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No Cap Gaming EP 50: Unpopular Opinion Only - No Safe Takes
Recorded: April 2, 2026 Duration: 1:22:39Space Recording
Full Transcription
Gunned up brain death, I can't decide.
You can't bring enough, you can't hide.
You can be cool, you can cry.
Do it wrong, not at all, but do it right.
No one owes you, no one's to blame. Sick or bad genes or DNA. Ask your conscience and but did it now what's up
three k-k-s
here
girl
he said
she gonna do, little buckaroo? Hey, you're a Ask a Life. Yeah, all you gotta do is
Happy Food is Ask a Life.
You know, we all can't be super fly.
GQ PhD
You can pretend them you can try move ahead
Lay down dead or sleep on by
When the shoe seems so far away, he loves you and Jesus said, you need answers for your dismay.
When the shoes seem so far away
Ask yourself, ask your mom, ask PMA.
What's up?
What's up, what's up, see you guys?
What's up?
What's up?
What's up?
What's up?
What's up?
What's up?
What's up?
What's up?
What's up?
What's up?
What's up?
What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? Ask your mom You gotta be happy Who is ask your mom
Yeah
Just ask your mom
Wow, hello, hello, hello
Hello
How are you doing today Grim?
Always good man, always good
I've been looking forward to this all week.
So I can't wait to have a jolly good time with the gang, as always.
I know, right? Like, I'm trying to get everyone up.
Manic Pixie has said that her meeting was cancelled,
so we get to have some unpopular manic tapes.
So that's a good one.
I keep inviting people to speak. Unhinged space. Unhinged space today. Always that's good. I've got terrorists. Like, I keep inviting people to speak.
Unhinged space.
Unhinged space today.
Always unhinged.
And we, like, we have Shaolin also up
and Alan Crypto.
If you are not on the speakers right now,
first of all, we share the room.
Secondly, like, accept a speaker invite
or ask for your speaker invite
Hey Niddy
Like request
Come on
Let's go let's go let's go
How we doing fellas
Yo hey Shao
This is a good one
I like this topic just because we can just get unhinged
And just go straight no cap hardcore
To the point
I am sure Taresh will take every opportunity to.
You know, we got to, we got to like,
we prepared the notion to be a bit more quick fire
because I know tonight everyone's going to want to go absolutely for it.
Me especially.
So to keep the rants within a confined,
enjoyable,
rantable,
understandable section,
we've been doing this.
And as ever,
everyone's filing in passionately late
like French
or other Europeans.
Like,
you know,
what's going on here?
Well,
we've got some of the gang
on the stage already.
You want to do the rounds?
Well,
I mean, the rounds should start with,
with the, you know, the, what do you call it?
Icebreaker.
Let's break some ice.
Let's get the icebreaker.
Break them.
What's one current popular take in Web3 Gaming
you cannot stand?
I wonder who wants to take this one on.
Taris, please. I bet my ass that you got some takes to
share off the top of my head like what what what are the popular takes in web3 that that web3
gaming's dying that uh i mean i can go against that i i i don't think that web3 gaming is dying
i think that we need to radically rework how we're monetizing and now we're doing
What we're doing built some better games and shit, but I don't think we're dying
If that's another soul many there's like it's a scam
All right, um, this is a popular take around web 3 gaming so I i just despise is that web 3 gaming quote unquote
was better before um no it's it's the equivalent saying like um it was better before when i jumped
off the cliff over jagged jagged rocks that that was obviously better but you were still jumping
off the cliff onto jagged jagged rocks like there was no way that was ever going to slide in that state.
It wasn't better before.
You just didn't know that you were just about to be scammed
and that founder was actually just taking all of your money,
laughing about your NFTs that you bought
and spending it all on nice watches and houses.
I got a question.
How many people are playing this sandbox right now um i think what's
that what's that thing yeah they've got a bot farm doing that like so yeah my my popular opinion is
it wasn't better before it was actually worse it's actually worse than before but yeah but
do we have gaspote around is he just being late no he's he's being uh late as gcrod
as well my god what is it we got crypto grit yeah dmgm thanks for having me a lot like i will
actually go against the current meta that we are seeing in webg gaming which is kind of more of a
risk fight right i think it's more of a
gambler fight and i think people are more leaning towards that and like kind of skill turn and this
stuff because like i believe there will be no liquidity on the loser side in the long run and
i think people are just kind of not realizing that yet all right so you your unpopular take is actually
i would say one of the most popular
takes in web3 gaming at the moment which is that only gambling works i i'm actually i'm actually
seeing that everybody's saying that all the games should kind of pivot towards what few of them are
doing which is gambling no no not gambling like more going like towards skill right but when you have two people playing you know with some reward pool
one person's skill will be so much higher in comparison to the other that like the loser will
be pretty obvious after a few games in most of the cases that like and i don't think that's kind of
sustainable but that's life chess has always been bvb for like a thousand years but but but people
want games not like live going hard on them in another world as well right i mean look all games
have leagues all games have this kind of thing i mean i think it's it's a relatively
popular take that um skills still gaming is better and i i will say that and if you're against that
as a thing then it's interesting nadim also you know what's up man look uh my take is um
the founders of wet3games are some of the most brilliant successful innovative uh
creative leaders in the industry uh they have not wasted any money that they got from investors in
21 22 and it's not web3 gaming that died it's just that x is dead like it's not it's like we're seeing
so much less engagement and posts and hyper on web Gaming, not because Web3 Gaming is dead, but because X sucks, dude.
