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Gamified #113 | TRUMP GAME?! | Publishing Dead?
Recorded: April 16, 2025 Duration: 1:52:57Space Recording
Short Summary
In a lively discussion, panelists explored the intersection of celebrity influence and crypto, highlighted the challenges faced by blockchain gaming projects like Treasure, and emphasized the need for innovative approaches in game publishing. The conversation also touched on emerging trends, including potential token launches and the impact of personal branding in the crypto space.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. is this thing on sure is brother
dude i just opened up uh up some random news website.
I don't know why, because I hate myself.
But the first headline says,
Elon Musk asked crypto influencer Tiffany Fong if she would have a child with him.
Which is fucking hilarious to me.
That's like, what happened to fucking courting somebody?
You just jump straight into being like,
Hey, would you
like to ideally give me a son are there any rules when you're the richest man in the world doesn't
that isn't the reason you want to become the richest man in the world so you don't have to
abide by the rules that everybody else lives by look he's the head of the department of efficiency
right he's skipping right to the end. Yeah. I have a
polymarket bet on this, too, so
fuck off, Jerry. It's great.
To be fair, Jerry,
I'm pretty sure, haven't they had this
back-and-forth kind of banter
thing on the timeline for quite a while?
Maybe it's the next step.
Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, but then
it's like,
I'm trying to think of a right way to say this.
And I don't have it, so I'm going to not say anything.
You were thinking, like, he's running this, like, a Game of Thrones thing,
but then he's also outsourcing out to get, like, you know, different kinds of DNA.
I just feel like, no, I feel like she edged him.
She's flirted with him
and been
kind of playing the game.
And then he's like, hey, so are you
kind of into me? And she's like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
whoa, whoa, whoa. I thought we were friends.
Well, she
friendzoned the richest man in the world
and that's why she got unfollowed.
Yeah, there you go, Matt.
Stand for the fellow man out there.
My dad is here in person for the first time
in 113 episodes of Gamified,
and he said, read his book and you'll understand.
Elon Musk's book or your dad's book?
No, Elon's book.
I met Isaacson. He said? No, Elon's book. Isaacson.
He said that. The Isaacson book.
The Isaacson book.
That way you'll know exactly what kind of autism
he's endowed with.
I mean, it's the kind where he lies about, of all games,
Path of Exile 2.
So it's the kind where he lies about of all games, path of exile too. So it's, it's, it's, it's fierce.
We've got a great show today.
Elon Musk's escapades only,
only a short brief moment in time relative to the rest of the two hour
show up first,
ladies and Lords gear up for a sharp shooting stage who fuses legal finesse with digital dazzle.
The brilliant brain behind Andromeda, the trailblazing Nintendo publisher pathway, powerhouse of Web3 games.
As a compliance king and a securities exchange commission pedigree, this lawyer leaves loopholes limping.
Welcome to the panel, the ace of Andromeda. The law is not so loose cannon. It's Michael Christine.
Hey, what's going on, everybody?
Currently booking my tickets to Dubai in two weeks.
So see anybody there who's going to be there too.
Enjoy the floods.
My birthday gift to myself this year was making me not fly to Dubai
because I can only take so many of those trips a year.
Up next, this guy's got more hustle than a honey bedroom,
a hot dog factory, a whirlwind of wisdom, and a veritable veteran of video games with his passion for super respect damn it wills
i wrote a new intro for you and i didn't put it in the right spot on the board i will save it for
next week he's a stud business developer at avalanche and he's built like an ox big enough
to carry wet through game on his back he's the salt in the smash it's wills it's so funny that
your dad is pushing the elon musk book on you because my dad does the
same thing i don't know what it is with musks with dads and musk they they love him i don't know what
it is we'll find out i got i got five more days with him i'll keep chipping away at it
up next never one to bask in bygone brilliance you won't hear this man talking about his past
experience at jagex king mobile miniclip or rovio but never content to coast on past conquests he
now spearheads a seismic shift with warp an all-in-one chain agnostic juggernaut that handles
web3 from marketing to marketplaces wallets user acquisition and more seamlessly spanning
any blockchain welcome to the panel the man who puts the bucks in Buxton, Matthew Buxton.
Hey, thanks for that.
Banging intro.
And yeah, I think the dad thing about Elon is like, you know, you don't have to own an
emerald mine or a sapphire mine, but you do hope your kid becomes the richest kid in the
world, you know, and still plays video games and enjoys their life.
So I think dads have got that going for them.
That's true.
Dad, if you can make that happen, I'd appreciate it.
Next, Lock and Load, fearless fans for a stellar sensation of fiery,
formidable, and far-reaching gamer aiming to catalyze and conquer
with his consoles and company Glitter Cloud Solutions.
Once a sharpshooter dropping foes with finesse,
this Dynamo dominates more than deals,
crushing controllers from Tokyo to Toronto and back again.
He's a supreme streamer.
He captivates crowds with his charisma and clutch plays the light up screens.
He's the king of killstreaks and controllers.
It's dub.
Holy shit, dude.
It was glorious.
I was told there was going to be a new intro.
I was freaking worried that it was going to get in the shuffle like Spangler down there.
RIP, buddy.
But thank God.
Wow.
Let me lather up in that for a little bit.
My dad also hates Elon, so it's a bit awkward.
We don't need to know about the rest of the dads.
Don't feel like you need to bring it up.
Let's have a good show.
Thanks, buddy.
Up next, Behold Mortals, a towering
titan who storms in from the abyss
of the Forbidden, carving cataclysmic
chronicles that blaze untrodden trails
through Web3 Gaming. He is the
indomitable intellect, forging
my angry Ikusa girlfriend, a volcanic visionary
who wields wisdom as divine
lightning, a behemoth of bold tastes
and brazen taboos, the renaissance
rebel that shakes up the heavens and strikes fear into peasants and gutless wanks alike.
It's the Titan of Taboo.
It's Senjen.
Oh, Sam.
I'm fucking blushing.
You said all the nice things about me.
It's like basically how I fuck up everybody in Web3.
Hey, guys.
I love Elon.
He's such a fucking nerdy loser that, you know, how can you not love him?
You know, he's just a superpower.
He has billions of dollars.
So let him be.
Let him cook.
Let him cook, I will.
Hopefully he cooks Twitter spaces to a point where they're no longer broken.
That's the only cook I care about.
Up next, he's worked on games that have brought the worlds of Game of Thrones,
Star Trek, The Walking Dead, and Archer to interactive life.
But he's not just a master of adaptation.
He's a problem solver, a platform pioneer, and a champion for creative freedom.
For the past five years, he's dedicated the expertise to Beamable,
a revolutionary infrastructure platform designed to unshackle game designers from the tedious technicalities
and let them return to their true passion, which is crafting captivating experiences.
He's a facilitator of fun from Beamable.
It's John Radoff
Hey Sam, thanks for having me here
Always a blast to be on
See a lot of my friends here
People that have been on the live stream recently
Sinjin, good to see you again
Just had a conversation with Kevin
This morning on the stream
Even though he's not here right now
But I'll just talk about him behind his back
Because he's a cool guy who can definitely handle it.
Knock, got a message in DMs to you.
When the fuck are we going to get on that live stream?
You've got the message.
Give me your TG already.
We'll get that happening.
Wow, Knock.
You let me down earlier today.
You're letting John down.
I mean, what are we doing here, brother?
I thought 100
episodes deep we we had something here with the gamified panel but i guess not uh just gotta just
gotta hang out in runescape wilds and maybe we'll get our answer yeah don't don't worry he'll let
us all down for the next two hours um next he swapped sterile boardrooms for taking a stab at gaming greatness.
This diehard devotee revolutionary is revolutionarily rippled.
Sorry, I didn't write it right.
It spawned a Black Mirror episode this season, which also I haven't watched yet.
As a streaming sorcery, massive mobs with captivating charisma, pixel-bounded passion.
He's a leading light in W3 esports and a parallel reigning TCG trailblazer.
Catch him commanding conferences draped in his legendary pot of greed jacket
as the parallel pack rat in the mosh pit monarch.
It's Koji.
Yo, what's up, guys?
As a dad, Elon Musk stinks.
And listening to Americans praise Elon is like, I don't know,
listening to Romans praise Genghis Khan or i don't know listening to romans praise
genghis khan or something this is you guys are insane shout out genghis dude genghis khan is i
want a netflix special about him so bad great great shout out he was one of the best cons
and we know something about cons here in web 3 and koji's checking in live from the 51st state
up next he's a wizard
weaving web traffic and a cunning connoisseur commanding captivating conversations the colossal
conversions at the helm of uptick he's the audacious architect assembling audience adoration
and he's the man in the arena on avax's social media hosting shows you've marveled at his
meteoric metamorphosis from the golden fraud to the glorious gleaming golden god forged in
fiery furnace of gaming greatness it's jerry the golden god singer hey yeah it's ironic we're
talking about fathers and all these things because i feel like i've fathered this whole industry and
sundell you bitches for two years now um but yeah i'm uh very excited to be here and um you know
sam i hope i don't disappoint your father the way I disappointed your mother.
Please, shit.
And his dad's literally there in the room, man.
And no, his mom was quite cross with me like a few months ago.
She felt like I lied about some of my stats.
Yeah, dude.
He's been pumping those numbers far too long.
Disappointing women, that's Jerry's thing.
Super true.
Super true.
Me and I have that one thing in common.
Maybe a couple others.
Jerry also hiding 14 children
that he claims not to have.
Up next, ladies and gentlemen,
prepare for a whirlwind of wicked weight
and wondrous wisdom.
He's the masterful maestro,
morphing maddening mayhem into crystal clear
captivating clarity.
He's the Michael Jordan of meticulous mouse clicks,
stacking sky-high stashes of runescape riches.
He's the magician of Magic Eden,
making sure your NFTs are perfectly priced in place.
Go answer the door.
It's knock.
Listen,
anybody who's concerned about where I am or why I'm not answering messages
hasn't been paying attention to fucking Twitter the last two days.
Dragonwiles is live. That's where I am.
New day, still playing RuneScape, same but different.
Yikes. Yikes. We're all worried for knock on this blessed day.
Up next, behold a slinky spectacular serpent from the shimmering sublime sanctuary of Lizard Labs.
Ticking the scales at a svelte.
2.4 pounds, this tiny trailblazing
titan is ready to rock it, so clap those claws
for the little Lizard legend.
It's Wems.
GMGMs, good to have you back, Sam.
And yeah, it's weird how Gamified
has just become the de facto place to call out
people to check their DMs now at this point.
It's just like, it's kind of like sort of networking
but sort of like, hey, why the fuck haven't you answered my dms yet two things can be true and
we got to get ready to howl with excitement as we welcome the alpha bringing the blizzard to
benefits with a flurry of fantastic games it's avalanche the leader of the blockchain blizzard
the one and only official chain of gamified the wolves that were en route to the chain known for
its frosty and formidable l1s to dive into the firefights of off the grid, conquer the competition in Shatterline, and enjoy the nostalgic world of MapleStory.
So why aren't you and gamers get ready to go gaga for Game 7?
The gaming giant is giving growth a gigantic boost.
They're not just building bridges.
They're blasting through barriers with brilliant blockchain breakthroughs.
Jeez, we're a little rusty.
