Projects
![]()
No projects found
Investors
New
DAO Treasuries
DATs
Lend / Borrow APRs
Chains
Categories
Spaces
Gamified #147 | Netflix | Trump Game | Fableborne
Recorded: Dec. 10, 2025 Duration: 1:59:00Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent episode of Gamified, key topics included the launch of a new token with a significant market valuation, a strategic partnership between Netflix and Warner Bros, and Fableborn's innovative buyback strategy. Additionally, Cambria's impressive revenue generation and the emerging trend of seasonal gaming models were highlighted, showcasing the evolving landscape of Web3 gaming.
Full Transcription
test test yeah sam get rid of those hosers man i'm glad you did that
those guys are losers this is the new place to chat yeah yeah fuck that all the patch the patch
hits different guys dog that last one broke my phone i saw one thing that sinjin
you're in machine first of all twitter usernames don't need fucking statuses and the last person
to do that was paul bettner and we haven't heard from him since so like bold move cotton
oh god that's exactly what i did he He went into beast mode, I went into machine mode.
So, yeah.
So does that mean you've been in half-ass mode until now, or what?
Like, I'm a little concerned.
I've been in, like, human mode.
Now I'm in, like, fucking just Terminator fucking mold them all down mode with no humanity.
I don't know.
Yeah, you should be a little bit concerned.
I'm going into
I'm turning into
turkey mode soon.
I'm going to ramp it up.
I, for one, am just grateful
we're in microphone mode right now.
I'll take that.
Also, Sam, Jerry wanted me to make sure to ask you if you want to do some improv classes.
Oh, God damn it, dude.
I've been trying to get Jerry to step up to the plate.
He thinks he's the funniest fucking person on earth.
The dude is afraid to stand in front of four middle-aged Mormon women and make jokes with me.
You know, Sam, I told the story of you saying,
I'll tell a story briefly here,
but when Gamified first started to get big,
I think Sam and I both were like, damn, we have to talk in front of people a lot. It would be really good
to be quicker on our feet. And Sam was like, yeah, dude, we should take improv classes. I think I,
I think I saw one and I was like, Sam, I'm not taking a fucking improv class. I shut it down
so hard. And I was telling that story. I don't remember how it came up, but it was just like a
funny thing we were talking about.
And then everybody was like, you were a really bad friend in that moment.
You know, Sam was like asking you to like do something and get better, you know, get more skills and like up level together.
And you were just a terrible friend in that moment.
And it made me feel actually really bad.
And so, Sam, I'm ready, buddy.
Stepping up to the plate.
18 months too late.
That's the Jerry I know.
And thank you for never having to ask me, first of all, Sam.
I'm too good.
The way you made that rhyme, Sam, off the cuff, that's why you never needed the improv classes.
You got the natural gift, baby.
I love you, buddy. It's all good man don't worry um they're still waiting for us
down at the local ymca they're just they're just ready with open arms for eight dollars on wednesday
nights i bet we could still slide in there yes and that's an improv joke for all you guys
that's hilarious you guys
Jerry deserves more for that
I would have gotten it if he ever went to
fucking improv with me maybe they would have explained
the joke but you know
are there no other theater kids in the chat
come on now
we gotta up this
oh man
thanks for the banter I appreciate that sorry for the getting started a little We gotta up this. Oh, man.
Thanks for the banter.
I appreciate that.
Sorry for the getting started a little bit late.
Got rugged in the first three minutes, as is not even tradition.
That was actually pretty... I guess I'd rather him get it out of the way before we get a bunch of people in here and
then have to reset.
But I appreciate all you guys for making it for another episode of Gamified.
Let's get some introductions up first. He's the newly minted forefather of forecast,
a prediction market demon with a penchant for rolling the dice.
He might go down, but he's never out.
The Reduction Arc is alive and well with our boy, it's Dub.
Yes, sir.
I am Jerome Powell today, and I freaking conquered the markets.
It's good to be here.
Thanks, Sam.
Looking forward to the show.
Shout out to JP and the rate cuts. Up next, he is the protocol power lift to the show shout out to jp and the rate cuts up next
he is the protocol power lift to the business dev bruiser retreats blockchain like a bench
press climbing in from avalanche's frosty peaks it's mr will spangler
yo yo stoked uh stoked to see you guys light on your feet today. Come on. We started off hot, Sam and Jerry.
Be funny.
Come on.
That's my quest for you.
I love as one of the token funny people when somebody comes up to me with a microphone
and is like, hey, just say something funny.
And I'm just like, that's not how that works, guys.
You just hit him with the old knock, knock.
And then from there, it's all rolling downhill.
I told Sam a personal story of a public embarrassment I had the other day at a gas station. You just hit him with the old knock knock. And then from there, it's all rolling downhill.
I told Sam a personal story of a public embarrassment I had the other day at a gas station.
So I'm retiring from comedy.
Yeah, game is game, brother.
Up next, her words are coordinates. Oh my god.
If you know, you know.
You got to be part of the Salt Lake crew.
Up next, her words are coordinates in the chaos.
Pointing north through the crypto casinos, empires, vSports, and dungeons of DeFi,
she is the content lead at Vita Labs.
Welcome back to the panel, the queen of context, the siren of story.
It's Kate Irwin.
Oh, my God.
Thank you so much.
What the heck?
Hello, everyone.
I'm here.
And, yeah, I'm at Vita now. I'm an infra girl now i'm a defy girl now
i'm pretty pretty hyped about that but you know what everyone can use a little more defy
and honestly guys this could save crypto gaming because if people
manage their treasuries a little better with defy vaults you could probably see a lot more games come to market just saying can i just add in siren of story is such a badass name i know
i love that reaction so much congrats on the new role uh kate very happy for you i saw also you
kicked off the podcast i think earlier today which was awesome i haven't had a chance to catch up on
it but super stoked to see you uh on on your content journey in a little bit different fashion.
Up next, he is the Commissioner of Confrontation, the Leviathan of live streaming on the newly
announced Exit Liquidity, armed with a microphone in an all-time low portfolio. It's the Golden
God himself. It's Jerry Singer. Yeah, Sam, thanks for the little bit of the plug there.
It only took me, as Sam, I hate that you said 18 months to commit to something
because it took us about 18 months to actually come up with branding
for a show that we're doing well.
I really need this to go well for me, guys.
This is the most money I've ever made as a content creator.
So, yeah, I really need this to go well.
I don't have a backup plan right now so
um what happened to the jerry foundation come on don't give up foundation is a personal venture
you know this is me and my business partner over here jerry foundation's good we're we're
profitable over on the foundation side profitable as in zero expenses made literally dozens of
dollars beating most crypto teams by the way with those metrics zero expenses made literally dozens of dollars. Offshoring.
Beating most crypto teams, by the way, with those metrics.
True, true.
Up next, he's turned guilds into gold mines,
teams into titans and marketplaces into magic.
Now he co-hosts Simplified and Amplified with me weekly
as the resident big brain for actionable information.
It is my co-host, knock, co-host on different shows.
Len, don't worry about it.
I had a raccoon break in last night.
Sam, Dub, you've been to my house.
Koji has also been there.
I don't know how this fucker got up.
Oh, no, dude, that makes sense.
Yeah, dude, back to the fire escape dog.
I had the back door open last night.
I have two dogs in my house.
I hear them barking at something. I walk into into the kitchen there's a third fucking dog where did it come from i had to shoot out the
back window and it ran down the fire escape into the park i don't know man no take your pokemon
cards bro did you pet it i trade that raccoon did you pet that dog you know you know they've become
like the unofficial symbol of toronto we
had one die on the streets a few years ago and its body just stayed there for a couple of days
and people put like a memorial up with like pictures of them in the raccoon and then lit
candles and shit and now there's like an actual city of toronto plaque in memory of the raccoon
that died on that street the city loves raccoons I just don't want them in my house. Bro, you met Sly Cooper
last night. That's a pretty
solid celebrity
sighting. I'm surprised.
I don't know how
that raccoon climbed up there with the giant balls
it must have had to walk in the door
with your dog that's like 100 pounds.
That's horrifying.
My dog was fucking drunk, dude. She was like,
what is this? How did this get in here? What do I do?
Up next.
He transformed Club Penguin
into a Colossal Kids King. Damn it, I wrote
a new one and I don't even... Fuck it, Chris.
God.
He wrangled Disney's Toy Titans from Pixar
Princess to Marvel. He blasted
mobile charts with Frozen, Free Fall
and Disney Cross. He wrote The Maestro of Magic.
The maker of mega hits, takes the stage.
I had a cooler intro than this, but not as
cool as cool Chris Heatherly. Sorry for
misplacing that.
I loved it. It was perfect.
Don't want your day job.
Yeah, thanks.
Next, the overseas orchestration of Project O,
a living organism of ownership and legendary origins.
Blending Hearthstone and Marvel Snap.
It is the originator of Online Obsession,
the card-opening king.
It's Kevin Lambert.
Hey, what is up, guys?
Man, I've had so many game design discussions internally
over the last week or
two and i feel like they've all gone the way of saying well it depends so i'm gonna try to bring
that forward into today's gamified episode and answer all questions with it depends and see how
far that gets me god i hate that so much uh everybody is send send koji a quick dm and say
ha ha ha you have to actually work instead of hanging out on Gamified
because he got sucked into a bunch of corporate bullshit today
and was really sad about it.
We miss you, Koji.
Up next, with Andromeda's flag firmly planted on the frontier of AI and gaming,
he is the publisher bringing sentience to the Switch and storytelling to Silicon.
It's the king of the court, the lethal lawyer.
It's Michael Christine. What's up king of the court, the lethal lawyer. It's Michael Christine.
What's up everybody.
Super hyped to be here.
And Kevin, I can definitely relate to that.
Every single law school teacher and their parents
answer questions with, it depends.
And it's the most mind numbing and infuriating thing ever.
So I can't wait to hear your contributions today.
Guaranteed zero votes uh up next he's part profit part philosopher and the founder of peaking duck studios turning chaos
into canon with my angry yakuza girlfriend a saga so spicy it might get banned twice it's the titan
of taboo the founder who can't be bought it cedent hey yeah i'm here to eat some souls. And unfortunately, Kate, I don't think DeFi is going to go too far because all the projects are going to load on prediction markets before it even gets a treasury.
So anyways, good luck and congratulations on the new gig.
Everybody looking at those those mentioned markets, I know we just raised $6 million,
but if Jerome Powell sniffles,
then it could be $12 million.
Okay.
Think of what we could build then.
Last but not least,
weighing in at 2.4 pounds of pure verbal venom,
it is the powerhouse punchlines,
the little lizard legend,
my co-host, Lems.
GM, GM,
for anyone who didn't believe
Nox's story, because there's a lot of raccoons in Toronto,
but go look in the fucking comments
Richard just posted.
Like, that's a real laugh.
You can scan a QR code to pay respect.
Like, what?
What is it?
Who the fuck names a raccoon Conrad?
Who the fuck takes a picture
with a dead raccoon on the sidewalk and then frames that photo?
It's beautiful.
My dad wanted to name me Conrad if I was a boy.
That was his preferred name.
Besides Mercedes.
It was Mercedes and Conrad.
Those were the options.
As much as I wish I was sometimes a cool ass dude named Conrad, I'm not.
Was Mercedes the boy's name?
Well, I guess it was a girl's name.
I don't know what I'm saying.
There is an NFL tight end named Mercedes Lewis.
I'm just saying dad could have shot a shot, you know?
Okay, so it could have worked.
Okay, cool.
Got to give a quick shout out to our
incredible sponsor before we dive in to some banging topics we got netflix and warner bros
on the docket we've got steam with the made with ai label we're talking about fable born cambria
etc but first let me give a huge shout out to avalanche season three the avalanche battle pass
is live right now for 10 bucks you can enter a snowstorm of games off the grid spellborn pixel my warden's ascent forgotten playland defi kingdoms
and stream it all on the arena play some maple story and it's a passport to faster worlds fairer
economies and fun that never freezes thank you to avalanche and the official chain of gamified
support games in web 3 they're still doing good things out there, guys. And also got to give a huge shout out to Remix.
