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Gamified #115 | POKEMON SPECIAL
Recorded: April 30, 2025 Duration: 1:56:45Space Recording
Short Summary
The crypto community is buzzing with excitement as Pokemon announces its entry into the blockchain space with digital souvenirs, signaling a potential shift in the collectibles market. Meanwhile, Avalanche's partnerships and innovative projects continue to drive growth in Web3 gaming, highlighting the increasing integration of blockchain technology in mainstream entertainment.
Full Transcription
Y'all really got beat by the Wolves Dow account today.
Ah, for shame, triked AE Phil.
You tried your best.
You boys were quick.
Looks like the AVAX account snuck in there with the first two.
Better luck next time, gang.
Damn, I appreciate you guys so much.
I don't know how you do it.
You're so fast every time.
Whenever I'm late starting the space i can only
imagine the the chaos that is trying to refresh getting getting me to catch up a little bit
i love you guys man what a great day to be alive what a great day to be a gamer man
black mirror by the way has the token apparently that's crazy I'm excited for that. Koji, what are we thinking about the Black Mirror token?
There's got to be something in the works here,
since Parallel is like 80% of Black Mirror's Season 5 or whatever.
Yeah, copying us as usual.
Those guys, those motherfuckers.
No, I'm just kidding.
I mean, I think it's interesting.
Although I do remember when, was it Love, Death and Robots? Somebody, one of the Netflix cartoons launched an NFT and everyone was like, oh, this is going to be sweet. And then it's probably not going to perform super incredibly well.
It doesn't seem like the Twitter announcement really necessarily blew up.
So we'll take everything with a grain of salt.
However, I'm excited about the potential.
Nock was telling me that he's in the middle of something and might not be able to be here for the intros.
And then I told him it's Pokemon themed.
And he said, mind never mind never mind
by the way that black mirror token it's going to be the primary currency to that you get paid in
when you inflict pain upon yourself and if you don't get the reference you need to go watch the
first episode of the new season shout out out to Masochist Token.
I look forward to it as somebody who punishes himself every day by trying to talk about Web3 Gaming.
That was too real, man.
Why are we so down bad?
Can someone save our bags?
Yeah, Delb, what floor are you about to sweep?
Let me know a few minutes before you go ahead and do it.
What are we looking at, Big Dog?
Wow, Dub, Dub, AFK, sleeping at the wheel.
Oh, my bad.
I didn't know that was me.
I'm in Dubai.
It's hot here. It's great. I love you.
I love you too, dude.
Peyton, the patron of pooches. How we doing, big dog? How's my little curator at K9s?
Hey, doing great, brother. Having a lot of fun. But yeah, down bad, like Len said. But my spirits are up.
Bags are down, spirits are up.
Sometimes that's all that matters, but not always.
Not always.
Unfortunately, just found out we're going to be missing Jerry on today's episode.
Jerry, big hugs.
Looking forward to having you back next week.
It won't be the same without you.
I'm sad that Dubai and the Pokemon special are intersecting because I would have loved to have Michael from Andromeda,
the Nintendo Defendo.
It would have been amazing for today's episode.
Doug Hype also joining from Dubai.
Appreciate you coming, chilling in the audience with us, buddy.
You're the best.
And we're also missing Kevin Lambert,
who's the diehard TCG and collector fanatic. And it would have been great to have him for
today's episode as well. But that's the cost of doing business. Grateful that I'm not in Dubai
right now, as much fun as it looks like. It's awesome to not have to sit on that plane for 20
hours. But I will be flying to New York tomorrow for Farcon. So if anybody's in New York City
wants to catch up, I'll be there for 48 whole hours.
I'm very much looking forward to coming home
and sinking back into my routine,
which has been in a good spot these last
couple of days, but it's
going to be a blast to get to know the base people
a little bit better, which is a new
sector of people for me.
Tony V, I hear
you're about to launch your Farcade game, by the way.
How's she coming dude?
Oh my god it's so fun
I'm just troubleshooting
How to get it to work on my mobile device
But it totally works on the PC
And I'm here for it
I made a little endless faller
Where you fall this little blue guy
And then eventually you transform into a pizza man
And he throws pizza at the enemies to kill them
Straight out of Tony's brain And into our platform And then eventually transform into a pizza man. He throws pizza at the enemies to kill them.
Straight out of Tony's brain and into our platform.
I'm looking forward to playing it, dude.
Thanks for building something cool.
Let's get into it, fam.
From crits to crypto, this former sharpshooter has leveled up and evolved.
With a master ball mindset and a mega stone strategy,
he planted the rare seed that bloomed in a Glitter Cloud Solutions,
a consultancy super effective against the staleness of game fi.
He's got a swagger of a Salamence in the business buffs of Blissey.
It's the kill streak.
It's dove.
Jesus Christ.
Live from the top of the Burj Khalifa. I'm about to base jump off this thing.
It's a great freaking life we're living.
Dubai's been great. Everything's going good. Games are this thing. It's a great freaking life we're living. Dubai's been great.
Everything's going good.
Games are going good.
It's awesome talking about gaming with everyone.
I feel like everyone's got something coming out next month.
So it's going to be hot.
And we just got out a level up in Vegas too.
And wild card with the booth was a freaking blast, man.
It was awesome to see.
So a bunch of good stuff coming.
Let's have a good show.
What a dog Dub is, dude. being willing to fly vegas to dubai my man never never takes a rest uh good work out there dude we love you bud uh and i think that's also the only intro where i'm
gonna mention anything that's not a 151 pokemon because i don't know i don't know what the fuck
those are dude a blissey what the fuck is a blissey? I'm pretty sure I pranked myself, but I googled it.
I think it exists.
Anyway, when the metaverse needs muscle and momentum,
a legend emerges, forged in smash tournaments,
and leveled up in Web 3 war zones.
With a horn for his hype and hooves built for scaling,
this ox doesn't sleep.
He stampedes.
Call it fate, call it evolution,
but every region calls him the same.
It's Wills, the Ox, Spangler.
Yo, what's up, guys? Grateful to not be in the heat.
Holy shit, it's been the coldest it's been here in California in a while, and I am loving it.
God bless, dude. The Ox gotta cool himself down in the non-existent ponds of Los Angeles.
God bless, Good luck.
Up next, this isn't any flame trainer.
This is the Charizard of Capital, soaring over spreadsheets and torching timelines to
over-deliver.
He's juggling budgets like Voltor's with the energy of a magmar on max caffeine, plus with
Glitter Class Solutions as his guiding nine tails and his latest side quest, sparking flames
over on Farcade.
This man is a blaze that you just can't bottle.
He'll melt your motherboards and still have
plenty of PP left to play.
It's the incendiary innovator,
the human flamethrower himself.
It's Tony V.
Let's go, boys!
Stoked to be here.
Stoked that Dub's having fun in Dubai.
Stoked that everyone's launching games.
And stoked to talk about Pokemon
Had a fun time this morning
We had a bunch of people tune in and watch
People play Pirate Nation PvP this morning
That was one of the dopest things I've seen in a while
And yeah, just having a blast, man
We're living out in this Web3 world
And I'm excited to chat more
Hey, where did they watch that game, by the way?
Oh, it was on Thousands.TV.
That's right, it was!
Wow, incredibly subtle plug.
That's how you do it, ladies and gentlemen.
I think that was exhibition number 12 or something.
Congrats on getting that out, guys.
That's right, EX12.
Response seemed wonderful.
I can't believe, this is why we need Jerry.
This is why Jerry's the lifeblood of Gamified.
Zero pee-pee jokes?
Zero?
Not a single person willing to step up to the plate?
Does anybody remember that in Pokemon? Why is it
called PP? It was like how many moves
you were allowed to, how many times you were allowed
to use like Flame Wheel or whatever. It was like
15 PP.
Is that a thing that stands for something?
Yes, of course it's a thing. It's like, was it
PowerPoints or something? I don't even know what it is.
I remember SP, PP.
There was a couple of them.
Which one was Peep?
Now I have to look it up.
It's PowerPoints, and don't forget, we're always better without Jerry.
Up next, from Victory Road to Virtual Vaults,
this battle-tested trainer brought home four titles in the Fortnite League,
earning his place amongst the real-world Elite Four.
His training regimen is tugged within a Dragonite scales, and now he's pivoted from power-ups
to pixel profits, mastering NFT placement at Magic Eden like it's a PokeMart.
He's got the badges, the brains, and the battle passes.
It's knock.
All right, Sam.
That was worth it.
That was worth it.
I'm actually in the middle of farming the Elite Four.
I'm playing a FireRed ROM, so that is perfect timing.
Also, speaking of red,
here's a not-so-subtle plug.
Magic Eden now supports Avalanche.
Go check it out.
God bless.
Excited to hear the news.
Congrats.
Oh, Spang, Spang,
I'll give you an equally subtle plug.
It's about time.
I know, I know I know
yeah thanks Nock finally Jesus Christ
you've heard the legends
whispers in the tall grass of a trainer
whose bag overfloweth not just with
Pokeballs but with skate deck VHS
tapes vintage vinyls and TCG
treasures too rare to list he doesn't
just catch them all he builds the boxes they come
in he's constructed a full Elite four lineup of legendary products each more evolved than the last with
parallel sanctuary colony and wavefinder some trainers chase badges but others create leagues
it's the collector king the architect of all arenas it's koji what's up guys and yeah I've realized hearing all this Dubai stuff that like the amount of
like mental dissonance you need to have to be a founder is high I just feel like every conference
that I'm not at is completely useless like I've convinced myself like there no one needs to be
there I don't understand why anyone's there because obviously I'm not there but hopefully
I see at the next one do I'm so proud of you for finally having as much narciss But hopefully I see you at the next one. Dude, I'm so proud of you
for finally having as
much narcissism as I knew you could have one day.
Every day I woke up and I said,
one day. One day he'll get there.
And it sounds like we're quick
approaching the threshold.
Up next, this trainer's
log, the first all-canine
compendium, raising each one like
family with over 300 unique wolves.
Having evolved far beyond the average pokedex with wolf in one-handed wolves,
Dal in the other, he's crafting revolutionary products while rallying peerless pooches
into perfectly synchronized strike teams.
He's built like an arcanine, but where others chase coins, this man chases consistency,
ensuring his wolf pack's got the right skills, trained for the battles that lie ahead and always ready to evolve it's the it's time to face the fur meet the master it's the
curator of canine the patron of pooches it's peyton okalanikapov i know we can live here
yo what's up what's up guys i'm that pokemon trainer that just captures all wolf pokemon
and then you know just gets ripped at the next gym, but I'm all on theme.
When you find out normal type doesn't work against Rock and you're just absolutely
effed until you level like 74
levels above what the trainer's at. Yeah, I've
been there. I've been there. I remember.
Every few decades, an Ash Ketchum
emerges who reshapes the very fabric
of the league. Some tame dragons,
other bend time, but this one rewrote
the fundamentals of fun. Deep within the archives of game dev time, but this one rewrote the fundamentals of fun.
Deep within the archives of game dev fame, there's one name etched in golden font and glowing in
pixels. A trainer who's done it all, and now he's tossed his game shark into a new machine.
This patriarch of programming has set his sights on the Web3 region, launching Wildcard,
a real-time strategy arena where only the bold survive and every battle is broadcast live to
the multiverse on thousands.tv. You might have heard of it a couple of minutes ago plus this trainer's handing
out rare candies to the crowd with a 100 community-owned token drop so prep your potions
sync your strategy and listen closely for the prince of pixels the bard of bites the prometheus
of play it's paul bettner and i am also the Pokemon called Playzorion, according to ChatGPT,
which says, as my Pokedex entry,
that Playzorion is said to have emerged from the fusion of creativity and code
with a mind that sees possibilities in every system.
It bends probability and constructs realities.
It communicates through shimmering pulses of data and sparks innovation wherever it roams.
My AT is 65. My SP is speed is 110 and doesn't
give me a pp i don't have a pp i don't know um but anyway i look kind of like mewtwo you can
check it out it's on the thread dude play zorion is really not chat gpt's best work that's no it's
terrible absolutely terrible but i'm just gonna go with it. We're just going to ignore that Paul said he didn't have a pee-pee.
That's what it says
here. It's because
skills have pee-pee. It's like
each skill has its own amount
of pee-pee that can be
spent. I can't do this with this. Thank you for
reminding us that.
Last but not least,
this man is what happens when Charmander
level charm meets Dragonair-tier Drip.