With some in the conjuring, the secret sauce to keep your players glued to their screens.
And with HyperPlay, they're hyping up the portal to instant Web3 access with no friction, just fun.
Thanks to them for being the official infrastructure of Gamified.
And get ready to blast off with Star Atlas, the official game of Gamified, and its sensational preseason spectacular.
Right now, you can plunge into a galaxy of captivating content, explore exotic exoplanets, and engage in exhilarating expeditions.
And experience the evolution of gaming graphics that will redefine the cosmos in Web3 gaming. Get a game key to the
preseason by joining the Strateless Discord right now. All right, guys, we're jumping into a juicy
topic number one, sentiment score on Trump's supposed Monopoly-style Web3 game. Bill Zanker,
who was part of the team that launched the NFT and meme coin, is the one leading the charge on this game.
It's said to be a Monopoly-style game that most likely is a mobile version of Monopoly Go,
especially if you've seen those revenue numbers, which are absolutely ridiculous.
I think it's over $2 billion now.
Also, some speculation on the timeline that maybe it would be using Trump's coin,
which could be kind of cool because those unlocks are about to start.
That has everybody nervous. They had a 90 day unlock period on his meme coin that they launched
previously. And everybody's kind of waiting for the shoe to drop there. So what's your sentiment
score? One to 10, one being this is garbage. I wish it wasn't happening. 10 being, oh my God,
it's sent from the heavens to save Web3 gaming what's your sentiment score on trump's
crypto game uh real quick a couple of tweets to just uh give us a couple more opinions here
johnny aka hustlepedia said while it could be bullish to expose more people to the web3 aspects
of games with real money involved overall feels like a grift just by two cents and og says news
outlets now will have to explain what is a crypto game to millions of viewers a couple
interesting thoughts there let's go to koji first yeah i mean i said it privately but i'll say it
publicly man this is a one for sure uh i don't know like even just like previous track record
he's not doing so well with uh almost anything so like i don't understand why anyone would think this will do well uh his meme coin pretty much called the top so is is is this game gonna like destroy crypto gaming
now as a narrative or whatever but i i don't know man like i understand why people uh will want to
hope that it could be something amazing but like i you know those are the same people that are
probably telling you he has a plan you know so take with that as you will i've gotten a few people already telling me um like
this is gonna destroy web3 gaming and i i already feel like we're halfway through sepulking ourselves
so i mean take a shot on goal with that dub dub i saw you throw a couple of thumbs downs. Over to you, bud. Yeah, he has a plan, first of all.
Second of all, like, yeah, we have to be, no, we have to be stoked on this.
Because, yeah, the meme coin didn't do well, but it ran to crazy fucking numbers.
And he is the president of the United States.
And all the good, even though they're satirical, it's like those SEO rankings, common knowledge of what crypto gaming is, the fact that it's the Monopoly game format that we're stoked about YGG shipping out coming here too as well.
It's like validating for LOL land and everything, I think, which is a big deal.
and fuck it dude he's gonna use that ft to tease as well you know i'm gonna go buy a couple of
And fuck it, dude, he's going to use that NFT as well.
those in speculation being able to use those as monopoly money or houses or whatever you know i'm
gonna put all trumps on all the borders you know and fucking we're gonna ball and play the game
like i you got to be excited about this even if it's a up it's good for like just the narrative
and everything of where we're at and because we are committing subuku on ourselves at the moment. So, you know,
we, we gotta do something.
Wait, what's your number though, Doug? Did you say, sorry.
Oh dude, like nine. Give me nine. Yeah.
I gotta say, I gotta say one more thing, but I forgot to say it.
Almost everyone on this panel knows how hard it is to make a game
or has been in the sphere of somebody trying to make a game
and knows how insane that process is.
Now, imagine trying to do that while you're the president.
And then, of course, the argument is, well, he's not going to be the one making it.
It's just going to trade on his name.
And I'm like, okay, that's probably true.
But do you actually want somebody to use the highest level of office in america to sell a game
and if your answer is yes like you guys are fucking cooked man maybe you should become
the next province of canada i i wouldn't say yes to that but i also would say
if you gave me the option between him using the name to sell a token that has no value
for billions of dollars or sell a game i'd say sell sell the game
yeah but it's not or it's both he has both yeah yeah exactly exactly the goose is already cooked
let's go over let's uh let's tag in singin here singin your thoughts uh sentiment score here on
uh trump's trump's monopoly go oh this is really interesting um my sentiment score oh Jesus like I'm actually uh I
think it's hilarious um I think it's a sentiment score for builders like a 10. the reason why is
because he's gotten rid of like you know crypto enforcement and he's gonna launch a crypto game
which inevitably you know the guys who have pitched it to him you know are going to include like a bajillion gotcha box like slot
you know mechanics and they're just going to full on just make it a gambling whatever you know
monetization machine and so like in terms of for the builders i think it's like we were complaining
about like like the lack of regulation or the amount of enforcement on something that wasn't very clear.
And now like, it's clear, just do whatever you're going to do. Um, but in terms of like the effect
for web three, like once again, like this panel thinking that this really affects us, we're all
peons here, including myself. I mean, whatever the president's doing is whatever the president's doing.
And like how it really reflects on Web3 gaming
as an industry, it doesn't.
Like it's not really going to equate.
But in terms of like what like the damage is going to be,
well, obviously this does not end well.
Like anyone who thinks it's going to end well,
I don't know where you've been living.
But will it have a splash? Will it introduce people to it? Will don't know where you've been living but will it have a splash will it
introduce people to it will they get traumatized by it and will it destroy like the you know kind
of the idea of other celebrities making video games yeah probably and maybe that's a good thing
i don't know so sentiment score for trump and how funny this is going to be a 10 for the industry
a one i look forward to jason derulo's fast follow
crypto game that'll be coming out just weeks after that i'm sure matthew buxton over to
you oh man sinjin kind of took the take that i was going for there but it would be hilarious
if he manages to pull off a crypto game where he uses his token with utility he uses all
of his nfts and he gives all of the things
that we were playing around with and trying to do for the last five years and fucking up majestically
and of course it's gonna rug of course it's gonna fucking rug it's a trump game but my god it's
gonna be glorious it's gonna be fucking amazing and if he pulled it off he's gonna suck every
last little bit of liquidity out of
every single little ponzi game that everyone's doing and then it's going to fold and that's
going to be even funnier and then uh we'll we'll all drive to real utility dot dot dot
yeah no i think um what's going to happen is it's going to potentially kill all the ponzi light
games by sucking the liquidity
a bit like trying to launch your game around the same time as gta 6 it's not it's not going to be
pleasant for the other people in the market at that point but people are making real games that
um don't compete with that audience probably fine the legend of the trickle down crypto economy is
long behind us uh john Radoff over to you
um sentiment on this is the square root of negative one because this is imaginary that this can ever come to be an actual thing guys that's a high quality math joke right there yeah
so like I get the Trump coin as a as a meme coin because meme coins are supposed to be fucking Ponzanomics.
Like, that's the whole point of them.
So I get that he'd lean into the grift there.
But the last thing gaming needs is just another thing that's going to get mass media consumption.
who doesn't even know what crypto is right now suddenly thinks of some new Trump game as,
you know, the way that they're introduced to this industry. So to me, that's a train wreck.
But we know that this game is not going to come to be anyway. It's not actually going to
get made because we know how hard a game is to make. And this thing's just going to implode like
every other grifty Web 3 game that's been
attempted that hasn't been built by a real team so uh imaginary is my sentiment damn that was a
banger michael christine i want to hear from you next yeah uh i'm gonna call this a solid 10 and
the reason i'm calling this a 10 is because it takes about seven years for the tech adoption curve to
happen. NFTs became a really huge thing around 2020, 2021. So what this is going to do, even if
it's a grift, even if the game sucks, what it's going to do is it's going to make the entire world
talk about crypto enabled games. It's going to lay an exact precedent for games to launch tokens,
to launch NFTs in a compliant fashion because they can literally say, well, the president did it, so I followed suit. So it's going to provide a lot of regulatory clarity in
the industry that people aren't realizing that's going to be such a benefit. And yes, you're
absolutely right. I think it's a grift. I think people are, investors are going to flock to it.
But then I do think if it succeeds, investors are going to absolutely be fully reignited,
trying to catch the next big Trump wave
in terms of Web3 Gaming. And I actually think it could be the catalyst, if not the top where it
was with the meme coins. I think it's going to be the catalyst of the Web3 Gaming cycle, not maybe
this year, but into 2026 and into 2027. Because if you look at the tech adoption curve, 2026 and
2027 is the expected date where Web3 Gaming actually starts to really
take hold if you look at past technology adoption. So I'm super bullish on this. I think Trump's
meme coin, yes, was a grift. Yes, was the top. Yes, sucked a ton of liquidity out of it. But
it still, I think, generated more revenue than the entire 51st state has since like 2020.
So overall, I'm extremely bullish on this.
I think, you know, it's going to make headlines.
People are going to be talking.
Investors are going to now be interested in the space.
They might not have had any exposure to the space before.
And they're like, oh, Trump's launching a crypto game.
Maybe I should look into crypto games.
So if you're a builder, you should be hyped. games so if you're a builder you should be hyped if you're in this space you should be hyped i've seen zero downside to this yo this guy read that it was coming up for switch or something
i have a question you're gonna publish it you're gonna try and publish it on you
did he catalyze meme coins you know i don't think he did so like i don't i don't know why this would
be a catalyst had already like run its run its course by the time he launched his meme coin web3 gaming is
down bad and nobody on this panel can tell me it's not where can web3 gaming go right now because
it's dead no one's talking about it no one wants to hear about it no one wants to listen about it
trump is going to revive the narrative of web3 Gaming just because he's doing it, because everything he does gets news, gets headlines, and the world is going to be talking about our industry again.
I didn't hear you.
What is Web3 Gaming?
Right now, we're on life support, and we need to revive it.
And Trump's going to come in with his efficiency chainsaw and revive the shit out of it.
with his efficiency chainsaw
and revived the shit out of it.
That was a banger.
Regardless of if you agree or disagree,
I just love the dissenting opinions.
It makes me happy.
It's my love language.
Let's go over to Jerry.
Jerry, your take on this one.
First, I would like to say
that I'm going to place my vote for MVP now,
and it's from Michael Christine.
And I would follow that with saying, I think there's
like a five, like a hard five because, and how do I land at that number is because like, I think
half the people in the world just hate Trump and hate everything that he does. But like those of
us in America know that like half the people we know love the guy. And we are always like, why?
Like, it doesn't make sense.
But they, if, dude, if he launched Trump steaks today, everybody would be a fucking meat eater.
Like they would eat nothing but red meat.
And I think that the effect of like the cult leader effect can't be ignored sometimes.
And I think when you're like making something like a game like do
we expect the game to be good no i think koji said this once like you could have an infinite
an infinite amount of time and an infinite amount of money and still not make a good game and i
think that is very applicable here because they don't have a lot of time or they probably haven't
a lot of time into this rather a lot of money and like the game is not going to be good, but are a lot of people
going to just download the game because it's a thing that Trump said to go to go and download?
Yes. And like, we know that that's going to happen because it happened with the meme coin.
So you can argue if it was a top or, you know, if it was a catalyst or was it a death knell?