Just launched a brand new level system
that unifies progress across more than 2,000 games
instead of scattered achievements.
Every score session and skill check
now stacks into one steady climb.
Every achievement pumps XP, every level drops bits,
and bits will unlock cosmetics, upgrades,
and creator-crafted rewards
that'll make your journey feel alive. One platform, platform one progression path one leveling system powering every game you
touch the official ai game studio of gamified is available now on ios just search remix games
and the flagship product from the wolves down called kaizuna is entering early access it's a
neural link for your community mapping every message every metric every meaningful moment
it's a google analytics for your discord community and soon it'll have even more access is limited early adopters apply
now big shout out to kaizuna and the wolves what's the word guys netflix trying to acquire
warner bros a few days ago netflix put in an offer to buy warner bros for 72 billion dollars which
was agreed to by management it also also would include Warner Bros. Games,
which is part of why we're bringing it up here.
This would give Netflix control over DC Comics,
Harry Potter, HBO Max,
along with games like Hogwarts Legacy, Mortal Kombat,
Batman Arkham Asylum, etc.
Netflix promises to keep Warner's theatrical releases alive
while ramping up original content,
spend by billions, quote-unquote,
and to really shake things
up paramount decided to attempt a hostile takeover for 78 billion dollars and they also said that
they would finish the acquisition six months faster i don't know how you can make that kind
of guarantee but they are uh but what i want to know is what this will mean for all these games
and all these ips netflix gaming has not gone well do we do we want them to own
uh the dc and harry potter licensing along with mortal kombat etc uh because yeah
to this point doesn't seem like it chris heatherly going to you uh so i
this battle is going is going to continue to go on. Maybe it'll get resolved before Christmas, but it may go into the new year.
I think, I still think Paramount is going to win this.
I think that the administration wants that.
I think there are a lot of problems.
You can see it all over Hollywood and the, the, the, I think a lot of people are scared
of, of, of Netflix getting this because of what it would mean for theaters.
So I think it's going to be, you know, I don't think it's smooth sailing for Netflix, but they could get it.
If they combined it, I mean, look, I'm not really bullish.
I mean, Netflix fired everyone that was working on their gaming initiative and
has basically rebooted. They claim that they've had success, but they really haven't. They're
pivoting to, you know, games that they can do streamed into the Netflix app. So you can play
them in your web browser now. And I think you'll be able to play them in on the mobile app but that's not really
a fit with the games that that Warner makes Warner is largely AAA they have one mobile gaming studio
that's that's that's you know got a title that's done well in the past but I don't know that
that they're really competitive in mobile anymore. So their best assets are all AAA. Netflix has no synergy to offer them in AAA.
And I think that this deal is going to load Netflix with so much debt that there's a lot
of pressure on them to, you know, either A, there's not going to be additional capital to investing games,
so they'll just starve it, or, you know, they'll spin it off to free up some cash and pay down
some debt, which I think would be the right thing to do. I think if Paramount gets a hold of it,
they have a gaming initiative already going on a AAA initiative over at...
on a triple-a initiative over at
let's bring it up
baby
you just said bonus hour
are we still in business
dude not make a joke about how he's
spending 4 billion dollars
i can i can keep going i don't know about you guys
is is chris chris mike working no i'm here i'm here I can keep going. I don't know about you guys. Is Chris Mike working?
No, I'm here.
You want me to finish?
Come on, I think it's him.
Dude, you got fan crowd music now.
Okay, I'm going to quickly explain what happened.
I'm going to quickly explain.
Okay, so I couldn't see any of the hands, but I knew there was like eight up because at some point it was showing them.
So I decided I'm going to connect to the PC because in the past that's helped us not get rugged and it shows the hands even when the phone
Is it showing the hand so I connected the PC
Louder Jesus Christ
Anyway, Chris quit, okay, I'll finish quick so
So so paramount and Skydance have a gaming initiative already.
They're doing a couple of AAA games.
One with Amy Hennig, who wrote Uncharted.
So they would probably be the best fit for Warner Games and be more willing to invest in it than Netflix.
Appreciate you rounding that out.
Let's go to Tad and then we'll tag in.
It is so loud.
It is so loud.
The music.
It's still going?
Oh, yes. this is fucking unreal man
Chris was fighting for his life
to talk through
he found a rhythm
this is fucking surreal man
music's gone dude we're good
we're back
my god dude
I couldn't hear it so I was like yeah chris just keep talking what's the big
deal he gets mbp you're gonna love it there was a there was a family guy episode with distracting
trumpets when they're talking about the godfather that was oh my god i love that scene
the problem is i can't see like any of the hands anymore. So Tatted, I know yours was up a knock.
I see you waving at me.
I'll go in that order.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet.
So I personally think this is one of the greatest acquisitions a company could ever make in
the lifetime of acquisitions that I've seen.
It does so many different things.
Yes, you mentioned things like DC and Harry Potter, but I look at it in a much bigger realm in terms of they're going to be acquiring HBO Max, which arguably is their biggest competitor in the streaming game.
Like, yeah, Amazon Prime is cool.
Hulu is cool.
But like HBO Max crushes it year over year.
They have Game of Thrones.
They have all the HBO IPs.
HBO Max and HBO itself is such a longstanding streaming IP.
Like, I think this is the biggest knock it out of the park moment for them that is imaginable.
And I completely think that if this acquisition does go through, it could kill theater movies as we know it.
And that's one of the reasons that we see Paramount bidding so hard right now and trying to do hostile takeovers
so that Netflix can't get this
because I think they see the writing on the wall
being like, oh shit, if this actually happens,
our business model is cooked.
Everybody's going to be, you know,
all the good content is going to be on Netflix
and we're not going to be able to compete.
I don't think it's going to put them
in as much debt as people think.
I actually think after this acquisition, they're going to obviously sell off some parts of the
company like every other acquisition ever goes or that goes through. But I think that this is
going to make their stock prices absolutely sore because they're effectively creating a monopoly
for themselves in the movie streaming content market that no one else is going to be able to compete with. So I think that this is a really wonderful move.
Hopefully it means it spins off into games and great games.
But I would say if I'm the executives over at Netflix, that's probably the least of my thinking.
I'm probably just thinking, how do I become the absolute dominant player in visual media?
And I can't think of a better move to do that than this one.
I think that's a great take.
The thing that I always get confused by, because M&A is not my forte, is, okay, so Netflix
can't buy them because they'll be a monopoly.
But like, don't worry, the small scrappy startup called Paramount will buy them like what the fuck knock and then uh caterwin yeah the difference is the small scrappy startup
called paramount has the administration in their pocket um that's the big reason and chris sort of
alluded to that earlier um i'll tell you how this goes for gaming not well when the netflix ceo was
asked about whether or not this was going to accelerate their gaming plans, he literally, and I'm quoting here,
we actually didn't attribute any value to that from the get-go because they're relatively minor compared to the grand scheme of things.
This is not a gaming studio acquisition from the side of Netflix.
This is a media and IP acquisition.
I also think it's a small admission from Netflix's part that by and large, their attempt and their belief that their own in-house IP can compete with any IP anywhere in the world isn't a plan that is going to do well for them long term.
Stranger Things is wrapping up this year.
That's their biggest IP.
Wednesday maybe has a season left, given the conversations that have been had there.
That's their second biggest ip and beyond
that the real gem of this deal is acquiring game of thrones and the future series there you're
taking in harry potter you're taking lord of the rings the hobbit this is an ip play and i think
the way all of this plays out from a streaming business perspective is you see a lot more of
these sort of conversations happening over the course of the next few years.
And eventually it's going to be back down to probably some combination of Netflix, Amazon, and Disney,
probably just Netflix and Disney, and they're just going to acquire their own licenses
and their own library of IP from all the other competitors in the space.
And what you saw with streaming was Netflix sort of starts this boom.
They have access to every single IP on the space. And what you saw with streaming was Netflix sort of starts this boom. They have access to every single IP on the planet. Everybody else really quickly realizes, damn, that's a
pretty interesting business. We'll take our IP away from Netflix and we'll spin up our own
versions of this. And what's happening now is, you know, in second thought, maybe it was actually
pretty difficult and Netflix isn't really making any money and we don't really want to be burning
all of this money while cannibalizing everything else that we do. I think Netflix takes this and they probably go after one or two more major
studios and slowly builds Netflix and Disney into the two main streaming giants. And then we're just
back to where we were with cable. Kate Irwin, should either of these companies end up being able to acquire?
I mean, no, but I think this is kind of a sign of the times of like the regulatory environment that we might be in at this point.
I mean, there are different, you know, folks in the administration now across a range of
different roles.
You know, I don't know if the federal government is going to enforce
anti-monopoly rules this time around. It's pretty unclear. Something that I would say is that the
theater models, you know, we had around 100 years ago, there was the landmark case against Paramount
and its theater model, And it owned all the channels
of distribution. It owned the development, the production, and the distribution or the exhibition
of movies and theaters. And so that was broken up, right? I mean, that was a landmark case that
happened 100 years ago. Now we're seeing Netflix. Netflix is sort of similar but different, the same but different. You can argue legally that
Netflix is sort of like Paramount pre-antitrust suit where Netflix owns its own distribution,
it owns its own content, it owns its own production. It is true to say that Netflix
obviously does not have their own director. They make deals with directors, but the directors aren't on the payroll
in like a W-2 sense of the word,
though they do sign exclusive deals with directors.
So we are seeing like the Netflix model sort of,
in a lot of ways, in my personal opinion,
looking a lot like pre-Antitrust Paramount
back in the 1930s or whenever that was. It was a very long time ago
because they own the method of distribution, because they have this exclusive streaming
model where it's only on their platform. And I think there is an argument to be made that
that's their equivalent of a movie theater. That's their substitute of a movie theater.
And so is that fair? Is that
legal? I don't know. We'll see. I think for me, it inches us closer to a antitrust situation
because Netflix is its own distributor. And so I would be really curious to see if anyone is going
to challenge this. It's going to cost, you know, many, many, many millions of dollars and possibly take years
for this acquisition to go through, just like with Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. That took years
to go through. Obviously, the headlines start soaring really quick. Like, oh, Netflix is buying
them. It's like, well, let's see what actually comes out of this and whether judges try to block
it, whether the federal government tries to block it,
where that really lies will be super interesting. But I kind of think that Netflix has this energy of like a pre-antitrust suit paramount where they own their own means of distribution and therefore
arguably are inherently already doing some things. Great context from Kate. Love that jerry i'm still shook if though by the the
comment that knock made or the quote that knock shared because i hadn't seen that before are
games just getting lost in this are we just throwing mortal combat out you know there's
like 14 of them it has to be worth something dude i mean like the hope is is not that like that that
doesn't happen.
Last time we talked about Netflix on this, I said, and I stand by it,
Netflix doesn't have this DNA built.
The fabric of Netflix is not about the games part of this. So the hope would be that they can take some of these IPs.
You take Mortal Kombat, you make a show around it, right?
And then you build a game alongside of it too, right?
And if you can make these moments that are, you know, I mean, if they can make something that's like half as good as Stranger Things with like the Mortal Kombat IP and then also put out a game on top of it, they're also linking that game to you.
You know, you can see like this vision that makes sense, right right but it's a very hard thing to pull off
and there's a lot of stories in the games industry of people trying to do things like this big
acquisitions um you know shout out to uh one of chris heatherly and i's favorite people eric kress
and the amount of shitting he does on the embracer group right where you go out and kind of buy
everything and uh and then you go like, now what do we do with it?
We don't, we don't know how to do any of this.
We don't know how to build any of this.
Right.
