.
Uh, we utilize any type of technology to the maximum, however we can utilize it.
And this is the plan for the future.
So if anyone thinks that we're stopping here, you're completely wrong.
There's a lot more to come.
Uh, it's, it's a long roadmap and there's definitely so many things that we can do with this technology apart from just the simple and basic things that we have currently in our alpha that is out.
I love this man.
And again, for those that aren't, um, aware of Haven's Compass, definitely, definitely check them out.
Um, and, and look, maybe we can get a take here from SushiSwap and SushiSwap, um, I would love to hear your kind of just thoughts on this, right?
Like how do we, how do we extend this conversation to our, our web two friends of like onboarding them through gaming, right?
And one of my favorite ways of like how I discover games nowadays is like simply scrolling through other social media platforms, like YouTube, Instagram reels, right?
A lot of short form content and which is why I love streamers so much is because they carry a lot of the attention nowadays, right?
I think the creator economy as well is, is, is a booming economy at this moment.
And with, with web three at its intersection and you attach gaming to it, right?
I feel like one of these days, all it takes is one of these games being built here in web three to make it on a massive, you know, Twitch streamer or whatever it may be.
Right. And he or she's going to get, create content around it and boom, now we have a massive, like domino effect from people, uh, finding out about these games here in blockchain, but we'd love to hear your kind of thoughts on this.
So she, like, how do we, how do we onboard more users aside from this traditional marketing campaigns from, you know, pushing out into social platforms?
Right. What, what are your thoughts on this?
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Yeah. A hundred percent. You know, I agree with, uh, uh, bit of, you know, what everyone else here is saying as well, but, uh, am I, am I on mute?
No, I can hear you.
Oh, is it me? I'm wondering if it's me. Is it me? It could be me. Okay. If it is me, I apologize for cutting you off. Um, let me, let me, let me, uh, drop off and, uh, scale. If you don't mind bringing me back up, that'd be awesome.
Totally.
I'll wait for my man to get back up here.
Um, okay. Let's get him back up. Invite to cohost. I love these X issues. Elon, get it together.
Okay. Until we can get boss assorted sushi, let's just take it away.
Yeah. Yeah. No problem. So like I was saying, I actually agree with, uh, some of what, uh, everyone else said, like, you know, obviously we're in an attention economy. Like you're going to need, uh, like you said, the Twitch streamers kind of pushing it. Uh, you know, like you can think of like, uh, whenever fortnight and cod and among us, you know, it was kind of doing all the meme stuff and you know, that kind of thing was taken off.
So I don't think you can just completely discount that, but I do think there's other ways of, uh, of going about it. Like, uh, when Stardust was talking about, just to go back on the, uh, example of the cars, you know, I think if you can make it, like you can almost gamify it within itself.
Right. If it's like, Hey, like I built this, I built this course, right? Like I'm a big Mario fan. So like, there's like a Mario 3d world builder thing that you can do. You could upload your, you know, your different courses, people run across it. It's just a 2d scroller, you know, whatever the whole game. Um, I think if you gave people the option, and obviously this is like far easier said than done, but, uh, you know, I think if you gave people the option to kind of build out and gamify their own kind of infrastructure within, like whether that's building a skin or building a skin.
Or building a whole map or something as simple as even like, you know, building a sticker decal that, you know, you can add to your car. And then it's like, yeah, it can either be just yours. You have the one NFT, or maybe you make 10 of them and then you know that you're one of 10 and you can get it around. So I think that's a great way of getting people on. I don't think it's all going to happen all at once. Um, we touched on this a little bit last week, um, on the last AMA, but you know, I, I do think that you can't really expect everyone.
To come like, it doesn't even really make sense to put every part of every aspect of the game really on chain, at least not right now. Right. So I think you do have to find a way to not, not tiptoeing to it, but you know, that kind of build out this, this gamification, you know, you want other people to be interested in it. And then I guess the Holy grail would be like, if you had someone on Twitch that was like, Hey, look, now I'm going to make my own thing and push it out. And then their whole cat's checking it out. And then, you know, everyone's doing it. It's this,
big, uh, snowball effect. So, um, that's what I would say. I'm not sure there's any like one, one, uh, you know, strat to kind of, to kind of onboard everybody. And I don't actually think it'll all happen all at once. I just kind of think, uh, you know, as, uh, as our, uh, space kind of gets less Nansen and, uh, you know, we, we build out more info on our side and I think they'll just, they'll kind of come. And I think everyone that's building these games kind
uh, Hayden's compass touched on earlier. So, um, that's what I would say.
Amazing. And well, first of all, thank you. Thank you, Skip for, for taking over for a quick, quick minute there. Um, and this is kind of like from, from your thoughts or from your takes who she is like, I wonder if at times, what are the consequences of like forcing blockchain integration in gaming? Right. And I think we heard it in the very beginning today's space is like, and even right now in your takes who she is
like a lot of these games, maybe they don't even need blockchain. Right. Same goes for these IP projects that I see nowadays. Right. Maybe their brand would have performed 10 times better if they'd never gotten to Web3, but that's my hot take. But it is, it is honestly like a genuine question though, is like in the case of this not being received well, I mean, I, I imagine it's probably just going to be kept on a communication backlash standpoint where
users or gamers, people that are so, um, messed up or, uh, they get, they get complicated or confused when it comes to, Oh, what is this wallet? What does it mean? Like, how do I sell this on a marketplace? Right. But which is why, again, I'm paying attention to this seamless integration of, you know, blockchain behavior, right? Whether that is, I imagine a scenario where you complete a mission and then there's a loot box at the end of that mission. You open it up.