I don't know. And I don't really care because because it's like that's not the topic at hand that we know that people are going to go
download it because we've seen the effect of it before so i think that can't be ignored hopefully
good things come from that but it's like i think if you have high hopes for this being like the
catalyst is like go look at trump steaks right like you were promised filet mignons and you got fucking like lunchroom
Salisbury steaks.
Right.
So it's like a lot of people will pay attention.
Do a lot of people stick around and like hang out and,
and join like these spaces and bullshit with us.
Yeah.
I don't know a few people,
but you know,
not a million.
Yeah,
definitely not a million. Let, definitely not a million.
Let's go over to Nock next,
and then we'll tag in Sinjin.
Fucking hilarious.
I think there are only two correct scores here.
It's either zero or ten,
and I'm going to roll with ten just for the chaos.
I've decided to stop fighting insanity,
and I'm going to roll with it.
I think it's going to be great.
I think the irony of Trump launching a Monopoly-styled game while pissing off the four
largest U.S. debt holders on the planet and slowly turning that dollar into Monopoly money
is fucking incredible. It is just the funniest thing in the world to me.
I think that this, to Jerry's point to michael's point yes it's gonna get
downloads yes it's gonna get plays if anybody believes that this is somehow going to change
the narrative around web3 gaming it's the cognitive dissonance is just fucking astounding
it is like generational levels of stupidity i saw this happen with Trump, right? Trump coin launches. Oh my God, he saved meme coins.
Melania launches.
Oh, did he maybe kill meme coins?
The blinders went on.
And then the next thing he announces is a game.
And everyone's like, yo, this will save Web3 Gaming.
Like, where the fuck were you 90 days ago when he absolutely destroyed the fucking market?
What are we talking about?
It is absurd.
Dude, honestly, I've spent the entire topic here just
laughing because I actually love all the points on both sides of this. However you feel about what
this is going to look like, I think it's an incredible conversation. But the thing that
blows my mind more than anything is we're talking about a place where less than a decade ago,
the biggest controversy coming out of the White House was a
particular president who wore a tan suit. And now you have a president on the weekend of his
fucking inauguration, launched a meme coin that he rugged, then launched a second meme coin that
he rugged, and is about to launch a game that he's inevitably going to rug. You're talking about a
man who bankrupted multiple casinos. He came to the ultimate casino.
Already has two bankruptcies on that front in Trump and Melania.
This will be the third.
It's going to be entertaining as fuck.
It's going to be a stimulant to the ecosystem for a couple of weeks while it's here.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
I'm no longer trying to fight these things. It's going to happen anyway, so I might as well enjoy the ride.
I'm giving this a 10.
Dude, Adnok, you said something that was like really like prescient there.
And it's like that it was a stimulant because like those 18 hours of like post Trump launching,
but like pre Melania was absolute euphoria.
And what does Web3 love?
Those flash in the pan brief months.
Come on, we all still hold on to those moments.
Like when we minted those moments like when we
minted an ape or when we did whatever and it was like it worked out and it shouldn't have
and like i don't know man i went to fucking shake shack after i like bought my trump coins
and came back and i was like what the fuck just happened like i did not expect this to do that i
thought it was fake when i bought it that's not a good thing though man it's like i'm sure that 15 minutes after you do a bump of coke is great until you realize it
was caught with fentanyl not that i know my friends would tell me my friends tell me that
yeah but i mean that's what crypto loves is that euphoric moment that doesn't last but we think it
can so i mean i don't know man yikes uh off the rails doesn't even begin to
describe it anymore let's go over this engine more like snorting rails yeah i'll be quick uh
yeah michael you're like i had so much respect for you and i still do but like seeing this part of
you i'm just like questioning my thoughts on reality i'll just be
really quick like what nox said yeah i completely agree with and and here's one thing okay guys
you are not elon if elon goes and makes 17 or 14 babies it's not available as an option to you if
trump goes and launches a web3 game you know what he is going to get it done and it's going to be a clone of monopoly with some crypto gambling stuff and you know for him to publicly say it like this
you know how family offices work where it's like hey dad guess what we got this deal and these are
the partners and this is the funding and i think it's a good idea and they pitch it to him and then
he's like yeah okay that sounds good that's like every family office ever in the world where they're pitching daddy for whatever
and they have the team ready to go.
That's how it works, and it's just going to work,
and it's just going to be for Trump, and that's it.
Michael, if you say anything, in my opinion,
Michael, lower, but knock yourself out, buddy.
At first, I want to go to Jonah who's joining us as well.
Then we'll tag in Spang, and we'll circle back to Michael who kicked off the chaos.
The realest retard with a ransom of ramblings, Jonah Blake.
Thanks, Sam, for the introduction. I really appreciate it.
So, yeah, I actually think this is going to be so much more viral than Off The Grid could ever spend money on and try to be.
It's going to get the most downloads since Axie Infinity x 10.
Also, if you're a mobile game company, because that's probably who's going to want to do this,
you will be lining up to try and kiss Trump's ass to try and make this game.
Because making a mobile game is already very expensive expensive and it's mainly through user acquisition cost. You have Trump built in
a free walking ad of the largest famous person on the planet of the earth. So this idea that
he won't get a game done or it won't be half decent, I think is bullshit. If that happens, his team is literally retarded
because any game publisher or any game studio
would lend their resources for a revenue split
of this kind of game.
That's one.
Two, a Monopoly Go-style game already has a blueprint
for a financial game.
Again, it's not the best game in the world.
It's just extremely well advertised
and well psychologically imbued.
Three, he has the largest install base, which is Republicans.
So it'll automatically be the most downloaded Web3 game ever.
And when it launches, it will be the biggest game in the world, period, for at least that week.
That doesn't mean the game is going to be good.
It just means it's going to get the most downloads of any game in that week or that month every single gaming
youtuber every streamer everyone's going to be fucking playing it and that's all going to be
earned media and if somehow his team actually manages to make a good game then that'll be
millions upon millions of new real not not fake, not fake, because we
all know it's fake, real wallets on a chain.
So if I were a chain right now, I would be I would be tossing his fucking salad, whatever
it takes, whatever it takes.
Get that man a fucking grant for your chain.
And the funniest shit is it's probably going to be Solana.
So all of a sudden, Solana has done barely any shit is it's probably going to be solana so all of a sudden
solana's done barely any game marketing and it's just going to mop the fucking floor with all these
l2 chains who are going to be sitting there with their hands wondering how the hell this happened
dad one one other just like hilarious point to what jonah's saying is like if you like who who
who like runs mobile right now is like the Turkish and the Israeli companies.
And I just think it's going to be hilarious that like a non-American team builds this.
And I hope it kind of does become the biggest game in the world.
So like, Trump has to be like, I've, I fucking outsourced it.
You know, we went offshore for it.
To Ukraine, to Ukraine.
It's going to be Ukrainian.
Hold on, hold on.
Is this how they figure out how tariffs work when he has to pay
a fee on fucking foreign labor on this
product? If this game works, the next
game that's coming out is basically
royal match, but Elon and all
the gems are really hot
women. And if you match them, you get enough
babies to get a super baby roll.
Oh my god.
A super baby.
I love that. Oh, let's go to will spankler then we're circling back to
michael yeah i don't know i'm i'm i really liked what what what john said about it being imaginary
not because i'm i'm a math nerd because i really appreciated that joke but i'm a 10 on this if it
never happens if we get all the hype about Trump wanting to build a crypto game,
and we get all of this, what is a crypto game? Let's discuss what Trump's crypto game could
possibly look like. All of that media coverage, and then he doesn't end up doing it. I think
that's the win-win. We get people interested, and then they're like, oh, well, this crypto gaming
stuff is already happening, and we don't have to suffer the massive shitstorm that Trump coming into a market is, as we've seen.
But we do get the hype and the normalization of the discussion, which I think is super important.
But, yeah, if it does happen, hold on to your fucking britches.
Hey, you know, thank you for that comment.
One thing I agree with on what Jonas said is, hell yeah, if you want to actually build this fucking thing,
like, Beamables Inn, like, we're the only one who's hit the scale
of a Web 2 game at scale that you're going to need
for a Web 3 game like this.
So sign us up.
We'll support this thing.
You go, John.
Take it up the ass right now.
Kiss some ass right now.
You're doing it.
No, no, no.
Michael's going to jump in.
Michael's going to toss us out next.
I may or may not have already texted my friend who I know has a direct contact to him.
So we'll see what happens there.
But can I respond to Spank?
So I completely disagree.
Let me tell you why.
If Trump is that serious about making a crypto game and he looks at it and he goes, damn, Web3 Gaming is dead.
I don't want to do this.
Everyone's going to be like, see, even the president agrees.
Even the president of the United States agrees.
So if he wants to do this and he doesn't make the fucking game, this industry is cooked.
Cooked beyond belief.
That'd be tough.
That'd be tough. That'd be tough.
Let's go back to Michael Christine, and then we'll probably move on from this insane topic.
Yeah, the last thing I want to say is I feel like a lot of people are looking at this from the standpoint of like, oh, my God, it's Trump.
He launches so many things that fails.
Whereas, like, really, you need to be looking at it as this is the biggest narrative that's going to be driving the world. And why do we not want every media outlet, every person, every family dinner talking shit about Trump?
Sure. But talking about crypto gaming right now, people sometimes hear the words crypto gaming and have no idea what you're talking about.
I still talk to people who think crypto gaming is only little little clicker games on Telegram. So if this normalizes the words crypto gaming and makes that phrase or on-chain gaming or
Web3 gaming a household name where it's a regular conversation topic, I think this is
a win no matter what happens.
And as a builder in the space myself who's going to publish a shit ton of Web3 games,
I'm hyped about this because the narrative is starting to change.
Things are starting to progress and laws or precedent, if you will, are going to be made if this game rolls out
that this industry desperately needs. That for me as a builder, provide me a lot of fear and
caution in terms of how I move forward. So I'm excited about it. I think it's going to actually
surprise a lot of people. I don't actually think the game itself is going to do well, but I think
it's going to have very positive impacts on our space just from a narrative
perspective, from a VC starting to look at the space again, all these different things.
If the president of the United States is like, you know, I like crypto gaming enough that I want
to launch my own game, that's going to raise a lot of eyebrows for people being like, wait,
why am I ignoring this space so much? Maybe there is something to come back here and come back to. So to the naysayers, we'll see what happens. Just
like these terrorists, we're going to see what happens by the end of the year.
Now, this is crazy. You guys are fucking crazy. It's the, it's the school of marketing psychology.
I'd rather be called a Nazi than just not be talked about at all.
You know, that's exactly it. Okay. Like, so like no matter what, okay, I'd rather be called a Nazi than just not be talked about at all
You know, that's exactly it. Okay, like so like no matter what okay It's just like what Trump did for memes or what Trump did for all of his real estate projects or his casinos or his business ventures or
Educational ventures or whatever like I mean like fine
but let's not get it fucked up and convoluted between attention and, like, a fucking bad rep association.
It's, like, the same thing as, like, okay, well, we're Subway and we got, like, really, like, huge attention with our Jared the pedophile dude.
And, like, yeah, we're, like, we're fucking rocking now.
I mean, like, hey, we love this association.
Do we have a good rep right now that we're in fear of hurting?
Because if we do...