And Warner brothers has been like the Warner brothers games has been doing
pretty fucking good on their own.
Right.
So it's this really weird inflection point.
I think of, you know, you have this really talented group that has, you know, games built into the fabric of who they are in Warner Brothers, who's just gotten bought by a company who doesn't know what the fuck they're doing with the games division.
And the ego that's going to get involved in this, you know, I would expect a lot of the Warner Brothers people to really get axed here.
a lot of the Warner Brothers people to really get axed here. And that's a shame because,
you know, I think Hollywood has shown over and over again that they haven't done games very well.
So I think if you squint, you can see how this would be really cool. But I'm pretty worried
about it. And it's, you know, I mean, Avalanche, right, made Hogwarts Legacy. It's a game studio called
Avalanche. It's a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. They're here in Salt Lake, right? These are people
we interact with all the time, right? They made one of the best, the best-selling title of the
last couple years. You know, in 2023, I think it was the number one selling title. You know,
and I hate to see the kind of like the, you know, home base get potentially affected by some stuff
like this. But, you know, these guys have been shipping really good games, really quality games, and I think Netflix has just kind of
shown that they don't have a direction here, and I'm pretty worried about that.
So I'd love to see them hold onto a bunch of the people.
I'd love to see them weave some of those guys into the strategy here and make sure that
they can kind of build out the bones of an actual gaming
division. So I'm a little cautiously optimistic, but like, I've seen this story before, right? And
so the optimist in me, which there is a small piece of an optimist in me, despite what the
last two years of doing this show might lead you guys to believe. And, um, yeah, I hope it works out,
but,
you know,
I think we've seen this tale,
you know,
plenty of times.
Sinjin,
should these guys be allowed to merge?
And if so,
should the games be more of an emphasis?
Also real quick,
Sinjin,
before,
before you go on that,
all we care about is the stock price on this show,
guys.
you know,
all we give a fuck about is what did the Netflix stock price do?
That's what, you know, marks a good game now.
So, you know, we know what hill these guys are all going to die on anyway.
Not Sinjin. Sinjin's not a punk.
But some of these guys are punks.
Yeah.
Guys, you know, I think that this merger is going to go through relatively quickly.
And the reason why is because even these acts of the hostile takeover, and maybe there's another player that will even come in, depending on.
And I think the one thing that a lot of people are missing here, it's not about the game.
It's really not just even the IP.
It's like there's an existential kind of issue coming on with
AI. And the last couple of months, I've been pretty knee deep into the IP side of it with
talking with a lot of firms who actually are partnered with Amazon and with like Netflix
and stuff like that. And they are dying for content right now. Like they are just focused
on content and they're looking at AI
and what it can do. One thing about the AI though, is that, you know, making new content is really
difficult. It's even going to be more difficult, uh, moving forward. And you know, there's just
this risk associated with it. But one thing that's a really easy lift is that if you own the source
material, right. And then applying AI to that, and then pumping
out like tons and tons of content related side stories that normally you wouldn't do because
of production costs, if you own that, that source material, then, you know, you're, you're good to go,
right? Because the, the, the originality or the creative part can't really be solved by AI yet, but the production flow is really getting there.
So I think more than anything else,
this is more like the word would be like kind of future-proofing
against like what's really coming
and how everything is really going to shift with AI.
Because you're talking about like games,
you're talking about distribution or their model.
Maybe there's some kind of level of consolidation here.
But I think there's a much bigger, bigger thing that's happening on a macro level, just with the economy and just with content and stuff like that.
So, yeah, I think this is going to go through really super quick.
I think the game part of it is like inconsequential, honestly.
You know, that's not where they're headed and you know we all know
that netflix was paying like two million dollars per developer senior developer a couple years ago
and they just like basically asked them all because they just realized it's not going anywhere
right um yeah i mean this is this is going to go through a lot quicker than a lot of people think
wow yeah it would be shocking i want to go to kevin lambert then to spang i have a soft spot for wv games because it's kind of my so i was like the fourth hire at
monolith back before they got bought by wv games back in my engineering days before i got into game
design so definitely love those guys and got to i was there during the transition and then i i
jumped ship and went on to do other things.
But you know, like I think from the high level,
you got government starting to regulate who can show what content in which
regions,
right?
You got China with strict censorship and EU requiring you to remove content
if it's not improved.
So I don't think Netflix wanted this for the IP.
My hypothesis here is that they wanted it primarily for the distribution platform.
But in doing so, on the game side, they get to skip 10 years of gaming growth with some of the WB Games IP.
They're probably going to take those transmedia. I am a little worried, though, for WB Games, you know, if they get absorbed into
the cloud gaming initiative, that they could lose their identity. Also, I think Netflix doesn't have
game publisher chops. And having made games for years and trying to self-publish and how much of
a nightmare that is, unless you're like a team cherry or a darling indie studio that
everybody knows a publisher is pretty crucial to get the game out there and netflix not having that
those chops on the not be knowing for known for that on the game side could be tough but i think
the the worst case the scariest thing for wb is that you know netflix is really known for their
data-driven mindset.
So, you know, like Knock pointed out, like, they're not attributing much weight to gaming.
So if this results in a bunch of layoffs or game shutdowns, that would really suck.
It's like, Arkham's falling behind, let's kill it.
Mortal Kombat spinoff is underperforming, shut it down.
New Middle Earth game not going to be delayed, let's kill it.
Games shut down all the time,
so that's not a big deal,
but I'm just worried about their DNA,
their heavy business DNA applied to that game studio,
and I hope they don't take it in the shorts.
They've already shown that with their shows and IP, right?
Can you count the number of series that Netflix has run for a year
has gotten some
relative good feedback from audiences and and pretty good critical acclaim and then they just
shut it down because oh it's going to take too long or it'll cost too much we saw this with the
riot game series that they put together right with league of legends it's it's unfortunate but
this is absolutely their mo ship something, the metrics don't look great internally.
Kill that thing.
We're going to get a million fireflies in gaming because of this.
Don't say that.
Arcane was the single greatest animated anything I've ever watched, period.
I know you guys are going to scream at me about One Piece or some bullshit, but it was.
guys are gonna scream at me about one piece or some bullshit but it was spang i'm going to you
Spang, I'm going to you.
look i i wasn't surprised when i when i found out the next netflix wasn't putting
any value towards the the gaming piece uh of wb and and frankly i think it's a smart
move for them and i think it could potentially be a good you know in a weird way it could
potentially be good for wb gaming if it ends up you know either spinning out or not if it doesn't
get nuked as on arrival as as a part of the adoption because i think what we're seeing this
everywhere we're seeing this at microsoft we're seeing this with ea the the giant public company does gaming doesn't work
it's the incentives are misaligned as we as we're saying it doesn't allow for these projects to grow
and and build at the pace that they need to in order to be successful and the frankly the people
who are making those decisions just don't have the mindset in order to help those games be
successful so i i completely understand why
netflix after having tried banging their head against the wall uh with gaming for the last
couple of years with no real results that they find valuable enough to point to that they would
just completely undervalue or not value at all the the gaming part of the business where i think there
is an interesting opportunity is for that section to go
off and do something, whether it's the studios privatizing or spinning off. I would hope that
that is the end goal because those studios operating on themselves or under some kind of
new moniker potentially having access to those licenses if they're able to figure out a deal
with Netflix. Saying it out loud makes me realize
how unlikely it is, which is a bit depressing. But I get it. The giant company, like public
companies doing games, it's very, very difficult. And I think we're going to see more and more of
this. The people who know games are going to do games and they're going to focus on that. Like
we were saying weeks ago, like when is Xbox going to spin out of microsoft like at the way things are going and you know with the
ea going private again i think all of these things are very telling of a shift that's going on
within the market and within these giant public companies that maybe gaming isn't something that
we can just kind of dabble in and i I think that net off to some growing pains.
And once we've kind of shaken that off as an industry,
I think that's going to actually end up being for the better.
Great one from Wills.
And a few really juicy topics to get to.
So I'm going to go quick through these next hands.
Dub, Kate, Chris, Dub, over to you.
Yeah, first of all, Sam's mustache, Chris Hetherley,ley is like my quan i trust him in everything but
it's obvious here that the word should be like net one netflix to rule them all i don't understand
how you guys don't see that i just want to quickly defend the the gaming side of things because
i like where they're positioned in what they're doing and i think they have enough money
to start acquiring people and just let them freaking do what they do and have success. Like that is the mega corporation
that Netflix is looking to become, it seems like. And on their gaming side specifically,
they have a commercial running now that what they're trying to position is if you have a phone
and you're with a bunch of friends and family around the couch, which we're all about to be again here at Christmas, then you can play games together.
And here's some quick games to check out and play. And it's a quick install. And I've been
through that process. Thanks to Sam forcing me to play Happy Gilmore 2. And I believe in it
because of that. So I think saying they don't have direction, they don't know what they're doing,
whereas comments I heard about earlier, and I just think it's really far off. I think saying they don't have direction, they don't know what they're doing, whereas comments I heard about earlier, and I just think it's really far off.
I think they know exactly what they want to do.
I think they're setting a good framework for the short term,
but at the same time in the long term,
they're as big enough to be able to just start buying studios and letting games go.
And I'm looking forward to that cross IP metaverse,
whatever thing that Netflix is going to corporatize and make unless the government stops it from being the monopoly that it is.
Okay, I made Dub play Happy Gilmore 2 on Netflix because I was too busy working and I needed to know what it was like.
And then he voluntarily, after suffering through it for like 25 minutes, decided to play it a second time.
That one's not on me kate kate over to you
you know i i think this whole netflix thing i mean it's it's at the core like like has been
said earlier it really is about a concern that this will be the death blow to not only movie
theaters but also to a lot of movies movies and really like a whole budget range full
of movies that already are struggling to get made and struggling to get views and eyeballs.
Like right now, at least from what I've been seeing, it seems like there's been a lot of,
there are movies in the sub $5 million range that to be honest, it's,
it's hard to get a good cast and a good crew together for that kind of a budget. Um, and,
and so we've really seen the collapse of mid range budget movies, I think kind of accelerate and,
and that is only in the hands of a few, right? Like there's a 24 neon and maybe a few other folks in
that space. Um, it's, it's just been increasingly hard, harder for, for movies in that sort of
10 to 50, $60 million range to make money and be profitable in general. And so I just think this
is like an important part of the whole broader conversation and challenges is how do we make movies that aren't just either Minecraft, you know, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Insidious 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and like Scary Movie 25.
movies that are you know original content original IP in that mid-budget
range that has been the hugest challenge for Hollywood to crack and a lot of
filmmakers in that budget range if they get an off offer with Netflix maybe they
don't want it because they're worried that no one's gonna see their movie and
they're worried that there's no marketing behind it and so there's no
sense of a theatrical cultural moment for movies and so ultimately
the deal is super concerning because of this like truly original powerful creative filmmaking that
often exists in that yeah like 20 to 50 million dollar range like those movies are kind of they've
been getting crushed i would say for over a decade and i'm i'm really worried that they could continue to get crushed.
Damn. Chris, I don't think with the last word.
Yeah, just a point on this note that they put zero in the model for gaming.
It's not as bad as it sounds, but it's also not great.
What it means is that they're just buying this thing for the video business, and if they do anything on the game side, then that's completely incremental.
But what it also means is that there's no pressure on the operators
to deliver anything on the game side,
and there's also no capital in the plan to grow the games business.
So when Comcast bought in NBC universal,
they put zero in their plan for the parks. And so they basically got the parks business for free.
And then Harry Potter, the Harry Potter land blew up and then they poured capital into it. And now
it's one of their biggest profit drivers so it doesn't mean that just because
it's got zero in the model that they're like gonna dump it but it does mean that it's not
that that they're probably not in a position to take on more debt to do more m&a and they're not
uh to grow it and they're also not gonna pour capital into it most likely
great stuff from chris a little bit of insider perspective i also got to give a huge shout out also not going to pour capital into it, most likely.
