good morning everyone good morning good evening wherever you are in the world can everybody
hear me just making a mic check hello hello John can you hear me hey Joe I'm
making a man wonderful wonderful yeah I've been I think like so many Twitter
space lately I've been struggling with being rugged or needing to change devices
last minute I know for all of the fellow spaces hosts Twitter lately has been has
been quite something to manage but you know on a more positive note I'm
incredibly excited to talk to my good friend on I've known John for almost a
decade now and we have in many ways similar backgrounds and similar stories
from being executives at top through the play gaming company and taking you know
the big jump into web 3 and believing that there is something unique to be done
in in this space so John why don't we just you know jump right in I know
actually before we jump right in I know we have two white spots available for
lucky listeners I have to say the MP list is probably the hottest mint of January
it's what everybody's been talking about for the entire month so this is what's
three days away from the mint one of the very very last chances to win a coveted
and the list but John welcome how's your day going hey Jeremy yeah really good
it's great to be here appreciate you you hosting and everyone joining in and
yeah really excited to just chat a bit more with you pretty openly I think you
and I are the same in that regards you know try to like just talking openly as
possible about what we're building you know what the challenges are as much as
much as what's going well so yeah really excited to be here wonderful how do you
feel you know three days away from your mint I know a mint is a massive step
it's also extremely stressful right there's a lot of of expectations and
unlike a free to play mobile game there is no soft launch right so there is no
room for mistakes how do you feel about the upcoming mint yeah I mean you've
covered a lot of the key challenges right I mean of course I mean not gonna lie
really excited I mean why how could you not be excited I once you once you make
this move into web 3 then this is just a natural part of your your journey right
so absolutely with that with the team and everyone around us try to embrace it
as much as possible and and recognize it's important in our in our journey but
it very much is that right this is you know it's not like we've we've finished
web 3 we do the NFT mint and we're done and this is really the start of season
2 for play ember where we're really gonna step up a gear with some of the
announcements we're going to be making some of the games we're making you
know but most importantly you know the the community because I think that's
perhaps what people miss right we we've been building for almost three years now
in web 3 so you know some people have been with us for almost three years now
you know people like yourself right just building very quietly you know
understanding the space building the team getting to know lots of amazing
people building some early collaborations so one you know for us this is also you
know a great opportunity to welcome even more people into our community so yeah
just to be honest pretty excited just really really been blown away by the
response so far and but also you know being very humble and recognizing that
yeah this is really the the start of the next phase and you know lots and
lots of hard work to come just you know to your point unlike web 2 you know
to have the power you know of a community behind you and the support of
a community to help shape your your business and product so yeah let's let's
get it done so first tell me more about about John right tell me more about how
you got into gaming and your you know your experience as a game executive what
you've been up to for the next you know the last 10 years or so see I don't
like I like my co-founder Hugo I don't have that classic gaming kind of CV
right basically just been building games your whole life definitely been a been a
gamer and much more like a casual gamer probably two types of games definitely a
massive Nintendo person you know like even now when I have the time just to
switch off just quickly run grab the switch and just dive into Mario Kart
and just escape for a while and you know anyone knows they're kind of like
sweaty hand feeling when you just like just totally into totally into Mario
but from a professional perspective I actually studied law so I am obviously a
massive disappointment to my family not being a lawyer and ending up in gaming
but but from law I actually fell into advertising to start with and started
off actually doing like B2B tech marketing and then moved into like
Denzil and WPP were in the early days of mobile and that's where I was working
with you know global brands was working with people like Adidas is working with
like Universal Studios water brothers VW helping them on their like mobile
strategy and kind of from there saw the early excitement around mobile so
co-founded one of the earliest mobile ad networks with a buddy of mine that we
sold to and as that listed company and then from there that's actually then I
switched to the actual games publishing side so coming from the monetization side
of things and haven't really looked back from then just working through you know
the early days of sort of hyper casual when it was when it was booming through
to some of the more recent challenging times and then you know broadening out
into more casual casual free-to-play games so yeah it's been a hell of a
you know hell of a ride and you know guess what making free-to-play games is
also really hard still is but I've always really enjoyed just working in
gaming because it's it's it's it's pretty collaborative you know lots of cool
people and you know even now when you tell people what you do the hardest part