There's a, there's a one of one golden sword that you can sell for $800 in the marketplace. Like to your average consumer that might sound very enticing. Right. And if anything, it's like, Whoa, like it's a whole new concept that they probably never seen before. Right. However, I see it all the time. And a lot of these like, uh, gaming YouTube videos that I see all the time there. And it's like, it'd be so cool. If you can convert all your points into Fiat, and then you can buy, you know, merchandise or buy whatever DLCs
with these points. Like they're thinking about it. It's just, they don't know about this space yet. So, I mean, I see scale with your, with your hand up. Please go ahead.
Yeah. So it's very interesting what Sushi said, getting people interested. So that's the end user. Um, I have a question for Stardust. How do you get developers and studios or people, you know, building these games interested in the ownership aspect? I always wonder, I'm like, what is the, what is the business model for even interoperability? Like, how is it going to benefit my game?
If someone can like take their game from their item from Minecraft and bring it into this game, then how am I going to sell my in-game items if you can just bring them? So yeah, very curious from like the studio aspect, like what, what interests them about ownership? Like what's the business model there?
Yeah. I mean, as far as like those intern discussions that are happening, right. I probably have to check in more with Andy as somebody that has gotten to talk to some of these studios, but as somebody that has worked a part of multiple different
game teams, um, as well, like in web three, um, I think one of the main things that kind of like excites, uh, developers or, uh, these other teams, like it's, it's more so any teams that kind of see the value of it. And while a lot of them are still kind of hesitant about joining the web three space, it's mainly because of just a reputation that the web three space is kind of, or crypto space has kind of gotten over the years, but many of them are kind of excited because one, they get a community that they can kind of build, uh, with, and a lot of indie teams are
already kind of building with those people. Right. Um, indie developers probably are starting off on discord nowadays, if they're building a game and they're probably are working closely with the discord community for feedback, uh, for suggestions, things like that about a game. For example, I play a lot of a game called for the king. Um, and I'm able to provide them, you know, feedback on the game and they kind of like work closely with the community to also be able to release, uh, you know, further updates on the road. And they really listen to that community a lot as well. You know, we're probably games
like Valorant also listen to the community a lot, but I think one key part to where indie teams are finding value is in, um, having these tradable assets, kind of like being able to have an extra income stream from those as well. You know, if somebody ends up getting a skin, somebody can trade that and they can receive a portion of that cell as well. I think that's another option where it's kind of like, it sounds sexy to the people that are building these games. But as far as like what those conversations are happening directly, I definitely have to check in with the team.
These are just my two cents as somebody that has, uh, worked inside of games before.
Let's toss it to portal portal. Go ahead.
Yeah, cool. Yeah, I guess. So, um, you know, when I was at immutable in the studio, I was working in the studio there. I was working on five different web three games, all the different stages of development. And I think where a lot of this comes down to is like kind of game economy design and game design and where those two things meet.
Um, and I guess like what that means is, you know, you can, if you have like, uh, um, uh, you know, a game that involves people like collecting items to then craft them to then like make other things, but then you also have, let's say like, uh, an item.
And I don't want to be too specific to give away too much about anything. Um, or you have like a grand item in that game that can be broken down into like, uh, it's con it's like constituent parts.
And then those things can be sold off and reused by other people. Like different people fit into the different levels of the economy in different ways. Some people will grind for things and sell them back to the market or they'll grind for things, uh, crafted into a greater thing and then sell that to other people.
And other people exist in the economy in order to, they're like, they're like min max strategy is more around like spending to buy higher level goods to then use in different ways.
And so I think, you know, where a lot of it comes down to is like, how nuanced is the game design so that there are different levels of, there are different ways to earn through money and earn through time, different items of value that can be used in different ways and either used like by yourself or that can be turned into other goods and then sold in the secondary market.
Um, and so, yeah, we've sort of like spent a lot of time mapping, like the player journey, how players move through the game, where those different economy interactions happen.
And how to try and build value for different assets, uh, like in that way.
Um, and I think this has been talked about a bunch, but obviously, you know, a lot of these economies are hybrid economies, not everything is on chain and this is sort of how you build differentiated value for your, your, the web three portion of your economy as well.
Um, so I think a lot of it kind of comes down to that.
It's like how, and when I look for teams, I always look at like, how do they think about their game economy?
How fun is the economic gameplay, because that sort of seems to be where the most, like the best fit for what blockchain does for games today really is.
Um, so yeah, hopefully that's like some, you know, interesting additional color on that point.
Absolutely.
And funny enough, I'm thinking of like upcoming gaming titles that where blockchain integration makes the most sense.
And one that immediately comes to mind is GTA six, right?
I think GTA six is supposed to come out next year, I think, or 2026.
So one of those years, but anyways, I imagine, man, I mean, it's probably not going to like, they're not going to mention like blockchain integration, but like, how cool would it be for players and gamers to one?
And I mean, we already kind of see what GTA five is like, they create their own servers, they're able to monetize off it, right?
Like, it's funny, they're practicing blockchain concepts.
It's just, they're not coining it the way that we coined it here in this space, right?
So sometimes I feel like we're in the same knowledge area, but the way we communicate is so far from each other.
Which is why, again, whenever we mention crypto or NFTs to your average, you know, web to consumer, they may think we're just scammers, or they may just think we're, we're, we're, we're playing our and gambling our money away in this online casino, right?
But again, I would love to see, you know, especially with these massive, like rockstar games, even Call of Duty Black Ops six, right?
I know that's also around the corner, but like, all these new upcoming gaming titles, if we can see a slight glimpse of a concept like what we're describing in today's conversation, that is extremely, extremely a huge sign that the two intersections are finally turning into one road, and we no longer have to coin web through gaming, web through gaming, and just say it how it is.
These are just games, right?
Right. And I hope this conversation leans into that direction. But I also just want to give a quick little intro here to my good friend Shiv. Shiv, what is going on, man? First of all, well, thank you for joining the panel. And if you don't mind, Shiv, we'd love to just hear a quick take from you, man. Like, what's your perspective on crypto gaming right now? We've essentially been breaking down the conversation that one, it's clearly not dead. There's a lot of games to be played, but how can we enhance this experience?