Great stuff from Chris, a little bit of insider perspective.
I also got to give a huge shout out to Dubb, actually.
Dubb, one of the few people who remembered the game category was,
what's the word?
I even forgot because I got so lost in the sauce.
I was so enthralled by people's takes.
I just wanted to ask questions instead of sticking to the game mode.
That's on me.
We're moving on to the next topic, which is keep or kill.
First time we've done this one, Steam should drop the made with AI label. Are we keeping or are we killing the made with AI label?
There was a debate on Twitter a couple of weeks ago about this label. A former Unreal Engine developer who uses generative AI in his motion capture work said, quote, Steam and all digital
marketplaces need to drop the made with AI label. It doesn't matter anymore. Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games, obvious competitor to Steam, chimed in saying,
quote, agreed.
The AI tag is relevant to art exhibits for authorship disclosure and to digital content
licensing marketplaces where buyers need to understand the rights situation.
It makes no sense for game stores where AI will be involved in nearly all future production,
unquote. for game stores where AI will be involved in nearly all future production. Unquote.
This sparked a debate with other devs who say there should be labels and penalties for those who hide it.
Consumers who don't care will still buy it anyway.
So give them the choice.
Whose side are you on?
We keeping or we killing the made with AI label?
Wow.
Lots of hands.
Lots of hands.
Let's go to Tatted into Jerry.
Yeah, I think they should kill it.
I think it's one of the, it's a relic of the past.
Like, yeah, of course, when AI was this new thing made with AI makes a lot of sense.
But to Kevin's point, I think a couple weeks ago, what game developer right now isn't using some form of AI to make the processes easier?
And it doesn't even just have to be generative AI.
It can be all different types of AI.
So I think in this realm, it's a relic.
It's kind of like saying, oh, this is a cloud-based game.
If you don't like it, then you don't have to try it.
We're giving people a choice that isn't going to even be a choice
probably very, very soon, within even the next six months or so
in terms of how games are developed.
So I personally
think it's just catering to an old crowd who hates AI and they need everything that's AI labeled
because they're seeing AI videos being made and they can't tell the difference. And they're now
basically applying that exact same thing to game development, which to me just doesn't make any
sense. And then also I think the term's too broad Like, what are they counting under the made with AI?
Are they counting voices?
Are they counting localization?
Are they counting, obviously, creation of 3D models,
the meshing of those 3D models?
Like, if that's done with AI,
do we have to put this generated by AI title?
So I think it's just an outdated term now
that doesn't really see where the future's going
in terms of game development
that I think needs to be killed and buried and never, ever resurrected.
Jay, are we keeping or killing it?
I personally am killing it,
but I want to maybe go and tap into the normie mindset
because this is something I didn't know about,
and I think we get lost in because we're so excited about like tech, and just AI and like how we all use it every day.
Like normal people fucking hate AI. I found this out in like the last week. You know, like,
there's a lot of people out there. And you guys know how much I kind of hate the gaming
audience as a whole, like an aggregate, I kind of hate gamers.
You know, I totally think that AI is going to become like the next version of blockchain for like the mass gamer.
They hate seeing like an art disrupted.
They hate seeing, you know, artists lose their jobs and voice actors lose their jobs. And, you know, name the thing that AI is going to disrupt. And normies and people who aren't as excited about tech and who aren't
using AI in the way that we all do don't like it. And so I think it's a little bit of like
virtue signaling from Steam. And, you know, I kind of, you know, I don't know. I don't want to
say how I feel about virtue signaling, but in saying that I've already
said how I feel about virtual, virtual signaling.
So I'll just say it's fucking bullshit.
And I don't like need to see it necessarily like in the games industry.
And so like, I can't believe you guys are going to make me argue in favor of AI here,
but it is going to just be a disruptor of like some form of jobs in the games industry right
and it's like texture artists and like environmental artists will probably be like the first I mean
concept artists are already kind of like a dying breed now but like your texture people will go
away you're like you know fucking environmental people will start to go away like your design
people and stuff are all going to still be around for a while. But like there is going to be an impact
on the games industry.
And the games industry as like the consumers
are going to hate that.
So, you know, I'm just, you know,
the part of me that sees the future
and sees how everybody's going to be using this stuff
and how it's going to make the game design
process faster and more efficient and smoother.
You know, we're probably getting really close to that day.
It doesn't matter because they're going to walk this back in, you know,
a year or two anyway, right?
This won't exist in a little bit of time.
But for now, you know, it's a little bit of virtue signaling.
And I just, it doesn't fucking matter, right?
It's coming.
We can't deny it.
And, you know, it's,'s yeah so kill it uh in my opinion
but understand that normies hate this shit at the risk of uh beating these dead horses i'm gonna ask
everybody for a 30 second take because i have a feeling we might get a lot of the same answer
here let's go to kevin lambert then knock i'm actually gonna go contrarian on this one whoa
i'm gonna say we we should keep it but refine the label like i don't
think just made with ai as a uh uh you know an overbounding label should be the thing so if it
and the reason for it's it's nuanced right and if we if we just say made with AI means any relation to AI whatsoever, then we're kind of making the first wave of AI slot games that we're all seeing.
We're letting that drive the narrative.
And now those are going to be indistinguishable from what I think is coming, which could actually be some legitimate AI enhanced games.
And so, you know, we could sort of punish those legit devs from from doing
that if we remove it now but i think the kind of i think a refined label where we talk about the
types of ai that's used um could be interesting and not necessarily a big downside to have
love that singin or sorry sorry i said i would go to knock then i'll tag in sinjin dub i see you
waving at me too yeah if you need a made with ai label to tell you which games you need to hate
then your whole thesis for why you should hate ai games doesn't fucking work right like you're
gonna slap a made with ai label on arc raiders aselling game on Steam, the third most played game at any moment in time, because their
entire, like,
all of the NPCs in that game
are leveraging AI to some degree.
No, it's pure
fucking stupidity. We might as well add,
you know, made in Unity, or made in Unreal,
or made in fucking anywhere else.
Like, it's stupidity, and
I think what ends up happening
a lot of the times with gamers is they're afraid of change, but they want change and they know exactly what they want, but they hate that thing when you implement it.
Gamers are fucking stupid.
And I've spent a lot of time in professional esports and I've realized that that subsect of gamers are even fucking d, and they're the ones with the audience. So it's best that you leverage data, get a general sense for whether or not a patch or something that you ship resonates with an audience based on the actual data, not just the loud people in the room.
And I think when it comes to AI gaming, you've got a bunch of loud people in the room.
You're never going to slap a made with AI on a title like Arc Raiders in an effort to disparage it.
And again, if you need the marker to hate a game, then you don't actually hate the game.
30 seconds, Sinjin over to you, kill or keep.
Keep it. You guys are all fucking idiots. You know, like at the end of the day, you say games
are stupid. Fuck you guys. Gamers are not stupid. You guys are fucking stupid. You know why? Because
fucking Emperor Game is there keeping the fucking, you know, banner up for what's important for gamers.
And he's protecting Steam.
And the interest is right now, just making it an issue, is like authenticity.
That's what gamers like.
They want to have something authentic.
And you fucknuts are all about the prediction markets and the bottom dollar.
And that's why you're all fucking disconnected in the space is all fucked up right so like obviously
the monkey doesn't work exactly right kevin's right on and eventually this is going to go away
right but to like keep the ai slop there and fucking put a line there fucking that's fucking
right emperor gave you fucking do your shit man Are you actually going to argue that Ark Raiders and the way that they've implemented AI is...
No, I'm not.
But it's making a fucking line.
Because you guys are thinking about, like, the bottom line and these little specifics.
But there's a bigger, like, motive here.
It's, like, signaling to the market.
Hey, this is game.
We're for gamers.
We want to, like, make a line here that we're not going to accept any of this ai slop obviously for our creators that's not the case right there's a lot of nuance to it
but you got to see from their perspective and if your perspective is that gamers are
fucking stupid well i can't fucking help you there my perspective is if you need a
label to tell you that something is slop then it's probably not slop
yeah i can see both sides of it the the label does prevent you from having to
you know do a deep dive you could obviously obfuscate a lot of shit in the trailer you
know if most of the game is slop but you just show the five percent that isn't i'm not sure
dub and then uh spank holy shit i can't wait to dive into syngent's problem with prediction
markets that's gonna be a good one um i I'm with Kevin here on it needs refinement,
but it just needs to be flipped, dude.
Like clearly these guys want to be like,
oh, this is like a mostly human made game.
Just it's the same shit as organic.
It's the same shit as like, you know,
respective of the environment, responsible down.
I've been through this before
in the sporting goods department and I'm all for it. Like if they want their label, give them their label. Obviously AI is way too
general and broad at this time. And it makes a lot of sense for them to be like, yeah,
a human mostly made this and that's what they're proud of. And let them be proud of that.
Spang.
I think it's really interesting from the art that from the people that are really angry
at the label that there's this kind of two-sided argument of oh no we need to get rid of the label
it's all going to be completely indistinguishable and the people that care about the label
are fucking idiots and aren't enough that it's going to make a difference so then why does it
matter if the label is there or not like you could slap a maid with AI label and arc raiders and no one's going to give a shit. Their numbers are not going
to change. And I think that just goes to the point that you can do it right and that the label isn't
going to impede on anything. I think it's going to help, you know, potentially smaller games
separate themselves out from the swath of AI slot games that are coming in. And if you're looking at
smaller games that are much more easily AI generated, it's going to be a lot easier to
distinguish those potentially. But like, I don't think it hurts anyone. And I also think it's so
funny coming from Tim Sweeney. Like, yeah, Gaben clearly doesn't know what he's doing. He would
just look at my amazing web store that everyone uses,
he would know that we accept AI and that's going really well for us.
I don't know.
Telling Gaben and Steam how to do their job is an absolute fool's errand.
And I think that they're capitalizing on what people are saying.
And Jerry said it really well.
People don't want AI slop in their games.
That's just a fact.
And whether they actually know the full extent of what that means is up for debate.
And I think I actually read, I did some research on what the actual disclosure is.
And the two key points were that you need to disclose if there was pre-generated content,
any content developers created during the game's early stage development or live generated content, any content that was created with the help of AR while the game is
in use. So I think that that's the distinction Kevin is talking about. I think docking people
or telling people what they can do before the game is released and how they develop their game,
I think that's stupid. I think generating concept art and whatnot, that's fine. But I think that's stupid. I think, you know, generating concept art and whatnot, like that's fine.
But I think you should know if there is AI actually influencing your gaming experience.
And people clearly care.
That's why this has created furor and rage.
It's because people want to know.
And I think disclosing that is okay.
And I think if you make your game right, like with Ark Raiders, and you implement it well, nobody's going to care.
So who really loses here? Good takes from Spang. make your game right like with arc raiders and you implement it well nobody's gonna care so who
really loses here good takes from spang i'm going to uh let's go to chris heatherly again uh 30
seconds for you guys as an american developer we need ai to compete with sinjin and his army of
waifu women so uh you know i'm kind of fucked if i'm gonna have to wear the scarlet letter
in the fucking steam store so we got to get rid of it um you know look there was a there was a
developer that was uh that was that that got bullied out of canceled out of business the other
day uh that makes a game called postal because they because allegedly they were using generative AI
in their trailer, which they said they weren't,
and they got piled on,
and it forced their publisher to drop them,
and it's a bunch of, like, bullshit.
And it's just a scarlet letter.
It's just inviting hate on game developers
who are going to have to use this stuff to survive.
That's my argument.
And a good one at that.
Lemz, I saw you waving at me too.
Did you want to add something?
Yeah, I wanted to push back on Spang
because I think his point on, yeah,
no one cares about Ark Raiders,
but Ark Raiders has been a breakout hit.
At this point, yeah, no one cares.