about it is convincing them that it's a real job and all of us here would know
that in like web 3 gaming it definitely is you know a real job and we work
harder than pretty much anyone in our friendship group because there is no
9 to 5 there is no Monday to Friday but yeah I just I just love working in
gaming it's it's just great fun agreed you know one of my ex-bosses said he
loved working gaming because it triggered all of his all of his neurons in the
sense that it is a technology problem it's a creative problem it's an art
problem it's a marketing problem right so unlike I think there's no other media
form that literally has this broad of a range of skill set right where a movie
is a linear experience there there are actual technology problems but I mean the
scale of those problems is the minimus compared to what we're facing in in
gaming from multiplayer problems to rendering to player interactions so yeah
it is a blessing and a curse to work in gaming you're right there is no there
is no 9 to 5 in gaming and even less so in web 3 gaming yeah 100% I think it's
you know I mean you've mentioned a few things in there obviously we're in web 3
and there's blockchain but you know there's increasing disruption in terms of
workflows and processes through AI right and in terms of what what that enables
us to to now do and and then you've got all of the challenges of you know
traditional web 2 gaming and Apple and Google policies to keep an eye on that
you know certainly you've got to be you know it's where web 3 can help
you've got to be a bit more creative now in terms of you know distribution and
access but yeah there's never a there's never a dull moment in web 3 gaming
like that you can be assured of right when you open when you switch your phone
on for the first time you know there's always gonna be something interesting
happening absolutely so I know everybody's really excited for the
environment that's coming in a couple of days what's the plan there tell me
more about when is happening where is it happening mid price supply but also
then what can be expected from from the amber mint well hopefully as those of
you know we're really proud to be partnering with it with stereo so really
excited to have announced that last week a lot of hard work behind the scenes
and still still going on to make sure that's as successful and enjoyable as
possible it's gonna be this Thursday which yeah so kind of countdown it's a
freemen so you know that was you know on our side a lot of a lot of discussion
around that but kind of as I mentioned for us this is about obviously you know
saying thank you to a lot of people that believed in us quietly for the past
three years our community supporters you know collaborations we've actually only
announced obviously we've announced a partnership with exterior we announced
call cats last week so really proud to have finally got that one out but of
course an opportunity to welcome in lots of new collaborations some of which will
be announced you know over the past next few weeks which have been sort of
locked down for a while as well as welcoming in you kind of new people as
well I can't remember what else you asked for me I think there are about like
six six questions in one but it's all on Thursday so timing so it's gonna
start 8 a.m. sort of Eastern time so 1 p.m. UTC yeah supplies 2750 sort of 250
in the in the Treasury and yeah for us it really is just just just the start
and there's going to be a lot more a lot more to come beyond the sort of
Genesis collection of of MB because really that's that's what we're building
out right it's not a it's not a linear ecosystem you know we are still obsessed
about onboarding mass mass consumers and the billion dollar addressable market
there so you know this ecosystem is is built to appeal to many different
motivations right you know play for fun I know that's a weird concept in in web
3 gaming but it's a big motivation of you know of web 2 gamers you know play
play and win play and reward so we've spent a lot of time trying to design
this to be a sustainable ecosystem you know it's coming up in every spaces at
the moment but also one that will continue to onboard web 2 but you know
one thing we're really excited about and we'll be you know showing some details on
very soon is welcoming on welcoming in sort of web 3 casual gamers to really
help accelerate adoption and bring web 3 out into you know the the mass consumer
market I share a lot of your thesis which is always why it's so fun to talk
with you but you know tell me about what people can expect in term of one what
is the NFT itself I've seen the the pre reveal animation it looks great by the
way I was going to send you a message about it really really love it super
super small super beautiful I'm sure a lot of work went into it but then what
is the utility that holders can expect in there as I just be that lost you oh
hello oh you there okay I was asking you know what is the utility that is
coming for MB a short term and then long term over world Jeremy so what what
I heard is what what's what's the Genesis collection all about I was asking what
is the yes what is the collection and what's the utility of the collection yeah
so the what it's all about so it's so let me answer that two ways so why why why
are we kind of launching MB well typically in in in let's say mass
casual games you don't actually have IP right because weirdly this audience you
know they're they're not coming into sort of really deep games and and
actually if you go too polished and start introducing characters and law they
kind of get scared off actually but for us in some of the direction we're going
in and we're not going in on you know we're a series of games we're an
ecosystem and one of the core metas within what we've what we're building out