So my take is Web3 Gaming is inevitable.
Yada, yada, yada.
It's very successful.
It's going to do great.
And the founders are brilliant.
That's my take, man. I guess the founders are brilliant is an unpopular opinion because it is shared by almost no one.
I mean, they were very popular when they're making
people money, but I can't get out whether this is an unpopular opinion, an April Fool's joke,
or like, I think you just, April got you, like, April 1st.
I want to hear what's your favorite April Fool's joke, actually.
I'm going to test your knowledge who's been watching around
the internet and been
picking all the ones that
stood out the most
I thought they were
pretty cringe to be honest
I was not a fan of anyone
with a token doing an April Fool's joke
I think that
well about MemeLand saying
snapshot in 69 minutes?
No, it was really stupid
because you saw projects you don't give a fuck about
talking like, oh, by the way, we're going to announce
we're shutting down. We're so sorry.
Are you bro fools?
Nobody gives a shit if you did shut down.
Fuck off. This is the worst joke where
there's no stake because nobody gives a shit.
That's sad, isn't it?
Imagine that you announced you're shutting down
and no one cares to say
oh no that would be terrible you announce the shutdown post and not a single person
gives a flying fuck this in april falls i think the most cringe ones um are the ones that just
copy an april falls off someone else because they just don't do it they just wait until they see a popular one um i like i also thought that the kitkat
um truck like stuff was just got out of hand because i saw
fucking only that on my timeline for the last like two days mixed in with the april fall stuff
you gotta stop engaging on those posts bro i mean i think that's your fault
from kitkat like i just like the buddy mode now.
That you like meant a Tamagotchi kind of thing or like Pokemon kind of thing.
But obviously it was like April Fool's.
There's no buddy mode. more like Pokemon kind of thing. But obviously it was like April Fool's, there's nobody.
You see, that would have been better if they actually used April Fool's
as a user acquisition
for people to play with
and have a good time and utilize memes.
I think that was a definitely miss
on so many other parts.
Actually, I know maybe this is too soon,
but I think the whole situation with Drift Labs
was perfect or terrible timing
depending on which end of the coin
you were on that one.
Imagine announcing that you've been hacked for 300 million
and everyone thinking it's an April Fool's.
That would be fucked up.
Like, we just got hacked from 300 million.
And I bet Circle were like, no, they're just April Fool's.
Oh, shit.
Are we going to do anything about this, lads?
Like, I think the thing with Circle is, like,
if they feel like if they have to do something about that, then they? No. Like, I think the thing with Circle is that if they feel like if
they have to do something about that, then they're going to be held responsible. They're going to be
held to a higher standard, right? They're going to be held to the standard that any time anyone
clicks on a dodgy link, they're going to be like, Circle, help me. So imagine that if every single
person fucked something up with a misclick or a stupidity in Web3 came at you.
I think that would just be a literal nightmare.
So I can see why they didn't bail them out selfishly.
I mean, obviously they should have, potentially,
got them out of trouble or something,
but still, Jesus Christ,
like being hacked for 300 million.
You'd think after the first 150 million
went somewhere you would do something
and move that fucking money off your
drained wallet right
no just me
no I mean
go ahead
go on Manic
okay nothing I've seen
in years has been as savage or as funny as the people who very carefully crafted a video game cover for Legend of Dragoon 2.
Oh wow!
That was just mean! oh no that's just not no that's not cool man that's not on that's like just taking a no no
that was mean
yeah dear god rusty spoon time on that one yes yeah i i do i do wonder about you know
the earlier take about x being um terrible Because I do think it is slightly terrible because it's really weird,
especially with spaces.
You don't see 99% of the spaces
that are actually happening in X at the moment.
And I think this is quite a big thing.
You just don't see them.
It's kind of weird.
But yeah, we've got some more.
We've got some more.
Anyone else got any more takes
that would have them, you know,
like pissed off, like the popular takes of Web3 that they don't believe in?
Before we get on to the next session. Everybody insisting that their tiny apps,
that they're vibe coding are just going to be the next big thing. It's exhausting.
I agree. I agree. That is definitely exhausting. And also suggesting that basically you can vibe code
anything and like
everything else is over because vibe coding
is winning.
I would absolutely
love to see someone vibe code
the next Dota. That would be great.
I've seen
some
MOBA being vibe coded, but
they look garbage.
That's the only way I can put it.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
There it is.
Yeah, but I mean, look at Mobile Legends BB.
Bang, bang.
I mean, we have garbage MOBAs already out there
that people love.
It's just a matter of getting people interested in it
and people enjoying the game.
Fine, you do it. Good luck the game. Fine.
You do it. Good luck.
No, no.
I don't want to vibe code trash.