What are we missing in order to really feel that crypto gaming is thriving? What's going on, Shiv? What are your thoughts on this?
Yo, I'm doing fantastic, man. Happy Monday. Happy Monday to everyone. You know, as soon as I saw the space, I didn't even, like, bother, you know, listening. I had to hit the request button to jump right on. I mean, we've got Bowser, we've got Scale, we've got Portal, Havens, Compass, and MFS are still questioning web through gaming. It's crazy.
It's crazy to think about. Look at this panel. But no, dude, I appreciate you guys hosting this and having this, you know, quality discussion, especially in a time like this, where people are, you know, being ballistic on the timeline and absolutely cannibalistic, you know, ripping each other's heads off.
And I think at the end of the day, it's just noise. True businesses, true games, and, you know, visions can't be changed, you know, when you just have a bunch of people throwing noise on the timeline.
And I'd like to obviously cut that out and focus on what's important and what a true build, sorry, true teams are building.
I mean, we've got Havens, Compass right here. They have their TG coming up, you know, fantastic team, fantastic squad right there.
You know, I'm vouching for them, looking for them to succeed as well. You know, we've got Portal right here as well.
Like, you know, they have Soma coming up. Like, you know, I think given the attention span in this space, right, it's very easy to forget and obviously thrive off the negativity.
But, you know, these games are being built in the background and given some time and they're going to thrive.
They're going to take over the timeline as it once did many months ago.
And so I'm always looking forward to that, my man. And I think if you're someone who participates on crypto Twitter, what can you do, right?
How can you bring back the vibes? Well, I think, Bowser, you're doing one step that, you know, a lot of people should be doing is, you know, focusing on what is quality stuff within the space.
You know, hosting the space, showcasing teams that are doing something incredible is important.
You know, writing about the stuff and advancements happening goes a long way.
At the end of the day, it's very easy to obviously engage with Pharma, post something that causes drama.
But as a collective group, we need to do better when it comes to highlighting the real teams, the real builders within the space.
Because at the end of the day, we want them to win, not the people who are, you know, LARPing as our heroes.
And, I mean, shit, first of all, from a creator to a fellow creator, right?
It's very clear why we've been seeing, like, a lot of our creator friends get into gaming because these guys are carrying the narrative, right?
And I think gaming came at a time, if I remember correctly, like, it really started picking up steam and traction around, like, November last year.
And I thought myself that gaming was just going to be a very quick, you know, come and go narrative.
And here we are again, you know, eight months later, gaming is, it's inevitable, right?
But Shiv, I appreciate your take here.
And also, I want to welcome a good friend here, Andrew Forte.
Man, Andrew, first of all, appreciate you being up here with us.
And I know I just said it, man, web through gaming is inevitable.
But just four days ago, Andrew, I pinned it to the top here and I don't, sorry for putting you on the spot, brother, but you literally started off your post by saying crypto gaming is not inevitable, right?
So, Andrew, I would love to hear your insight on this, right?
What, where did this, where did this stem from?
And maybe if you can shed some light for people who want to know more about this, this narrative.
Andrew, please go ahead, man.
Boss, I appreciate the spotlight.
I also appreciate you saying you're not meant to intentionally put me on the spotlight and put me on the spotlight.
So thank you for that as well.
Yeah, it's pretty clear cut.
And I don't want to take too much away from the other guests up here.
Effectively, it's nothing is inevitable.
If you don't work at something, you don't improve, you don't iterate, it'll never happen.
It doesn't matter what it is, the gym, working out, cooking, business, making money, investing, you know, jumping into meme coins.
It doesn't matter what it is.
If you're not iterating, improving, making it better, you're never going to have any progress.
And I will say, since 2021, the games have gotten, you know, 100% better, a ton better.
Back then, we had roadmaps of things people couldn't promise.
And people thought that on the roadmap, the whole point of the roadmap was to have a, you know, big home run.
Now we're seeing teams stack wins, which is a lot better, in my opinion.
Absolutely, man.
And I feel like, again, this is a comment take I hear across gaming spaces.
It's just, there's not enough pure at heart gamers in Web3 yet, right?
Now, is there, does that mean that we need to kind of play with the blend of personalities that we have in this space?
I definitely think so.
But, again, until we, and we mentioned multiple times already, but until we truly get in touch with, like, a massive streamer or, like, some kind of strategy that breaks, you know, crypto gaming into this massive audience, then that's when I'll start, you know, paying attention more to how it's being received.
But, Andrew, appreciate you being here with us and thank you for sharing your take.
I also want to welcome, now, this panel is cooking.
We have Sam Stefanina with us today, man.
Another huge gaming icon on behalf of the Web3 space.
Sam, man, you already know, dude, I wish we can host, like, a whole other hour around this.
But, like, Sam, we've got to hear it from you, man.
How do we proliferate crypto gaming beyond Web3?
How do we break barriers down?
How do we break down these boundaries that are holding, you know, blockchain gaming here in this space?
Sam, we'd love to hear from you, man.
Go ahead.
Man, oh, that's a big question.
I think you guys summoned me because the first, like, five words I heard whenever I tuned into the space was Basa saying Web3 gaming is inevitable.
So shout out for that, buddy.
You know, realistically, I think it's probably what we've seen a lot from Avalanche and from Ronin recently, which is onboarding big Web2 intellectual properties.
I'm really excited for Avalanche to have Robokiden going soon.
And that's going to be I think the playtest goes live maybe tomorrow on Elixir and then Ronin with, like, Ragnarok and some of the other IPs that they've brought in.