is this collection meta right so Funko pop is the best reference I can I can
give you so it's going to be a collection of things that you you know
is constantly going to grow versus collecting one thing and so MB is going
to be the sort of first character that you see from us but absolutely not the
last and in terms of the why you're going to need one well I mean first of
all it's it's going to have the you know the highest level of benefits and
rewards in our in our ecosystem and but very much using it to you know find
those early community members that really want to empower what we're
building over the next next few years of course with that you're going to get
exclusive access to a whole range of you know like games missions quests you know
partnerships that we we're going to be dropping can't can't tease too much beyond
that at the moment you have to hold back some some alpha but I think the way
that we're designing our ecosystem is is is you know built built for gamers so
any any asset that we also release is going to have you know and has to have
gain benefit as well and because that's ultimately the community that we are
building or want to continue building so at its core any anything that we we
release will always will always lean heavily into into gaming but I think
that's one of the things also that we're looking to rebalance from web 2
and that's why again if you if you if you miss out on MB and you're unable to
get one on the secondary market this lovely idea that you know unlike web 2
where all of us heavily get monetized you don't actually need an NFT or an
asset to just enjoy playing our games and get rewarded right I think that's
really important about the the ecosystem that we're building you know so like for
example right now we have I think we're up to six now but like six games
on the Lightning Network totally free to play you don't need an NFT you can
jump in and earn fractional amounts of Bitcoin started those two three months
ago and those games already have 35,000 daily active players in those games you've
had 250,000 installs and most importantly those games are profitable it's a bit of
an interesting concept when we when we look at like web 3 in general but so
that just gives you a an actual example not a not a thesis of yeah like how we
are trying to grow this ecosystem love it then you know you mentioned
sustainability it's obvious that web 3 itself the business model has radically
changed and now we need to be building something that is beneficial to holders
while still being a viable business model notorious for being very pro
royalties which I know some people disagree with me but now that you know
this is currently out of the window and it's coming back of course a lot is
being worked behind the scene on how to enforce royalties but without that key
component really web 3 is becoming kind of a way to bootstrap community away to
bootstrap marketing and get that community ready to build the next step
right and then do it with the company itself yeah 100% I saw I saw a great
deep tweet from one of the team at Bitcraft at the weekend and you know
there's lots of school schools of thought but I but I like I like this
idea that it's not necessarily about certainly for our business model it's not
about web 2 vs web 3 it's about what are the good things about web 2 you know
like game mechanics business model that we can build on that that we know to be
true and people enjoy because you know we don't necessarily have to change every
single player behavior versus what are the things that we can deploy the power
blockchain technology to make even better in terms of the way games are played the
way games are shared and even the way that they're built and that's really the
ecosystem that that we're building here so to your point you know some of the
some of the things that you know if you're able to do it in web 2 that are
important to build on top of are obviously the ability to quickly
distribute games to millions billions of players all over the world through Apple
Google third-party app stores you know browser based stores for example are
really important but when we start thinking about sustainable sustainability
if you're able to distribute those games in a profitable way and actually have
consumer revenue from early on in your business I think that's a really strong
anger because it anchor then gives you you know like you always publicly talk
about you know we still have bills to play we still need to build games
right we still need to pay pay wages pay salaries but it also gives you a bit
of a starting point to think about then how you can grow reward your community
and then when we start thinking about web 3 again for our type of games part of
it actually is not a gaming problem it's a blockchain problem this this idea
looking into the data that you know there's a lot of countries where you can
enjoy mobile games but it's very hard to get a bank account so part of our
thesis is is if we can design you know the right games the right game
ecosystem but remove the barrier of wallet access will players then on top of
everything they're already doing start you know generating some significant
revenue in this web 3 model based around microtransactions eg trading NFTs
and to turn this you know like millions of players over the world that let's say
you're unable to contribute to you know web 2 mobile games because of this
problem can we now significantly increase you know hyper casual is 11 12
billion dollars in web 2 I mean shit Jesus Christ if you can increase that
20 30 percent that's a lot of money so that's a little bit about how we think
about growing this ecosystem in web 3 we we want to just take a lot of things
you know that are good about web 2 you know don't get me wrong there's a lot of
things that are messed up about web 2 gaming and who controls the power and