Weighing it at a sleek 2.4 pounds, this trailblazing tail flinger is slithering straight to stardom.
So clap your claws and salute the slinky serpent of the spotlight, the little lizard legend, it's Lemz.
GM, what is good, everyone?
And yeah, all this talk of Pokemon definitely makes me want to download some ROMs.
So now I want to know what Nock's playing and give me some ROM recommendations.
We've got to rerun some of these old school ones.
I don't want to play any of the new versions.
But yeah, good to be here.
Can't wait to get into this one because I feel like this was a hot topic on the timeline of
is it all bullshit or is it actually something interesting with Pokemon on Sui?
I just need to live in a house with
Nock for like a full week and see where the fuck
he gets all this time. And Lemz, I'm adding
you to the list too, because, Jesus,
the last thing I need is somebody to
give me recommendations of 20-year-old
games I should be playing, for the love of God.
Prepare to
you threw me off about it. Prepare to ascend
to the peak of innovation with Avalanche,
the official blockchain of Gamified, with possibilities as high to the peak of innovation with Avalanche, the official blockchain gamified.
With possibilities as high as the Himalayas, Avalanche allows you to own a digital Everest where your community plants its flag and your own token fuels the innovation and the climb.
So whether you're a seasoned Sherpa or a curious climber, come explore with Avalanche and the opportunities never stop.
Discover a world where the fun never stops
and the innovation snowballs.
Sorry, I went a little out of order there.
Up next, these aren't your run-of-the-mill developers.
These are architects of growth,
building a better landscape for Web3 Gaming.
It's Game 7, the official infrastructure of Gamified.
They've got this incredible toolkit with Summon,
a super-powered magnet that keeps players hooked.
Hyperplay, your fast lane into Web3 Gaming,
making it a breeze to discover and dive into new games.
Shout out to Game 7, the infrastructure innovators
making it all come together.
And the gates are open. You can now venture into
Cosmos, teaming with Discovery,
unexplored sectors
of space-time, confront cosmic anomalies
in pulse-pounding expeditions, and witness
the evolution of photorealistic rendering that'll
redefine your perceptions of the metaverse
to acquire your access key and embark on this interstellar journey. Plot a course for the Star Atlas Discord and join the fleet of photorealistic rendering that'll redefine your perceptions of the metaverse to acquire your access key and embark on this interstellar journey plot a course for the star
atlas discord and join the fleet of the official game of gamified all right we're jumping in not
not quite with pokemon okay it's a little bit of a setup i gotta i gotta lead into it i'm sorry guys
what's the word for counter-strike having a 4.5 billion dollar skin market we all know everyone
in web 3 likes to use the Counter-Strike example of like,
see, you know, Web3 should be a thing because look at all these skins selling for all this money.
It's experienced steady growth over the years with big booms both in 2020 and then again in 2023.
Over 400 million cases are opened each year,
which contain new items causing the market cap to continually grow.
CS2 launched in September 2023, giving more momentum to the skins market despite a brief dip. In 2023, case openings alone
generated nearly $1 billion in revenue for Valve. As of today, the market cap of all items is just
over $4.3 billion. I think it actually retracted a couple days after this to like 4.3, but it's
around there. For reference, Immutable's valuation is currently $1. there for reference immutables valuation is currently 1.1
billion and arbitrums is 3.2 billion so counterstrike's cosmetic market is literally
larger than uh two of the blockchains that we have here in web3 gaming combined what's the word
for counterstrike's cosmetics being valued at 4.5 billy i'm going to paul bettner first i've been
waiting to do this the The word is inevitable.
Y'all, how long have we been talking about this?
And it's really fun to put some numbers behind it. I don't know how many times we've said it's only going to take one hit game,
one truly hit game, and we're going to be finally there.
We're going to finally make Sam's dreams come true.
And what is Sam even going to do, actually, once it's happened?
Because you can't say inevitable anymore.
But anyway, yeah, this is, I think for some of us in the industry,
kind of knew the scale of this kind of stuff already.
It's great for them to share those numbers and for that to sort of become
a little more well-known.
It's also amazing that these are cosmetics only.
This is not pay- play or pay to earn
or anything like that this is literally just people who love that game and are willing to
spend money on blingy skin so that they can feel good about playing the game all the time or just
be proud of their collection or their skins uh and yeah this just i love people seeing this, hearing this, and then thinking about how this kind of success will translate and even be amplified when it's on a blockchain.
It's coming. It's inevitable. That's my word for it.
People have asked me many times what I will do whenever the inevitability stops being in the future and is just here.
And I think that's what I'll have to tweet. I'll have to just say Web3.
How about Web3 was inevitable?
Yeah, I told
you, you fuckers.
Let's go to dub.
I was going to say, just drop the
was, bro. It's pretty simple.
But my word for this is
Empire. That's why
CSGO is built here.
It has taken them like years and years and years to build this.
This isn't something that some other, I don't even care if you're Pokemon,
you're not going to replicate these numbers that CSGO has just in a couple months from a launch, whatever your product is.
These guys have been fine tuning auning a community a product uh entire
ecosystem around this thing that works i'll even challenge paul a little bit here and say it is a
bit played earn as well there is a lot of people my friends included that are strictly trying to
increase their their total account value so that they can go sell that on the black market someday so
like it it's it'll be interesting how it rolls out but for sure csgo has built an absolute empire and
that's how they're able to do the numbers that they do empire is a great word for it i miss the
order and the rest of the hands forgive me guys i'm going to spangler and then to payton
There we go.
My word is, I'm going to pull a hyphen or not even, but origin story.
Because this is why we're here.
It's this, I've always used, and I'm sure many of you are in the same boat as me, whenever
anybody asks me what the hell I do for a living, I say, oh, do you know CSGO?
Yeah, kind of like that, but on chain. And I think it's the, what's the word?
We're looking for a killer app that replicates that CSGO feeling and that CSGO community.
And I think it's, you know, it's no wonder that, well, it is a wonder,
it's baffling that the community has been able to grow and engage and the Valve has been able to
capitalize on it in this manner. And I think that we are looking to, it's proof that we are here for
the right reasons. And there are people who want engage and wanna play and wanna have control over these assets
and care about these things enough
to make everything that we do worthwhile.
So yeah, that's my word.
Peyton, what's yours?
We're gonna cheat and pull out the Navy PMF,
Product Market Fit.
I think when it comes down to like a lot of the aspects
of what CS go to, and I've talked to Paul as well,
whenever I was working closely with him at Thousands,
was like, you know, it only takes like one game,
as Paul said, but even to take it further,
whatever, Paul, I'm quoting you a long time ago,
but like, once you see a game that is equivalent
to another game, that people are going to say,
hey, I want to play this game
and it's just as fun as the other game.
Let's see what tech stack actually wins out.
And in my opinion, as a gamer,
I'm going to pick the one that I have more control
over my assets.
And to be honest, I also think that
it's product market fit.
And with the way that we look at Web3,
I think we really like double click
into ownership away too much and like not into identity.
And I think identity for these CSGO skins
are extremely important.
It's Fortnite skins, there's all these specific ones,
to Paul's point, in terms of cosmetics.
And I agree with you, Dubb,
that there is a black market for ownership
and then there's also some gambling mechanisms within CSGO.
But we don't talk about identity at all
in terms of gamers' identities,
like on-chain or off-chain,
is one of the most important things to them.
Achievements, a whole specific thing is around them.
And a lot of these people want to buy these skins because they want to flex.
They want to do all these stuff.
But it's not so much out of a point of, like, wanting to resell them.
It's more of the identity that they have in CSGO and to their friends.
And so huge PMF and definitely should be studied.
But I feel like we've, like, beat the dead horse in terms of ownership.
We should definitely be looking into more of identity stuff.
Huge PMF, massive.
Koji, what's your word for the 4.5 billion CSGO marketplace?
Unsurprising, man.
The word is unsurprising.
This is just the power of of unbridled fandom right like uh what what causes
people to spend money on on on collectibles we see it with like baseball cards someone has bought
you know several magic cards are sold for over a million dollars even a parallel card uh masterpiece
sold for over a million dollars so it's just like i think that, you know, as more and more people get into these things, it's bound to happen.
I mean, you know, like you say, it is inevitable.
And I think that, like, it really just shows you, you know, what the possibility is, what we as a space can aim for and hopefully exceed, right?
hopefully exceed, right?
Because imagine having all of that,
but then not being sort of chained to, you know,
a single provider, a single marketplace, whatever.
Like, I think it, like, opens up a whole new world.
So, yeah, I think unsurprising is my word.
Unsurprising.
Nock, do you agree?
I do agree with unsurprising being a good word for this,
but I'll be the downer, and I'll say blinders,
as in the blinders that Valve has had to add on
the entirety of the CSGO lifecycle
in order for the market to reach the point that it did.
CSGO is great.
There are plenty of people who play the game,
want to collect skins, want to collect in-game items,
but let's not pretend that that's where the majority
of this market cap comes from.
This comes from and on the backs of a decade of illegal gambling sites
targeted towards children to get them into the CSGO box opening area.
They have a thing called float value in CSGO,
which is the wear of the skins and skins that weren't worn in-game
are worth more similar to something like a PSA-graded card in Pokemon or any other card game. So this absolutely is a speculative vehicle.
Coffeezilla did a video on this, I think it was last year, where he dove into an ongoing CSGO
marketplace war between two different companies based in the Nordics that are literally getting
to the point where they're like sending people to like protest out of one of the owner's homes to like intimidate them to shut down shop this market gets as big as
it does because valve says we don't care what happens with these assets do with it what you
will if you want to trade them on valve great if you want to go and gamble it away great we're not
going to get involved with a lot of this that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing right
it's the same reason why pokemon is as hot as it is right now,
because the Pokemon company prints a bunch of cards,
and they don't really care if it goes to scalpers or if it goes where it really goes,
whether or not it's going into the hands of fans.
I think any time you have an IP that is as strong as Counter-Strike,
you're bound to have financialization around those assets if it's allowed.
And in the case of Counter-Strike,
it has been allowed. It's the reason why people search for float value skins of 0.00, which is the equivalent of, you know, your PSA 10. It's never been worn. And it's the reason why massive
sites like CSGO Wild, spun up by FaZe Clan about a decade ago, were the target of such controversy
because it allowed for gambling of skins towards children.
I think for any game or for any product to get as big
as a $4.5 billion market cap,
it has to be equal parts truly enthusiastic fans,
people who really love the IP and care about the game,
and equal parts extraction and financialization
and pretending that the CSGO market got to where it did
without a lot of the issues that we call you know plagues to nfts i think is a little naive um yeah
it's it's blinders for sure that's how it had to happen valve had to kind of stay out of it
and let this ecosystem develop the way that it did but that's not necessarily a bad thing
it's a great take i'm
going to go to lens and then to tony but i do want to expand the conversation a little bit here i'm
also going to ask you guys over under seven billion dollar market cap for csgo skins by 2030 do we
think this is going up into the right or have we kind of hit the upper limitation of where this
could go lens over to you all right my word is surreal because i don't
know i feel like we all know csco is pretty huge but actually seeing this number when you sent me
like this uh the article or topic or whatever i was like man i can't believe it's actually that
massive we knew it was big but it's it's pretty huge so i get why koji's and like and not we're
saying unsurprising but to me it is still a little bit surreal.
And I think it shows, yeah, it's like huge demand for this game that has been around for a long time, like Dub said.
But one thing that got me thinking was like, is this a little bit like our low float, high FDV token launches we have?
Because we know that all these skins are not being traded actively.
And like they say, approximately like 80% just sit in users' inventory
and never get used.
So like, is it an accurate representation of the market cap?
I think regardless, you know, yes or no, it's still a really impressive number.
But it was just one of those things that, you know,
I started thinking about to be the devil's advocate and the Debbie Dowder here
of like, is it really that massive?
Because there's
going to be not that much liquidity if people actually started to uh want selling want to start
selling them um but regardless of that i still think it's going to be over by 2030 because it's
continuing to grow cs2 only came out what like less than two years ago and we saw cs1 have been
around for like over a decade so i do think think there's definitely still more life in the tank,
and it looks like it's going to keep going up and to the right for a while.
Tony V, what's your word, and do you see this going to $7 billion by 2030?
My word is cha-ching and absolutely.