Yeah, but why are you expecting a shortcut here, man?
This is gaming.
It's going to grow organically with gamers, right?
I mean, what Trump does and how successful it is,
it isn't going to trickle down.
That's the whole point of it, right?
I mean, if you think that is the case, that's fine, right?
But I think it's just completely delusional. that's fine right but i think just it's completely
delusional that's not what industries are made it's not made on intention it's made on actual
like adoption and like organic growth and that's what's sustainable yeah we're gonna get speculation
back on and maybe people will get an investment for a little bit but when it crashes and it
crashes and people will say well the president couldn't fucking make it work then like what the fuck is going to be you know the options there then we call george bush and we
get him because we know you'll align with that and you can't fool me twice i love george bush
and george bush senior yes i cannot lie i love those i love the bush family i know let me hit
this drive if if michael's right and we have to wait till 2027 in order for
Web3 Gaming to be adopted and we have a crash of Web3 Gaming further after the Trump game,
it's going to be a long 18 months of gamified while we wait for things to come back. So please,
for the love of God, let's have a little bit more sustainability in the meantime.
Jonah with the hand up. I'll give you a quick 30 seconds
and we're moving on from this one.
Well, I'm excited for when this is called AI-ified
because that's where we're going next.
I've already, by the way,
I've already started building the bridge
so I can invite you guys over.
But yeah, no, the thing about gaming
is nobody can tell you what you can or can't make.
That's why indie games are so cool. So I'm not here to tell Trump what you can or can't make. That's why indie games are so cool.
So I'm not here to tell Trump what he can't build.
And ultimately, it will generate millions of wallets.
And any chain right now would be begging, like,
please, please, Mr. Trump, anything I can do.
Like, I'm telling you right now,
every BD is flying to D.C. in their half-assed suit to beg for this game.
I don't doubt that.
I'm going to go for the Malania Fashion Game.
The Malania Fashion Game is definitely going to be the next one.
Kim was printing money on that one.
All right, guys, we're moving on.
Big deal.
Little deal or no deal.
Treasure is shutting down its game publisher and some significant downsizing.
They're doing a much
needed pivot due to their current financial situation. In 2024, they made about $200,000
in revenue, but they had 40 full-time employees with about $9 million in annual burn rate,
clearly unstable with their revenue numbers. They have $2.4 million in stable coins and approximately
$1.5 million in Magic, which is their native token, assuming it hasn't gone down since then.
With that in mind, they made the call to kill their game publisher and their blockchain.
They turned off the blockchain, which some people will just call a database if it can be turned off, pulling the grants that they have laid off all staff related to this.
Excuse me, pulling grants and have laid off all staff related to this.
I think they went from 40 to 15 employees, if I'm getting that number right.
And with these changes, it extends the company's runway from July 2025 to Q1 2026.
Treasure's new focus is on AI, with the likes of Smallverse, and returning to the roots with DeFi.
Despite this pivot, their in-house game studio Dark Bright seems to be unaffected.
It raised $6 million in 2024 to develop Smallbound, one of the games.
So big deal, little deal, no deal for Treasure shutting down its game publisher and chain.
Curious if you guys think, and I know especially in months or years past of Gamified,
we've been saying, oh, more chains need to be game publishers.
More chains need to be game publishers.
Does this have a little like chink in the armor there now with this?
Or is it just because Treasure wasn't ever really set up to be game publishers does this have a little like chink in the armor there now with this or is
it just because treasure wasn't ever really set up to be a game publisher let's go to jerry first
because i know he's been beating that drum for a long time yeah no deal um i i think it's just
like we had this topic i think monday sam where we kind of talked about this and like i don't know i just want to
ask the question of like if you remove uh beacon and small verse like who who played treasure games
right because like i i couldn't really name one besides those two and i really like those teams
i really like mike love beacon you know but outside of those two, I, I could not
tell you the first thing about treasure. And I think that is just generally kind of the consensus
with like the people that at least we run with and talk on this stage. Um, I'm not happy to call
anybody a liar who disagrees with me. Um, so like, I just don't think it's a big deal that like a company that is a name that we all knew but nobody really followed super closely is shutting down right and
like i have a friend who has a web 2 game that's doing really well right now and he's very like
crypto curious and like his publisher sucks for that game, right? And publishing is just kind of hard.
And I think if you remove Beacon and you remove Smallverse,
what did Treasure do a good job of building attention to
or helping market or helping publish?
And I don't have the answer to that.
I would love if somebody could tell me I'm wrong.
But I just don't think it's a big deal that a publisher that
wasn't doing its job very well is shutting down, you know, and I don't think that should preclude
other chains from trying to do that, what they were doing and just doing it better. So I say
it's just, it's no deal. It's, it's more, more of it's going to come and it's probably not going
to be a big deal when those teams shut down either.
So, you know, hopefully not too many teams are affected by it,
but ultimately I think, like,
we're not really going to think about it very much in a year from now.
I want to tag in my co-host, Lems, for the first time.
Lems, what are your thoughts on Treasure shutting down,
and is this the death knell for publishers in Web3,
or just a blip on the radar, Big deal, little deal, no deal.
I think it's a moderate to big deal because they were trying to like put themselves as like, oh, this indie, like indie publisher.
They want to have like these, you know, the Arbitrum games.
But it was like Jerry says, what was the real game that stood out apart from the Beacon?
And it felt like there was this weird blurred line
between Arbitrum gaming and treasure gaming.
And then they left Arbitrum, which felt really weird as well.
And it was just no clear thing of what their ecosystem
was actually doing and what they were trying to build out.
Because as we know, games are hit-driven businesses.
How many titles were they publishing
that they were burning all this money over the whole period, right? Like, surely, if you're playing the role of wanting to be a publisher,
you should be signing a bunch of games, knowing that a bunch of them are going to fail.
Yet this whole time, they're burning a lot of runway, evidently, with a lot of employees,
but they're not signing new games. So it's probably the right move from them. But man,
it's just like, it's another one that makes the
industry look bad that we just had all this money that kind of just got evaporated and there's not
really much to show for us um i'm glad beacon just pivoted away and they're just like we're going back
to arbitrage and we're still doing our thing so at least like they're not dead in the water and
they're not really affected by it but man it's uh it definitely makes the rest of the whole industry look bad and we're already in this uh web3 gaming is dead narrative i've got a lot of thoughts on
this one personally but i don't want to front run any of our great panelists i'm going to send it
over to dub sorry guys i don't know what order the hands went up in and then i'll go to uh michael
christine again yeah i mean like just the timing of everything right now has me saying like medium or lowish deal on this.
Like it's the everything's just so fast.
Like I would have been I would have felt better about this plan or whatever their plan is going forward.
If it was still like being cooked on for another month or something before made public with this like fruition.
And there's just so much marketing behind it.
So quickly, I feel like they spent more like
on the marketing of this whole thing
than the actual plan itself
and leaning on a known successor,
like small verse or whatever,
and that like no one really dove into anyways to begin.
It's just, and then the AI stuff,
it just feels like a copy of what what we've seen
in the market already and that hasn't been like proven successful yet so far so it's like the
combination of all that uh just has me not feeling great about it but um it could be proven wrong
that's why i'm still like kind of medium on it. Like, you know, at least they're not dead. And at least the doors are open and they can do stuff.
And even though this is like the facade right now,
it doesn't mean they find some shot on goal that works out in the short term.
Yeah, respect to them at least for pivoting without just going straight into bankruptcy.
I like that at least.
Let's go to Michael Christine, then I'll tag in Spang.
Yeah, I'm going to say this is one of the smallest deals ever because game publishers
shut down all the time, not just on Web3, but at Web2. If anybody here, have you ever heard of
Versus Evil? Probably not. But you know, they were a solid publisher for a while. They shut
down in 2024. Game publishers shut down every other day because this is a hit-driven business.
If you're not driving your business the way you should, your studio is going to shut down every other day because this is a hit driven business. If you're not driving your business the way you should, your studio is going to shut down. A studio that's only made $200,000
ARR and they have 40 employees, of course, they're going to shut down. What other path did they have
unless like that's insane to me. So I'm going to say very small deal. This type of stuff happens
all the time. It's the reality of business. And I think slowly but surely, the Web3 space is starting to understand the reality of running actual real
businesses that have actual real products that need to hit margins, that need to extend runway,
that need to hit certain benchmark metrics. I think a lot of this is forcing the space to
really mature in a way that it should have been when everybody was receiving all this investment money in the first place.
So very small deal, just the natural progression and maturity of an industry.
Great take. Let's go to Spang, then Matthew Buxton.
I'm going to say that this is a big deal
because I think that the question of chains as publishers is really interesting
because first you need to look at what are publishers supposed to do? They're supposed to,
they can do a variety of things, but they're supposed to have a vested interest in making
the game succeed and picking games that are going to do well and succeed to benefit them in the long
run. And traditionally what that looks like is providing financial and marketing support.
And from a chain perspective, those incentives don't entirely line up.
And I think we've been seeing this for years, right?
With the difficulty that chains and games have with aligning their incentives with each other.
And can a chain be a publisher, I think is the big question that's looming here.
And potentially, I would say is the answer, but I don't think that negates the need for
traditional web to publish it because you have to think that, you know, we know that
there's a limited amount of users, traditional gaming users in web three, but what we can
do is target those valuable web three users really well.
You come to a chain, you want to attract whales.
We can provide you with the infrastructure, the ecosystem,
the connections that will allow you to thrive
in a Web3 manner.
What we can't do is run millions of dollars in UA for you
because that will not go well.
And we do not have the expertise in that.
So what I think this kind of shows is that chains aren't going to replace
traditional publishers. And I don't think that there was any worry of that happening, but this
was an experiment in trying to do that. Where I see the potential for a lot of success is the
combination of chain support and traditional web to publishing. Because when we look at games,
and when I look at games, one of the first things I want to understand is how are you guys going to market what does your marketing plan looks like because as we all know marketing is
make or break in this industry and i think that that's something that we can assist with
and other chains can assist with but it's not something that we can front run so i think the
collaborative effort between web 2 publishers and chains from a web 3 perspective is what's going to really lead to the
most success. But yeah, it's a huge bummer that this wasn't able to go through, but I think it
provides a really awesome opportunity for the rest of us to learn from.
I don't know if anybody knows off the top of their head how many games Treasure signed,
but just doing some quick math, let's say 98% roughly of games fail to get traction in Web3 Gaming
or return any significant amount of revenue.
If you're working with a budget that's not that big and you sign, let's say, 10 games
to your chain as a publisher, I don't like the odds that you're going to find any level
of real success, just from a balance sheet perspective.
So I feel like they were always kind of doomed to fail by taking that approach to begin with.
Maybe I'm wrong there.
I'll send it over to Matthew Buxton and we'll tag in Jonah.
I think that was a fantastic layup from my friend Spang there.
I mean, I do believe as someone who actually works and founded a publisher, that publishers
actually works and founded a publisher,
the publishers and chains should and can work together.
and chains should and can work together.
And I don't think chains should also be publishers
unless they have a specific reason
and they're specifically built on that model.