But what about the small indie studios
who, hey, they want to use ai to you know
accelerate development or something like that it feels like you're just throwing the baby out with
the bath water if you're just like oh it's because the label is vague too so it's just like oh
everything is ai is bad like the amount of irrational hate for ai i think rivals nft and
blockchain like it's literally at that level where it's just
so insane how people are online so i think it fucks a lot of people over if you just get all
get branded with this label of oh hey it's it's made with ai like yes i get that there's going to
be slop but let the game speak for itself people will get better at identifying slop just like we
identify slop on crypto twitter we can see in the comments like at a glance we're like oh this is just slop content people will get better at
identifying slop games and you know who needs the label it's just like is it good or not
lens you promised to stop referring to our game as slop come on man
this one's a juicer we got knock waving at me spang put the hand back up still got a tag in
kate and tatted uh knock since you're waving i'll send it to you yeah listen i mean if we're gonna label games made
with ai then i vote to kill the motion of rebranding web3 gaming to gaming or on-chain gaming because
we don't need we don't need to worry about it we should just leave it as web3 gaming it shouldn't be
a deterrent for people to play our games and And if our games are good, you'll break out.
And no, everybody in the Web3 space wants to remove away from this because there is this connotation that traditional gamers have with crypto and blockchain.
And the entire industry has spent the last three years trying to scrub the industry clean of the phrase Web3 Gaming just to then turn around and pretend now we should
slap a label on ai gaming because we don't want ai gaming it's it's funny when it's us but it's a
different problem when it's somebody else and you you bring the point well and i think it's an
argument that is not meant to be in bad faith but is in bad faith you're taking a breakout game
in arc raiders after it's had success and slapping a Made with AI
label on that title. Embark Studios does not do well. If that game comes out of the gate
with Made with AI, it dies. And the issue here and the thing that Chris mentioned is
you don't want to kill games before people have had an opportunity to play the game for
themselves. And i think that
that's what we've been arguing for the last three years in crypto just because crypto is in the name
or just because crypto is involved doesn't mean the game is a bad thing it doesn't mean that you
shouldn't play it and arguing for labels in a different part of the industry is either being
disingenuine or being stupid Made you go fuck yourselves.
Let's go over to Kate.
I'm sorry,
but,
but yo,
yeah.
so initially,
you know,
a couple of years ago,
maybe I was like,
yeah,
we need labels on this stuff because the deep fakes have gone pretty far and caused a lot of problems. And misinformation
and deep fakes are obviously a reason why we would want content to be labeled as AI generated
to help people better understand what's real and what's not on the internet. I think with games,
though, that's not really what's going on here, right? Like, it's just they want to just label it to distinguish it as, okay, like, someone typed in a prompt and, like, this thing came out.
And I think that we, when it comes to these labels, like, we don't, I don't think we need them.
So I think we need to kind of pass them off.
And I agree.
Like, with crypto, it's kind of the same thing.
It's like, oh, this is a crypto game.
And it's like, because crypto games have been so clunky and the user experience has been so like the user has to understand so much just in order to buy an asset, play the game, blah, blah, blah.
Like they have to label it as a crypto game.
And the marketing, because there's different blockchains and the blockchains have their own interests of promoting their blockchain and making their blockchain beloved by the masses like
the blockchains are also marketing themselves and saying we're this blockchain we're supporting all
these games and so there's been a lot of like very crypto forward marketing um around blockchain
games and so i think there will be some games where you'll see some ai forward marketing and
that i'm that i'm not sure will land But I think the label's got to go.
I think crypto game labels also kind of got to go.
I think we got to do a smooth onboarding there.
I mean, I tweeted a while back that we kind of need stablecoin payments first into games
and other kinds of things that are going to introduce people in a more organic way to
meet them where they're at, to give them things that they actually want. And then from there, that can be kind of the gateway to get people to better
access the crypto ecosystem and use DeFi and all the other stuff. So I kind of think that that's
the entry point. And I think that AI labels, we can kill them because honestly, in gaming and in
other forms of entertainment, people can tell. People are going to be able to tell. And I do agree with previous sentiment around that. So yeah, I'm here to say, like, I actually thought literally a year ago, like, keep the labels. But now I'm saying no, like, we don't need AI labels. Everyone's going to be using AI. Where do you draw the line on what's AI and what's not? Literally, everyone's going to be using it in some capacity. And so I just think we don't need them.
I do appreciate that willingness to revise the opinion.
Spang, I'm tagging you back in.
Sorry for putting you on pause.
Go ahead.
Okay, look, I get that as it is.
Great.
Like slapping a made with AI label is pissing people off.
But I think comparing AI and blockchain and like a made with blockchain game or it utilizes crypto an ai game is is completely nonsensical i i i
frankly i think the argument is a lot better in favor of ai than with blockchain because with
blockchain you're plugging into a financial system like absolutely like it's a core part
of like how you're going to experience that game and a crucial bit and saying that like, oh, we've been trying to like get rid of like, like calling games like Web3 games.
No, we haven't.
We've just been trying to revise how painful the UX is on these experiences and make it so that like people can actually use it i and i think the made with ai thing is you know it's
like yeah it may be maybe it's putting people back but at the end of the day you know about like
valve is a user first platform and if users want to know if games are going to made with ai that's
what they're going to give people because that's what valve does whether it's like good for the
games or not good for the games like if people want it and
that's what the players want to see and that's what's determining players decisions on the steam
platform because that's the only place that this is happening you're not going to see this on the
app store where basically everything you play is slop anyways you're not going to see this on
nintendo you're not going to see this on epic it's only in the steam app store and i think if that is
for those players specifically and if those players want to know that, then fuck it.
Let them know that.
Fair takes from Wills.
I'm going to Tadde, then Vo joining us on the stage as well.
Excited to hear her take.
Tadde, over to you.
Yeah, so the reason I want to bring it back a little bit to one of the things that I said before and Kevin said before is that it's fine to have this AI label if they define what it means.
Because if you're just going to label every game that uses any sort of AI at all in its
development, then what about machine learning being a subset of AI?
Isn't that technically an AI created game?
So I think the idea that you're just putting this label on and people don't understand
the nuances between what's generative AI and what's not generative AI, I think that's where really the issue comes in. To Kate's point, a year ago,
I would have absolutely said, yeah, this should be on there because this is such a new thing.
The tools are so new, give people a choice, but it doesn't really make any sense anymore.
And as technology improves and grows, this is almost exactly like putting cloud gaming on a
game that's just part of
a cloud server.
It doesn't make any sense because we're just going to start to see every single person
or every single company in the industry using at least some form of AI in their game.
So I think it's like a bastion to an older time.
It doesn't really fit anymore.
I understand Sinjin's point, but it's again, we need to qualify it in a way that we're actually defining this term versus just putting this blanket
statement over it. Because if you ask the average normie on the street, they can't tell you the
difference between something that's this section of AI versus this is generative AI. They have
absolutely no idea what the difference is. So by blanket labeling things, we're causing a lot more harm, in my opinion, than good.
And I do believe in Gabe Layden more than anything.
They're the most profitable company in the world per employee.
But I'm ready for this one to fall off
because I want to give game developers the freedom to make a lot of games.
And if this is what's scaring a good game from being created,
let's knock it out of the equation.
Great summary from Tatted Vo.
Are we keeping or killing this Steam made with AI label?
Yeah, this is a really interesting debate
because we did this on the NFT side of like,
hey, should these be labeled as ai or
you know one of one are like what should we do and i think ultimately open c integrated some labels
categories and then magic ended up not so this this has played out in different um different
types of platforms before so it's cool to see it come back um i i don't know why we need it
players don't care like i just want to play a game
that's fun I it could be 100% AI could be 0% I don't care um but I think the the thing that
an AI tag makes me think is oh it's like AR or VR and I don't want to play those kind of games
so if anything it's probably just a little off-putting to certain users.
But the other side of it, too, is like I don't know a game studio that has not experimented or used AI in some capacity,
even if that's working on RNG and algorithms with AI or character design.
Like everyone's using AI.
It's kind of like, why are we afraid of AI?
I guess legacy game developers are trying not to turn into AI simple compute robots.
But, you know, at the end of the day, like AI is our friend.
And when the AI robots take over, I'm going to be their first line of defense.
But I do want to tap back on one thing Kate said about crypto games and crypto labels and those games being kind of clunky.
There are crypto games that aren't clunky.
There's ones that have crypto aspects and you can buy assets and it just is a normal piece of the game, obviously off the grid.
And then there's more mainstream ones like CS, right, with their chain and such.
So I think a lot of crypto games are clunky and a lot of the
experiences are pretty shit but a lot of them are actually pretty good um and i would not be
surprised if some of the bigger games that all of us have played um have some level of blockchain
running in the background that we may not be fully aware of love that appreciate you chiming in vo
going to knock for the last word then we're moving on
because we have like four topics still yeah yeah one one really quick final piece here i think
listen the predominant advice if your name is not sinjin for the last four years sinjin is
unwavering and i respect the fuck out of sinjin for being the way that he is he's going to deliver
something that's a ton of fun but for for literally anybody else, the predominant advice given to every single game in Web3
was hide the crypto, take it away, approach it in a Web 2.5 manner, make sure that you
obfuscate it away so that the crypto element is outside of the game experience, and that
way you can get listed onto Steam.
Like, the idea that labels that have negative connotation because of a technology does not affect the outcome of a game is not real.
That's not real life.
Of course, that is a thing.
We are all worried.
We've spent the last four years in this space worried about games and players finding out that games are crypto games before they've had a chance to play the game. Why? Because so
many people in this space believe that that game would be DOA before anybody's ever had an
opportunity to find out whether or not they like it simply because crypto is associated with that
game. I think the idea of slapping labels on anything that isn't inherently like literally
harmful to the physical well-being of human beings is stupidity and is going to affect
the ability for people to find those things, try those things out, give things an opportunity,
see if they like the game. I wholeheartedly believe that Ark Raiders, especially in this
climate, is DOA if they get labeled with an AI tag on the day that that game launches on Steam.
Nobody plays it because the bots because the robots that you fight
are AI and it's unfair and it's this and it's that. But instead, it wasn't labeled. You had
an opportunity to play the game. You realize that the game is incredible and it's incredible,
not in spite of the fact that they leverage AI, but almost entirely because they leveraged AI in
the way that they have. And now it's opened up the doors for more people to get experimental
with the way that they introduce AI, how they can opened up the doors for more people to get experimental with
the way that they introduce AI, how they can develop games, etc. I think labeling things
before people have an opportunity to play them, just because the technology behind it is a hot
button issue for a bunch of people who are going to forget about that issue in three months' time,
just like they have with every other hot button issue for gamers, is killing games before we have
the chance
to play them and it stops us from getting games like arc raiders i'm sorry but i also want to jump
in um i just i don't think that like using off the grid as an example is like a great example
to say like this is a successful blockchain game for many reasons um like 45% of their Steam reviews are negative. There's been a lot of other questions
around that game. So I just don't really think that we can just like point to all these games
and be like, wow, look at how they're integrating crypto. They're a huge, massive success. Like,
I think there's a lot more going on under the surface that a lot of people don't know about.
And so I think like if more of these games,
if we actually knew how much revenue are they making,
what are they paying their employees?
Do they have testers?
Are those testers not getting paid?
What's going on with the financial side of the game? How many players do they actually have?
I think we would get a much better sense
of what's going on with a lot of these games
and whether they actually deployed crypto effectively if we had more information.
So I understand that folks are in marketing roles at various companies and they speak
to certain things as proof of success.
But to me, I would challenge that a little bit.