Yeah, man, I think that this style of entertainment is only gonna increase uh some of us on the on
the panel here are friends with a guy named mylan who runs a company called box.gg and this he might
be aside from paul the smartest human i've ever met in my life dude's wild he's like 20 he's like
a 25 year old genius i love him too man yeah yeah he's fucking genius but his whole business is this
style of
Entertainment if you want to call it that people could show up and they pay money to rip random packs of Pokemon cards And soon CS go skins or maybe now CS go skins in like a blind box style way digitally
And I'm not I don't work for my own by the way
I just like him a lot and and the data that he shares with me is that like his customers say that they feel better when they're spending, they're happier when they're
spending more money on their, on his site because they, they truly view it as a form of entertainment.
Um, and you know, whether or not that's like black mirror, sick, you know, level of capitalism,
uh, it said, it says something about the power of this, uh, this model. And I only think, you know, I have a nine-year-old who gets more joy out of spending Robux than opening Christmas presents.
And so I only see it increasing, this idea that digital ownership, digital items, and all of the mechanisms around getting things randomly and via games of chance are only going to increase.
And I actually, I don't think it's a terrible thing.
I think it's on us as parents to make sure that we aren't letting our kids become addicted
to gambling.
But I do think that entertainment has changed intrinsically and the way that people consume
media and also extract value from the media they're consuming is dramatically different.
And I think that it's good for people of all ages to be exposed to this type of financialization, to be frank.
Very interesting take. Nock, I'm going to you. Are we going beyond $7 billion here by 2030?
I don't think so. I'm going to go the under, but I'll say it with this caveat. I also don't think
the total market cap drops all that
much i think that the market cap of csgo is probably going to be pretty steady for the next
decade or so i think one of the things that you're starting to find with long-standing ip is the
longer that ip is there the more financialization is associated with that ip the more loyal people
are to spending in in around that ip. So in my case, it's Pokemon
TCG. I collect a whole ton of it, been collecting it my entire life. As I've become older, I'm
definitely spending more. And it seems like more and more people are also doing that. I would
imagine the same holds true for Counter-Strike. If you've already spent thousands of dollars in
your Counter-Strike inventory, you're probably going to continue to do it. But I worry, or my assumption would be that they're probably pretty close
to the number of people that are willing to spend that much for this long,
given that they've just seen some of their highest player counts
over the course of the last 12 months.
So I think it's a growing game.
There's obviously a lot going on in that ecosystem,
but to almost double you know, double,
I think it's pretty insane. A $7 billion market cap for any game asset would be absolutely ridiculous. I just don't see it happening, but I do see it staying pretty steady between that
$4 and $5 billion mark. Paul Bettner, do you? Well, so first of all, I think it's all super cute
that you guys are talking about timelines like decades when we all know that there's an AI apocalypse called the singularity that's coming probably before 2030 at this point.
So like everything's going to infinity or zero or whatever.
But let's pretend that that's not the case and we're just living a normal life for the next 10 years.
life for the next 10 years. I think it does have a lot further to run. I remember the last time I
I think it does have a lot further to run.
looked at the Pokemon IP, I want to say it is the most valuable IP in the entire world, by the way,
and I want to say it was like 25 billion, but that number sounds too small to me right now.
So it is, you know, especially when you have a game that has consistently been shepherded by its team to this evergreen status
um you know i kind of it's like the way i feel about minecraft even though i was initially so
skeptical of microsoft acquiring that brand and taking it over but like they have shown that they
are gonna take good care of it and that they're just gonna allow that audience that that game to
find new audiences as new kids grow up and discover it for the first time i think that's the thing we
take for granted, right?
Like, we're all, like, older and we don't realize, like, yeah, there are new generations
discovering Counter-Strike every day for the first time.
And for them, it's all new.
And a new opportunity for them to spend thousands of dollars on their favorite skins as well.
So let's see what happens.
I think if it was more of a cyclical inventory of assets, like it was easier to trade them
than it is currently of having to
sell an account on the black market, then I could see it, you know, that would be a different model
and maybe not. But if they continue to have it be like my skins are my skins, and there's not
really a way for me to take money out of that economy easily. Yeah, I think it could accumulate
$7 billion of revenue, no problem. The last thing I wanted to say is, it's kind of like echoes what tony was saying um and uh you know really
kind of we all said this in some ways but i think the thing we haven't experienced yet is the
amplification effect of web3 technologies applied to this level of success and it's why i just think
every time we talk about are we there yet are we not there yet it gets back to what payton was
saying like there's just there's a very easy way to answer that question. You don't
need to look at market cap. You don't need to look at anything else. If we're gauging whether
web three or crypto gaming is there yet, just ask a simple question. Is there a game in your
steam library that you're playing more? That's a web three game that you're playing more in your
spare time than any web two game. No, no, we're not there yet so once that happens and then
you apply the the underlying capabilities of a blockchain of crypto of web 3 technology smart
contracts etc i don't know that we even can wrap our heads around what that means and i will say
that for folks in the game industry who even are not in Web3 and are looking at this, they're wondering, like, how is it that this part of the industry still seems to be succeeding, actually, able to raise money, able to continue going, even despite all the insane market fluctuations and everything else?
I think it's because the really smart money and the smart investors, including our own paradigm, understand this concept.
They understand that really the results haven't even come in
yet on this specific bet and you just need that one game to come out and to be a hit enough game
then multiplied or amplified by these technologies and then we'll see what happens but i think you
know looking at something like the success of counter-strike and knowing that it is possible
obviously for a web 3 game to eventually be that level of hit.
And then thinking about what that means when amplified by the things that a blockchain adds,
like, I just, yeah, I can't wait.
So, inevitable.
The jury is still out, says Paul Bettner.
Knock has the hand up.
I'll give you a quick take.
Then we're going to move on to Pokemon.
Yeah, just one really quick clarification here.
We are talking about the
market cap of existing assets not revenue generated yes exactly i think that those are
yeah those are two entirely independent things i think valve can have a revenue of 10 or 15
billion dollars and still not have that market cap of those assets exceed seven bill because most of
the assets in csgo are utterly worthless you spend spend $100 on a case, you get a $2 asset out.
Like, the math there just doesn't make sense to me.
So I understand and I agree.
Like, CSGO is going to continue to smash revenue every single year,
I think, for the next 10 years.
It just continues to get more popular.
But in order for that price of these assets,
not only does, like, the old class of assets need to maintain,
and we've seen this in, like, comparables with Pokemon TCG,
where there are massive price fluctuations with assets that are like ten thousand dollars in one
year and trading at like forty four hundred dollars the following year that's going to be
an issue for the overall market cap and most of the assets that they dump in on a new basis
new skins aren't going to be worth nearly the amount of money that people think they will be
because they're newer skins so i agree heavy like they're
going to smash revenue but i do think market cap of the assets is different i'm gonna let you guys
lean on a secret i would rather play candy crush for 20 hours than cs go for 20 hours uh that's
just me though uh shout out to them for making a billion dollars my words for that if we if we had
the ability to kick the host of a show off that might happen right now my word for this one would be inflated because i think it's just a bunch of shit sitting there
with like a 50 000 price tag that absolutely nobody will ever buy but it does sound sexy
4.5 billion i do think it's going to go up from here we're moving on though big deal little deal
no deal pokemon coming to sui there was a bunch of speculation whenever somebody uncovered Pokemon Home had a privacy policy with ties to Sui.
We also, back in 2023, uncovered that they had a job listing for the Pokemon company for something that didn't necessarily sound like blockchain, but included blockchain in the description.
That turned out to be actually correct.
It was basically confirmed a couple of days ago that Pokemon put out announcements that you could collect medals in digital souvenirs, which could be traded with other players.
They seem to be intentionally avoiding language like NFTs and digital collectibles and going with the new name, quote unquote, digital souvenirs.
Some people think it's huge to see Pokemon integrating into the blockchain in some form.
Others say it's a nothing burger and not much different than the secondary Counter-Strike skin market, which is why I wanted to bring that up first.
Using the blockchain as a ledger for receipts on trades.
Where do you sit on this big deal, little deal, or no deal for Pokemon coming into Web3 and suey?
Tony V, over to you, bud.
I am ever the optimist when I hear stuff like this, and I think it's a huge deal.
I think that Nintendo is real slow moving on stuff
until they're not.
And so, you know, I think that you can look at what they did
or didn't do with mobile games for years and years.
And then, you know, over the course of a couple of years,
they released just, you know, a handful of bangers
that are, you know, to my knowledge,
still making a whole bunch of money
and being played by lots and lots of people.
And so my hope is that we see a similar pattern here where they see some level of success
or whoever's responsible for caring about this initiative is both important and happy with the results.
And we see continued expansion into the space.
But I feel like it's a huge deal.
I hope you're right.
Wild Paul, what do you think?
So first of all, I just want you to know, Sam, that I do hold myself back sometimes.
It took everything for me to not interrupt at the end of the last segment when you said that you thought it was inflated.
But now I'm actually going to use that as a way to talk about what you're talking about now, but tie it together.
together okay so the reason that i just i'm like oh my gosh seriously so that four and a half
Okay, so the reason that I just, I'm like, oh my gosh, seriously?
billion dollars that is the majority of those people are exactly like you said giving that
money over to counter-strike with no expectation of return they're not looking for their skin to
get more valuable they're not looking to cash it out in the future they spent that four and a half
billion dollars just because they fucking love counter-strike and they want that skin to show off and to feel good about the this
game that they love that they now have a new collectible and like isn't this what we want
in the first place so when we like we talk about valuations and we talk about fdvs and we get all
hung up on this and we are only looking through it through that lens not only i know we all are
on both sides of this but we tend to in web 3 look at it through the lens not only i know we all are on both sides of this but we tend
to in web 3 look at it through the lens of that's money in extracted value out that's fdv that means
i can sell that right now and turn it around to a profit but and and then when we look and we're
like yeah well that's not true for counter-strike skins then that's a negative no it's not it's the
biggest positive ever the fact fact that four and a half
billion dollars went into that economy with no potential of upside. That's insane to me.
And so when we look at Pokemon, it's the same thing. Any beloved IP, but especially these two
that we're talking about, is going to have that feature to it that is effectively foreign to existing Web3 products. I mean,
it's just so rare, which is I purchased into that product. I bought that token. I acquired that NFT,
whatever it is, because I just want it. Like we can all sit here and claim that that's true for
some NFTs in our collection, and maybe it is for some of you, but I've been in this space long
enough. I know who we all are. And I know that
the thing that is generally we're talking about when we talk about these assets that we love
is specifically when we put on our Web3 Gamer hat is I love the idea that this thing might
appreciate in value. I mean, I might also love it because it's a cool looking picture, but I love it
as an asset. I think when you take that and apply it to a project an ip or assets that people
just inherently love anyway it is the ultimate utility and pokemon comes with that automatically
more than any other ip or project i can think of so yeah this this is you know this could be that
moment i i don't know though because it really depends on how much the Pokemon company leans into these things at all.
They might just be using it as another buzzword or just a thing to experiment, and we might not see them trying to move the needle in Web3 at all.
So the jury's out on that. products, when they begin to show up, that have things in them that people want, where the core utility is fun, or just being a collector of a beloved IP, that's a whole nother level that we
truly just actually haven't gotten to yet in this space. Great take, Paul. I think we might be
fundamentally disagreeing on the definition of that topic. I'm pretty sure that $4.5 billion was the total value of the listed assets
on marketplaces,
not the total amount of revenue
that's ever been generated by selling skins.
But everything else that you said,
I agree, and I think it's spot on.
Let's go to Koji.
I didn't even know that.
That probably means that that number
is actually far larger than,
which is, I guess, what Nock was saying earlier.
Thank you for that clarification. Now I'm going to go try to figure out if I can find what the real number is actually far larger than that which is i guess what knock was saying earlier thank you for that clarification now i'm gonna go try to figure out if i can find what the real number is or ask
ai to get it for us well i can tell you paul that i saw in 2023 that valve made a billion dollars
from selling cases alone and that was just in 2023 yep koji over to you
yep koji over to you
i couldn't unmute fast enough there uh since singen's not here i'm just gonna call you all
uh peons and gutless wanks pokemon's bad game so i don't really care about this topic uh this is
terrible no no i i'm kidding i i also want to appreciate like paul for for calling everybody out there. Like even when he calls everybody out,
he does it in a nice way. He's like, I know you, you know, I see you,
you motherfuckers, but he doesn't have the motherfuckers part,
which I appreciate. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's,
it's obviously a big deal whether or not it like turns into anything material,
you know, we'll know we'll see but like
i bring up the the pepsi mics thing a lot on this on the show because it's like one of the most
hilarious uh missteps in in like my web3 memory um and this could easily be that but but the fact
that somebody like uh nintendo is willing to take that chance with an IP like Pokemon, they weren't like, hey, let's make up a new IP, you know, and like feed it to these Web3 idiots and see what happens.