And it's about creating experiences that people care so much that they want to have that experience, that they're willing to look past the fact that maybe there's a stigma around blockchain and it's it's annoying for them to get started or whatever.
I also love what community gaming is doing with Hearthstone tournaments being paid out in USDC.
I think that's a really cool way to both onboard people, but also show them why getting paid in cryptocurrency might actually resolve a lot of the issues that esports has traditionally had with payments.
It's just taking the technology and genuinely showing people how much better it can be instead of always trying to convince people to come in, sit around for four years, get pumped and dumped seven times.
Survive through all of it and then finally, maybe in the future, have a better experience like now, just come and have a good experience right away.
That's how we're actually going to onboard people. So, you know, I always think it's inevitable, but I think it's really nice to see these tangible things that are working in the right direction for us.
And Sam, like I want to pin up a post here that you posted two days ago.
Right. And I can't speak. It's this poll that you that you shared and the four options.
Right. And encourage everyone in the audience to look at this poll.
The king of gaming chains is the first one was Avalanche.
Ronin was a second. Third one is Immutable X.
And then you said other as a fourth option, which is a comment. Right.
And out of this poll. Right. You had 20. What is this?
Twenty six hundred votes.
Forty four percent voted Ronin as the top gaming chain.
Right. And now I feel, again, as the space continues to grow, chains are also going to grow along with it.
Right. Meaning that people that are building on scale like Haven's Compass versus games like Shrapnel utilizing AVAX.
Right. Do we feel that chains are going to matter in the future?
I mean, they kind of I don't know what they do now.
And maybe this is where I'm asking like a general question to the panelists.
But like, how do we feel about chains being kind of a huge role, a huge key component to creating games in the future?
Right. Let's go to scale first. And then, Sam, if you want to tackle this, go ahead right after, man.
But scale, please go ahead.
Totally. So I would hope we get to the point where the chains don't matter.
It's like taking an Uber and giving a shit that is run on an AWS server or a Google server.
Like, who cares? And it's such a boring topic.
And I and I, you know, to reiterate what I said, I tell gaming creators, I'm like starting off a video.
You're trying to attract gamers and you're like, what's up, everyone?
This is the game. It's on this blockchain, on this network.
And this is the gas fees or there is no gas fees.
It's things that gamers don't give a fuck about.
And I hope we get to the point.
I mean, I think we're so early in this industry where chains do have to play a really big role in co-marketing and onboarding and helping out with like SDKs and making the blockchain integration very seamless.
But I want us all to get a point where these are just games and the chains that are running them in the background.
It doesn't matter because like currently we don't care what servers, any of the apps we're using run on.
But Sam, take it away.
Yeah. Hey, I wasn't sure who was back there.
Good to see you.
I, while I agree with what she's saying at a, at a fundamental level, the part that I would push back on is I think that right now people are pretty indoctrinated in the ecosystems that they're onboarded into.
Like I was onboarded into ETH and I've been in ETH Maxie for the three years that I've been here.
We see people onboarded into Ronin and they stay in Ronin and do all the Ronin quests and invest their money into Ronin ecosystem.
For whatever reason that is, we tend to have bias towards whatever the first thing is that kind of red pills us into the ecosystem as a whole.
And so I think it is really important for people to understand what chain they're picking and why they're picking it.
But hopefully as that's abstracted away over the longterm, it really doesn't matter.
But the poll data is really interesting to see.
It's also hilarious because AVAX was winning with like 60% of the vote.
And then it was like one in the morning, my time, which means it's like, you know, morning time Philippines or whatever.
And all of a sudden the number just started getting, you know, more and more diluted and eventually Ronin won whenever they all tweeted about it.
So it's always, it's always funny to see kind of the demographic breakdown across the geography.
Look, we have three hands up and I want to keep, keep this momentum going.
Let's go to portal.
But Sam, I, first of all, appreciate your time, man.
Portal, go ahead.
Yeah.
I mean, I think it's definitely true.
You know, chains are really important to go to market partners for games.
But I think, you know, over time, like what we see is there, you know, many chains, many wallets, many games, like lots of noise, lots of saturation.
And in the end, like, you know, something like portals really focused on making discovery and accessibility super easy, especially in this world where there are so many games with different technical environments that create sort of silos and users are stuck in one place.
And so I think, you know, to Sam's point, you get onboarded into one place and you sort of get stuck there over time as portal continues to focus on onboarding, like, you know, a tremendous number of mainstream users and making it easier for existing Web3 users to also access content on different chains.
We'll start to see that shift.
I think that breaking down the technical barriers and making that experience much more seamless is like a really important part of all of this.
And so, you know, I would argue that right now, like the chain piece is really important to help games kind of launch and go to market.
But, you know, over time, as we kind of solve a lot of these problems and build products that make it easier to discover and access different content in different environments, you know, that paradigm shifts pretty quickly.
So, you know, from our perspective, I think the next 12 to 18 months is going to be pretty exciting because of that.
And I feel, again, we're just as early.
I mean, we hear it all the time.
Maybe we just need to be revisiting this conversation two to three, five years from now and truly see, okay, which chain has performed the best?
And on top of that, which game has performed the best?
You know, so portal, love it.
I want to pass it over to Stardust.
CBass, hit us with it, man.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I think two people here have had, or everybody so far that's said, has had a great response.
I think while Sam is saying, right, that you get onboarded and you stay in here, right?
I was personally onboarded onto Solana and I stayed there for two years.
Great place to be.
Great community.
And Skel, right, was saying that it kind of, we need to move away from this terminology about blockchain.
Hopefully it ends up, you know, depreciating down the importance of it at least.
And I kind of feel like I agree with both of these people, right?
I'd like to eventually move towards a part where the blockchain gets mentioned less and less, right?
Because knowing the blockchain and where the game is actually on, I feel like doesn't necessarily add as much value to the gameplay, you know?