I mean, vibe coding trash is easy.
What happened? We lost Matt.
We got quiet all of a sudden.
Let me just fix him up a second.
I need to.
I'm co-host, re-co-host, the usual mumbo-jumbo thing.
Let's see if it works.
Oh, XX.
But yeah, I've seen some weird shit.
I like the AI ones because usually those are funny.
Either, you know, the one with the body mode,
and there was the founder of Entropic saying
that it was intentional, the leak that they had.
And I was like, oh my God, they are really trying
to spin this around, but good on them for even trying.
But also I saw this famous brand of computer
that made a
blow-up case for your PC
that actually terminal. And I was like,
yeah, right. And you would
put that in a pool.
That's a funny
one. I just got like instantly
rugged from X for
shooting on spaces.
You see?
Must have said something that didn't go straight with something.
I was basically saying
that spaces have no visibility
and it doesn't really matter.
No one fucking sees them.
No one attends them.
And also, you know,
yeah, Doug,
if you haven't seen the news,
we are debating,
or basically saying,
like, what popular take
in Web3 gaming
can you not stand? what popular take that everyone's
kind of believing in and saying is the meta do you despise with fiery passion oh so many of them
um and a lot of them i probably at some point believed in myself but like that's part of the
fun of like trying stuff out right like we figure out what kind of works and doesn't but like
the everyone thinks that like with gaming because this idea that you can own your assets that it's going to be
revolutionary and everyone's going to love it and it's like actually it could completely destroy
everything that you love in your life you know what i mean it could be the opposite like you
you launch a game and you launch a tournament and the second somebody sees they're losing things
that could be real money value and they never want to play your game again, right?
So there's like, there's a lot of stuff that's like, like people always want to have some kind of take.
But the thing is, it's like, you have to know what you're doing to know how to implement it, try it out, test it.
And actually, like, that's the whole part of gaming.
Like, what's the difference between a good and a bad game you can't just use these overarching
like slogans or stuff to say like oh if we do this you know it's going to work or whatever
because it takes a lot of trial and error to like figure it out and um so in fact at gdc when i was
interviewing people and i would like i pivoted my whole show and all my interview and all my
questions to be about just real life and not be about fucking Web3 in any fucking possible way.
Now, if people want to take it that direction and they want to talk about Web3 stuff, that's totally fine.
Right. But when I'm interviewing people and I ask them, what's your take or like, give me a thoughts about this.
And they just give me genuine thoughts that they have that they care about, it's fantastic. The second Web3 comes up, it's like you can feel their nervous system.
It's like when they're watching OJ talk.
You know what I'm saying?
It's like when they're like, oh, the gloves don't fit, so you must acquit.
It's like the same vibe.
And I'm not shitting on blockchain itself.
It's a great technology.
But the problem is that people just
pretend because they do some one thing that all of a sudden they're like fucking saving gaming
oh i get it i get it uh guess boat what's your what's your um unpopular popular take uh it has
been around and as doug mentioned i probably was a fan of it early doors but that's like four and a half
years ago at this point people just need to be educated and then they'll love web3 gaming
is the most condescending self-serving wrong and probably slightly infuriating for anyone who is
on the other side of the fence statement that a lot of web3 gaming rolled out i think that it's nothing to do with education or teaching people about it to make
them suddenly love it i think that a lot of people love things before they even really understand it
and web3 gaming needs to have that they need to love it without education because people let's say people
like enjoy learning and education but you're not selling them on a consumer product out the gate
with a whole dictionary definition of what they need to do to actually understand why this is a
benefit and even then benefit is a loose term that I probably wouldn't use either.
No, I fully agree with you.
I mean, that has been one of the most despicable takes that I have ever heard in this space.
And the fact that I've still heard people talking about it
in 2025 and 2026 and 20...
Like, no, education for what?
Like, you're taking people who got into a get rich quick scheme,
who've never played games in their lives.
And then you're basically getting the same people as them
to tell them to educate.
Like it's literally like saying,
oh, we need to set up a timeshare kind of advertising thing.
It's like a scam conference
where they educate you on this
pyramid selling thing i think that's horrible like i agree with gaspard 100 on that
marcello in the house um we are discussing marcello what is your least favorite popular
take in web3 gaming and then we're going to go on to the next section oh man you're putting me
in the hot seat i literally just came to support some of my
favorite people
he deserves it yeah get him marcello oh my god my hot take is uh more people need uh some some
nice fur coats like uh like doug hyde that's uh that is so good i hope a hundred percent
marcello forgot the cake though We need more cake apparently too
Yeah I was gonna say that
My hot take is
Cheesecake is
Marcello I'm literally watching a video
Of fucking Jace flip pancakes in the air
Right now as we speak
So like it's true
I'll just picture
Steve Aoki throwing a cake in the crowd
When he talked about cake
Jesus Christ
Steve Aoki's got nothing on Doug's head though
Well but I would imagine Dougie do something like that You know talked about cake. Jesus Christ. I mean, guys.
Well, but I would imagine Dougie do something like that,
you know.
Who wants cake?
That's all good.
All right.
All right.
We've gone around the rounds.