you know total lack of ownership and you know empowerment of web 2 gamers but
there are some good things that we can build on and to drive you know our
ecosystem and make this more sustainable so yeah I think you know maybe one of
the unique things about play emba perhaps in the category we sit in is
that yeah we we already have you know pretty meaningful revenue streams
already right so we're going to continue to use that but very much to
empower our community to help us grow even even faster together wonderful so
you know obviously you're keeping a lot of information still in secret and I
agree in web 3 you can't discuss everything too early right you need to
take people on a journey with you and show them how the ecosystem is building
and you know big on the other side of the mint it's it's a challenge as well
I'm sure you'll see it where your community wants to know everything now
because they want to have a sense of like you know security of understanding of like
well how is the asset island going to be appreciated but sadly you need to you
know disclose information at the right time in order to make sure that not
only you have things to tell right you can just like tell everything and
then have nothing to say for month but have regular messages and updates but
also I'm sure you know in both of our cases we also have investors meaning
reality you know VC investors there's also legal and so some things may take
time so I'm not going to press too much on what is coming for for MB it sounds
like you've got quite a lot in play and I want to be respectful of that but
you know before we kind of you know this is a pretty short one but before
we kind of break and let you go back to work because I know you're absolutely
swamped no is there anything you want to tell the community about what's coming
right now in the short term and long term yeah of course I think look I think as a
as a founder in web 3 the one of the key key things that I've learned from you
know people like yourself many other gaming founders and project founders
that I've got to over the past three years is that there are there are some
things that you know they're kind of a no excuses for right is the ability to
clearly communicate and be transparent with your community so for a play ember
perspective what's the one thing that we we can control and be accountable for is
is games right we're a gaming company so that's the one thing that you
absolutely gonna see from us right we've already got nearly 40 games there's one
thing that you are going to consistently see dropping is new games
right you're gonna see some some of the the debut games with MB they're going to
be a mix of games you know some will be really fun sort of like dopamine hit
hyper casual games there are some casual MB games in the work we've already said
there's a roblox game in development which is which is really exciting we
also have two games on Nintendo switch as we start to think about you know
ecosystem distribution to other platforms where we know this mass casual audience
are and and also we are starting to develop and co-fund third-party games of
which you know it's great to finally have the immutable cool cats partnership
announced on on Friday so that that's the first time we've announced there and
just incredibly excited to bring that so that's one area that you know we will
consistently be delivering in because that's our goal is to be one of the
biggest web 3 casual gaming ecosystems but yeah outside of that we will be
very considered with you know to your point Jeremy about you know there's
there's some important you know legal considerations here about you know when
and how we then communicate you know some other things that may or may not be
coming with our our community but you know one thing we're enjoying already
is you know is is the immediate feedback that we're now getting on games you
just don't get in web 2 and have already had some direct impact on some
of the sort of live weekend events that we've been running already so yeah in
terms of what more what more what is more that coming and hopefully I've given
you a bit bit more information but you know please keep following us along
follow us on discord we're gonna be a bunch of IRL events that we have been for
the past few years out on the road but maybe now people are starting to get to
know us you might recognize more so we'll be at NFT Paris we'll be over at
GDC as well be at token 2049 in Dubai as we continue to really build what
we're doing so yeah just really appreciate all the support we've had so
far and you know probably the final thing for me is you know the best thing about
some of these announcements that are coming is they're just sort of
partnership with friends right people like yourself Jeremy that have just been
there you know almost since day dot that you know it's just this great
humbling attitude in web 3 of how we can actually all help each other to
grow the space so yeah just very grateful for genuine friendships behind
the scenes that you know just helping on all fronts so yeah you know a lot of you
I mean I can see something in the audience now so just for me like a huge
personal thank you for all the support you've given me the team the community
and you know let's just keep that going through you know through through the
next phase wonderful wonderful wonderful well thanks John I'll talk to you
literally probably in five minutes on telegram I know your team my team at
exterior are working really really hard to make this mint a massive success
which which it will be and you know the sky's the limit from there I'll
definitely see you at some of those events where I'll be present as well so
take care everyone thank you so much for your time please do participate in the
request for two coveted Ambulists take care everyone bye bye