And then we'll like onboard our real shit.
It's like Pokemon is like one of the most important things there is. And they know that those people have a rabid,
you know, it's like rabid collectors for whatever reason,
even though the game's bad.
And so I think that like,
like anyone who says anything other than big deal is crazy.
Like, obviously let's wait and see what happens.
And again, it could go horribly wrong,
but it's a massive deal.
One way or the other, it is indeed a massive deal.
And yeah, even when Paul's calling me a dumbass,
he's still really nice about it.
I appreciate that.
Let's go over to Knock.
Knock. Knock.
Oh, dude, I did not hear my name there at all.
Okay.
Obviously, this is a massive deal. we sort of had a sidebar about
this in the wolves and friends chat but um i think that this is a big deal that pokemon is willing to
even look at what's going on here um i think that that is like objectively true i agree with koji
anybody who thinks any different uh i won't be as nice as paul you're a fucking idiot um that being said i also think
it's borderline idiotic to think that pokemon is going to do anything at all that jeopardizes tcg
as its collectible brand and the collectible collectible vertical that they have pokemon
tcg is like an unlimited money printer that runs 24 7 every single day of the year for the last 25 years,
and it only becomes stronger literally every single day. The last three sets have become
harder and harder to get. The MSRP is being tripled now. Even if you're buying Japanese
sets, it's spilling into Japanese and Korean and Chinese sets. It's not even just English anymore. So they have a lot
to lose by putting together a product that is meant to be a collectible that competes against
TCG. It's part of the reason why I think they launched Pocket, which effectively just gives
people a way to, you know, collect TCG cards, but digitally. And that's been a moneymaker for them
since they've launched it. I think it's a's a big deal though that they're willing to play with this technology and get a sense for what is actually
happening in blockchain it's tied to pokemon home which is a pretty big piece of the pokemon
universe if you play the games it's part of the way that you can sort of store pokemon in like a
massive you know cloud version of the pc that you have in games that allows you to transfer Pokemon from game to game, generation to generation. It is a pretty integral part of what they do at Pokemon,
at least the Pokemon company from the game side of things. And to me, that signals that they
actually have some relative confidence in this implementation and the willingness to associate
the games themselves with blockchain, I think is a massive risk that they probably don't
take if they're not serious about it working out. I also think that the way that they're
introducing it with badges is, you know, pretty low risk, right? It's just a couple of, you know,
here's a few badges that'll make you feel good about some things that you did in game. And
if this works out, we'll continue to expand it in fine ways. But I don't think that this ever
becomes a competitor to TCG.
I think that there's too much of a risk there.
So big deal that they came in, bigger deal that they're associating it with the actual
games themselves, because I think that's their most important IP.
Medium deal about the actual way that they're integrating blockchain today, but could be
something pretty big in the future.
Man, it's crazy to hear any part of this
could possibly be not a big deal like i feel like in 2023 whenever we saw that job posting it was
like if pokemon farted in our general direction we would have been like this is massive we're
all going to the moon buy everything especially sui uh because they're the chain that's related
to it lems i'm going to you then we're tagging in Peyton.
All right, I'm going to say it's a big deal now and then has the potential to turn into a massive deal,
but also has the potential to turn into a little deal.
It kind of depends on what their implementation looks like.
We have, I don't know, it seems pretty scarce on details at this point.
I like what Nock said there.
It's nice that they're kind of dipping their toes in
with the whole metals side of things. I agree with theck said there. It's nice that they're kind of dipping their toes in with the whole metals side of things.
I agree with the whole TCG.
They've got to protect that market.
I think this is something that's really often overlooked in Web3 as a whole,
is that when you create a secondary market for things, even if you're making trading fees,
you need an exponential increase in volume.
Just for context, if you want a five percent royalty or trading fee you need to have 20x the volume to generate just as much money as you would by
selling packs to each person individually and not letting them be able to trade them so that's
something that you know it's hard to see what they would do there and like i don't think they're going
to expect to see that kind of an increase in volume um and something peyton mentioned earlier
as well is something that i've talked about a lot is like blockchain for player identity and i think this is
where it could be really interesting what they got with the medals um but i'm kind of surprised
they weren't going to they're talking about them being tradable and not soul bound because like for
me i always think like achievements should be kind of soul bound it's like you achieve that
and then you have other things that are like assets in the game or whatever it might be that
you can trade with one another so it'll be interesting to see how this actually looks like
in a few weeks months whatever and that's kind of the question i'll say i'll throw across to the
panel of like what would be a meaningful good integration that doesn't make this just feel
like a nothing burger when we look back at this in six to 12 months because we've seen you know
big brands come in here and then not
really do a whole lot of anything and so i really want it to be a massive deal but i'm still like
a little bit skeptical to see just because they are such a massive brand and they don't want to
hurt their own reputation but so far i'm still going to say it's a big deal great expansion of
the topic would love to hear what a meaningful integration might look like let's go over to
payton then we'll circle back to knock and put the hand up after i mentioned uh nintendo flagellating Great expansion of the topic. Would love to hear what a meaningful integration might look like. Let's go over to Peyton.
Then we'll circle back to Knock and put the hand up after I mentioned Nintendo flagellating in our direction.
A massive deal, obviously.
And I just want to take that.
I put my hand up whenever Knock was talking about these cards are very hard to obtain.
Me and Blake were hosting the Thousand Stream this past Saturday.
And one of the ideas that we had was, like, oh, let's have a Pokemon battle, right?
Let's have a Pokemon battle where we open up a pack and then we fight similar to what we did at Wolf's Den.
And I checked five stores.
Blake checked four.
And they were all sold out.
And I was like, what the frick?
Like, what's going on here?
Like, we're trying to think about a different segment.
We just ended up doing another thing. But I agree with knock it's honestly massive and i think a
lot of people that are not in that ecosystem don't really know how massive it is i gotta look a little
bit of taste because i've only like played like pokemon uh back when i was younger it wasn't like
an ip that like i really stuck with like a lot of people that are uh in this specific uh space um
but i think it's massive too and to Lem's point in terms of like the
Soulbound Badges versus the
the tradable ones.
I'm very interesting, interested to see how they implement the tech.
But they're in the realm that like EVE Frontier is in, MapleStory is in and Pokemon is in.
Now they can just do whatever the frick they want.
Right.
They've been doing this for a very long time and they're going to implement it.
However, that's very unique into the ways and that's what like
i want to see is like what a big specific company that only they can do to pull off to do right like
maple stories pulling like decades of experience into like a um which out child to avalanche in
terms of like launching an avax l1 but also doing a whole bunch of like tokenomics is different.
Their tokenomics is different from everybody that we've seen, right?
And Pokemon, they're going to just do what they freaking want.
And it would be really cool.
Kind of like what Reddit was a few years ago,
if anybody remembers like the Reddit avatars.
Again, it came down to like identity and stuff too.
So I'm excited to see what they implement for it.
But massive deal, honestly, massive. Man, I had a similar but different experience.
Somebody highly recommended the Watchmen original like comic books, if anybody doesn't know that
movie. And so I was looking for that book and I was able to find it at a local comic book store.
And I noticed as I was checking out that they had 151 packs like behind the cashier. I was like yo I like a good dopamine hit like just like the rest of us why not you
know let's get a couple of packs and they were like they're 14 dollars each and I was like that's
fucking insane dude that's absolutely crazy when I was a kid they were like four bucks and I'm sure
it's like aftermarket whatever because they can only get like 100 packs each or something but
it's incredible what they've managed to do with the aftermarket like tcg uh with these new packs i don't pay my
i i will i will add sam so they're like my last store was like it was a wizard's asylum it was
like a card deck specific for game shop which love that place um lost a lot of money there
uh but like i would say that oh like they did have a pack, but, like, oh, like, we only have, like, our pack that has, like, you know, 20 packs.
And I was like, I love Paul, but I don't love Paul that much, right?
Dang, man.
I didn't know there was a limit.
Okay.
Yeah, well, Paul, it was, like, 250 bucks.
You know what I mean?
What am I going to say?
You're a cheap date, dude.
That's Daddy Paul saying invoice me.
Yeah, seriously.
Just bear market stuff, man.
Just bear market stuff.
I was like, nah, I'm not going to do that.
But anyways, I just wanted to agree with you, Sam.
It is crazy how expensive these things are.
It was wild.
I was like, does that booster pack come with like 90 cards
because i'm pretty sure it's still like six uh knock over to you buddy uh you want to know why
that pack is 14 sam because people aren't buying it with no expectation of return they're purchasing
151 at 14 a pack because they expect that pack to go up and that's why they'll keep it sealed
it's the same reason why scarlet and violet Set, which is in the same series of 151, is going for $6 because there's nothing good in it, and people will rip it just to have some fun.
Okay, the question was, what would a good integration look like?
And I thought about this for the last couple days.
I really can only come to two conclusions that I think are exciting. The first is promo cards having some sort of like
association, whether that be through NFC chip that associates them with something on a blockchain,
like an ongoing ledger that this is verified. One of the things that we're starting to see in the
Pokemon TCG like hobby is there is a set of Pokemon cards from 2016 in Japan. They were
released at Pokemon centers that are called the poncho pikachu it's effectively just pikachu wearing a rikwaza skin or a gyrdo skin or magikarp skin they are
insanely expensive in psa 10s like starting at 4500 for the worst one some of them go as high
as 10 grand a piece and what you're starting to see is a lot of counterfeits flooding the market
and that trade shows and things i was at a trade trade show on Friday in Toronto and there was actually cops at a
booth for a guy who was selling a bunch of fake PSA 10 ponchos.
So I think that that's a really interesting way.
These aren't cards that are in packs.
These are cards that come through some separate mechanism, right?
So in the case of this, you actually had to go to the store.
You had to make this purchase.
They handed you a sealed promo card.
For me, that makes sense.
Authenticating actual like special edition cards that don't come out of packs. Really interesting
way to do it. Obviously an active problem in the TCG market. It also sort of associates with the
way that they're handing out these badges, which is go to a physical location, earn a badge, and
that's your NFT. That's the way that they're attempting to do this with home um the second piece is i'm gonna out myself here when i was in high school i played uh i played competitive like
actual like pokemon where you would have to go and train pokemon it's like a pain in the ass
you have to breed pokemon to have certain traits and certain natures and you have to train them a
certain way so that their individual effort values are reached it's a whole fucking thing the point is one of the issues that they have in the pokemon competitive community is you know when
you're building a team part of the excitement about building a team is the way that you built
that team so did you raise it yourself did you train it yourself did you you know get it from
somebody else is it out on loan but with a lot of the duplication glitches that exist in these games,
it's really difficult to verify whether or not,
you know, you've actually earned that Pokemon
through authentic measures.
One of the things that they could do this
is similar to the way we've seen some teams implement NFTs
in blockchain games today,
which is if it reaches a certain rarity, it gets minted.
In the case of Pokemon, it could just be,
hey, if you hit a level 100, it has six perfect IVs,
you've trained it, that is now a blockchain-minted asset
through Pokemon Home.
They've already got the infrastructure in place for this.
It's just another layer of authentication.
I don't see this doing anything other than solving real-life issues
that currently exist in the Pokemon market,
which is the reason why Eve and MapleStory are so exciting,
because those games aren't just those games brought to blockchain,
now we'll throw in some NFTs,
they're brought to blockchain with the hope and intention
to help remedy and solve issues that exist in both of those titles
in traditional Web 2 markets.
So if Pokemon's going to have the same success,
they need to target actual issues rather than creating something.
Because they have a graveyard of projects which nobody asked for, nobody wanted, they delivered to us anyway, and they're all fucking dead.
They're incredibly defensive with their IP, except for when it's them fucking up their IP.
And then they're real loose with shitty implementations of that product.
So I hope it's not that. I hope it's leverage to actually solve issues within the current Pokemon ecosystem.