I've seen Nadim drop down,
trying to bring him up against.
Nadim, request if you can.
Well, let's go to the next question.
What I want to ask you guys is,
name one Web3 game you really believe in
and you tell me why.
Who can we start with this one?
This is a hot potato.
Come on, look at the hands.
Okay, well, I'm going to have to say, due to contractual obligations,
I believe in all of the three games we publish, which is really unfair.
So outside of Gladiator, Mayhem, Legend of Lumia and the other ones,
that we work with as well.
I have to say, Mites and Magic.
Mite and Magic.
Well, let's go to Marcelo.
Which one is the game you like and why?
I've got a few.
I've heard of this cool game called Tolan Universe.
I don't know if you guys heard about it.
I know you guys are working with them.
I think those guys are pretty cool.
I like the On-Chain Heroes team, Gigaverse. I think those guys are pretty cool. I like the on-chain heroes team, Gigaverse.
I think those guys are doing a good job.
But I can only just say one, right?
So I'll say Tolan Universe just to shout out some good people here.
But, yeah, I like what they're doing.
Lovely.
Dougie, you're next.
Whatever game Marcello and Matt says Because they're nice to me
And they hang out with me
So anything that anyone does is great and good
All the Web3 games are great
They're nice to me, they pay me monies
All of them
Do I sound like I'm Web3 enough right now?
Why is this with the passive aggressive
Aggressive face today?
Matt's the only person
I think Matt you might be the only one that really gets me around here
You know what I'm saying? You really really gets me around here you know what i'm
saying you really really get me um okay so when we were at gdc i saw people playing um uh origins
the trading card tournament um game and really enjoying it and like literally spending like
every second they had a lot of people like playing it studying whatever and it's fun tournament stuff
right in the game the game is simple enough where you can understand it
and actually you can learn with,
if you sit down in one day and sit down and play it
and ask questions, you can really learn how the strategy
of the game and everything and like, it's not that hard.
And you can be good at it really quickly, right?
But it's complex enough where when you're playing
against other people, it's really intense.
And I'm like, whether there's Web3 involved or not, which they kind of sort of are Web3-ish, they're kind of like Web 2.5-ish or whatever.
Like you can collect their NFTs, you can collect, they have real life trading cards and everything.
So like I saw in front of my eyes actual evidence of people wanting to play something and be part of something.
And it was pretty cool.
And, you know, I work with YGG and other platforms and other games and stuff and people that hire me to make content stuff and
i do like a lot of those games but the thing is like if you walked up to me and said that like
what game would just captivate the hell out of me that i would be obsessed with playing
like it would be probably a game like that i could honestly say could it could potentially
happen you know but i'm not going to say like oh this game this game is the next pokemon and you know everybody is going to and
their mom's gonna play it a good take good take we got terrace and then crypto
um i honestly i one of the games that i fell in love with a while ago, and it's just one of those games that you can like no life, like just sit there and no brain just play.
But it's also kind of challenging was Etherscape.
It's a small indie game by a guy, Sam the Bay.
He's a Microsoft engineer or some shit.
And he's just been tooling away at it.
He's not like being super predatory with like the NFTs and stuff. He's not being super predatory with the NFTs and stuff.
He's not charging people an arm and a leg.
It's just a solid, fun game.
It's simple.
It's pixelated.
It's isometric.
Top-down dungeon crawler.
But it's a fun game that he's not trying to fleece everybody on.
Interesting.
We love to hear it.
We love to hear it.
Yes, sir.
Sorry about not jumping in.
Crypto, crypto.
Marcello said a little bit, but I would say Gigaverse
because, like, it's fun and simple game loop.
They actually addressed in-game economy very early,
which I think is a huge
problem overall in Web3 Gaming. And they kind of proven that they can like come up with
the new stuff and actually make it successful, which is another rare thing that we're seeing.
So yeah, those three.
Do you agree with these takes, Matt?
We said, what do they like?
We didn't say who was right.
That's all I'm going to say about it.
Well, I'm going to ask Shao.
I want to say he's prepared.
Yeah, I'll ask Shao.
Wait, ask me about what game I love in Web3 right now?
Yes.
And don't tell me something with Pudgy Penguins, please.
No, I wouldn't.
I mean, to be fair, the only game that's actually gotten my attention,
and I think that's the benefit of being at the house,
was probably Waifu Sweeper.
Not because of the game of the Waifu part,
but just because I haven't played Minesweeper in such a long time.
And it was the only thing that kept my attention for half an hour to an hour.
My problem is when I get into a game, I have to decide whether I want to continue playing
it because otherwise I get hooked to it and otherwise it's just problematic for me.
It's also why I play non-Web 3 games when I can in my pastime, but then again I'm stuck
with my kids so it changes the whole dynamic of how things work.
Obviously, looking forward to the latest releases
from Glider Mayhem and Illumia.
But, you know, again, I got to make time for these things,
even though it's part of my job.
Isn't that the downside of all these things?
But by the way, I feel like, you know, our fellow guys in green,
we're only pumping, you know, pumping abstract.
I would assume that there are other Web3 games outside of abstract,
but it's only fair that they say what they say.