I don't really know that Off the grid is like a smash success that like
other game studios should seek to emulate yeah hey sam i just want to make one point to uh
but go ahead bo sorry yeah sorry i was gonna say i i've liked off the grid before i was an employee
at avalanche if that's what you're alluding to um i've known the team for a while they're they're
good guys and i checked a couple days ago jonah and i actually have money on uh how many users
they'll have in two years um but just on steam they had 10 000 concurrent and like a random
middle of the day a weekday last week um and steam is their smallest platform from my understanding
by miles um with console being the biggest one. They're a very
competent team. We all know them. We all love Theo. So I would definitely say that's a success.
It's probably the most successful game we've seen so far. The game works. It's fun. I don't think
Steam reviews is that great of an assessment just because it was in beta and the game did suck.
an assessment just because it was in beta and the game did suck uh it's been much better recently
but um even for like arc raiders they only have like 80 85 positive reviews and that game is like
you know the end all be all for extraction shooters right now like everyone loves that game and
it's you know it's kind of like rotten tomatoes right like the some of the movies we love the
most and the audience loves the most is uh hated the most it has the most critics so um i mean have you have you looked into the off the
grid um game testers and how they're not getting paid and how like many of them have reported not
getting paid and have you also looked into like off the grid employees reporting that they've
also faced like issues getting paid.
What does it have to do with the game being good or not, though?
Yeah, I think that's probably a debate for another day, but I appreciate both you guys weighing in on it. Super, super tough subject in general to dissect, and I think we're getting
off the rails a little bit, but I do really appreciate your perspective as well. Sinjin,
you wanted one more word as well?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I just wanted to let Nock know that.
Thank you for letting me know that you don't like labels whatsoever.
So when you come to Thailand and I take you to a nightclub,
I won't point out who the ladyboys are,
so you can just have fun and figure that stuff out for yourself.
I really appreciate you, Nock, and so with the ladyboys.
It's obvious, Nock.
It's obvious, Nock.
Don't worry, you're fine.
Don't you tell Dub how to party. Nah's obvious, not. It's obvious, not. Don't worry. You're fine. Don't tell Dub how to
we'll see.
I was nowhere near what I expected that to go.
That was incredible. It sounds like, yo, we're getting
off the rails.
And that was the next thing to follow.
My God. All right. Bullish or
bullshit. Fableborn.
Buying back, quote unquote, token
allocation from NFT holders and
airdropping USDC. A few weeks ago,
Fableborn held a town hall with holders. They announced they'd be buying back some of the
airdrop allocation for Genesis NFT holders and airdropping USDC instead. They had previously
allocated 3% of the supply to NFT holders. The changes meant they'd be buying back 1.3% of the
supply at a $70 million valuation and airdropping it as USDC. So holders got some
of the token allocation along with the USDC airdrop. This cost them about a million dollars
from their treasury. The token launched last week, opening at $70 to $80 million. FDV peaked at 300,
currently sitting around $200 million FDV. Bullish or bullshit on this token allocation
buyback and airdropping USDC?
That was just a move that I personally did not expect.
Dub and Lems going to you guys.
Yeah, I'm bullish on it until I'm told otherwise by Sinjin,
who's going to follow up and call me an idiot.
But it just feels like they rewarded all their people that wanted to be rewarded
and also took away the sell pressure from their token that is seeing success right now in the news.
Whether or not that creates a cannibalizing expectation from the current community on whatever comes next is to be foretold and we'll see.
But that's the only real downside I can see of this whole thing.
And overall, it's a win for the token,
and it seems like a win for the players as well.
Well, is the downside not that they had to spend a million dollars to do it?
Lems?
I like money.
Yeah, I'm bullish on this.
I think it was a bold move from the team to spend a million dollars
from their treasury, right?
You don't know how a token launch is going to go.
At the time of the snapshot, like the amount they drop in USDC
was basically around the floor price of the NFT as well.
And then you plus you get the power token, which is their native token.
So I think it was a really good deal for holders.
We've seen lots of teams, you know, not just gaming projects of all sorts of teams,
just slash allocations and decide to change it when they need it for a listing or whatever.
These guys put their balls in the line and said like, Hey, no, we're going to spend like a million
dollars buying back because we want to stay true to what we like, what we promised people is a 3%
token allo. And I saw a few people in discord going like, Hey, can I just get the token allo
instead of like the USDC now that the token's pumping?
Really easy to say that stuff in like hindsight when you watch what happens with the launch.
I think, you know, no one knew we've seen so many launches go bad recently and, you know, over the whole year basically with gaming tokens.
So I think, you know, hats off the team for doing this, spending the money out of their treasury, doing right by holders
who've been holding for a long-ass time.
They didn't have to go above and beyond.
So overall, very bullish move.
People still got some token, I don't know.
So I think it was pretty good, but definitely a bold strategy because a million dollars
from your treasury is quite a chunk of change.
It sure is.
Send you in then to Jerry.
Yeah, so fucking bullish.
Good job, fucking Cameron,
the Fable We're Blowing team.
You know, like a lot of times,
like it's a gimmick when they're paying back shit
like out of their treasury
because they don't know what the fuck they're doing.
And, you know, like a lot of things in Web3,
especially if you say like,
okay, you have a native advisor,
whatever like that,
and the native advisor is just telling you how to like you know pick up expectations so you can raise more
to rug more or whatever like that but you know they really looked at like what the sell pressure
was going to be like what the obligations were and they decided this was the way to do it and
it's fantastic because you know they were facing an issue. And the thing with like Web3 Games is that this entire live ops thing of the secondary market, if you talk to any of these tokenomic expert fuck nuts, right?
They only give you information up to like how much you could raise or how much you could list at the TGA.
And it's like, well, then you can figure out the strategy afterwards because nobody has.
And the fact that they did do this and it's gone so fucking well i was asking the wolf's
discord and the wolf's telegram because no one was talking about no ko was talking about this tge at
all like everyone had lost fucking hope and they're like there's no fucking way and people are like
good fucking luck there's no fucking way this tge is going to work right and they did it this
particular way and there's no holder that i know and and I'm a holder as well, that was unhappy with it. And if, if they got to 600, then instead of dumping it, then they're like, okay, well,
that actually built a lot of confidence. And a lot of people took their allocation and just bought
more tokens with it. So I think fantastic job. This is where like, you see the experience and
also being native to space, but not just how do I say using the information just for exploited purposes on the founder side, rather really looking at this live ops situation post TGA really seriously.
A fantastic job for these guys.
Jerry, your thoughts?
Yeah, I think there's no way that like people should be bearish on this.
You know, I think you kind of have to be bullish.
That's what we're doing.
Is bullish bullshit or whatever?
Bullish is the answer.
And yeah, man, I mean, it feels like everybody won here.
And I think the thing that people maybe, when you kind of look behind the scenes, is now that they have a token that's seemingly doing well, can they just replenish the war chest with OTC sales of that token? Right. And so, yeah, was it like a strategic
risk to, you know, use a million from the treasury to, you know, go and make this move happen? Yeah.
And it's not a team that raised like an infinite amount of money. Right. That's that was a
meaningful amount of what they had probably still in the in the war chest right um but i think it now has allowed them to actually kind of
you know control their own destiny in a sense and you know i'm sure as part of this they they
you know cam is a very smart operator and uh maria and like you know i want to give a shout
out to tcaf as well i mean those guys have been really understand the culture and the, you know, mindset of
what's happening here.
And they made a hard choice and a risky choice.
But yeah, I think this has set them up for the future in a much more meaningful way than
holding on to that million dollars would have.
of that million dollars would have.
And you have to think that Ronan's probably super happy as well.
You know, Ronin maybe helped make this happen,
but, you know, it's bringing activity to the chain.
It's bringing a big win to the chain.
And it's helping people start to look at, like, okay, is there a future here?
Is there something that can be done with this vertical
and this industry that's really hurting right now?
So I think we kind of have to celebrate them, you know,
really proud of all the people over there. And, um, you know,
as Lems eloquently said, they put their balls on the table.
And as, uh, the great Peter LeFleur once said,
it's time to put your mouth where our balls are.
Jesus. Let's go to Kevin Lambert.
Then did not.
Yeah. Can you hear me? Okay? I had a weird power flash there.
Yeah, all good, brother.
Okay, cool.
I remember one of my best performing tweets of 2022
is when I said something like,
game studios out there are hiring economists
to fix their broken tokenomics
rather than just getting better game designers
to add real value and demand to the tokens.
I think what Fableborn is doing here is actually pretty clever.
It sounds like generosity, but you could also look at it like a silent tokenomics reset.
It's almost like the first time I've seen a Web3 game exit the token meta without leaving Web3 and staying in it.
And it's really novel how they did that.
They're looking at it like, hey, getting value and getting the tokenomics story is really difficult.
So here's a move that preserves the narrative.
preserves the narrative, it preserves, you know, it brings value to the OGs. And it just sort of,
It brings value to the OGs.
it lets them reset their tokenomics in a way that now they can go after the real utility.
I'm a little worried that it mortgages the future. Like it's a million dollar mortgage on the future
demand of the token in the loop there. But I think the way they executed it was awesome, right?
Like, everybody still looks up to the game, the token had a nice chart,
and they still have the respect of the Web3 game community,
and the game looks good.
You know, Kevin, I do think that there was, like,
a little bit of a leverage for the future,
but, I mean, I've kind of heard behind the scenes
that there's actually a pretty decent appetite right now
for, like, OTC token deals.
So would you feel the same way if they had sold like a couple million dollars worth of the token?
Would you still feel that way?
Or do you think like you would have a different?
And I don't know that that happened, but I'm just kind of curious.
I don't know.
That's an interesting thought experiment.
You're saying what?
Because it's only one million and then the way that it was done might have a different narrative on it?
Yeah, yeah. If they spent one but made back three, right, that would be a genius move at that point, right?
Totally, yeah.
Yeah, good point there. Lots of economics going on in the background that might make this more worthwhile.
more worthwhile let's go over to uh knock and then a dub yes and i'll tell you one group of
Let's go over to Nock and then to Dub.
people who is going to be incredibly unhappy with the way that this played out and it's every game
founder looking at the way that this tg went off without a bunch of fucking flames and people
running from the building like this this was about as good as it could have happened and people are
going to look at this and try to emulate it without really understanding what's going on. And I think when you look at the team there, specifically Cam, Maria, Tyler, people that so many of us know and have had conversations with,
these guys over the course of the last three or four years have spoken to literally anybody that would speak with them about their opinion on Web3 Gaming.
They've taken the time to synthesize all that information down, absorb as much as it is humanly possible, and then make an educated decision on the way that they should move forward
with what is quite literally outside of the official global launch of your game,
the biggest, most important moment that you're going to have as a Web3 game, as a game building
in crypto. And, you know, of the ways to spend a million dollars, buying back your own token in an effort to reduce sell pressure on TGE while making your users happy isn't even in the top 1,000 dumbest ways a million dollars has been spent in crypto. without the understanding of how this all worked. To Jerry's point, you probably also bought back with the understanding
that there will be some sort of OTC deal here from existing investors.
We saw this play out a couple of weeks ago.
We talked about it on Simplified with MegaEth
and them buying 4% of their company back.
They bought 4% of the company, sure,
but they also bought the token warrants that were associated with that 4% of equity.
And that was in a very similar capacity to just remove future sell pressure of that token
and to instill confidence in people
who are participating in the ICO.
So to me, this is a really smart way
to spend a million dollars pre-global launch.
It ensures that your token launch,
which you do have an obligation,
and they did have an obligation to go live with and launch,
doesn't kill the product
before you even get the
game out on a global scale i think this was handled well to singen's point everybody who
was part of the community is happy with it the token is still performing well about a week after
launch does it stay in the 150 to 200 mil my bet would be in the short term the answer is probably
no but over the long term they've now set themselves up in a really strong position in which most of the token, most of that circulating supply is either controlled directly by them or by people who are aligned with them if this OTC thing is happening.
And I'm sure that it is.
Don't put the last hand up there. We're going to move on.