I wish more people talked about, like, Avalanche's win when they did the T1 collaboration with Faker and the entire team, right?
But that didn't get as much recognition as I wish that it did, you know?
I wish, you know, more people talked about, like, Mix Mob and how they went onto Twitch and livestreamed their entire World Clash game in front of thousands and thousands of people, you know?
But nobody's really talking about that as much, you know?
And so, like, I really want the importance to go back to these games and what these teams are doing rather than kind of focus on, you know, what will eventually end up pumping my bags, you know?
Because I feel like that's kind of how we kind of get to these parts, right?
We're so invested in what we have that we kind of move away from the games.
And I feel like that's a lot of why CT is kind of saying crypto gaming is dead because their bags are down.
But in reality, it kind of seems like these teams are trying to push more and more for where the gamers really are.
Dude, you bring up such a great point.
And again, we can't take away the financial speculation of Web3, right?
It's almost like you can't take the degen out of a degen.
We kind of just have to build around it.
So hopefully within these, you know, feature titles, with these gaming titles, right?
Hopefully that narrative starts to change, right?
Is my point there.
But CBass, I appreciate you sharing.
Let me toss it over to Havens and then we'll go to Andrew afterwards.
Havens, go ahead, man.
Thanks, Masa.
I like the takes from everyone, but there's one very important point in everything that's been mentioned until now.
So anything that was mentioned until now is pretty much or seems to me like it's very much focused on crypto people.
From a game perspective, we're not focused on crypto people.
You know, this is not even the aim itself.
So if we're asking what's the king of gaming chains, who cares?
You know, we want the gamers.
And if we're going to think about, as an example, like who started, who was onboarded on which chain specifically, then again, we're talking about crypto people.
But when it comes to a game itself, we're not even going to think about that.
So we were talking about marketing earlier on, just a bit on that.
We're planning on not even marketing directly to Web3 or crypto people.
So the marketing itself should be the players and gamers.
So we need to get out of that whole thought process of, oh, which chain should I use?
I think that's a business decision, right?
It's every project's business decision to pick a chain, right?
To get onboarded on that chain and to utilize that chain.
Now, when it comes to which chain is best, it's which one has the best technology, which one is going to make it the easiest for that game to build on, which one of them really makes sense to use.
So for us, it's scale.
Obviously, they have this amazing gaming chain.
They have everything set up for games perfectly.
But it's not like we're going to jump around and market that big time.
Of course, we're going to say we're on scale and you're going to be able to see that because it's part of the game itself.
It's part of the technology that we're utilizing.
But that doesn't mean that we're going towards people who were onboarded by scale, because in the end, again, it's a game.
We want people to play the game.
Our people that we're reaching out to are gamers mainly.
So whether someone was onboarded on Solana or Ethereum or whatever it is, it really doesn't matter to us.
What matters to us is do you have an Epic account or not?
If yes, go ahead and download that game.
Play the game.
Enjoy it.
Oh, my God.
Haven's Compass, I love you so much.
I could just kiss you right now.
Andrew Forte, you had your hand up.
And I feel like you and I have some similar thoughts on your response.
Let's hear it.
We may.
We may have similar thoughts.
Really quickly, I disagree, but also agree with Sam at the same time.
Yes, where people became onboarded from, obviously, they will, I guess, instinctively stay there longer than other chains.
But I don't think they stay there forever.
We saw this happen with DeFi and NFTs.
I came from the DeFi side.
I had no idea what the heck NFTs were.
Right in the beginning, didn't believe in them, didn't understand what they were.
After, understood what they were, why they matter, all that stuff.
A lot of the DeFi folks that I met three or four years ago are now buying NFTs and are some of the biggest NFT heads in the space.
So, obviously, a lot of that cross-pollination will happen and does exist.
And I have a, I think, kind of a bearish take here.
A lot of chains right now, as we kind of see it, there's a massive identity crisis.
And I've tweeted this, too, or posted, whatever you want to call it now.
And I think chains are struggling to kind of identify themselves with what they are, who they're serving, and the people that are using the chains.
And I think as soon as we kind of figure that out, who the chain is serving, what they're doing, what their identity is, what products is on those chains,
people will soon use XYZ different chain for XYZ different thing.
The way that you kind of go shopping for X product here, X product there, depending where it is better from, where it's better on, the material, all that stuff.
Or even grocery store chains, for example.
That's the way I kind of see in the next five years.
I could be completely wrong, but, you know, we'll see what happens.
I do want to also comment to Sam's point where you talk about, you know, how we're all backing up these chains or these certain tokens, and that's what we get behind.
We have to get out of that mentality, though.
We can't continue to try to onboard people into gaming through financial incentives or just financial means.
We're going to get the wrong audience.
You're not going to get sticky users.
And I think about these, you know, the Telegram tap games right now that are so successful, and it's just marketed as, like, a really addicting game.
They take a lot of components of what works from, like, free to play and just implemented that and have some crypto components, and I think that's, like, so chef's kiss.
But to say, like, you know, people are always going to want to back up chains, it's like, I hope not.
Like, again, I hope we're at this point where no one gives a shit what server's run on or what blockchain is run on.
We're just focused on good gaming because if we are only onboarding people through these financial means or, you know, through crypto and it's blockchain, you're not going to get the right gaming audience.
And I look at my nephews who are watching, like, skibbity-toilet-riz videos.
Imagine trying to onboard them into a game, and they hear blockchain, and they hear a certain cryptocurrency name.
Like, it's just not happening.
But, yeah, I'd love to hear your take on that as well, Sam.
Oh, man, I mean, how do I compete with skibbity-toilet-raised?
What the fuck did you say?
I don't know.
That one was new for me, but somehow I have a mental picture of exactly what you're talking about.