Interesting. And I see you raised a couple of hands.
What's that, Matt?
Gaspoad.
I was just going to say, Charles, was ending on a little catty note there.
Oh, yeah.
I saw a hand pop up from jared uh gaspode still
has his hand up so let's go to gaspode yeah i i think i've almost ruined web3 games for myself
to be honest um i think i mentioned it before but i'm currently on a side hobby of reviewing
steam demos and i've reviewed probably about five to six a week for the last four weeks.
And the variety that's there, the options that are there.
And then I come back to see maybe I'll throw in a Web3 review every now and then.
And I just don't want to.
And I think that that's going to be my biggest problem, that a lot of the ones and even the ones that people have mentioned up here already are closer to a slot machine with extra steps rather than something i'm really going to
stick my get my teeth stuck into um i had a mention of gladiator mayhem i don't know where that is
that was probably the last web3 game i reviewed until i reviewed goblins of Elderstone this week. And that one I did enjoy.
I enjoyed it when I played it in the Gamescom.
I played that one.
But again, that's more mobile.
They have a beta out now coming out in the next few days
with a huge content update that it severely needed,
which is going to make a whole lot of more stuff in the game.
And I think one of the things I would say is like Web3 Gaming,
because they build in public, you get to see them when they're really at their worst.
And half of them were run by people, well, maybe half is a little generous,
like 90% were run by people who, you know, didn't know how to finish a game.
They just knew what a game was conceptually.
And then they started from there.
Like watching people debate, like should I KPI Max
and things like that.
It's like watching people who shouldn't be doing this
talk the most retarded shit about game design.
It's fucking hilarious to me.
This is the problem. It's like most of the web 2 games
would have died before they'd have got to the point where web 3 games are like yay everyone
come play our terrible game that's i think that's a really good point one game that i played
which i didn't think i'd enjoy or play it's called dungeons and dining tables where you are a axe axe at all you know
the little like newt looking creature um and you're in a world and you jump into the dungeon
and you've got to fight the dungeon the dungeons are a lot harder than they are makes it look it
looks like it's going to be a cozy game and i had to quickly change how hard i was trying in this
dungeon but then when you leave the dungeon you you build furniture, like little lamps, cute rugs.
And then you build your room full of this furniture.
And your furniture gives you stat boosts in the dungeon, which is completely random.
But they did it all via Kickstarter.
They did a demo slice, which had a full level up to a boss.
And then they're like, hey, we want to to raise i think it was 15 000 australian
dollars which is like 20 pounds or something it's really not that much money um and that's kind of
how they did it but if they hadn't reached that kickstarter that game would have just died and
it's that this no one cares enough to put the money in so this game died that web 3
struggles with they get too much money up front people think that their money is going to increase
rather than that they've actually spent on a consumable um and that means that games end up
surviving longer than they should do when really they should be put down because the interest just
isn't there yep and. And they end up,
a lot of people claim that they,
you know, they got rugged on this or that.
They end up probably,
if you look at it,
giving away more value to those people who got the NFTs
than they actually received
because many of those people
who buy the NFTs buy them secondhand
or on the secondary market
and only pay like a couple of percents, right?
So if someone spent four grand on an NFT,
but you've only got like 40 bucks for it,
and then they're demanding you give them like 12 grand's worth of tokens,
it's not a very good business model, is it?
Right.
Your hands up.
I just wanted to chime in and say I've never played Waifu Sweeper.
I haven't bothered playing it yet.
And part of the reason
for that i'm sure shaolin is disappointed in me um but the reason that i've i'd like i've kind of
stopped searching for a lot of new web 3 games and it's mainly because every game that i tend to play is almost just some like rebranded, remade version of a prior game with nothing to it,
but a token and an NFT.
Like I,
if I want to play a really good strategy game,
I can go and play civilization frigging six or Civ seven.
If I want to go play a solid RPG game, I can go for WoW Classic or the new WoW.
If I want to play a good MOBA, I can go back to the Timeless, the Dota 2s and League of Legends.
I don't have, like majority of the games that come out, if you want a shooter game,
you can go play Rivals or frigging Overwatch. If you want, like game you you can go play rivals or freaking overwatch if you want like
none of these games have anything to them no real substance to them like look at nyan heroes i was
calling the death of nyan heroes from like a month into the game everybody's like oh my god cats and
robots but the only reason why they were jerking so hard for it was because of the fact that they had tokens
and that they thought that they could make some money off of it.
Pondsy.
Yeah, I wanted dogs in the game, and they said no.
I mean, if you look at cat-related games,
there is a cat game that is drawn in 2d called battle cats and it's
been running for like maybe 12 years or something it's been running for an insane amount of time
and that still has collaborations that you know you'd expect out of fortnight so it has
collaborations with all the top animes it has like hundreds of thousands of things in like this game like one of the things that they do
um is they do a simple core and a lot of depth and i think the biggest failure of web3 gaming
has to be trying to make the most fucking high quality core games and making nothing else like
90% of web3 games i've seen are a core loop and then nothing else. If anything that you could say about Dith and what they do
is they actually do make the metagame.