Yeah, I just want to like straw man for a second why this was terrible because i'm terrified
when all of us unanimously agree and think something's a good thing it's it's never
works out that way like you can guys run back to tapes and you'll see it um and like they have now
trained their customer base and are growing a new customer base around the same idea that they're going to get rewarded in USDC
along every major launch and thing that happens for the game.
And we're scoffing at them spending a million dollars.
So if they have to go and keep spending that and doing that alongside everything,
then it's going to be the thing that actually probably kills them.
And while it's cool to see
i don't think it's sustainable and i worry about what the future looks like and guys i know i'm
wrong i know i'm so far off base it's why it's called the straw man so if we can move on to the
next topic you can put your hands down no need to to roast my gutless uh take there we we all know
yeah with that said i do want to squeeze in one or two more topics if we can
since we spent a lot of time on the first two sentiment score trump game launching on open loot
yesterday the trump meme coin page announced a game called the trump billionaires club and it
looked like only people over 80 would ever play it and it's the it's launching on open loot it's
gonna have one million dollars in rewards in trump coin what is your sentiment score for the uh the game featuring old number
47 uh knock over to you oh shit this was a residual hand uh my score is negative 52 um just
like every other crypto game related stake stake, university, knives, fucking toques, whatever.
Everything goes up in flames.
This will go up in flames.
This is just using a million dollars because they have an obligation legally to do so.
Dub, what's the word and how many days of your life are you going to spend playing this?
Well, I'm not going to change up.
It's what? Shut up, Jerry. It's a sentiment'm not gonna change up. It's what?
Shut up, Jerry.
It's a sentiment score, first of all, it's one to 10.
I'm giving it like an eight.
And I have to slap a word onto it.
It's market making.
For me, like OpenLoo,
if we've watched what they've been doing,
it's like they shed all of their residual games
that they had signed onto the platform that
they were hoping to run the big time business model on and then failed to do so and now they're
they have been cooking in the back end we've been waiting to see what their pivot is and they just
revealed that the pivot is a trump partnership around the trump meme coin. And to me, that's one giant money-making known to market
maker, partnering up with the president of market making and market makers. So of course, it's like
destined for, this is beyond 70% success rate. For me, this is, these guys are going to throw
all their shit into it. People who participate heavy are going to win everyone else is going to be like oh shit i guess i should have saw it coming
and like just fucking get on the roller coaster and have a fun ride guys i don't i don't understand
why it's like oh fuck it's just like the same sentiment towards negative ai and not and being
stoked on it just because it's got trump's face on it doesn't mean it can't be a cook
i don't this is a pre-existing token though i'm not sure where
magical rewards outside of this million dollars in in trump coin are going to come from i think
it's one person gets lucky and everybody else just wastes a bunch of time and money most likely i'm
not really sure uh but shout out to dub mvp vote goes to him from me because he survived me
fucking up game modes now twice and stayed the course, which is shocking.
Let's go over to Sinjin.
Sinjin, sentiment score, you know, Trump game, this or that, whatever.
But like specifically on open loot and their strategy being,
you know, they used to be big time.
Let's try to make, you know, the AA, AAA stuff in Web3.
Now it's hyper casual mobile.
What can only be described as garbage objectively
if you watch the trailer.
Yeah, you, what can only be described as garbage objectively if you watch the trailer. Yeah, you know what? I think Dub was actually totally spot on. I give him an eight in the
context of that this is a Trump project and there's a certain thing that's going to happen
and it's just going to end up in flames and then become irrelevant. But, you know,
in terms of like its launch and its playbook
and what's going to exactly happen i think dub is spot on so for what it is and what for open
loot is and the fact that they have this partnership everyone kind of knows what
is going to play out and if you don't know what's going to play out oh man like
please don't do prediction markets or anything else like that
Don't do prediction markets or anything else like that.
Lebs, I'll go to you.
All right.
It's a negative 47 for the 47th president.
This is just a massive grift.
So this is from the same company who licensed his likeness for the NFTs and the token, right?
So it has this whole disclaimer of like oh this is like you know
we're licensing his name and likeness yada yada yada they launched nfts once they pumped because
it had trump's name then they uh released new ones and like diluted the out of it and nuked the
collection so but they didn't give a because they grifted more money then they launched a meme coin
which basically like marked the top for quite a while earlier this year.
And now they're teaming up with Openloot, who are also really extractive and good at trying to shake people down for money.
And they've not been doing so well on all their other games so far.
So they've gone for, oh, hey, let's just do a massive grift here.
like yeah there's maybe a slim chance of you making money but honestly i'd bet more on gambling
Yeah, there's maybe a slim chance of you making money.
on pump fun than trying to make money off this shit because this is just like yeah extractive
level 9 000 kevin lambert sentiment score well it depends there i said it um there are two lenses
here the first lens is is this good for gaming is this good for gaming? Is this good for
our industry? Is this going to be good long term? And the sentiment score is negative.
Uh, however large of a number you can come up with in your voice. Um, and then, you know,
Dubb actually had a pretty lucid statement, you know, just cause it's got the man's face on it
doesn't mean it can't cook. And that is true. Like, I remember back in the day when I was, this is like 2017, 2018, and I'm looking at
all these coins, like DentalCoin and Tron and all these shit coins, pardon my language.
And I'm just like, these are absolutely terrible.
The fundamental value is garbage, but there's like an army of speculation there and you
could ride that wave and it could
cook and i think from that if you're if you're here to be a degen and play stupid games and win
stupid prizes you know i i give it a seven like because it has some potential there but it ain't
going to be around in three years i guarantee it chris that literally Here's my review
For the second week in a row
Although I will say
This game seems to want to be a clone of Monopoly Go
And I'm calling you out Javier Ferriera
Put it in Monopoly Go
A Trump integration in Mon monopoly go would be a billion
dollars and you know it you coward wow the call out here on gamified we're gonna try to squeeze
in one more here what's the word cambria generated over a million dollars in just a couple of days
season three just started and almost all Ethan
Ron spent in-game is used as rewards. Last season, the prize pool, $1.5 million from a two-week
period, and this is already over 1.2 in just a few days. Most of the prize pool is distributed
based on how much silver you hold relative to the total supply at the end of the season.
Cambria, in general, though, seems to be cooking.
You know, now season four, or excuse me, season three,
and every season seems to have a reasonable amount of players,
reasonable size prize pool.
People are still interested.
Tough to find games that can have, you know, long-standing staying power.
We just talked about Fableborn.
Season four? Are you kidding me?
Some sustainability in Web3 Gaming potentially.
Tad it over to you.
Sorry, what was the sentiment score?
What's the word for Cambria generating over $1 million just a couple of days?
The word is incredible.
I feel like any Web3 game or on-chain game, excuse me,
that we are talking about that's generating real revenue
deserves to be celebrated to the stars. The fact that they've been able to be celebrated uh you know to the stars uh the fact
that they've been able to sustain a player base sustained revenue have people want to spend money
in the game and they themselves are not going bankrupt doing all this i think that's a pretty
clear sign that they've figured out a winning formula at least for themselves who knows if it
can be replicated but i give them all the kudos in the world.
And I think that more games should follow along this exact way because that's how the on-chain gaming space grows.
And that's how we find the future of gaming to be on-chain.
Dub, what's the word for Cambria?
Well, it's obviously Cookbria.
Shout out to Logic for that one.
It's funnier when he's around. And like,
in all seriousness, it's great to see year over year. It's wild that it's the game of the guilds,
though it doesn't feel like it's a game that anyone can just like solo player go in. It's like,
oh, you're joining a guild and you're grinding under whoever, which is, it's fascinating that it's working.
So, you know, glad to see it continue to cook
in the Cambria universe, cook for you once again.
And, you know, like you said, year over year,
sustainability, all that good shit.
And I actually enjoyed playing it
when we got to our first look at it
while in Manila as well.
So looking forward to their future.
Sensing a little bit of a theme with, you know,
guild-based games doing well in Web3, who would have thought?
Let's go over to Jerry and then to Kevin.
Yeah, this is great, man.
Like, you know, I just had these conversations with people.
I don't want to name names.
But, like, there was a nervousness around games.
There's, like, just this total fucking fear around Web3 Gaming right now.
And I think you can look at a couple teams, look at Fableborn, look at Cambria,
and they're showing you, like, man, this shit can be done.
And, like, are these the big hits that we all expected?
And are these, like these making billions of dollars?
No, they're not.
But they're doing something, and they're making money.
And we don't know with Cambria what was the cost that went into development
and all this stuff versus revenue coming in.
We don't know.
I'd say net-net, it's close to...
It's a little bit profitable, probably, I would guess, to moderately.
But people are spending
money on the game and people are helping that like people are allowing them to be a business
that can sustain itself but yet we don't look at these teams and go well what are they doing that
we're not and how do we do more of that and like dude i played cambria alongside dub he was shouting
all the time and trying to kill me it It was very hard to focus on the game.
I didn't really care for it myself.
But, like, everybody I talk to goes, like,
ah, this is great.
I can't wait for it to come out.
I can't wait for this season to come out
because I'm going to go spend all my money
and I'm going to go play the game.
So, like, there's teams out there that are doing the thing
that we're, like, all so discouraged about.
And, like, they're being successful.
So, yeah, this is this is like the word is
you know fucking finally finally not fucking finally just finally like somebody's making
money and showing people how it's done and like just look at what they're doing and think how do
i tap into that mindset how do i tap into that consumer and get them to want to do the same
thing with my project right and this is happening on where Abstract is getting beaten up right now about people
saying there's no activity, everybody's nervous about
Abstract and all this shit.
And, you know, gaming is in a really
critical point, and yet there's teams
doing it and pulling it off, and, you know, I'm
really pumped that these guys are doing it.
Shout out to Logic, who supplied
me with a copious amount of nicotine while
I was in Manila.
Yeah, Logic shows up and just hands
people packs of Korean cigarettes and just goes, I heard you like smoking. Here you go. It was
bizarre. Let's go over to Kevin Lambert. Kevin, what's the word? The word is wolf game. This
reminds me of wolf game back in the day it but it's like the more refined version and
it's better and man i've talked so much about like how a web 3 game could exist sustainably
long term and there were sort of two two versions of that there's the one that is like the games that Chad's come to play and they enjoy it.
And the Web 3 is like the fifth leg on the table.
You don't need it, but it's great.
It's got collector economy and it doesn't cannibalize.
I'll drink some water, baby.
I know.
I'll make it, I promise.
But it doesn't cannibalize the players that are there for fun.
And then the other end of that spectrum is a fully on-chain game,
very transparent and upfront about what it is
and the social contract from the very beginning.
And either you sign up for that, like poker, right?
Either you sit down and you know what your chances of making the money
or you don't, play it.
And I think Cambria is the latter, right?
It's clearly one of those games that's very transparent about what it's trying to do.
And if you enjoy that, you will play it.
And there's no getting rugged because you know how it works.
So I think it's an awesome example of that.
It reminds me of Wolfgame.
Sinjin, I'm going to you and i'm requesting that you also give me your
mvp on top of the word for cambria right now
yeah uh mvp is uh spang and um i think the word is like on
chain i think like they have their product market fit it
works for them yeah uh yeah well fuck on chain
anyways because that's my next point is because like on chain is on chain it's like fucking niche
it's great but this entire thing that we've like kind of lost this idea of like mainstream adoption
or growing bigger i mean a million dollars is great but in the greater gaming universe of the time spent the attention gathered
you know whatever like this like this is not this is not a great future i mean this is a this is a
really good niche and i'm happy for cambria and i think they've executed really well like i can't
say anything negative about it but in the greater scheme of things of like why we're all here and
what have we spent the last four years if cambria is like the max right on on chain fantastic uh but like if i look at like what
is the max for like like fableborn you know my expectation still is there that fableborn will be
you know like a hundred million dollar a year game and we'll create this new playbook and and get that
mainstream adoption and figure out something that's really kind
of moves the industry forward rather than staying in a kind of a niche of a
niche.