If you're built to be a chain
that is meant to be used for sort of DeFi
and it's meant to be used for games
and it's meant to be an underlying tech layer,
which is permissionless and allows anyone to build on it,
you don't really want to be in the
in the business of publishing games specifically you want to be in the tech business where you
have loads and loads of different um success cases so that your chain can naturally evolve
um in in the best web3 decentralized way into doing what it does best and unless you're
specifically setting yourself up to be the
gaming chain or a chain about games you shouldn't do it but if you are specifically setting yourself
up to be a gaming chain that wants games on your chain you probably don't want to actually be
earning money from your on-chain resources you want to be earning money from the game success
and sam you're pretty much right when it comes down to finding games and their success rate
but most web 2 publishers basically plug themselves into the analytics of a game before they actually
say yes if you've ever had a game published by voodoo or a green panda or quali they literally
hook themselves up into your numbers you can't fake it they will run the test themselves on your
game and then they will be able
to say based on all the other millions of games that they've seen and they have seen way more
that this game has a chance of making it not only does this game have a chance of making it this is
the audience size this is the ad spend that we're going to do for this one and this is precisely
what this team's like runway and and deadline should look like there is no way in hell that 40 people
who probably don't know shit about game publishing should be costing nine million a year like or
whatever it was that is just insanity there's some people are being incredibly overpaid there for
doing what they've done um i don't i think it's a nothing burger i do think that chains have their
own role to play i don't think that a gaming chain can't exist as a publisher but i think the publishers um definitely definitely should learn from at
least the money management side of not fucking up and and don't publish shit games basically
jonah i know you've been on the marketing side for quite a while we've talked about you know
chains as publishers your thoughts on uh treasure but specifically publishing as a broader approach to,
I guess, having an impact for the games that come to your chain.
I still believe in that thesis, and I still believe it's required.
I think for every bad test case, there's a good one.
I think Immutable was a fantastic publisher for that MMO.
I don't know why I'm forgetting it right now, but the one that just
came out that got a bunch of users. I think in many ways, Abstract is a pseudo-publisher for
Cambria and certainly a publisher for Bitcoin. I think Treasure just didn't have the wherewithal
to know what games to pick and why and who their audience was they also just
didn't have enough funding and uh every i think there's the the what the idea of publishing is is
changing um i'll give you an example why is it that schedule one is made by one dude and and it
beats out uh assassin's creedadows made by Ubisoft and the cost
is dramatically different.
I think the reality is that publishers need to understand and think more like Blitzkrieg,
Boots on the Ground, trench warfare marketers than they do just as investors, mainly because
most blockchains don't give enough money to a game
for it to be even considered a real publisher.
But every multipurpose chain,
including the one that's sponsoring the show, Avalanche,
I mean, that looks like a publisher logo right there to me.
I mean, I'm pretty sure they run a unit
where they have a lot of creators
and those creators are making content for off the grid
or whatever the other games are, right?
And they're coordinating
and creating culture so i think your sponsor is a great example as to why even chains realize that
that's required well said on that one on koji tagging you in then let's go to singin yeah i
mean i think this this point was was already made, but basically we're in a highly volatile space as it is.
I mean, game publishing is hard.
You add on Web3 to that and things are going to fail or not succeed in the way that we had hoped.
And sometimes that failure of success isn't evident right away.
Like a lot of what we've seen is companies go under almost immediately.
And so when something that's lasted a little bit longer goes under, we've seen is companies go under almost immediately. And so when something
that's lasted a little bit longer goes under, we're like, oh, it's shocking. But like,
if you think about it, you look at like any industry, you know, even things that were
titans at one point end up failing. So like, I don't think this is to answer the original
question. I don't think it's a big deal, to be honest. And I also think that it's hilarious that
people on this panel are talking about real games and real metrics and real this and real that in
the same breath that they were like, yo, this Trump game is going to be off the fucking hook.
You guys are insane. Except the Trump game is going to be endorsed by Trump and not developed
by him. And if you were a mobile publisher, like Royal Match,
spending at least $100 million or close to that on Royal Kingdom
and not having the best user acquisition on that,
and you have Donald Trump, the number one influencer on the planet
and leader of the free world, saying,
I will talk about this game while I'm at the fucking White House,
yeah, you bet your ass that those mobile studios will take that shot
if they can get a shot at it.
And that gives him a better shot than most games
because he has unlimited funding to do it.
I'm like a, not to revisit this, but I'm like a three on the Trump thing,
unless he gets Supercell to make this shit.
And then I'm like a 45, okay?
Well, Supercell would never make this.
I know. They would have to be like a 45 supercell would never make this i know they
would have to be like uh like it won't be scopely either because they already have one unless they
it may even be something where scopely just partners with trump and they add it as a new
live service season in monopoly go and maybe they have some sort of crypto rails that would be the
best solution ah the diablo immortal netties strategy don't don't yeah that would be the
best solution yeah they make a reskin with some crypto rails.
It's still made by Scopely using the same code,
so it's out of the box to a degree.
And then they just do work on top of it as a mod.
Yeah, that would be the best option.
All right, before we get lost in the sauce,
let's go to Sinjin, then we're tagging in John Radoff.
Yeah, I think this is a little deal.
And I do want to shout out to the treasure team for
uh being like taking action i know like we we looked at like and we heard all the video and
the proposal and we're like wow like you know you spent this much and you did all this and you you
guys are idiots uh but you know relative to the space you know they're pretty responsible i think
relative right um and you know a big part of that was is that um the grant program was killing them
because you know the token had uh you know devalued so much and um you know it was being
paid out in their token uh to like a u.s dollar value and this has really
impacted like not just them but like every chain that's given out any grants and they've like pegged
it at a u.s dollar and they didn't manage their treasury properly you know i kind of always feel
like in web 3 it's like a whole bunch of like virgins, like getting into having sex and like never watching any porn at all,
you know,
and just not knowing what to do and just like discovering it.
Wow.
We just found like missionary or this style.
And it's like,
wow,
this is amazing.
Like,
Hey guys,
like this is the style you should try,
you know,
this is what you should do.
And they just don't realize that like,
like there are things that are already kind of like known and done outside.
So, you know, it's, it's, but it's like in terms of publishers and stuff like this i think there's the traditional
publishers and there's mobile publishers and pc publishers and they're very different right but i
think like with web 3 for the chains i think in some ways like if we're not talking about strictly
publishers but like marketing channels that are specifically for web three.
And then that kind of know how I think at the end of the day,
it's like,
yes,
like chains and web three,
you know,
quote unquote publishers,
they don't really know what they're doing quite just yet,
but it is a different game genre and it's not like they can't learn.
And it's not like that games don't need that.
So if you think of a game publisher as simply just investment,
well, I think that's a little bit weak in the sense that like,
yes, but everyone's investing.
I mean, like, but what is it they're more of?
Like, where is like the kind of way to make that game really successful?
Right.
And then mobile, obviously, it's a lot of data and analysis
and test markets and stuff like that.
And PC, it's kind of like understanding like, you know,
what is this game?
Is it going to really, you know,
resound with its target market?
Is it, like, competitive enough?
So on and so forth.
And I think for Web3,
we're still figuring these things out.
So I don't want to be too hard
to the Treasure guys.
I think they've done what they can do
considering it relatively.
I think they've done it all right.
Relatively.
But yeah, it's not a big deal.
I think we're still learning so much.
John Radoff, I want to hear from you on this one.
Then we're going to go to Hantou's joining us from the audience as well.
Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think we should salute anybody who tries things in earnest,
whether they succeed or fail.
And startups, you know, they fail most of the time,
and that's fine. That's part of the process of discovering what works. And we should actually
celebrate that there's people out there actually trying to do real things. The higher level
question to look at is, what is a blockchain in terms of like what is really a gaming blockchain,
for example? Is it distribution, meaning it's more like Steam? Is it a platform,
meaning it's more like PlayStation? Is it really a publisher or can it really be a publisher,
meaning it's more like electronic arts? There's very different incentives in all of those.
In a chain, as I understand, I haven't launched my own chain.
I'm launching my own token and a protocol.
But for a layer one chain, my understanding is they're all ultimately motivated by how many wallets can they have
and how many transactions can they drive through the network because that's where value
creation is going to come in terms of their layer one so you know they're just looking to drive lots
and lots of transactions at the end of the day which is not necessarily always aligned to the
kinds of games that people are going to think is most fun if you look at the incentive structure
of distribution platforms like esteem they just want to have the most users.
They don't really care how you've built and what the technologies are.
They just want people to come and slap down their money and pay them the 30% for being the place you buy.
If you're a platform like PlayStation, there's a big technology bar to overcome to even get your software on the platform.
So for them, they're really all about lock-in.
They want to get developers locked into the platform so that they can't leave
and then entice them with incentives so that the device, the PlayStation, for example,
becomes subsidized by all those other software developers that become the only place you can get highly rated games.
And if you're a publisher like an Electronic Arts, really you don't care about any of the above.
You're really just about revenue and profit maximization of your portfolio of games,
and you'll go to whatever technologies, blockchains, distribution platforms,
and platforms that you care to have. So I feel
like we're still discovering in blockchain what the role of a game, what a quote unquote gaming
blockchain really means as distinct from just blockchains in general and how they can ultimately
add value. I will say that if you look at chains in general, it's a pretty inconsistent level of quality.
And I'm not going to point any fingers whatsoever here because we are a friend to all, I will say.
But there is an inconsistent level of quality of actual gaming expertise amongst the so-called gaming chains.
And they all want games because they think it's going to drive a lot of transactions and open up the mass market.
But wow, some of the people that are on these teams have never published a game, have never built a game, barely understand the technology of games.
And that's interesting to see them going after that.
And it just points to where are the real incentives there and where
are the incentive misalignments. I'll double down on that, John, and say...
I had to follow sex talks from St. John's. I've had some absolutely painful meetings with
quote-unquote gaming chains that made me never want to talk to those
the same quote-unquote gaming chains again whenever it is clear they just had no idea
what they were talking about and this comes from a guy who's relatively new to the gaming industry
I'm just a passionate lifelong gamer but even I was like Jesus Christ these guys know nothing
let's go over to Hans Howlow with Tag and Nock. Yo what's up? So gaming, especially for publishing, is very long-tailed.
And I'm going to try to make my thoughts a little bit more clear
so Sinjin doesn't call me a virgin.
But right now in Web3, I think people are not really...
Like, they understand, but they're still being forced to choose.
And what they're being forced to choose and what they're being
forced to choose from is two sides one is where you have to monetize through volume and transactions
this is your exchanges marketplaces which have a business model right now in web3 that exists
that makes money similar like trading platforms like photonon, BullX, etc. And then there's another model,
which is a lot more sustainable, but it requires a lot more long-term work, which is your Web2
model of acquiring users, getting them to spend money, and being a normal customer. And those
people do not exist in Web3 right now because the majority of the people, like 99.5% are all there to min max, even the whales and people who are able to
spend. So I think the problem right now with games especially is that they're choosing more of the
latter and they're not really getting the true monetization or revenue that they are supposed
to be getting if they were in Web 2 because they're just building for the wrong audience and going after a web
three audience.
As a side note,
I don't know if you guys have talked,
but why the fuck did base just rug three tokens?
Yeah.
Seeing that on the timeline as well.
Wasn't sure if we should bring it up or not.
Obviously we don't know a lot,
so I don't want to get into it too much.