Yeah, no, I think, like most things in blockchain, whenever I talk to smart people, the disagreements are rarely about what we're actually talking about specifically and more about the timeline under which it happens.
Like, Andrew makes a great point, right? Maybe you stay in that ecosystem for a while.
I'm still in ETH Maxi, but obviously I have AVAX, I have Ronin, I have all kinds of different things.
I mess around in different ecosystems.
I just tend to defer and feel the most comfortable on Ethereum at the end of the day.
But, again, hopefully people have experiences where everything is so abstracted away sooner rather than later to the point where it just doesn't matter at all.
I think Parallel is going to do a great job with their $500,000 tournament that's coming up.
And it's just about having great experiences, you know?
Sam, a quick question to you, man.
Like, as an avid gamer, what has been your favorite way of, like, either onboarding someone or you yourself have kind of onboarded into a game, right?
Like, essentially, like, what is your go-to dream scenario for someone to be, you know, into a game or onboarded to a game?
What are your thoughts here?
Realistically, I don't think it's really happened yet.
I've tried a couple of different games that had Web2 experiences that you could kind of import the Web3 eventually.
NFL Rivals, I think, being the most sort of standard example of this.
And it always still feels pretty damn clunky, in my experience, getting from being a Web2 user with absolutely no Web3 interaction to being like,
okay, I have a custodial wallet, now there's a marketplace, it's usually not in the app anymore, I have to go over to a browser.
And even for me, it still just feels a little bit too friction-y.
So I don't think I've really seen it yet.
However, I will say anybody that's just on the Epic Games Store, like, Nyan Heroes is a great example of just being so easy to boot up and to enjoy Wilder World as well.
Congrats to them for being, like, one of the top five games on Epic right now as far as, like, wishlisted or downloaded.
I'm not sure what exactly that metric was.
But those kinds of games, if they could create an experience where essentially I play the game for a month and because I'm having so much fun, I earn some kind of reward.
And then I get the surprise and delight of finding out that that reward is not only actually valuable the way that maybe it would be on the Steam marketplace, but it's tradable for real, you know, dollars and cents.
I can engage with it, interact with it with my friends.
That'll be the sort of magic that I think really starts to turn the tides in our favor whenever people can have that experience on a regular basis and just go, what the fuck is this?
Like, they hit their friends up, they're like, what the fuck is this?
And then their friend goes, oh, bro, that's blockchain.
That's crypto.
And they're like, no way.
No fucking way.
You know, that's what I'm looking for.
I'm waiting for one of my friends to be like, hey, have you heard of this game?
And I'm like, yeah, no, I've heard of that game.
Of course I've heard of that game.
And they're like, oh, we should play it together.
And it turns out it has an NFT in it or something.
That hasn't happened yet.
I feel like you literally described the exact interaction, like, from word to word, the conversation from someone that was, like, maybe bearish on crypto, looking at it as an online.
Like, casino to be like, wait a minute.
I play this game and I get rewarded and I can get money for it.
Yo, say less.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, hopefully that conversation is what really stirs and kind of changes the perspective around.
Let's go to Andrew here and then we'll keep pushing it, man.
Andrew, go ahead.
Sam, quick question.
I had a conversation with my hockey buddies this past weekend, actually.
I was trying to onboard them to play some crypto games.
And I got kind of the same response that you got.
They were all super, super cautious.
I'll use the word cautious here of what we have here, despite some tokens, some not tokens.
Anyways, Sam, what was your turn back moment from you starting on Solana, obviously, or ETH rather, and then going to AVAX, going to Ronin?
Was it the products on those chains, the games, this, that, the third?
Or was the actual chain itself as to why you kind of went over there?
Like, obviously, you probably saw something, but what was the lead, Megan, that brought you there from a selling perspective?
Yeah, it's a great question.
I think it's a little bit different for everybody.
For AVAX, it was seeing shrapnel and off the grid and also finally understanding subnets a little bit better and understanding why exactly it creates a system for games to kind of thrive and succeed.
And being more optimistic about that than I am with ETH.
ETH, obviously, for gaming, especially L1, is just absolute dog shit and pretty much completely worthless.
So for the longest time, it's just been about liquidity, which is not a very good answer for actually onboarding the masses from a gaming perspective.
And then Ronin, similarly, they have an audience, they have good products, especially whenever they came out with the Machines Arena was the first one where I was like,
oh, this is actually really compelling and more interesting than Axie Infinity to me.
And then learning more about their ecosystem through some of their ambassadors like Finn and Hantau really expanded the way that I think about it.
So I think, you know, for everybody, the story is a little bit different, but they all have the common theme.
And this is true for Solana, too, and Zai as well as like there are really compelling experiences that at some point will get me to engage with it on a deeper level.
And therefore, you know, I'll actually, you know, begin to accrue some assets, play the games, etc.
Andrew, I hope that answered your question, my friend.
I want to toss it over to, man, I am terrible with names.
Is it Zappuccini?
I hope I'm pronouncing that right.
Dude, you got it.
Let's go.
What's your take, man?
Go ahead.
Hey, man.
Yeah, I'm an ETH Maxie, too.
That was the first chain I got onboarded to.
And I can tell you that what really pushed me to other chains was the Gatsby's.
I think, like, probably the biggest reason that anybody else would move on elsewhere, right?
And so, like, it makes me think, you know, about how, like, that prevents people from getting in to the games.
Because, you know, just like gas would be utterly preventive.
Them can even play it in the first place, right?
So I don't mind seeing all these side chains and these, like, individual ones.
Like, I was on Chainless the other day and I saw a Bandai Namco research chain.
I thought that was funny.
But, like, I want to ask a question, you know, to you guys.
Like, something that's big for me and, like, a worry in the long run is I've played a lot of MMOs growing up.
And eventually, you know, after a while, the economy can get utterly broken or, like, overinflated.