That is a great reminder how exciting MapleStory and EVE Online are as proper Web 2 integrations
and Web 3. Because whenever you talk to the team or listen to them speak, they always
talk about how the core game will be improved with blockchain implementation. And that's
why they care so
much about it and they're also taking their time because they don't need to rush it out people are
already enjoying the web 2 version of it that's revenue positive and all that great stuff let's
go over to wild paul yeah i just wanted to double down on what nox said i am as we've all talked
about before not the biggest pokemon fan i have to out myself and not because of the ip i love the
ip so dearly i mean it's a huge inspiration for wildcard itself but just you know kind of like
knock was saying like their efforts to create wonderful games in the ip have always fallen
short of what i feel like the potential is there's been a couple of shining stars in the past and
games that we've loved on prior consoles but it still just feels like a massive missed opportunity for something that is
such a beloved property in the world.
But there's a, I don't know if this is a silver lining or not,
but I personally would, because of that,
and because it seems like maybe they don't care that much,
like their digital implementations of Pokemon are never the thing that they
seem to put all of their effort into like i kind of wish that they would just throw caution to the wind and like basically
go create a new online digital playable version of pokemon kind of like they're like another
hearthstone type of spin on that that was only web 3 purely web 3 all of its internal assets were nfts
and just see what happens like because it doesn't
seem like anything they do can really harm the brand anyway like they've clearly sort of built
up a resilience against that over the years and i personally wish they would just do that i think
it would answer a lot of our questions if we saw them just like going for it and doing a fully
tradable digital nftized version of just their mainline tradable
card game uh but they they won't but that that's kind of what i wish that's the next question that
i actually have for you guys and we also have a great question from trevor in the audience around
web 3 pokemon adaptations or or swings that people are taking towards this sort of monster capturing
genre. But along the lines of what Paul's talking about, I wanted to ask you guys to
over under $4.5 billion, like the CSGO marketplace, if Pokemon was to properly integrate
these digital collectibles, allow them to be freely tradable on an auction house-like market.
Do we think that this would surpass it?
And we had this actually a pretty lively debate about it in Wolves and Friends yesterday.
I'm going to send it over to Lem's first.
I feel like it's got to be over.
Like as much as Counter-Strike is pretty massive and has like a huge cult following, I would
say Pokemon is a hell of a lot more global
and widely accessible, especially now
as they have mobile versions and that sort of thing.
I feel like the collectibles there would exceed it,
but maybe not quickly.
I think it was Nox at the start,
or maybe it was Dub saying, if a new game comes out,
they can't expect these kinds of numbers
and a market cap that big within, like, a couple of months
or something like that.
Like, CSGO has curated this over years and years.
So I do think it would take a while to grow there.
So I guess depending on the timeline, but I would say over,
just based on, yeah, the sheer size of the IP.
Knock has the hand up next over to you, bud.
Yeah, I'm going to share the same opinion i shared in that chat
uh way under no chance it surpasses uh for a couple of reasons the biggest of which is
counter-strike is as big as it is because of 25 years of training user behavior to understand how
to interact with those assets pokemon tcg is as big as it is because of 25 years training user behavior to understand how to interact with those assets. Pokemon TCG is as
big as it is because of 25 years training user behavior to how to interact with those assets and
those packs and the speculation that goes within that. Pokemon, the entire TCG market is valued
depending on where you're looking, somewhere between like 12 and like 14 billion dollars.
That includes things like Magic and Pokemon and now you're starting to see things
like one piece pop off so there's obviously uh an incredible amount of value in the tcg market but
if you assume that pokemon is half the overall size of the tcg market combined then they're
barely ahead of csgo as it is now so to the idea that they could introduce another speculative asset that would require training brand new user behavior and would come even close to having a similar market cap to CSGO in the next five years, to me, just seems unfeasible.
It feels like you would have to sort of drain off some of the people who are training in or speculating on the TCG market.
You're seeing it here, right?
Like the market for pokemon
collectibles is a lot of the same people who are on this panel it's a lot of the same people who
operate within this ecosystem it's why things like courtyard are absolutely fucking exploding
and they're not exploding because it's an nft version of a pokemon card it they're exploding
because i have a way to now offload crypto to gamble on collecting pokemon cards and then when
i get something good i'm going to extract the card because that's what I actually want.
I want the physical thing.
I think in another alternative universe where Pokemon hasn't yet introduced
the collectible, absolutely.
It would destroy Counter-Strike.
But in this universe, the one that we're all operating in,
there's a multi-billion dollar market cap for Pokemon TCG that only continues
to grow.
And I do not think,
I just can't see the business behind putting that market at risk.
Fair enough. Johnny, you thought with a great comment. He says, on the topic of Pokemon cards,
my kids' elementary school just sent out a newsletter to parents talking about limiting
trading at school to certain days and specified times. They need adults to chaperone any trading times
because the kids are absolute sharks.
All the kids are bringing their binders together.
Decades later, it's still hype.
Thanks for sharing that, Johnny.
Awesome to hear.
I can't believe that 20 years later,
that's still happening.
Like, I remember that as a kid,
and then the internet came along.
We were like, oh, it was nice while it lasted.
It's still, Pokemon somehow brought it back from the dead, man.
Knock you on mute.
Yeah, it's worse now, is what I was going to say.
Like, infinitely worse than when we were kids.
You used to have, like, scrambles.
When you were a kid, you'd be showing somebody your deck, they'd come up, they'd smack all your fucking cards out of their hand, they'd scream scramble, and people would steal your shit.
But the thing is, your entire handful of cars were worth like $8.
Today, you know, every set has a car that is worth, you know, 50 to 100 bucks,
and kids are pulling them at school and getting shit stolen by older kids.
It's fucking 25 years later.
It hasn't changed.
If anything, it's gotten worse.
That's another reason why I just don't see this happening.
Yikes, dude.
Scramble's a new
term for me i'm glad i didn't have to live through that one personally let's go over to paul bettner
that will tag in big spang okay when when i'm trying to imagine the possibility of something
that doesn't exist yet and that's kind of hard to see the path to like well how's it going to happen
i i tend to like jump over that this is not going to be a surprise to anyone i tend to jump over
that part where all the hard work it has to happen and and all. This is not going to be a surprise to anyone. I tend to jump over that part where all the hard work has to happen and all these terribly risky things have to be
figured out and tried. And I go straight to the like, yeah, but imagine if that did happen,
how would it feel? And is that feeling that that thing that I can like imagine in my brain,
is it a good feeling? Is it something that I could really imagine everyone wanting and wanting to be
a part of? And when I do that exercise for here, and I try to imagine exactly what you guys were just talking about,
the joy that is still present that I got to see with my own kids when they first got into Pokemon just a couple years ago,
was at least as much as my own joy when I and me and my friends first encountered it.
friends first encountered it and like nothing has changed about that and what i also then see
And nothing has changed about that.
in their lives as kids growing up in today's world is that in any case when they can have that thing
that they're interacting with be online be digital be something they can share with their friends
even if they're not over at each other's houses or in the playground together they will choose that
they will they will choose virtual sneakers and want money for that
over real sneakers in a you know in the in the real world so when i think about that and i think
okay it will so if you combine those two factors then i get back to the word inevitable again like
i don't know how long it's going to take them to figure out or someone to figure out but the future
where that joy and that that inherent desire to own the Pokemon cards
that I care about in my collection that you guys all probably have in your closets, I think we're
being old men when we're like, yeah, but that's just the physical thing. People wouldn't have the
same kind of feeling of connection to a digital asset that is provably on a blockchain and is
something they own and is an actual unique thing that like what an nft allows a digital asset to be i think that's just us being old i think that in the future a kid who
if if again there's a lot of ifs a lot of things that a brand like pokemon would need to make true
to be in that world but that world is definitely coming because the convenience the connectivity
all the things that that experience becoming
digital add to it they're all just better there's there's no going back from that world that we're
heading into where everything is that way eventually so in my mind for that reason like
yeah i don't know you know it all depends on on how much risk the pokemon company is willing to
take and how much they're willing to invest in this and how fast they're willing to go
and it might be that they're not the leaders, that someone else does this
and actually leapfrogs them. And then they're playing catch up with some other TCG that got
it right before they did in the world of NFTs and real digital assets. We'll see, or maybe they will,
but somebody is going to do it. That's the completely inevitable part. And then they'll
they'll do it too because they'll either be that leader or they'll be in catching up to him dude
do it too, because they'll either be that leader or they'll be in catching up to him.
that would make me so insanely happy to watch all of the world's biggest trading card games try to
catch up to somebody that just beat them to the punch by doing it properly let's go over to spangler
and by the way we've all seen that kind of thing before haven't we oh maybe a couple of times
already uh let's go over to spangler thenton. Okay, for risk of sounding like an idiot, can you just restate the over-under again?
Are we talking about Pokemon collectibles generally?
Can you just restate the question one more time?
Yeah, we're pegging it to $4.5 billion, which is the Counter-Strike market cap.
It is a little bit opaque sort of in what exactly is enabled. I don't know that
these home collectibles are going to be things that are sellable on an open market, but certainly
there will be a black market for them because they're tradable. And then of course, we're not
really sure where they end and begin besides right now their trophies or whatever, but you can kind
but you you can kind of embellish just tell us what you're thinking like what version of it would
of embellish. Just tell us what you're thinking, like what version of it would land where?
land where yeah so i'm gonna say under for a couple of reasons um i've kind of been sitting
in the wings just listening to all the poké notes go really ham on this because i am not one of them
and i like learning from them um and the one thing that i really just can't get over with these home collectibles versus
something like CS skin or the example Paul used of like digital, uh, like digital sneakers
is that these items aren't things that you're like out and about using.
Like they're not in, they're not like displayed in the gameplay experience in a meaningful way and i think that
that's what the that's what the real value of the cs go skin is oh not only did you just get
clipped from across the map you got clipped with a ten thousand dollar skin there's no way in hell
you're going to come back from that and that feeling of walking around and loading into lobbies for hours and hours on end is part of the value of these skins that we don't really talk about.
What I worry about, and also CSGO is an innately collaborative and multiplayer experience.
Pokemon is as well, but in a very different way where you spend, because that's
how I've experienced Pokemon. I never got into the TCGs. I never got super into competitive.
I beat the Elite Four and then I put down the game nine times out of 10. And nobody else knew
that I was lying about my level 100s and my shinies, but me, and that's how I liked it because I got so much clout on the playground.
Um, exactly as, uh, kind of people have been saying, I just don't really see that the way
that they're rolling it out now, at least how they're approaching it currently being
able to surpass what CSGO has been, has been, has been building because the entire experience
that the skins play into the joy of that experience
in a way that these collectibles,
and it seems like Pokemon is approaching these collectibles,
doesn't really maximize on it.
I love the idea of Lil Spang just lying about all his Pokemon
and then he's like, oh, sorry guys, can't bring it to school,
lost my Game Boy, can't find it, can't find it. Let's go to Nock and then to Lems to tie this one up.
I actually agree with everything that Paul kind of just outlined.
And I think one of the things that we're missing in this conversation is what Paul outlined
is exactly why the CSGO market is fundamentally different than what we're talking about with
Pokemon.
CSGO from the outset delivered digital assets.
They gave you something.
They told you this is the way that you're going to interact with them.
They didn't care about how people iterated on those assets and the way that you can interact with them outside of the Valve ecosystem. They didn't have something physical.
They didn't train behavior on a different class of product. And I think that that's where I
struggle so much with Pokemon. In order for digital collectibles for Pokemon to succeed, it fundamentally has to cannibalize the TCG market.
And part of the reason why the TCG market makes sense today is because there are only so many base set packs that are unsealed.
There are only so many, you know, Machamps from a starter deck that I didn't fucking get stolen as a child or drop drop it into water, or played with, you know,
in Pokemon games, we're trying to learn it as kids. The reason why those cards are valuable today
is because they were in limited print, they've been damaged over the years, it's incredibly
difficult to find and source them, and you've sort of been trained on this behavior. Buy these packs,
rip them if you want to have some fun, which is what I do almost all of the time, and if you want
to protect them, keep them in a box, throw them box storm away that's no fucking fun but that's what most people do one thing that
you mentioned in the in the article is 80 of skins in csgo never enter the game so this idea that
people are just purchasing these skins to flex on people in game is like i love i love the pokemon
analogy though there too i don't know
what the number is but i would be so curious to know how many pokemon cards are bought but never
played oh my god i can tell you right now paul i can tell you right now i just looked behind me
i have about 10 000 bulk cards that will never be played and probably how do you feel about it
How do you feel about it, man? It's great, right? It's a comfy feeling to have those sitting behind you all that.
man it's great right it's a comfy feeling to have those sitting behind you all that
Exactly. But this is what I'm trying to say. I think fundamentally, I agree with you.