If anybody wants to give a hot take,
I suppose we could allow it first. So let's wrap up this topic. We got two more hands. I want to go to get into it too much. If anybody wants to give a hot take, I suppose we could allow it.
First, though, let's wrap up this topic.
We've got two more hands.
I want to go to knock Matthew Buxton,
and then I've got to hit you guys with an ad read,
and then, you know, well, the floor is your guys.
Knock, over to you.
Yeah, I want to say that this is a big deal,
but not because they shut their doors.
I think both Jerry and Michael Christine covered really interesting points
about why that's pretty common.
I think the way that this happened is maybe a little more concerning.
I think it's important to note that Treasure is a DAO, and both the grant system as well as the decision for a lot of this to happen was voted on by the collective.
And I think depending on which way you look at it, this is either an argument for a DAO in the ability to sort of course correct or the argument against the DAO in the, I guess, ability for a DAO to direct your overall strategy for the course of a couple of years, which was the strategy to deliver the grants, to open up the marketplace, to build the blockchain, to separate from Arbitrum, to build a unique, isolated ecosystem was the decision that was voted there. And I think more than anything, this is a conversation, once again,
about whether or not DAOs can actually be effective
because it's the most recent example of a DAO
that held voting control and power over a lot of things
that happened within this ecosystem that failed.
So I think that that's really important.
The other piece that I think people sort of glossed over
is that there was very clearly like some amount of infighting and struggle for power going on
behind the scenes here at treasure that video that was posted i don't know if anybody watched
it looked like a fucking proof of life video it was crazy the way that that was just just absurd
the way that that was all delivered and and, you know, there's a silence from the previous leadership team.
There's a random abrupt stop of functionalities within the ecosystem.
You had Diego from the Beacon who built it literally tweet about how something crazy has happened.
We're no longer going to be on Treasure.
We'll have an announcement when we figure out what's actually operating.
have an announcement when we figure out what's actually operating.
That's not how businesses should be running.
That's not how businesses should be running.
That is just an insane thing to do to the one title that was actually operating well on your blockchain.
So to me, that signals some stress and concerns about the way that this was operated.
Also, to be running a blockchain, a publishing arm, having your own game studio and a marketplace,
effectively entirely owning the whole ecosystem of everything
that goes on within your network and only bringing in two hundred thousand dollars in revenue clearly
there was like monetization issues as well like to me when you said that number sam i hadn't heard
that before that's absurd to me when you control every aspect of a closed ecosystem and that's what
12 calendar months bring in from like a revenue perspective when you have
titles like the Beacon who have raised four and a half five million dollars via nft sales that feels
a little weird to me I'm not sure how that played out that way um yeah I think all in all big deal
because of the conversation about DAOs because of the way that this was handled from a business
perspective publishers shut downains will shut down.
Not everybody can be Ronin.
This is very clearly the Ronin model.
Hey, we own the chain.
We own the biggest games.
You know, we own the actual wallet in the marketplace that you'll be transacting on.
Like, it's clear what the idea here was.
And for a while, it seemed to look like it was working.
But I think some combination of, you know, what looks like from the outside, again, coming from a place of pure ignorance, purely speculation, what looks like some infighting, as well as some decision making from the Dow.
I think that's the bigger story here.
And I think that that's a pretty big deal.
Man, I'm just as shooketh.
I mean, the Ronin example is a good one if you're a dow with you know less than 10 of the money of ronin and you try to chase the same business model it just seems like that's a interesting decision i guess i'll
leave it there matthew over to you brother i mean look i'm never gonna basically turn around and say
i want to start a car company or a logging company or a rocket company, unless I'm a bajillionaire.
This is what has happened in this space.
People saw JPEGs go up and then they were like, what's the other thing I can do with JPEGs?
Games.
And then people who had never even played games made games.
And now if you're a publisher who's never published games and you're talking to the same kind of people as you that
have the same kind of interests and never made games before and this isn't really exclusive to
web3 there's quite a few founders og founders who never made games or were not gamers before they
started incredibly successful game companies but they're basically they're either way right because
you have a bunch of people who don't know how to make a game, and you don't know
how to publish a game.
And then you talk to these people, and what you both say to each other sounds like it's
making logical sense from a tokenomics and all the rest of the point of view, but it's
already doomed to fail because no one, like you can say, oh, the game's doing great because
it sold a bunch of NFTs.
That's not a real fucking model in the rest of the world.
Selling games at the start and then apparently providing infinite support for the endless of your game, this is not how it works. We found in games that those one-time purchases,
like 10 bucks for this really cool item, fucked your game economy. We found that out years ago.
You sell one permanent item that gives
someone else a boost you will be wanting to grandfather into a different game to remove
yourself from that burden so it's it's the blind leading the blind and i mean the crazy part like
conversations you've had sam with change and stuff i've had the same thing with games literally
trying to say they've invented perpetual motion
because they have a lot of transactions on their chain that they run. And I'm like,
but who pays for the chain? We're spying. We have a lot of transactions. None of it makes sense.
If you were to go outside of the bubble, that doesn't make sense. But these people get funded
and that doesn't make sense. So we do need real genuine people who know what it looks like to have a business
and don't have a run rate of like $9 million
with 40 people who outsource all of the dev stuff,
decide to make a console,
then decide to do other stuff.
I don't think it's a down thing.
It's literally a lot of inexperienced people
wearing drocks, smoking vapes,
and then not having any fucking clue
about what they're doing.
But because you've got enough money,
it takes you a long fucking time to fail.
And so for me, it's not much of a deal,
but it does clear the way for other people in the space to do well.
I feel personally attacked.
Yeah, Koji once ripped a vape while we were on a Google Meet together,
and I said, I'm never working with that fucker, that's for sure.
He never has.
But there are people that have done that,er that's for sure he never has but there
there are people that have done that and it's such a weird red flag to me it has nothing to do with
their business acumen but it just like triggers something deep in my soul it's like well don't
sign a contract with that fucking guy i don't know it's it's it's innate anyway avalanche is
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Star Atlas actually just posted, I i think yesterday a really interesting uh unique
movement mechanic that they've added into their first person shooter that i think is really really
cool i think it's going to level that one up a lot we move on though to the next topic uh well i i
guess you hands out do you want to do you want to talk about the base thing you want to you want to
just tell us the current status of what's going on over there yeah sure so jesse tweeted that they're
going to be coining things on a platform called zora and to follow the base account on there
and they coined a token called basis for everybody and apparently a bunch of snipers sniped
i would estimate like 50 of the supply uh other people are saying like they see
30 but i estimate it's higher because he told everybody where they're going to deploy from
and those snipers essentially just sold everything and one clipped it from i think it was like 15
mil ftv down to one mil ftv and jesse is defending it as a, what is it, a culture coin?
Yeah, and they launched the second token too, right?
Like that was what I think caused the big downward spiral.
They dropped another one.
It was like Trump and Melania, but like 15 minutes apart.
Well, they released like three tokens
from the base account by the way that's rogue intern would be really funny if that
was true spicy at best uh anybody want to weigh in on the madness that's unfolding here or should
we wait for a little bit more i mean meme tokens and chain drama not typically on our radar uh it
looks like basically every influencer
under the sun on Twitter is talking about it, but nobody seems to have more details than what
Hantau just laid out here. Yeah, probably just don't tweet a ticker from the main account of
your chain when you have all these people waiting for you to drop a token. That sounds so outrageous it might just be the right answer well done you solved it
uh up next let's talk about a new game mode that we're trying to introduce here we're calling it
send it to zero uh yes a little pun not intended with what just happened uh with with base uh what
genre of game in web 3 would you suggest no one invests in strictly because the genre just does
not work with web 3 technology talking exclusively about web 3 game genres that will just never
work in the past we've seen web 3 attempts that match three games like grapes we had single
player rpgs that we used to meme on because it just didn't make any sense what genre are you
sending to zero michael christ Christine had the hand up first.
Yeah, I'm going to get a lot, a lot of hate for this, but first person shooters,
send them to zero in the Web3 gaming space. And I'm not talking about Web3 gaming. I'm talking
about every type of gaming, unless you're a legacy title who's been around for, you know,
multiple years, like the Call of Duties, like the Battlefields,
like the Rainbow Sixes,
like any of these legacy type of brands,
you're going to crush it.
If you're not one of those,
you're going to end up like the literal
several hundreds of games
that are first-person shooters
that launched over the last 10 years
that maybe out of all of those hundreds of games
that failed, around seven of them succeeded.
So if you want to take those odds, be my guest.
But I like to see game development is very expensive.
We're already in a very niche industry.
Maybe stop trying to make it harder for you just because this is the type of game that you like to play.
Despite the fact that every single signal, radar, etc. is telling you if you develop a first person shooter there's a 99 probability
that it's going to fail even even higher probability and that's not just web 3 i'd say
in web 3 it's even higher probability it's going to fail i'm talking about all of gaming and i can
if you want to to die on this hill i can go down a list of so many games that had so much promise that, again, failed most recently, obviously being X Defiant.
So send it to Xero. Stop making first-person shooters. Get more creative.
There's so many different game genres out there that can succeed. Let's go.
I love the controversial take right off the bat. Let's go to Spang, who threw the thumbs down.
the thumbs down what's the thumbs down about and also what are you sending to zero brother
What's the thumbs down about? And also, what are you sending to Xero, brother?
so the thumbs down about is about this narrow perception that everybody on this panel seems
to have of what an fps is and what an fps can be an fps can be more than team deathmatch and
battle royale that is not the entire scope of what is what an fps bit i've said it once and i'll say
it again have you guys ever heard of destiny
like there are so many cool things you can do with a genre and uh like making another battle royale
yes absolutely send it to zero but like i was just playing an fps that was a roguelike called robo
quest and it is has some of the tightest shooting that I've ever experienced in a game. It's super, super cool.
But I'm just, I always have to do that.
No hate, Matt.
But like, come on, guys.
Let's open the box a little bit.
As far as like, what am I sending to Xero?
Games that aren't planning on having more than a million users.
Anything that doesn't require like scaled networks
of people transacting and engaging with each other
probably doesn't need a blockchain.
Like there's cool stuff that you can do with assets,
absolutely, but if it's under a million users
and they're not all transacting at the same time,
just do it on web too.
Like make a little indie games.
I think there's a lot of cool stuff that can come from the indie scene
that can be scaled up.
But if you're not looking to have
that massive interactable sphere,
like there's no reason to overcomplicate things.
And I think that that's what we in web three
have a really bad habit of doing.
That was a great answer answer i love the unique approach
there let's go over to a knock we haven't been able to tag in early on a topic yet today then
we'll go to jerry yeah i was gonna say solo player games based off of a conversation we had yesterday
on solana gaming space but i think that that's kind of a cop-out um i don't think anybody really
believes that there's and if you do i think you're crazy but i don't think that there's any real belief that that's something
that's really feasible from like a blockchain perspective i'd say rts titles um i just i i
can't i've tried tried to understand where blockchain components come into play and what
that looks like for multiplayer and i think that there's a couple of really interesting examples of unique takes on the genre in this space. But I think the
overwhelming majority of them are going to fail. And that's in part because I don't think that
there's a great story to tell from like a blockchain perspective. But also just in general,
it feels like anybody who plays an RTS is probably at the absolute youngest, 26 or 27 years old with any frequency.