And the metagame is basically all of the game.
They don't mean that because they don't know what the fuck
they're talking about in game design.
What they want to do is they want to have a metagame, a reason to come back and a reason to
spend the money. If you look at 90% of the Web3 games that are out there, they haven't done that
because they don't know what the fuck they're doing when they get to that point. That's my,
you know, crazy hot take. That's booed. I'm going to join Tarish on saying why don't I just play a
different game with some slight caveats?
Obviously, if we're only ever looking back at the giants, no one should ever make any new games.
But I don't think that's true. I think you can do.
But even if you can't compete with your comparable even footings who are just starting out, that's where the problem is.
So Goblins of Elderstone is a mutable game, even though it was released in 2019.
Not entirely sure how blockchain and mutable gets involved, but I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole because I'm not interested enough.
But that I played as a colony sim to review, and it is $7 less than Timberborn, who, if anyone loves beavers and building dams you it's a colony sim but your
beavers building dams and i've been playing for maybe a year i've got about 40 hours and for seven
dollars more it's just such a better game released similar times similar sort of price aiming for the
same kind of target market but the depth depth, the quality, the aesthetic,
everything is just done so much better that even if I'm not looking back and saying,
well, why are you making an FPS?
I could just go play Battlefield.
Even if we're kind of taking the giants out of the picture,
it's still not enough to compete with some of the others
who are also trying to break into into the space that
the giants are already taking up see my my point my point isn't so much about looking back at the
giants and saying why make another game yeah if we did that we wouldn't have escape from tarkov
right escape from tarkov created a new genre of games almost entirely on its own though with an indie studio
They did stupid. Well until Nikita became retarded and decided to start changing up pricing and all sorts of stuff and pisses
Follower base off but like I'm not saying that we we shouldn't try to build better games or improve on a game genre or create
Cool new exciting things like when it comes to like civ it's hard to
compete right because they have a little bit of everything in the forex genre but like i'm talking
about nyan didn't do anything revolutionary nyan didn't create a better game nyan didn't have a
more fun game because half the time you were dealing with bugs and bullshit and lobby right
you didn't even have what was it you didn't even have a freaking friends list or like a custom lobby you can create or some shit and they were trying to host these
big major tournaments and just push the hype as much they could get because they needed to make
as much money as they could off the freaking token like the the problem ends up being is that
there's no real innovation there's no real progression or or or moving past what the predecessors have done and done really well
even if it wasn't very polished so long as it was innovative and new and something interesting being
done i don't think anybody would sit there and say oh well it's just a a copy of this game but
the problem is is that's what we're doing we're just creating the same garbage over and over again
the same things that don't change anything but copy exactly what came before
Don't improve on it at all toss a token on it toss an nft on it and say here you go this revolutionary and it's bullshit
Agreed and I've heard some story
I've heard some story about that game.
I'm not going to fad or divulge anything here.
I know that there's a lot of people that lost money on that.
So let's not put our finger into an open wound.
But I do want to step to the next session of our show.
And it's asking you guys
what is the take
that would get you all
excommunicated from Web3 Gaming?
Take your time
and I'm open to hear
you out. Anything that
you come up with.
But since we got Dougie that's got
his hands up, let's start with him.
Yeah.
What would get you excommunicated, Dougie?
He's not even paying attention.
No, he's definitely not.
He's just got his hand up because he wants to talk.
He's picking his boogers.
All right.
Oh, my God.
But yeah, I guess the take that would get me excommunicated from Web3 Gaming.
Well, it's a real shame that G-Crod isn't here
because he has all of the takes
that everyone else believes in Web3 Gaming.
I agree with none of them.
But I think the take that would get me
the most excommunicated would be saying that,
you know, Web3 Gaming is never, ever going to work
if we have calls like we do.
Like Web3 Gaming calls don't work.
That's the thing to get me communicated, I would say.
I don't necessarily.
What did you say, man?
Web3 cars won't work?
Like I need to buy like a non-Web3, a Web2 car?
Web3 KOLs.
Oh, KOLs.
Oh, I don't know.
What is that?
Doesn't work.
Terrible business model.
That's interesting.
Can you explain?
Yeah, no.
I mean, what it is,
is basically you pay someone $3,000
and they do a very high production video
to precise, well, like, you know,
precisely 20 people of which
all of them are mostly other people
and their friends. and then beyond that
you get nothing from it and if you then stop paying that person they publicly fudge you on
the timeline oh yeah i forgot i know i forgot about the flooding part i need to start doing
that i haven't really like learned how to do like the fud people. Yeah, I just put it into some numbers, right?
Like for $200, you can get your game in front of with like,
and this is standard prices,
someone with a million views or a million like subscribers,
not subscribers maybe,
but you can get a million views with one piece of long form content
on YouTube for $200.
And that's mid-priced.