Somebody's going to bring something that leverages blockchain tech and make it so much bigger than what we're seeing out of Counter-Strike and Pokemon.
But they're going to be able to do so because they're building their ecosystem with that intention.
They're building their ecosystem around digital collectibles that will do a whole bunch of cool shit that we haven't seen today.
I don't ever expect somebody like Magic or Pokemon to go to blockchain or digital and somehow disrupt
the entire business empire that they've created and now retrain user behavior and tell them that
all of the physicals that you own are no longer worth anything. You have to go through this digital
route. I think it will be somebody new. I think the incumbents that you own are no longer worth anything. You have to go through this digital route.
I think it will be somebody new.
I think the incumbents are where they are.
And if you're not intentionally building out an economy with digital in mind, it's going to be incredibly difficult to usurp something like CSGO,
which is the pinnacle of the space right now.
So I don't think that these home badges even sniff a billion dollars in total market cap.
I think that they're much, much lower than that.
But that doesn't mean that they're not successful.
It doesn't mean that it wasn't a good integration.
It doesn't mean that Pokemon's not going to do something massive long-term.
I just don't think it'll ever become the ruling collectible class.
Okay, sorry to jump in, but I just wanted to say,
I actually really love that take.
First of all, it's great news for folks like us
who are building next generation Pokemon games
that maybe we will have to be the ones
that lead the charge into that
because Pokemon will need to follow
as a product that didn't start there,
didn't start its life in that world.
And I think you're totally right, actually.
Like, I think that the feeling I was describing
that that future Pokemon digital only child would have
would come from them, from there already being some other product or some other example of a game
that was fully digital, fully NFT, and that had people feeling that love. It showed people that
actually the majority of the assets that are being acquired in this game are not being sold.
People are just hanging on to them because they love them so much that they just want to own those,
just like a Pokemon game.
And I think as soon as those big companies see that happening,
then they're going to be like, oh shit, okay, now it's time because the kids have been trained in this new behavior
and they are ready to collect and own and cherish digital assets in the same way they're doing it their physical.
But you're right, until that moment happens, bigger bigger brands and companies may not take that risk or may not
take that chance and may be waiting for that to be proven by uh you know a startup oh i gotta jump
in here real quick also sorry because i i heard nox say it twice that that uh they're gonna they'd
be cannibalizing their own collectibles. That's an insane take.
Absolutely insane take because you underestimate the absolute insanity of collectors.
Like, it's crazy.
Okay, like, so I have a hobby collecting 4Ks.
Anyone who follows me on this platform probably knows that.
There are people who own the same film on DVD, on Blu-ray, on 4K, on Laserdisc.
There are people who bought things on iTunes, who now buy the vinyl,
and there are people who are now collecting cassette tapes of the exact same release.
So to be like, oh, you know what, it's going to take collectors away,
if anything, it's just another thing that they can collect for the shit that they love.
These people probably aren't just buying
Pokemon cards. They probably have Funko pops of Pikachu all over their house
They're hunting down rare figures and all this other bullshit
So like it's just one other one more thing to add to the quote-unquote display case
I don't think that it's gonna like take away from any market that they already have
Can I use one thing that code? Oh, oh man we're all like one to jump in
yeah you go for a statement i'll jump in uh i just wanted to kind of agree with paul's statement
as like i think we're all like i think the one thing that me paul and koji and tony see
is we have kids right um and i take jackson to play a target game like because we don't want
to have a way in the house because I've been addicted to some degree.
And so, like, I'm being very meaningful.
But, like, the first thing that he writes whenever it's daddy go to school day is I
want to be a video game designer, right?
It's fundamentally these kids' digital world is so much fundamentally different from, like,
is so much fundamentally different from like runescape days not like even for like our generation
RuneScape days, not, like, even for, like, our generation.
uh like just watching jackson and the way that he looks at stuff like legos for example he loves
legos he loves playing lego's clone wars his mom said no anymore because he keeps on shooting his
sister but that being said that's what he wants to do right so like in terms of like the cross
pollination of legos i'm pretty sure that Legos has,
now he's also watching Lego Star Wars on Netflix and Disney.
And so like, there's all kinds of things
that I think that we have to take an objectively step back.
And the paradigm in which that we lived in
is very different.
And I think the reason why me Koji and Paul
and probably Tony as well too,
see this is because we see it every single day
and they're obsessed like I have to literally pull Jackson away from Target um to like even
play these like we have to talk to his mom about hopefully getting one but like you know that's
like what I'm talking about so um I'll switch sorry but it is pretty crazy I just want to kind
of agree with Paul on that side of things I think it's going to be a whole new paradigm
I've got to just real quick uh we're so far over I'm going to sneak in agree with Paul on that side of things. I think it's going to be a whole new paradigm. I've got to just real quick.
We're so far over.
I'm going to sneak in a quick ad read that won't continue the conversation
because I want to keep it on Pokemon for just a little bit longer.
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Thanks to the official game of Gamified. All right, guys, we're jumping back into Pokemon. I'm gonna let you guys
riff on this a little bit longer. We were talking over under $4.5 billion on the market cap for
Pokemon collectibles on the blockchain, if it was similar to what Counter-Strike has going on. And
then just so people can start mulling it over, Trevor had a great question in the audience as
well about if we were gonna play or bet on the success of a Web 3 Pokemon, which many, many have tried.
I think he said there's 27 that he counts.
Would you pick any in particular?
Do you think they're all doomed to fail?
Animate, Aurori, Axie Infinity, of course.
Illuvium, of course.
Omnia, that's not quite out yet, is a Sappy Seals game.
Spellborn, which we see on the timeline a lot. Legends of Vinari, Hatchlings, Cororo Beast, Pixelmon, the list goes on.
We'll continue the conversation with Lemz and then Mage also joining us from the audience. Lemz, over to you, bud.
All right, I'll just say, because I have someone who said over here, and I didn't quite have a caveat in there, which this is predicated on them going hard on digital and moving away from physical, because I am 100% with what Nock said about cannibalizing and
what I'll push back and what you had said, Koji, on your statement about like collectibles, I think
absolutely would stand true if it was just another avenue for people to buy stuff and not have the
option to sell it. Because if it was digital and you can just purchase it, that's what all these
other kind of formats come in, you talk about like music and movies and that kind of thing but as soon as you
add that secondary market to it i think it totally changes the game because it can cannibalize their
primary sales and then all of a sudden you're just getting those uh like marketplace fees and that's
why i mentioned like at the top of the show about you need if you have a five percent fee on
secondary trading like you need 20x the volume to cover on the loss in primary sales.
If everything was just like locked and bound, like soul bound or whatever,
then I think they would like make a killing,
but there wouldn't be the same market as we have with the CSGO situation.
So I don't think they will actually do it.
But if they went ahead and went hard on digital,
I don't see how they wouldn't just kill what Counter-Strike has done so far with $4.5 billion.
Because the physical market is whatever, like $15 billion, I think, for Pokemon cards.
And you can think you're going to get a much deeper reach with digital and make things more liquid.
So there would be more trading happening.
So I would imagine that would be a pretty sizable market but i'm just a skeptic and think that pokemon probably don't want to like
shoot themselves in the foot or at least risk shooting themselves in the foot by cannibalizing
their primary revenue man i'm in the camp of why not both i mean if they just had very limited
releases of online collectibles you're telling me that that would cannibalize
the market that bad? If they just said there's only 1,000 digital Charizards and there's only
3,000 digital Zapdos or whatever, and then just kept the physical thing going, you guys really
think that would harm? Can I just add one thing, which is the greatest companies in the world
are the ones that are actually able and willing to cannibalize their own business before a competitor comes along and does it.
Okay, so we talk about Apple and the iPhone wiping out their iPod product line, and that was the best decision they ever made.
I don't think Pokemon and Nintendo have the guts to do that.
So, again, I go back to I think they're going to follow, but it's just leaving open the opportunity for someone else to do that and then possibly then possibly even take that lead as insane as that sounds i i a thousand percent agree with that
take i think it's a great one paul i see mage spamming some uh emojis mage want to tag you
in welcome to the panel brother wait just real quick i want to say royalties man let's not
forget about royalties which is something that can't be enforced with with uh physical goods
sorry go ahead mage oh hey everybody really appreciate the convo um i think it's
exciting you know to hear pokemon stepping into the blockchain there's a lot of potential i get
why people are hyped smart low risk move dip their toe in test the waters keep the business
the core business intact but we have to recognize is it's this isn't a revolution it's an evolution
and a safe one.
I think you guys called that out.
But let's zoom out for a second here.
Magic has been around for 30 years.
Here's Poke25+.
These are titans in the TCD world.
We have to be honest.
Magic has reached it.
The game has already been around for 30 years of mechanics. It takes nearly a cycle of Pedia to play the game that has over 30 years of mechanics.
It takes nearly a cycle of Pedia to play the game nowadays.
And it's really expensive for people to buy into.
And now we're seeing crossovers with Lord of the Rings, Walking Dead Transformers, retro frames, serialized foil cards, alternate arts, and bundled reprints.
That's not innovation, that's monetization and that's the textbook apex of a product life cycle they're squeezing everything
they can from the fan base to keep shareholders happy and pokemon for all its hype it actually
has a different problem most collectors don't play the game. It's not a massive player-driven game like
Magic. It's hype-driven, collectability-driven, and we've all seen the people lining up, knocking
each other over at Walmart and scalping product for five times resale. The collectability model
works until it doesn't. Just like Magic, they're feeding their flames, but not necessarily growing
the game, and that's the real kicker everybody wants to be the
next big tcg right now every few months there's another kickstarter that's mashing together tcgs
and board games into frankenstein hybrids they're throwing pre-slabbed cards, NFTs into the mix, uncut sheets.
Sometimes a front man with a lot of charisma,
but they end up fading out in two to three years
because the gameplay isn't there.
The experience doesn't hold.
The research wasn't done and it was hype before heart.
And that doesn't last.
And that's really one of the problems I'm trying to work on right now
is building one
where it's not just a copy paste of what's already out there and throwing NFTs into the
mix.
I mean, I brought in some pro players from Magic, Pokemon, Hearthstone, and a few others.
We spent three months putting the effort into breaking down what works, what doesn't, and
refining things so that it feels fresh competitive and sustainable
and then we teamed up with an international award-winning team of artists to bring the
thing to life and people keep asking are you doing nfts and you know i'm like no not yet
we may and i'm strongly leaning towards we may because too many projects i think rush into the
blockchain for hype you know we're here to build something that lasts.
And the same with Kickstarter.
Everyone's racing to raise, you know, like seven figures.
You know, they want to hit that million-dollar mark on Kickstarter
to will their product into existence.
But without the foundation, the community, the roadmap for sustainability,
it all falls apart.
Appreciate the take, mate.
So we're pacing ourselves.
Thanks for joining us, man.
Yeah, great point about Wizards of the Coast.
You know, it's like you guys will give me the Walking Dead integration of IP into Magic the Gathering before you just give me verifiably rare digital cards.
That seems fucking insane to me.
Knock, you were thumbs downing whenever I was saying my point about it wouldn't cannibalize them to have a thousand digital Charizards.
Tell me why.
Yeah, this is a very common knock is willing to die on this hill because this is one of the things that i know better than literally anything else is pokemon collectibles so i will die on this
hill i think the ipod analogy is a little incorrect for one key reason. When the iPod was phased out, it was on the back end of a six-year tailspin.
And each progressive year, it peaked in 2008 or 2009, and every year after that, they sold fewer iPods than the year prior.
They also had the iPhone becoming significantly better, and it effectively just did the same thing, so they stopped it. This wasn't a let's kill a product in the name of
innovation. This was a let's kill a product because something else has now taken over that product.
Pokemon is not in that issue. It does not have that issue. It took Pokemon TCG 25 years from 95
until 2019 to reach 30 billion cards sold. In the next three years, they sold an additional 15 billion, and they're now on
pace between 2324 and 2425 to sell 30 billion cards in that two-year stretch, which originally
took them 25 years to reach that point. They are bigger than they've ever been by many orders of
magnitude. This isn't an issue of, we need to innovate to stay alive. This is an
issue of we need to not fuck this up because we have an unlimited money printer that is growing
at 25% year over year, bigger than anything else in the industry. We have never seen two years of
growth like this ever. And the market continues to get hotter. Koji, to your point, I don't,
I don't disagree that there are many different ways for people to collect.