Most people who are younger do not play the genre. There hasn't been a ton of really new ones that
have exploded over the course of the last few years. So for me, that's the genre that makes
the least sense. It's also the genre that maybe I have the least experience in. So I can't tell
a story and I can't figure out what that story is from a blockchain perspective. I'll say RTS to give you a multiplayer example.
But yeah, first person games or solo player games just is always going to be the answer.
I just don't understand how it ever works out.
Nock trying to stab me in the heart with real-time strategy games being the one he's going to send to zero.
Spang, I saw another thumbs down, brother.
You want the smoke?
I'm just 24 ripping RTSs quite regularly, so I just wanted to flag that.
Thanks, buddy.
I love you.
Let's go over to Cherry, then we'll tag in Koji.
Yeah, I think we all know Spang is 24, but 45 at heart, so I don't know if he counts.
but 45 at heart so don't know if he counts um i i would say i would say um mobas stop making
fucking mobas dude like i just don't think they like people just love the ones that that they
love already and i i don't like who is that company that just bought heroes of new earth
and they're trying to be like oh we're gonna bring going to bring Heroes of New Earth back and it's going to be Web 3. Like,
I guess, you know, but like it'll be cool to try, but like
we all just see that not going well,
right? So, I don't know.
I just don't think like there's going to ever be a new
MOBA that comes and like takes the place
of League or Dota.
So, trying to do it in Web 3 was
like kind of silly from the start.
Even some of them were not bad.
I actually kind of enjoyed that one, Tearing Spaces or whatever.
But the world wasn't going to enjoy that.
And the world is not going to enjoy the MOBA that some random team is building right now.
There's the dagger to my heart, Sam.
I fucking loved Tearing Spaces.
I still think about that game all the time.
It was good!
He's told me this every single week for the past six weeks.
He brings up tearing spaces again and how heartbroken he is.
It's not around anymore.
I feel you, dude.
All right, let's go over to Koji, then we'll tag in John.
Yeah, man, I feel like me and the lawyer are going at it this week,
but I hate the argument that making first-person shooters is hard. So you shouldn't do it. Like, if that's the case, that we shouldn't be making any games, honestly, because like, all of them are next to impossible. And yes, yes, like shooters are exceptionally difficult. But I think that like, unless somebody has the, you know, like the self-confidence or like,
maybe it's a rational self-confidence to try and make one, like all,
all what we'll ever get is just like call of duty, like 11 or whatever.
Right. Like something has to come along and topple the tower.
And like people have to be willing to give it a try.
And maybe it's not going to be a web through shooter, but I think like,
you know, you got to be open to that sort of thing.
The other thing that I'll say is uh you know as far as genres that that that need to die
i i don't think like this is a cop-up but i don't think any of them man we're we're no one has
figured out like we pontificate endlessly about how to use chains and web 3 and games and blah
blah blah and no one's cracked the nut right so? So, like, to say, oh, we should stop making X type of game is ridiculous
because we need as much innovation and as much poking and prodding
and testing as possible.
Now, the one thing I will say is, like, if you're going to make a game
in a genre that's been tested in Web3, look at what has come before you
and see why it didn't work or how you can iterate on that
before you jump in and make another version of the same thing.
Because being, you know, just being like, hey, I'm going to make a thing and the assets are going to be on chain
probably isn't good enough anymore, right?
Like, that was like a highfalutin idea.
Everyone's going to make Counter-Strike.
It's going to be on chain.
It's going to be great because now you're not stuck to the Steam Marketplace.
Well, guess what, man?
Gamers don't mind the fucking Steam Marketplace.
So I think that, like, you have to have a better argument than that.
And yeah, that's all it takes.
But I would say I'm not tired of any of them.
Just keep iterating.
I had somebody tell me they were making, in 2025,
that they were making the first ever Web3 Match 3 game.
And my eyes almost rolled into the shadow realm.
I don't know if they've stopped rolling
since then let's go to uh let's go to john then to the tatted lawyer once again
what i'm sending to zero is just any game where it's being built or designed by a finance bro
with an idea of what the gaming market is and what people want and probably the only game they play is Madden once a year leading up to the Super Bowl.
That just hasn't worked for five years.
It's not going to start working.
But I will say this.
From a genre perspective, all you guys who are dissing MOBAs
or first-person shooters, do you think that there's not more innovation
to be found there?
That's just wrong.
If any time in the game industry has taught me anything at all, it's like there is always someone with a really innovative game mechanic that can be layered over something that already exists to break out and make a really big hit.
And by the way, also things that are in genres that you've never heard of.
the way also things that are in genres that you've never heard of and like when i made my game of
thrones game everybody told me this game was going to fail and that i didn't know what the heck i was
doing because it had a very unique game system in it and we shipped it to 11 million people and it
did fine um it wasn't like mega mega hit but it did pretty well so the game industry will always
surprise you just have it built by teams that are earnest and sincere,
and they're going to iterate the fuck out of things
because it's really hard to make a great game.
And you can go the distance with virtually any game
as long as you've got the right runway, the right team,
the budget behind it, and it's scoped appropriately
so that you can actually accomplish what you set out to do.
Great take from John. Michael, I want to hear from you then. We what you set out to do. Great take from John.
Michael, I want to hear from you then.
We're going to Sinjin.
Yeah, I just wanted to respond really quick to Koji.
Koji, you know, I love you, brother, but I think your takes this week are terrible.
I never said that it was hard to make a first-person shooter game because I'll be the first to admit.
I loved, for example, like Splitgate.
I loved X Defiant.
I loved the one that had the
destructible environment that came out in 2023 that i'm uh blanking on the name i loved all those
games i played them it's just i never had any hope that they would ever catch on because for some
reason it doesn't matter you could make the best game of the world it could be the coolest game
ever you will not pull first person shooter players away from their comfort games or cozy
games or cozy brands.
And it has nothing at all to do with the game.
And I think it has so much more to do with the market psychology of the players who already
play that game and that are in that genre.
So don't get me wrong.
I love first-person shooters.
I just don't have any belief that a first-person shooter without a legacy title can succeed.
Sinjin, what genre are you sending to Xero, brother?
Yeah, not really a genre, but anything that's a direct clone with a couple of features.
I think they're all going to Xero.
It's really funny because it's investor-focused first.
What investors want is a very easy one liner to say,
this is what the game is.
Like we're going to be the next fortnight or the next counter strike or the
next,
whatever.
And,
you know,
that's not how gaming works.
I mean,
because just what Michael was saying about the competitiveness of it,
that's really the heart of it.
I mean,
if you can't make a niche and you can't stand out,
you can't bring innovation here uh you just can't compete and i think that's the whole thing was that
again the euphoria and the speculative you know movement of the market you know covered a lot of
those flaws but the reality is like you could have a game that everyone says like hey this is a
really really really good game in web 3 and it's's a clone. And I'll be like, yes, okay, fine.
Because it's a clone, they made it really well,
because the specs are all there, and they added a few features in.
It's fantastic, right?
But when that game goes head-to-head for, like, mass adoption in Web 2, okay,
you don't think, like, all the Reddit warriors are going to rip it to shreds
and, like, fuck, I played that game, like, 10 years ago.
This is only, like, whatever.
And even remastered games, games like they just don't perform um you know you need something that it's
not about the blockchain tech it's about really um innovation in the space and you know like
yeah just clones unfortunately yeah you might work well in the speculative market but really
you're definitely going to go to zero. And, um, you know,
I want to say that, um, you know, while Michael has said that he doesn't agree with any of the
takes that Koji has said today, I pretty much agreed with like all of them. And I think one
thing is like, again, when we're here, um, like we have to be looking at it at a level where we're
not quote unquote gutless wanks, you know, like we
have to really be pressing for it because the thing is the more competitive something is, and
that's more like established, then we have to look at something that's more 10 X that's really gonna,
you know, do something. And if it's not 10 X, of course, fine. Right. But I think for every genre
or whatever like that, if you don't like MOBAs, then look at Wildcard. You don't like MOBAs, then look at Sparkball.
I remember when I was first explaining my game to people and I'd be like, it's a turn-based third-person shooter.
And they'd be like, what?
And like, can you give us an example?
And I'd be like, you know, Worms with like 3D, whatever, Where's Waldo, whatever.
They're like, what the fuck are you talking about?
People's minds in Web3 are not there. Or you look at my IP and you're like, oh, they're like, what the fuck are you talking about? Right? Like people's
minds in web three are not there. Or you look at my IP and you're like, Oh, that's too sexy. It's
too R rated or whatever like that. But it's the funniest thing that in web two with my web two
friends, uh, in the game industry, they were like, that's fucking cool. Oh, that, that fucking IP
fucking rocks, you know? Like, Oh yeah. Like her ass is just so good. You know, and it's
just a total two, like,
dichotomy in terms of, like, what our
priorities are. So, yeah.
But, like, clones, like, sorry,
I don't care what genre you are in.
You're fucking going to zero. And, uh,
RTS Games, Doc, I'm so sorry.
You're just not that good of a gamer, I think.
Did you just use
Where's Waldo as an example instead of XCOM?
That was a wild one.
Let's go over to Matthew Buxton.
I'm going to probably get the most hate for this out of anyone.
Pixel art games.
I'm sorry.
Pixel art games.
Try harder.
Do better.
Fuck pixel art games in Web3. You basically, you're taking the easiest way you basically you're taking the easiest way out you're
taking the easiest way out you're making the shittiest art choice and you're not even getting
close and the reason i say this is because i love pixel art games i love them so much and i want them
to be good and i play them all the time i play like kingdom two crowns that is a fantastic game
that game will suck your time and
you'll be like fighting off these little horde things i played the pixar games when they came
to the phone and they were like really beautiful marine like i love those kind of games and we have
murdered them if i have to see another shittily done chibi character walking around with like a basic kind of like the runescape
of this world that's just done in 2d and like they try and do stardew but they haven't spent
seven years as one person just crafting this again and again and again give it up man like
i would never invest in that because that to me says that someone doesn't give a about the
craft of that game there are certain exceptions
to this like moon frost and a couple of others that but generally i do not trust and i will
never trust investing in pixel art games i would just not do that's a spicy one uh because you
know there's a couple a couple of decent pixel art games in web 3 knock and spang i saw you guys
which ones i well you know i'm not at liberty not liberty to pick sides Some pixel art games in Web3, knock and spang. I saw you guys. Really? Which ones?
Well, you know, I'm not at liberty.
I'm not at liberty to pick science.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Because many of them fake their numbers, right?
Many of them fake their numbers and they're all bullshit.
This is what we can't save.
They might be enjoyable, but they're not really actually going to ever succeed or make money.
Okay.
Outside of Web3, there are tons of pixel art games that are super successful in fact some of the biggest exactly and that's why i think in web 3 i hate them so much because i love them
and they should do better knock what was the thumbs down about brother
i thought he was shitting on the fucking art style i was gonna go in but that ended up not
being the case so i generally don't know to take um one thing i just this is like gently related to this but we've
been talking about mobas a lot i wanted to ask a favorite of the panel or anybody listening if you
can send me unique mobas i would love to fucking play them as we're talking about this i realized
that every moba that like is released in web 2 is the same version of some three-lane fucking shitty map
where you're doing one world boss and you try to kill an exit.