Items can get, you know, dropped too much.
I'm just curious.
You know, it's, like, cool to see what different developers are doing, you know, with this in mind and, like, how trying to mitigate, you know, crashing economies and stuff like that.
Yeah, I think if I'll jump in.
I think to your point, like, that's where having these great, like, economy and live operations folks on these game teams, you know, makes such a huge difference.
To help manage supply and deliver, like, fun and, like Sam was saying, you want to deliver, like, surprise and delight and fun while at the same time giving people things to do.
And if you can kind of help to drain different parts of the economy that are overinflated or lagging behind, you know, help people recycle things or whatever, like, you know, that's very much a part of it.
And the more you can wrap that in storytelling, the better.
So I think, yeah, you know, like, as we have more and more kind of, like, marketing, it's, like, the meeting point of, like, marketing and live ops, people with, like, that hybrid skill set come to the forefront.
Like, that'll take a lot of these games to the next level and help to make sure that these, like, the economies kind of keep running, running smoothly.
Because obviously, like, the value of all this is the data is on chain and it's public and you can see everything.
And so, like, you know, we need to be very cognizant of the fact that the people who get the most value out of things that are on chain and blockchain will be looking at that data over time.
So, yeah, that's sort of how I've been looking at it.
Zabba, first of all, thank you for coming up and asking the question, man.
Look, man, I want to remind the audience, dude, shoot us a like, shoot us a repost, a comment.
This conversation has been amazing.
And also follow these amazing panelists up on stage today.
One more question, right?
One more question that at least for half of the panel and then we can keep it going is when do we know that mass adoption is essentially has reached gaming, right?
And I know we often revisit this topic a lot, but, like, we have so many different, like, people on this panel from creators, from the games itself, right?
When do we know that this is, like, reached, right?
And are we still looking at, again, MAUs, DAUs, right?
What metrics are we looking here?
And maybe this is a question I'll throw it right back to Haven's Compass and then I want to hear from everyone else.
But, Abood, just a very, you know, you don't have to give a full-length answer to this, but just kind of curious on when do we know that Web3 Gaming has essentially broke out of this bubble?
It's as simple.
To me, it's as simple as when it's not called Web3 Gaming anymore, when everyone just refers to it as gaming.
And that's exactly how I would know.
And that's exactly the response that I was looking for, man.
And, again, like, this is what I'm saying.
I just don't want us to kind of complicate the way that we communicate this type of, like, I feel like sometimes we alienate the space.
You know, it's almost like we're coming from an outer world or we're kind of, you know, introducing a whole new, I guess, yeah, approach to gaming how it is nowadays.
But, yeah, man, and then I love the simplicity of your answer.
We also have brought up Nikki G, man, another fellow builder that I respect in this space.
Nikki G, I saw your hand go up, my friend.
Please go ahead.
Immediately.
Immediately after you said that.
And, you know, thanks for bringing me up, guys.
Sorry.
A little bit of an unknown right now.
But, you know, I came into this space for a very specific reason.
And the host, the host of this space is a very amazing, I won't say much more than that.
But what I do want to say is that crypto gaming really alienates itself because we decide to, you know, tag ourselves as crypto gaming.
We decide to tag ourselves as Web3 gaming or play to earn or blockchain technology rather than using these things as a feature, rather than making it our whole identity like we should be.
I think that's the biggest the biggest reason is, you know, blockchain, NFTs, play to earn.
Those are all kind of add ons and features and bonuses.
They're not like the entire identity of what we do, right?
Like everybody here is still trying to make a fun game, just like every other indie developer out there that is trying to make their own fun games, right?
Some work, some don't.
But I think that's the biggest issue is that just the language that we use and kind of the status that we give ourselves that we're, you know, above other people because our games play to earn.
Well, right now, there's not a lot of games that are super fun out there.
And it shows because none of them are mainstream.
None of them are getting picked up on other places.
But I see the thumbs down.
The only game that I do really like is Avan's Compass.
I'll add that in there.
There's a lot of amazing games.
I mean, Hamster Combat.
What is it, like 125 million users?
But I think I will know we have achieved mass adoption when Andrew Forte tweets.
Back to you, bossa, or scale.
No, Nikki, I'm talking.
Nikki, can't hear her?
Oh, you can't hear her?
Nikki?
Oh, jeez.
Oh, jeez.
Nikki, hop off and back on.
I can hear you.
Irritate me.
Oh, man.
Let me reiterate.
She's pretty much saying, Nikki, you're the worst speaker.
No, I'm just kidding.
I will say, I'll know that massive adoption came when Andrew Forte tweets that Web3 Gaming is inevitable.
And Sam Stefanina tweets, I told you so.
And that's what we know.
Oh, man.
That's a top signal.
That's a top signal.
That happens.
We're going to zero, man.
Yeah, look.
I've been saying, you know, Sam has been the bottom signal for the longest time.
But when Andrew comes in, oh, jeez, everyone's got to pack up their bags and bounce.
No, Andrew, I'll love, bro.
Let's go to an idiot here, man.
An idiot.
First of all, what's good, man?
Good to see you on another panel.
What's up, brother?
Yeah, I just wanted to come up real quick while I got a second at work here and say two things.
First of all, nobody actually thinks Web3 Gaming is dead.
Jonah said Web3 Gaming was dead for two weeks because he was on a villain arc and every unoriginal fuck on the timeline decided to copy that sentiment because they don't have any thoughts of their own.
And also, as far as what blockchain will be the best to build shit on, it's very simple.
Where are the most people slash most interesting people on any given Tuesday?
By the time all of this shit is actually built out well enough to be mass adopted, all these blockchains will have improved.
Their transaction fees, their TPS, all that shit across the board.
It's not going to matter.
It's just going to matter where the people are.
Unfortunately, in this space, it is like 95% vibes, 5% technology.