And I agree with you, Sam, that there would be some appetite for things like, hey, there's a thousand Charizards and a thousand Zapdos.
I agree with that wholeheartedly.
But for those collectibles to reach $4.5 billion, which was this topic, you absolutely would need to cannibalize English Pokemon TCG cards.
Because in every collectible
market, there is one premier asset. It is the thing that you chase. And in Pokemon, it's English TCG,
and then it's Japanese TCG, and then it's Korean TCG. And now Chinese TCG is starting to take off
a little bit because the prices are just getting so expensive. And then from there, it's things
like plushies and collectibles and figurines and keychains and shirts and posters and all this shit.
But those are like third or fourth or tenth tier collectibles.
In order for anything to reach a four and a half billion dollar market cap, it absolutely would have to take away, at least in the short term, some of the market cap from Pokemon TCG
because that is the current tier one collectible.
I think it's crazy to assume
that in what took Pokemon,
you know, 30 years to develop
the Pokemon TCG market
into a seven or eight billion dollar market cap
that it wouldn't hurt it
to just all of a sudden introduce another asset
that you're going to push
as the premier digital asset. There's room for it. People are absolutely going to collect it,
but I doubt it beats it out. I just feel like this is the typical thing people get stuck in,
which is you have a wild success. What is the only thing that could fuck it up? It's
oversaturation or lack of willingness to adopt the new thing that dethrones it. And it just screams like Kodak being like,
no, no, no, people are only going to use film cameras for the rest of their lives.
Trust us, that digital bullshit is going to be out of here in no time
and then they get completely wrecked.
Not to say that that'll happen to Pokemon
because they have such market dominance and such nostalgia
and such brand affinity in a way that Kodak really can't
because it's just a camera but i still think like wouldn't you take a 0.05 of your revenue or profit and just be like let's invest
in that thing that could absolutely fuck up our entire business model it seems crazy to me
here's sam if i might just really quickly jump in i think the fundamental difference between
pokemon company and what we're talking about there is that those companies, companies like Netflix, did not believe that this new technology would ever be worth their
time. That is obviously not true. The thing that kicked off all of this conversation about Pokemon
this week was that they are entering blockchain. They are paying attention. They are watching this
technology. But it's the same thing that we talk about why you want to see a Call of Duty bring
skins to blockchain just yet is because, yes, in theory this works out. But it's the same thing that we talk about why you want to see a Call of Duty bring skins to blockchain just
yet, is because yes, in theory
this works out, but there hasn't been anybody
that has even come close to
sniffing magic, or sniffing
even fucking one piece, from
like a total sales perspective,
that would ever make Pokemon, at least not right
now, in the middle of their best three years of growth
ever, look at blockchain and go
maybe we take a risk right now.
That to me is just fair.
Let's go to dub and then to Koji.
Yeah,
I'm a,
I'm excited to bury knock and every other Pokemon lover on their Hill here
because this is like under for sure.
And like saying that Pokemon's like nostalgia forever gonna be okay forever is
just crazy because like it's we are the generation that grew up with ash ketchum and kids that are
growing up now are gonna ingest pokemon and probably never even know about ash misty brock
all that kind of shit and like they're on a timetable where they're gonna get timed out
as time goes on and yes they're having peak right now because our generation is coming into wealth
right now and having disposable income to spend and all this stuff and they never saw their
clients or their demographic of consumers able to spend like they do now, but it's very, very limited. Like I do, I do strongly
believe that Pokemon is at an apex and that generations to come are going to be way less
focused and hyped and prioritizing Pokemon over other IPs that they're digesting because they
simply didn't grow up with the way we did like it was literally you got a
gameboy and you had pokemon on it and that was it and everyone everywhere was doing pokemon and that
was it but now there's four there's so much more uh there's so much more everywhere and like there's
no way that pokemon maintains dominance and mindshare generation over generation because
they're simply not making something cool or making something new like there is not going to be another
awesome ash ketchum story or anything like that to be completely new there's only
going to be derivatives and that's why i'm also like bearish as hell on all of the web 3 mimics
of this because it's just derivative after derivative over derivative and no one wants to
collect another random monster
thing and walk through grass like it's the story in the game loop and everything is getting old and
thus will just kind of decay as that decays for the record dub i was also under let's go over to
i'm still the hand up i also want to hear from people if you want to tag it on this
is there a single pocket monster monster collector whatever you want to hear from people if you want to tag it on this is there a single pocket monster monster
collector whatever you want to call it game in web 3 that is not pokemon that you are optimistic
about at this point but koji whatever your hand was up for go for it man well a couple things one
uh horrendous take by dub i love dub uh and i'm a i'm a dub defender but that that was absolutely
fucking horrendous and i mean let's go back to the kids.
I don't even like Pokemon.
So, like, I hope that it fucking dies.
But, like, let's go back to the having kids thing.
My daughter intrinsically just loves Pikachu and whatever, but intrinsically loves things like fucking Mickey Mouse.
You know?
And there hasn't been, like, a good mickey mouse anything in like fucking a hundred years and still she's like let me digest this like slop because i love the way
this character looks so i think like kids liking pokemon are are going to be just fine but i also
wanted to say that like saying under i the reason why i i'm like i'm on the fence but the reason why
i'm i'm more in the in the over category is like,
you know, we're talking about cannibalizing their existing collector base and blah, blah, blah. But
what we're, I think a lot of people aren't really factoring in is the amount of liquidity and sheer
amount of fucking stupidity that exists in Web3. And they're willing to just like speculate on fucking nonsense like if if fart coin can go to billions
then like there's no way that people aren't willing to just like ditch a whole fuck ton
of money on something that starts to move with a pokemon name on it right and it doesn't even
matter they don't even have to like pokemon you know to to paul's point earlier i see you guys
i fucking see you you know like you're gonna put your money in there regardless if if it starts like skyrocketing up so like you know it could easily easily go over
lems whenever you look at the current state of uh monster collectors in web 3 are you are you
inspired by any of them or you think uh it's really just the ip driving all this it literally i have your answer in two letters
no like no one has anything remotely close that can compare like it just feels like uh i don't
know it's almost like ptsd at this point from 2021 and 2022 it was like what do we get we get uh you
know and i'm not doing this to bag out you ko Koji, but TCGs, Creature Collectors, and Battle Royales.
There will be a couple that stand out from the crowd in these genres,
but I have yet to see a Creature Collector
that looks like it has really good staying power.
There's a couple that we might see something cool come from.
Like, you know, Pixelmon,
I'll have some optimism that maybe they do something cool.
But as it stands today,
I don't have any high conviction
in any of them
sticking around long term and I said to it was Trevor in the comments like I'd rather just go
play pal world if I'm gonna play a Pokemon clone that's not even web 3. Yeah I don't blame you
either Peyton over to you. In terms of like the traditional like creature collector game that Pokemon is in, probably not.
I think the one that obviously we all have on this panel is Wildcard.
If it becomes more of a collector-specific type of specific one, which is a TCG as well as a MOBA in a lot of capacities.
And I think that Paul is probably going to have.
We haven't just seen that element yet.
So if that's what we're calling wildcard. But in terms of like other copycats and derivative products of it,
it has to be kind of what Paul is doing, right, which is an iteration, or a genre bend that is
fun, and it is new and perspective. And so yeah, I think that's kind of like my specific take on it.
Like, I always felt as if like a Pokemon game that has kind of like my specific take on it like i always felt as
if like a pokemon game that has mixes like a stardew valley where like you're building a farm
and you have to actually attract the pokemon through your farm would be like really fun um
if anybody's building that out just let me know because that would be freaking dope the reason
that i know the answer to this is is no for me at least personally, is because I don't even want to play Pokemon that don't just feature the original 151 Pokemon.
Like, as soon as they got beyond, like, the first 300, I lost complete interest.
So, starting with a brand new game with brand new Pokemon that I don't even know, and then it all feels kind of like the RC Cola of Pokemon.
Your point is exactly right, Peyton.
It has to genre bend.
It has to iterate in a meaningful way.
It can't just be like, you need more of the exact same thing.
Here's our spin on it, because it's just going to feel bad.
Tony V.
Yeah.
I was going to add to you, Sam.
That's the reason why we like Super Vive, right?
We have to plug it.
If both me and you are on Game of Fun,
we have to plug Supervive, right?
In terms of that aspect of things,
it's like a genre band of Supervive, of a MOBA,
and also a VR that is fun.
And I care about those characters now.
I care about Kingpin.
I care about Shrike.
You definitely care more about Shrike than I do.
You know what I mean?
In terms of that understanding of like,
oh, I want to kind of know more about these characters,
but it required me playing that game for 30 plus hours to start actually wanting to know actually, why does Shrike
do this? You know, so that kind of element is kind of what I see. But yeah, just wanted to,
I saw an opportunity, Sam, I had to take it. Yeah, Shrike main, by the way, I also think, yeah,
wildcard being a good example of something that is genre bending and iterative.
If it was League of Legends with different characters, I wouldn't care.
But the fact that it's League of Legends with different characters in a battle royale.
Now I do care because I haven't had that experience and I can't get it elsewhere.
Tony V, over to you then, Wild Paul.
Yeah, I just wanted to tell Peyton about a game called Moonstone Island.
It's Ashley, Ashney, I can't remember her last name, I'm terrible, but one of the wolves
people introduced me to it, but it's exactly what you described.
It's Pokemon and Stardew Valley and a little bit of Final Fantasy all mixed together.
It's beautiful.
I play it on my Switch.
I cry sometimes.
I just weep openly, but it's an amazing game.
Yeah, I love you, Tony.
Thank you for Ashney. Shout out, Ashney. Yeah, shout out Ashney. Christensen, but it's an amazing game. Yeah, I love you, Tony. Thank you for asking.
Shout out, Ashne.
Yeah, shout out, Ashne.
Christensen, I think, is her last name.
She's great.
Wild Paul, talking to you.
I just, well, first I wanted to say I really appreciate the shout outs for Wild Card,
and we're working really, really hard to live up to or exceed y'all's expectations.
I completely agree with that take.
I think, and you know, this is obviously bias and perhaps unique to my own position working on this game.
But I don't think that a viable path to being a competitor to Pokemon is to just make a Pokemon clone or do what Pokemon's doing.
It is such a juggernaut of beloved nostalgia that that sort of path, it never work I mean you know Yu-Gi-Oh!
got away with it but that was back in the day and I just don't you know at this point I I think we we
were required and I think any anybody who wants to go into that creature summoning creature battling
kind of genre required to do something fundamentally new to even get anyone's attention. We had to, in our case, clone, or it's not clone, come up with a new name for the genre
because it's such a mouthful.
Right now we're calling it a CCAG, a collectible card action game, or KCAG.
And Brad, the lead designer, came up with that idea.
that idea.
But yeah, I mean, I just,
But yeah, I mean, I just agree with what you guys are saying.
I disagree with what you guys are saying.
Like, I think that the fundamentals
of the sort of power fantasy
of being a creature card collector
and summoner and trainer
and all that kind of stuff,
like that's evergreen,
but the gameplay isn't necessarily.
And I think that, you know,
those up and coming brands
and products that are going to,
you know, hopefully become competitors to
pokemon or or just at least join the pantheon of beloved creature collecting genre uh they're
they're gonna similarly have to do something new um likewise when it comes to the collectible
aspects of wild card and peyton was you know kind of guessing at some of those i mean he's seen some
of the stuff up close he knows some of the internal things that we've been working on
i even when it comes to that we're trying to do something new. I don't think that you guys have heard me talk about this a bunch of times. I don't think that the straightforward approach of just, I am, you know, the collectible card that I'm playing with in the game is exactly the asset that is going to be freely tradable on an open market.
is exactly the asset that is going to be freely tradable on an open market.
I just don't, I don't think that works very well when you have the sort of permissive open
liquidity of something like a blockchain marketplace where it's so trivial to sell
your collectibles and just creates this path to those things becoming immediate,
just kind of vehicles for liquidity, which isn't really what you want for collectible
assets like this
and i think there's another path and the thing that i'm most excited about is finding that other
path i think as as collectors who are also web 3d gens like we all are what i tend to find it is
more appealing to us is when is when we get to be in the position of sort of like being the source
of those assets like to use the pokemon example now i'm going to shut up because i'm get to be in the position of sort of like being the source of those assets like to use the
pokemon example now i'm going to shut up because i'm going to be giving away too much alpha i think
that as a web 3 player i would be much more interested in sort of like being one of a very
small number of people that somehow owned or or fractionally was a part of owning the actual
pikachu like the one pikachu and that the cards were like these collectible things that people could play with,
and they were meant for fun.