Unite, here's the New Earth, here's the Storm, League of Legends, Dota.
For whatever reason, Web 3 has seemed to attract a ton of absolute fucking lunatics
who take the MOBA genre and add really unique twists to it.
So in the case of Tearing Spaces, it was MOBA, but Dungeon Crawler. In the case of Spark Ball, it was MOBA, but add really unique twists to it so in the case of tearing spaces it was MOBA
but dungeon crawler in the case of you know spark ball it was MOBA but we're playing soccer now in
wild card it's MOBA but it's also a TGE summon game I feel like that hasn't happened a whole
lot in web 2 might just be ignorance if you've got examples send it to me that was just me being
jealous or or selfish Sam I wouldn't want it to see uh if there are any more games like that that
I could play no I have an idea for a MOBA.
Let's make it. I honestly do.
I think that if I, yeah, I dream
of making MOBAs. No, let's do it.
Oh, no. Let's do it, Jerry.
Yikes. Fucking bearish, boy.
Send it to zero. Bang. Yeah, you also
were hitting them with the thumbs down. Was that just
you were also afraid
that they were dissing the art style or something more?
It was, yeah, I was, I was.
But I actually really like the point that he made.
And I think it's really interesting.
Pixel art games are awesome because there's less you can do with the art.
It's so much easier to tell when it's soulless.
I feel like it's a lot easier to identify a soulless pixel art game because it doesn't have that kind of like crispness and connectivity and life that someone who really loves those games puts into it.
So I say Web3 games, please keep trying to make pixel art games, but just know it's when when you're not doing it right um and i thought
i thought sinjin's point about clones was really interesting um because i 100 agree in like the
trip like let's say triple a although i hate using that let's say the triple a space making like a
clone isn't profitable but on mobile go, go ahead, make a clone,
and that will roll bank.
Basically, every indie game that comes out
and is a top hit on Steam, within three weeks,
some Israeli or Ukraine mobile studio has put that out onto mobile
and is making millions more than that small indie game
could ever hope to make.
And it's depressing, and I think they should go to zero,
but the fact of the matter remains that they're printing
bank right now.
But yeah, just wanted to point that out
so everyone can be depressed.
That's not really being a clone.
That's not what I was meaning,
but that's pure theft.
Exactly, exactly.
It happens.
I just want to say
that I mean this this fully pixel art sucks
stop championing it no dude no i don't i don't want to catch the smoke but i this might i might
agree with jerry just a little bit just the hair just just the sprinkle i agree with jerry on that
one uh it's a little bit overdone a little little bit lazy, etc., especially with AI. Oh, God, there's going to be
this is so crazy.
I'm just planning today
to cost its fucking mind.
Guys, you guys,
I might not show up next week. This is insane
what's happening here.
Just say, you know,
like, Dussel Art minus, like, the
AI advancements right now actually
is a real pain to actually develop because you have to make
each like graphic.
I mean, you guys don't understand what goes
into pixel art. I mean, like, no, no, no.
It is fucking huge. Yeah.
I just also played Pokemon
Red and Blue 27 years ago and I'm
kind of over it. I'm kind of ready. Yeah, dude.
It's like building
cathedrals was hard as fuck
700 years ago and we stopped doing it for that reason.
You uncruciate American.
All right, all right.
Lemz, Lemz, you get the last word on this one.
Tell me your MVP as well, brother.
I'm actually just shocked no one mentioned TCGs,
and I don't know if it's just because Koji is on the panel.
Like, I'm not saying that, but just because it felt like in Web3,
we've had so many TCGs, Pokemon clones.
I'm third person hero shooters.
I'm building Fortnite with NFTs or League with NFTs, which is kind of to Sinjin's clone point from earlier.
I'm just shocked that the like, I mean, shooters didn't get mentioned at the start.
But yeah, I'm surprised TCGs didn't get rained on.
I would say, yeah, puzzles or platformers to me just make no sense kind of like the nox point on single
player but i'm just actually shocked that those other genres didn't get mentioned because it felt
like for the last few years they were just overdone to absolute death um and oh i don't know who to go
with mvp like the the beef between koji and Tatted has been pretty amazing all episode.
I'm going to give it to Koji to try and encourage him to come back next week because I don't want
you to feel like you're not loved here anymore because you get beefed on on stage.
Koji, who's your MVP, brother?
Who's my MVP?
That's a good question.
Everyone here has collectively lost their minds.
But I still do enjoy it here.
I think, you know what, I'm actually going to go, I'm going to go with the touted lawyer because, not because I agree with the takes, but I like the defense, you know, in a Trump-esque fashion.
Well, knowing that you are totally wrong, refusing to give up, I very much appreciate
that.
So I'm going to vote him for MVP.
Incredible, incredible positioning.
You know, Tatted, usually it wins the MVP in my head just because he says things that
people disagree with. And it's spicy, man. It's fun. Let's go over to Michael.
Michael, who's your MVP brother?
Yeah. I'm going to, first off, thank you, Koji. You know,
the last horse finally crossed the finish line. I love it.
But I'm going to give my MVP to Jerry.
I think Jerry had some really, really great takes today.
He also understands the, what can happen with this Trump thing and the Trump game,
and I really enjoyed his takes.
So I'm going to give it to Jerry.
Also, Cody, I hope you know.
I'm just joking, brother.
I like your takes as well.
We'll see who's going to be right in the end.
You know what I mean?
It's all a wait-and-see game now.
It's all a wait-and-see game.
Man, I've been saying that for 113 episodes.
All right, let's go to Jerry.
Jerry, who's your MVP?
Yeah, I kind of echo what Koji says from like an opposite way.
In that somebody once said, I forget who the guy was,
but he said this whole panel has IBS.
And I think that was very true today.
You guys do say some crazy shit sometimes.
And I'm just like, how do you guys think about this?
With that said,
the MVP is somebody who made great points
all throughout the show,
and I really didn't disagree
with much. Had a lawyer.
Killed it today.
Wow. Had me waiting with
bated breath. You delivered that like you were announcing
Movie of the Year at the Oscars. I appreciate it.
Let's go over to Will Spangler. Spang, who's your MVP?
It's a tough one for me this week.
I want to give it to Koji because I often resonate a lot with Koji's old-mannedness towards the entire industry.
And I enjoy the way to call things out as they are,
which is most of the time shit.
But I also like the tattered lawyer
and his similar thing,
but with a little bit more energy.
I think I'm going to give my MVP to Koji,
but the main thing I want to do is shout out Matt
for the Genghis being one of the best cons joke at the
start because that was an all-timer i'm going to be using that everywhere i go you know if it's
living renfrey in his head like an hour and 45 minutes later had to be pretty good matthew buxton
who's your mvp i'm gonna go with john because john basically said the thing that i've wanted to say
so much is that basically people who don't
know how to do this shit should stay the fuck away from the shit. And he knows the pain. I can hear
the pain in his voice for those years of making games and fucking shipping them and doing more
than the entire space has done in like five years with one game. I feel your pain. I am your kin.
Nice beard. I rock with that.
That's just from like compliments
to flirtatiousness.
That's all good. I'm just trying to seduce
him into the beard. Send me a DM afterwards.
Yeah, dude. Join the beard.
Join the beard down.
That's going to be a DM session.
It's going to be a therapy session mixed with an invitation
to come on a podcast if I know where to put
my money. John Radoff, though, who's your mvp brother great work today
uh i'm going with singen because he's keeping his fuck brand everyone tried to drop so many
f-bombs today but just stood out i think you should stop trying to dilute his brand i'm
personally going to go with fracking if anybody anybody remembers old Battlestar Galactic.
I just got to carve out a different space for me because too many people are throwing this word around.
I just know fracking from my personal hero, George Bush.
Jesus Christ.
Knock, knock, who's your MVP?
No, who's your MVP?
Oh my God, dude.
I was going to give it to,
I think there's an even toss-up between Koji and Tatted
for vehemently defending their points all episode long.
Disagreed with a lot of those takes,
so I'm going to give it to neither of them,
and I'm going to give it to Sinjin
for being the only person
who consistently called every single person on this panel
a fucking idiot without most people realizing
it. Also, just Sinjin, I think, got my Monopoly money joke better than anybody else because he
comes from that world, and that made me feel good to see him spamming that emoji. Yeah,
this panel's fucking baddest. All right, Sinjin, who's your MVP, brother?
This one's a tough one.
Okay, I'm going to say this.
I'm not giving you the tattered lawyer, man.
That fucking takes, man.
Like, who is this guy?
And, you know, Koji.
I think Koji always wrecks it every week.
And then I think John had some very solid takes as well um and uh but i'm
getting into matt uh there were a few things that matt said i think uh usually matt goes on like
this kind of rant on repeat and so like yeah but today i mean he was really really got into things
and uh you know that passion uh that's definitely there i just really love seeing
that um and you know you know you can tell like this guy he fucks he ain't no virgin this is why
i gave it to singin he literally just said matt usually sucks but he was pretty good this week
so i'll give it to matt all right guys well we have a two-way tie between koji and sinjin and oh actually a three-way tie
koji sinjin and tatted lawyer three-way tie between these these three stellar people well
you know i said at the beginning of the mvp voting uh most times tatted lawyer wins in the back of my
head because he's just willing to add some spice to the panel diverging opinions so tatted lawyer
i'm giving you 60 seconds of FaceTime.
Congratulations on an MVP, brother.
What do you want to say?
Hey, I love it.
I love it.
Second MVP.
It feels great.
First, I want to just say to everybody who didn't understand the watch this drive joke
or reference, you have failed.
Like, go home.
Go study your internet memes.
What are you even doing here if you don't know what I'm talking about?
Second, check out Andromeda.
We're the only company that's been able to close money this quarter.
We are about to be announced as the flagship company and flagship game of a certain very, very fast-growing chain.
Announcement's coming next week.
We have our first game launching on Nintendo Switch in about two months.
So stay tuned.
Make sure you're keeping up with Swarms.
And we're just here to keep the vibes high.
Really love everybody on this space.
Despite our differences, I love all your takes.
And I think this is always so much fun.
So just happy to be here.
Happy to be surrounded by people making the industry better.
And let's fucking go.
Great to have you as always, man.
It's been a blast. since a couple of months ago,
we started getting you on the show and I have a great time every time.
Glad,
glad you do too.
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been a real fun episode i can see that uh jesse pollock is currently on a space explaining what
the hell just happened with base already 4 000 people listening to that one so maybe slide in
there and see what happened koji with the hand up. We all know I won this one. Stop the seal, Sam.
This is ridiculous.
Thanks for having me.
The only thing you have to stop
is from becoming the 51st state, Koji.
Keep it up.
Maybe soon Parallel will increase the GDP of Canada
single-handedly.
I'm looking forward to that.
We can't wait to add you, Koji.
We can't wait, my fellow future citizen i think my american
friends need to revisit that monopoly money joke once you figure it out i think it's going to hit
a little bit harder well in reality there'll probably be a territory or a colony first but
we'll we'll get you into the state yeah they got to earn their way in dude yeah real real puerto
rico energy coming out of Canada these days.
All right, guys.
It's been a great show.
Thanks so much to all my amazing panelists.
Thanks to everybody in the audience.
We love you guys.
We'll be back same time, same place, 4 p.m. Eastern every single Wednesday.