That's what gets the market share.
So, yeah, those are the two things I wanted to say.
Thanks for bringing me up.
An idiot always coming in hot.
It's a very interesting thing to say.
I won't say too much on it.
I don't know, Sam, if you had any thoughts there.
But like Shiv said, he said the timeline is cannibalistic.
Like when our bags are down, everyone wants to be negative.
But what happened to Wagme, guys?
Sam, take it away.
Yeah, no, very concise and compellingly said.
An idiot, appreciate the well-spoken nature with which you approach that.
Yeah, I'll say for the record, me and Jonah are buddies.
I actually like Jonah a lot.
We hung out a lot at our-
I like Jonah too.
I like Jonah too.
I'm not here to fund Jonah.
I'm just saying that's how this all got started.
Yeah, no, with that being said, though, I'm inclined to agree with you.
People parrot their narratives, especially whenever their bags are down.
It's really easy for them to be like, ah, man, he's right.
Like it is fucking dead.
All right, everybody to meme coins.
Which just tells me that there's not a lot of conviction there.
Like if you're actually talking to founders, if you're actually enjoying the products that they're building,
if you're actually seeing what the core communities are saying about the products and the technology and the evolution of it,
none of those people actually think that Web3 Gaming is dead.
I actually put out a thread recently that was founders' opinions anonymously
so that people could actually see if founders do really believe in the space
or if they're just bullshitting us because they can't publicly say like Web3 Gaming is dead
because then their product will be invalidated.
And I think six out of the seven that I talked to were like more bullish than ever.
And then one guy was like, ah, I feel kind of pessimistic right now.
But he wasn't like, oh, it's going to zero.
So I think that tells a lot about where we're actually at outside of the sort of wave of sentiment that you get from retail investors.
Yeah, I mean, while no one else is talking.
And dude, I mean, Web3 Gaming is literally the only like compelling argument for blockchain technology
outside of Bitcoin being a store of value.
Like there are other interesting use cases, but gaming is by far the most interesting and most viable, in my opinion.
You're funny, my PFP, please don't do that.
Sam, I have a quick question.
Negative, bearish as well.
Do you think that the concept of owning assets on chain can thrive and can work without any of the games in our industry actually thriving full time?
I'm not sure if I understand the question completely.
Are you saying can blockchain be successful without any of the current iteration of games being successful?
Yes, yes.
Like GTA integrates NFTs, right?
But the rest of the games in the industry don't actually survive.
Is that possible?
Or does gaming only survive if the games that are native from crypto actually do?
Yeah, it's a really interesting question.
One that I'm probably not qualified to answer.
But I will say it's something that I think about a lot, which is, yes, if blockchain adoption actually happens, I'll refer to it as outside in instead of inside out.
Inside out would be like one of these native products becoming a really successful IP.
Outside in would be like World of Warcraft having NFTs all of a sudden.
If it happens in that way, does our little Twitter bubble just like expand, you know, by 5x with a bunch of people coming in because they want to learn more about it?
Or does it absolutely just obliterate everything that we have here because all of a sudden it's just irrelevant because it's been mass adopted and we no longer kind of need whatever this little niche cabal is?
I really don't know.
I think I would like to say that all of the people that are here will actually be elevated by that because we will be the quote unquote actual experts.
There will be a lot of people that are really excited and interested in it.
But how many people will have actually been in the trenches, having the conversations, thinking through use cases, consulting, advising those organizations?
Very few, especially, you know, the ones that are just being onboarded by World of Warcraft or GTA, you know, adopting the technology.
So I think we'll be fine no matter what.
But it's an interesting thought experiment for sure.
Do you agree?
Yeah, you and I are neither qualified to answer the question.
You and I both.
But I think you potentially could be right.
Yeah, I think potentially could be right.
I agree with that.
Oh, my God.
And all was right in the world.
Andrew and Sam agreeing on the same space.
Oh, my God.
Someone record this.
Havens, come to us.
Take it away.
I just wanted to get back to something that was mentioned a few takes before now.
The thing about founders speaking badly of Web3 Gaming, let's say it like that.
I mentioned this a few weeks back in one of our spaces.
And I said it exactly because we've been taking some notes of who's saying Web3 Gaming is dead.
And it's very specific to some projects that just didn't do well.
That is one thing.
Second thing is launch pads that didn't do well either with their projects that they're launching.
These are mainly the guys that started off with, oh, it's dead.
You know, market sentiment is not here.
This and that is not working.
I think that's all because a project itself is failing.
Doesn't mean that the whole market is failing.
So if your project failed, just say that your project failed.
You don't have to throw it on the whole market and, you know, throw blames around Web3 Gaming is dead and this and that.
It's not that everyone's going to play games, regardless of what is happening on Earth.
Usually people go entertain themselves.
They want to play the game if the game is fun.
So if your project is dead, that doesn't mean that Web3 Gaming or Crypto Gaming is dead.
Always consider the source no matter what in Web3.
You always got to consider the source.
That's great advice.
Opinions are like buttholes.
Everyone has them.
We are approaching.
We're 20 minutes over at the time.
I wanted to thank all of you guys for joining us.
This has been an awesome discussion.
Thank you, Sam, Andrew, Nikki, for hopping on without having this scheduled in.
I really appreciate it.
I appreciate everyone's perspective.
I hope that we stay positive in this current market, regardless.
You know, for a lot of us, this isn't our first rodeo.
We've been through the bears.
We've been through people panicking and, like, eating each other up on the feed.
But it's going to be fine.
Wag me.
We're all going to make it.
Let's be kind.
So thanks, everyone, for joining us.
And I hope you have a great rest of your day.
Bye, guys.
Bye, everyone.
Goodbye, everybody.
Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
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Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
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Bye, guys.
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Bye, guys.
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Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
Bye, guys.