So good on them.
I can't say anything bad about them.
Honestly,
great for them.
Do I think this is the future of West 3 gaming?
I hope not,
but if it's the future of on chain,
you know,
try to go knock yourself out buddy buddy, on your million dollars,
whatever, fuck, revenue a year.
Gotta start somewhere, baby.
Let's go.
On-chain product market fit.
Kate Irwin, over to you.
Yeah, I mean, take the win, right?
I mean, if you're finding a way to make the gaming work and crypto gaming work, take the win.
I think that's great.
I think the long game is really what a lot of folks have to be playing for.
And I think people do forget that the finances are kind of everything.
And that's kind of what matters.
And that's how businesses live or die.
And that's how businesses live or die and that's how projects live or die and so so i'm i'm here for you know supporting folks that are able to make it work
financially and and also see success financially and um my mvp goes to chris for um managing to
make a very um great statement a few sentences despite that very loud elevator music earlier,
so props to Chris.
Shout out to Twitter for the elevator music.
Knock, going to you, what's the word?
The word is nostalgia, dude,
and it just reinforces my belief that RuneScape is the best game that was ever made.
The team at Cambria are DGens just like me
and have logged tens of thousands of hours in that game.
And you can see it in the DNA of the game that's been built.
For the love of God, change the name of Capital City
to something anybody can remember.
Capital City is not the name.
In RuneScape, we had Varrock.
Capital City just doesn't fly.
But I'll say this.
The game looks good.
It looks fun.
I think it's a reminder that game loops and engaging and enthralling content can do a lot more for you as a game than high fidelity assets.
I think that there's a certain charm to a particular visual style.
And I think that they've nailed theirs.
They deeply understand MMO progression.
They understand how to build seasonal environments
and seasonal experiences around this game.
A few months ago, we talked about, you know,
what does the future for Cambria look like?
And I suggested that maybe it is a seasonal game
that you play in between taking breaks from other games
that you spend more time on, your forever game.
And everybody here laughed at me.
And sure enough, four seasons later,
every single season continues to do well.
I think it'll be their strategy moving forward.
I think seasonal games is exactly what something like Cambria should be.
I see it as an additive experience to your forever game.
I think the team probably also sees it that way because most of their
forever games is probably also RuneScape.
And I think that they've done an incredible job
of monetizing the audience that loves the game
and loves the seasonality of what they've put forward.
We're talking $4 million by my count.
Maybe that number's off.
It might be three and a half,
but around $4 million over the course of the last 12 calendar months.
The number of titles globally that make $4 million a year is a few hundred to maybe, maybe 500, 600 games in the world.
And there are tens of thousands of titles that are delivered every single year.
For me, this is a massive win.
To St. John's point, is it a $100 million title that's going to break out and your mom's going to be playing it?
Probably not.
Does it need to be that way in order for it to be successful?
I don't think so either.
I think this is a massive success.
I think that they've found a formula
that is very clearly resonating
with the spenders in their ecosystem
and they continue to deliver more and more content
every single patch.
And for me, the mark of a good MMO game,
this is going to sound stupid as fuck,
but the mark of a good MMO game
is how good fishing feels.
Timberia fucking nailed it.
Fishing in that game is something you can do for 10 hours.
I would watch somebody fish for 10 hours.
It just looks so good.
They're crushing it as a RuneScape fan, as an MMO fan,
as somebody who spent way too much of my life on these types of games.
I'm so fucking excited for what they're building.
And I hope, if anybody from the team is listening,
keep the seasonality.
It adds something to, I can't wait to get back in.
It's exciting.
I want to spend some money.
I want to run hard for two or three weeks
and then get burnt out and come back next season.
That is a special moment that MMOs are beginning to implement.
You've nailed it.
You've got a captive audience.
Keep delivering it.
I agree with basically everything that you said, Noc. One thing I do just want to implement, you've nailed it. You've got a captive audience. Keep delivering it. I agree with basically everything that you said, Nock. One thing I do just want to add,
because I feel like it's disingenuous not to, as I said in the intro of this topic,
they give back the majority of what is spent in a season. So $4 million in revenue generated,
but I think they're only actually keeping maybe 20, 25% of that. I'm not super deep in the
ecosystem. I don't want to overstate, but just based on what I've seen.
I saw you on mute for a sec.
Yeah, no, that's fair, and that's a valid caveat to bring up.
I'm also just realized I didn't give my MVP.
It will be to Wills.
I'm always going to give the person who I yell at MVP
because it's fun to yell at somebody and share dissenting opinions.
I love that energy.
Let's go over to Chris Heatherly.
Chris, what's the word for this one and who's your MVP?
The word is congratulations.
You know, I'm happy for them.
I hope it continues.
I definitely think this seasonal model works for Web3, you know, to the degree that anything works.
And maybe Fableborn has shown us how to do tokens and this NFT buyback thing will be will be another way to do it.
And, you know, I mean, I like it whenever pieces click into place.
My MVP is Knock for two reasons uh number one uh because he had a fantastic take
on ai and uh and and and strongly defended my view and the second is that he found a way to
work fableborn into the conversation again for the 87th week in a row and i want to see that streak undefeated
i'm actually currently on my annual hiatus for moonscape i take like a six week break when i
burn myself out from playing eight hours a day while i'm doing other things all day long
uh so we're in the middle of that maybe cambria i'll fill the time
jerry going to you send this guy to rehab dude i loved everything that nox said
until he said he could watch 10 hours of people fishing and i was like dude i dude hyperbole is
built into who i am as a person and even i was like what what did he just say um listen sam i'm
a professional podcast host now so i'm gonna i'm gonna do something that a professional does i'm
gonna take it back to something we talked about a second ago and say that, yeah, man, a million dollars, is that the
win that Sinjin wants to see? It's not. Sinjin has famously said all the time, he's not here for
10x opportunities, he's here for 100x or nothing, right? And I still think that that's a good
mindset for a lot of people to have. But when we look at the future of people building, I think the million
dollar number is actually going to be so much more of a right now million dollars is like a kind of a
meme in the games industry. But when we have a day where Cambria is being built by four people
with the with the help of AI, a million dollars isn't gonna be that bad, right? That's gonna be
so much more than they actually need to actually build something. And I think you're going to see that number of like,
you're not going to have to see games make hundreds of millions of dollars to be like
these breakout successes. I think you're going to see a lot of games like Canberra that make like
a million dollars or $2 million or $4 million a year. And those will be huge hits and Spang will
be playing those on his, you know, Gabe cube and, you
know, from the comfort of his living room.
And yeah, I mean, I think that's where the games industry might actually just be headed.
And I think that's a overall, probably a positive for the games industry.
Yeah, MVP, honorable mention to Chris for mentioning the Scarlet Letter.
These people don't read, so they didn't know what you were talking about.
And so I'm going to give it to Dub, actually.
I think Dub is a...
Man, I've been loving the Redemption arc.
And I interrupted...
People kept interrupting me earlier today in something,
and it pissed me off, and I said something about it.
And then Dub was like, yeah, it feels like shit,
and you do that to me all the time.
And then I immediately interrupted him on this show.
And I felt terrible about myself.
So I'm voting Dub.
Sam, I just realized what might kill Cambria.
And it's the double AI crypto game tag on Steam.
Wow.
Yeah, I heard if you have both, it just...
You don't even want to know.
You don't even want to know.
You go straight to zero.
They'll tuck you in a house and shoot straight to zero The Gabe Cube just combusts
Gabe Lane just slaps you
Tadden, I'm going to you for your MVP of the day
I'm going to give my MVP today to Dub
I actually thought he had some really impressive takes today
I can tell Dub is definitely putting his hat
into the ring for content creator of the year with these uh with these amazing takes he's
he's my dark horse content creator of the year and also my mvp of gamified today i like how
you're uh that was a really nice compliment you're hedging your bets though you're like 50
weeks out you're like you got plenty of time to pivot let's go over to
wills wills who's your mvp honorable mention to dub as well i think he's crushed it today
but i'm gonna give my mvp to chris headley if you guys don't follow chris on linkedin
go do it it has improved my linkedin scrolling experience phenomenally some of the
most informative takes on some of the coolest topics thank you what i learn on the game about
the gaming industry comes from doom scrolling on linkedin and reading chris's takes so i just
wanted to shout that out it's quality content do you still talk about politics there chris
also uses the quote tweet the way that it was intended to be used.
And the algorithms don't reward it,
but I find so much cool shit
because Chris is just like,
here's a cool thing,
plus a little take or a little joke.
And I wish that that was actually
how these platforms function.
Being able to share things with each other
by virtue of the timeline,
it just doesn't.
It pisses me off, but good job, Chris.
Kevin, Kevin Lambert, who's your MVP?
I'm giving it to Tad.
Distracting trumpet, are you kidding me?
I'm going to be thinking about that for all week.
Dub, who's your MVP?
Dude, I thought I was going to be winning a lot more,
and I was going to vote for myself,
even though that's taboo.
But it's Sam's mustache, Chris Heatherly, for the third time in a row.
I just love all of it.
And Lenz, who you got?
Oh, it's got to be Nox.
The AI-themed topic, yeah, it's Nox.
You were my spirit animal for that, so you win.
Well, Dub, I'm sorry to tell you I don't get a vote. So you win. Well,
Dub,
I'm sorry to tell you,
I don't get a vote unless it's a tiebreaker,
which means that's cool.
Chris Heatherly with three votes,
winning the MVP of the day.
Take your 60 seconds of mustache face time,
brother.
I don't need 60 seconds.
I just want to say happy holidays to you guys.
It's been a great year doing stuff together.
We have a few more of these left to go,
but it's an honor, and thank you once again.
Hey, we love you, Chris.
The show got better whenever you became a regular.
Big hugs for all your involvement the last few months,
and I got to give a huge shout-out
to our incredible sponsors one last time, too.
Season 3 of the Avalanche Battle Pass will let you traverse seven snow-capped worlds,
MapleStory and Pixelmon Warden's Ascent off the grid among them.
Each subnet is a spark for Web3 Gaming on its quest for a better gaming infrastructure.
They also teamed up with Helica to help games become great again with $150,000 in rewards
for those building the future of gaming from the official chain of Gamify.
Shout out to Avalanche.
And Remix is a digital dojo where every game can be drafted into Destiny,
then deployed to millions with a swipe of a screen.
Whether it's parodies or platformers, every player becomes a publisher.
Go to Remix.gg and become a game creator today with the official game studio of Gamify.
Or find us on the iOS App Store.
And every pack has a pulse, and Kaizuna reads it in real time.
Built by the Wolves down,
battle tested in the field.
It's the cleanest way to see
what's actually working in your Discord
by tracking messages, moments,
and members that move the needle.
Shout out to the official analytics tool of Gamified.
I also want to give a huge shout out
to all of our amazing panelists.
Sinjin, Spang, Jerry, Dub, Kevin Lambert,
Tatted, Kate Irwin also coming in,
even though I only told her what time
it was on, 20 minutes before the show. Appreciate that. My bad. And of course, my amazing co-host,
Lems. Chris Hadley just dropped off. I can't tell you how much it means to me that you guys give me
two hours of your week every single week like this. And just big hugs. End of year is always
sentimental, and I'm feeling a lot of that. So I wish I could give you all a hug, but I'll have to
save it for the next conference.
We'll be back here same time, same place next week.
Till then, big smooches.
You can give me a hug, buddy.
Don't worry.
Vote for yourself, guys.
Merry Christmas, you gutless winks.
Are we not doing an episode next week? Why are we doing this already?
Seems a little early. No, we're doing an episode. It? Why are we doing this already? Seems a little early.
No, we're doing an episode.
It's the Christmas period, man.
Okay.
You fucking peons.
Happy holidays.
Listen to some Ryan Carey, you fucking culturalist queens.
We know how you feel about her, Sam. I'm sorry.