And I'm just saying, like,
if your game goes out to a million people
and you don't get, like, more money from that
than you would get from spending $2,000 to show it to 20 people
or $3,000 to show it to 20 people or three thousand dollars to show it to 20 people
you have a terrible game so well that's my that would get me excommunicated i believe well maybe
but like i also have a different viewpoint on this because like coming from the advertising world
the real problem is that like okay in regular web regular web to advertising, see who advertise in a Superbowl
or something, right. Or on television, you can't really track those metrics, but if you put out a
high value, like marketing campaign and stuff, along with all the other stuff you're doing,
it can work extremely well. Right. The problem here is that nobody is creating like this. So
there's a lack of qualityness. There's a lot, There's a lot of things that just don't fit into the mix.
So then it makes that setup not makes totally like a lot of sense, right?
But I do really appreciate the KOLs that are putting in any time to connect
and trying to make real content because there are some of them
that are actually really cool.
And they –
Oh, yeah.
I mean this shouldn't be taken as a thing against kols right because i
believe they make some of the best content out there with higher production values than you
would get but because the following in the audience is so small and the fees are so high
because you are paying for the production values of this and you're paying on top without a premium
because your cpi is i think you're only talking about me i think i'm the only person
that actually does what exactly what you're saying how let's have a guess thumbs up if he's talking
only about me thumbs down if he's talking about other people okay nobody okay come on vote in my
poll vote in my poll vote share the room then and it's funny because matt doesn't really know any of
like the stuff
that i do or what i charge probably but i literally charge a lot put a huge amount of
production value into what i do but the thing is about it though that like i feel like i'm one of
the few people that actually care and because i put the work into it right i'm not saying you
don't care tuggy i'm just saying that that's just i'm not i'm not trying to attack you or counter
you i'm just saying that like but the problem is I'm also doing eight other million things along with that.
Like, you know, connecting with people, doing game nights, doing all this other stuff, right?
So the problem is that most KOLs in this space, they just grift, copy what everyone else is doing, pretend that they're important, and pretend they have connections.
But there's no actual real like um authenticity there
there's no real value there and it's very hard to track these things so like when a company or a
project tries to hire a kol or a marketing type idea none of them really have any idea what they're
doing so they just go what if whatever is in front of them so like that's part of the problem is that
like they also don't know what the fuck they're doing.
So then they just get people
that also don't know
what they're doing.
So there's like a,
there's like multiple.
Yeah.
And they shouldn't have been,
they shouldn't have been
building games in the first place.
But yeah,
let's move on to Gaspoad.
What's your take
that will get you excommunicated
from Web3 Gaming?
I think it's optimistic
that you think
KOLs are getting paid anymore.
But yeah,
I was trying to perpetuate
that we're getting paid a lot, Gathpoed.
I think it would be
that Web3 Gaming
is going to be in all gaming.
I think that that's still something
that gets touted out,
that eventually is the future of gaming
and everything will go into it.
I don't think it will be.
I think it will happen in some genres more than others.
I think some studios will embrace it more than others.
I do think eventually gamers won't care one way or another,
like from a positive standpoint,
but also from the negative standpoint that's already there.
But it will just be something that is sometimes used.
I don't think it's the this is definitely inevitable and it's going to happen for all games.
I think some games will use it.
And I think it will be closer to what we saw with Hytale, where you could buy a normal game.
That's good. And you can pay in crypto.
And then you're done. We're out out that's as far as crypto goes with it
i think that will be the closest it will come to being used widespread
and uh and all of the chains seem to also believe uh gas mode that which is why they're running a
mile from funding any games i said tarish i saw your hand pop up there so what's your take to
get you excommunicated from web3 gaming oh didn't i give that already i'm sure i gave that already um i was just gonna say i agree
with gaspode on this one um like i i think that part of our issue as web3 gaming is that we have
to everybody's pushing it as this end all be all to gaming like this is the next evolution this is
where everything's heading and like realistically for the for for probably like 80 to 90 of the games it won't really even
matter like they don't need web 3 to complete this what what difference does it make it just
a payment rail system you know part of the problem with web 3 right now with gaming
is the speculative aspect being tied into game tokens
and and and game assets right like nobody wants to spend 500 for a fucking character in a game
like i refuse to spend oh people do i refuse 500 no there's no way in hell no many people do many
people do on gatches and things like that.
So my sort of like anti-take to your takes is like,
I don't, yeah, I also agree with you guys that it's not going to be everywhere.
But I genuinely think, I genuinely think
that it's actually going to be more than just payment rails.
I genuinely think it will be a lot more than that. It'll be
like making sure the gacha odds are returnable. It'll be making sure the coins can go back to
the player. It'll be complying with the EU law that requires you to be able to sell back these
coins or these coins to actually have their value recorded at all times. I just think that 99.999
recurring percent of all studios that have come before
too fucking dumb to actually make an economy that works the majority of them never got to
the point where they had an economy um and the ones that got to that point didn't get there by
themselves and um and that's why it didn't work i've seen Nadim is back with a hand up. What's up, ladies?
Doug, you want to go first, bro?
Who are you calling? He's gone many times, man.
Doug, is your name Nadim? No, I'm just kidding.
You can go ahead, man. Oh, I'm sorry.
No, you go. I can't see what's
happening, and I can't see who
has my hand up, but you go.