But if I wanted to come in as like a true owner in that ecosystem,
I want to be the Mark Cuban of Pokemon.
I want to be like, I bought literal Pikachu.
He's mine. He's worth a zillion dollars.
I get a share of all the revenue of every Pikachu card ever made.
Like, when I think about coming in as a Web3 user,
that's what I get excited about.
And I think that's actually the path to success,
not just being like, well, let's just take this formula
and make these things digital collectibles
and also playable cards at the same time.
That's exactly what the Blueprint guy,
or sorry, the Project O guys are doing with Blueprints,
which I think is going to be really interesting
to see how it unfolds.
I know, I wish Kevin was here. We share
100% of a vision on this particular
point. Yeah, that would be awesome
to have him. We'll get him back next week.
And please, for the love of God,
Paul, let the marketing department take a stab
because KKag is
rough. But that being said,
that being said, you know what?
MMO RPG is
fucking tough too.
Exactly!
I've been saying it for years.
I'm working on it.
I'm working on it.
Just gotta go on a spirit journey and I'll find it.
Dub's last attempt
that that didn't work out so well, but we'll see.
Yeah, KKag
is not what I want to be saying for the next
20 years if I can avoid it. Knock over to you.
Yeah, I was just reminded of something that dub named that i i won't share here
uh i think it's what paul is alluding to uh yeah maybe maybe stay away from the spirit journey dub
i i'll say this um i i don't think that there's anything right now that is particularly compelling
and i think that that's maybe equal parts uh that
being true and equal parts me being a little ignorant of where some of these teams have been
building over the course of the last six months um i can maybe give a little insight into what i think
would be compelling creature collector um so when you're talking about pokemon right now all of the
content that is being created pretty much anywhere is not actually core game it's typically through
what people are calling an Ironmon.
So the ROM that I was alluding to playing at the beginning of the episode
is a FireRed Ironman ROM.
Effectively, the way it works is every Pokemon you encounter is entirely random.
Their abilities are entirely random.
Their nature is random.
All of their stats are random.
If your Pokemon dies, the game restarts.
You've got to try and beat that game. Also, you can only have one Pokemon. That is something that people are
playing because it takes an experience that you understand and fundamentally changes the way that
you interact with that game. So instead of building up a team with type coverage, et cetera, et cetera,
you're basically just like, how do we get the strongest Pokemon possible right now? And is
this Pokemon good enough to survive forever? And do I get fucked strongest pokemon possible right now and is this pokemon good enough to survive forever and do i get fucked by bad luck like that is something that a lot of
people are playing there's a ton of content around it i think that changing core gameplay loops are
incredibly excited you you talked about how you know something like super vive is compelling
because it gives you an experience that you don't normally experience in league of legends and it's
part of the reason why i love things like Earth, Ultra Rapid Fire,
or some of the Nexus events that League of Legends do, and I think they could be standalone games,
because it's familiar enough, it's really relatively intuitive to just jump in and understand how the game works,
but with fun twists that make it feel unique and different.
So Peyton and I have talked about what Tony just mentioned, there is a game that is sort of like this,
have your farm, you know, go out and capture Pokemon, do things of that nature. That's a great idea. I love that. I like challenge modes and skill modes and things of that. I like innovating on story.
You know, the first Pokemon game, you reach the third gym city, there's a ship there,
you have like a little bit of a side quest where you're wandering through the ship, and
you never really touch upon it again. And then two years later, when Heart, or heart or when gold and silver released that story is continued and you realize that that was setting
you up for something else that was going to happen in a different region within the world
they did that it was incredible it was probably the best game that they've ever released and then
they just completely walked away from that story so fuck you pokemon um but i think you can innovate
on gameplay mechanics i think you can innovate on storytelling gameplay mechanics. I think you can innovate on storytelling.
I think there's ways to make a creature collector really fun
that doesn't have to be the same old boring mode of Pokemon.
Pokemon seems to believe that the way of making it fun is
now instead of just grass and a Pokemon appearing,
there's grass and you can see the Pokemon,
which I think is fucking stupidity.
But there are ways to make this exciting.
And I'm kind of surprised that people haven't pushed this before.
So if you are team building in Web3 and you're building a creature collector,
there's such a blue ocean for you to do something that is familiar enough
that people can kind of jump into it and understand what's happening,
but different enough that it feels like a brand new experience
because there's an entire generation of people
who are like begging for something like that.
I was thinking at first, there's no way that a story-based thing
would be interesting enough in order to get people to care about
monster collectors more than they care about Pokemon
and just want to play Pokemon.
But I do think if somebody said,
we're going to do like a rated R version
where the Pokemon are like slaves and it's horrifying, and also you can date your Pokemon
and try to like marry them and shit, there's like a whole audience of people that would...
You should read some actual canon material about a Pokemon called Typhoon.
Yikes, hard pass, but somebody, anybody who wants to spin that up, congratulations.
You just raised $20 million at a 100 mil valuation.
With that being said, it's time to pick our MVPs of the panel.
While Paul, I see you spamming some emotes.
I'm sending it to you.
Who's your MVP today?
It's Knock.
You know, it's been a while since we got to go back and forth,
and I got him to agree on both.
I got him to agree with some of my takes
and disagree with some of my takes
usually it's only disagree so i'm really proud of that um but but separately from that he just
all of his takes were killer as usual but especially so today so knock you get my vote knock who you
got i'm gonna give it to koji um Paul, to be fair, close runner-up,
but I love Koji kind of coming in and telling everybody
that they're fucking idiots and keeping us honest.
I think sometimes we definitely go a little deep in the rabbit hole.
Koji's always the one that pulls us back out
and always does so with an actual point that you have to think to refute.
So, yeah, Koji's a good idea.
Giving Koji even more excuses to call
us dumb asses is a real dangerous game you're playing there and knock it over to you
oh boy i mean i i want to give it to knock but like his takes were so wrong that i feel like
it's like i'm lying to myself here if I give it to him.
But yeah, I mean, I think it's got to be not.
That was the rollercoaster ride.
I don't know what to do with that. I mean, he's wrong.
He's wrong, but he brought the energy.
He's an MVP.
He got me to, like, you know, got my blood up a little bit.
So I think that's worthy of a vote.
Interesting.
All right.
Well, in the NBA, the MVP of the finals very rarely goes to the losing team,
but I guess sometimes you can switch it up.
Let's go to Peyton.
Peyton, who you got?
Well, I can't vote for myself, Sam, if that's the problem.
He's on the winning team.
Koji was on the winning team.
I also have to give it to Nock.
He's the MVP season for Westbrook.
You know what I'm saying?
Because I also have to put an OKC reference in there somehow.
But yeah, we're on to the semifinals, by the way.
Anybody wondering?
Probably don't.
But whatever.
Yeah, Nock has my MVP.
Great job, Nock, in terms of also just holding your ground and dying on that hill.
I don't think you died either.
I think you're still surviving.
Might be bleeding out, but you're surviving. I i'll kill him eventually but you're alive for me payton spinning up the chet holmgren section of the wolf discord as we
speak here congratulations yeah there's actually a channel for each thunder member
call westbrook's just triple double it's all you need to say. Let's go over to Dub.
Dub, who you got?
Yeah, luckily I was in a club and missed most of what Nock had to spit down.
So I really liked what Koji had to say, even though he broke my heart.
So I'm going to give it to Koji.
So, you know, thanks for making me cry today.
It's a two-man race right now.
Let's go over to Tony V, see if it stays that way.
I mean, yeah.
You know, how do I not give it to Koji after Dub just said that he made him cry?
For making Dub cry, I absolutely give Koji the MVP.
Also love the sassiness.
Also, I just want to, because Sam keeps calling it out, although Dub is my co-founder, he does not
represent my views. Pokemon will live forever.
Wills, who you got?
Not voting for Nock
during the Pokemon episode
is like not voting for Koji
during the parallel episode. It just
can't be done. But honorable shout out
to Dubb
for saying it how it is
because I can't remember the last time
I played a good new Pokemon game.
And I think that's worth saying.
Damn, Dubb.
Fire takes limbs.
All right, it's got to be Nark.
And because of how right he was
with all his answers today
and willing to die in that field and proving you know, proving how wrong Koji was.
Last but not least, Mage.
Who you got for MVP today, brother?
He's dead to me.
Noc, you got 30 seconds.
Sorry, I had to run into the store.
What was the question, man?
No, it's all good. We're going to move on.
Knock, over to you. 30 seconds of FaceTime.
Congratulations. Another MVP for the belt.
What do you want to say?
Yeah, I actually
do have something to show, but first I'm going to give dumb
shit. This guy clearly did not listen
to anything I said because he refuted my
point of saying Pokemon would never
meet CSGO with
all the reasons why Pokemon will never meet CSGO with all the reasons why Pokemon will never
meet CSGO and he thinks he won that argument while he agreed with me. Magic Eden launched
on Avalanche today. Super excited. This is a long time fucking coming. So go check it
out. There's an open edition mint. It features Wolf, Ked, Blub, Wink, a bunch of the meme
coin culture that is built within that ecosystem we're happy to
support it finally i know it took way too long but we're here so there's my actual show for once
god bless congrats to magic eden and avax love to see it man super excited to see uh things just
continually becoming easier on the user experience to engage with blockchain engage with different
chains engage with different marketplaces uh a step in the right direction for one of us is a step in the right direction for all of us.
Thanks for doing that.
And of course, Avalanche is the official chain of Gamified.
It's more than just a blockchain.
It's a winter wonderland of innovation.
$100 million AI fund, by the way, with partnerships and gaming giants like
Godzilla, T1 Esports, solo leveling.
Avalanche is breaking the ice and setting the standard for the future of Web3 Gaming.
So whether you're a seasoned pro,
curious newbie,
come explore the avalanche of possibilities
and discover a world
where the snow never melts.
And of course,
calling all cosmic crusaders
and spacefaring scoundrels
because Star Atlas
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with pulse-pounding space races
where velocity and valor
are your keys to victory.
Master maneuvers of magnificent spaceships,
mine marvelous minerals
and build an empire
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Join the Discord, get a game key and play the preseason to prepare for a year of stellar surprises in 2025.
And get ready to rumble with the gaming gatekeepers that are flipping the script and giving the power back to the players.
They're the ones that are turning the metaverse into a melting pot of ideas, a crucible of creativity, and a breeding ground for innovation.
They're the ones that are empowering players to take control of their digital destinies, to build their own societies, and to shape the future of gaming.
So grab your gamepads and get ready to conquer the next era of gaming with Game 7, the official infrastructure of Gamified.
That's going to do it for another excellent episode.
Number 115.
Very fun, full circle moment being able to talk about Pokemon.
We covered Pokemon in that job listing that was weirdly posted on LinkedIn two years ago.
So it's incredible to see all the progress that Web3 Gaming has made.
Here's hoping that a rising tide does indeed lift all boats and they have a great time in Web3 Gaming.
Thanks to everybody that joined us in the audience and, of course, our amazing panel.
We got Big Peyton Okalanika from Wolf and Wolves.
I love you, dude.
We got Koji Nagata from Parallel, the number one TCG in the world as far as blockchain is concerned.
Knock from Magic Eden, of course.
Wild Paul from Thousands and Wildcard.
Thanks for making time for us, brother.
My co-host, Lems from Lizard Labs.
Dub and Tony from Glitter Cloud Solutions.
Big shout out to GCS.
Big Spangler from AVAX.
Thanks for coming, as always.
And Mage joining us from Mage TCG. Shout out,
of course, Icy, Doug Hype, Dave, The Right Dude, Denizen, Chief, Filch, all these amazing people.
Thanks guys for joining us for the entire two hours. Love you so much. We'll see you back
same time, same place, 4 p.m. Eastern every single Wednesday for another excellent episode.
And if you ever miss us, don't forget, you can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts,
pretty much any podcasting platform known to man.
And we have a good audience out on those as well.
So feel free to download and listen at your leisure.
Thanks so much, guys.
See you next week.
This was better without Jerry. Ha ha ha ha ha.