Awesome, bro. Dude, I think people
are going to get heard the most from Web3 Gaming being a complete shit show or all the unemployed people in third world
countries where the u.s dollar is really valuable and they can no longer extract while sitting in
their living room which i'm not shitting on them like i would do the same thing if i was them
but these are the people are getting gonna get hurt the most with all these studios shutting
down uh play to earn dying for them is like their
income source just disappearing evaporating but actual gamers who don't want to make money from
gaming dude they don't like like they don't care about some shitty mid-tier game that has on-chain
elements like oh my god i can't trade anymore i can't get an nft like we suck dude i'm sorry but
like we suck in so many ways and i think there is
potential but like we're just not even close to being there yet and the last thing i'll say is
like i think a lot of web3 games feel like they have an excuse to be shitty games just because
they're on chain oh yeah we are a game but we are on chain so we do have an excuse to be shitty
so that's it go ahead doug good take good take. Good take. Doug. Dougie, Doug.
I want to apologize to Nadim because like my I don't know if it's like the connection or something, but I I'm not seeing what's happening and I can't hear very well.
So I thought you said we're going back to D when that's a letter of my name.
So like like my ego says that I got that's probably me because I can all the only thing I can see is my hand up.
I literally can't see anything else.
So I'm going to write a letter to Nadim
right now, and I'm apologizing to him
because I care about his prosperity
and people hearing his voice.
But I'm also...
Oh, thank you.
Thank you, Nadim.
And I couldn't...
I didn't even...
Twitter's so messed up,
I didn't even see you here.
So when he said D,
I was like, there's no one near my name. I mean, I didn't even see you here. So, like, when he said D, I was like, there's no one, like, neared my name.
You know, I mean, I couldn't understand what was going on.
But now you're popping up and I see you.
Now Twitter's laughing at me.
Of course you can see him, right?
But I want to give, like, a little bit of a counterpoint.
Because, obviously, you guys are talking about quality games and you love games.
Your passion is super great.
But what's really funny is that, like, the behavior we see in Web 3 happens also in Web 2 almost even worse. Like when you see all these
little like mini games on mobile and these little like things that pop up in ads where you're just
shooting some army soldiers and then the ad comes up and says like, people said this was a fake game,
but it's not. Watch me play it now. Like, even the ads make no sense.
And then there'll be another one with, like, an A-list celebrity that's, like, promoting the game.
Like, literally, like, people that are making, like, probably $5 to $10 million a year that don't need the money in any possible way.
They're just shilling the fuck out of some really terrible terrible game that's just extracting
from you where you have to buy coins and buy shit whatever which is hilarious i'm like and it's
people that i like like literally will respect as creative people and that are doing it and i'm like
my mind is blown i'm like dude like literally this is a person that just starred in a major
hollywood film this year is well-respected and people love them.
And they're in like the worst ad I've ever seen in my life,
shilling a terrible game.
That's just extractive and terrible.
That was probably made in one day.
And so,
you know,
in India somewhere and they're just like sitting there going like,
how can we scam everybody?
So like,
it's totally great to criticize,
be critical and whatever,
but like the whole spectrum of gaming across the world,
like there's even much worse stuff happening than even in web three with,
with a list celebrities,
with people in media companies and agencies and like people in the,
in the entertainment business that are like the highest peak of legitimacy.
Right.
So like,
it's really fun to like think about all this stuff and like get a good perspective on
it because um you know like with the ftx thing that happened with tom brady and everybody that
were getting paid they probably didn't even know what the fuck ftx was half of them right um but
we live in a world where like think think with your own brain make your own decisions
and um make sure that you give your friends cake Oh no we lost Matt again
Yes we did
Let me hop in while you try to figure that out
Please stop
It's going to take a second
Doug I agree with you to an extent
There like yeah they do it in web 2
Yeah we see all these false ads for all these
Bullshit games right But at the same time there like oh yeah they do it in web 2 yeah we see all these false ads for all these bullshit games
right but at the same time what what we're not doing here in web 3 is we're not monetizing beyond
the token and the assets right majority of the games and the companies that we have producing
shit in this space are tossing these games out solely on the backing of the tokens and the nfts
right promising big returns for people
promising people that that maybe not promising but insinuating that you're gonna make all this
money and you're gonna be able to do this and be able to do that right and then not monetizing the
game beyond those things right like at least those games in web 2 are putting ads in their games and
making money okay like we don't it, and we're so stupid
for it. Because, like, look at
what was it?
Immortal whatever.
What the fuck was that game? IMR, IMT,
whatever that game was.
But they tossed ads in their game
every five seconds!
Every five seconds you had an ad
that you can watch and double your gems or whatever.
And people clicked them! Because you know what farmers like to can watch and double your gems or whatever. And people clicked them.
Because you know what farmers like to do?
They like to get free shit.
Right?
So they clicked all of those ads again and again and again.
They probably made millions off of ad revenue alone for that game.
And nobody else wants to do it.
Oh, nobody likes ads.
Nobody likes ads, But people like free shit
Give them free shit for the ads
And people will click your ads
They do click the ads
I remember when I had my own game
And we had ads in that
And they were entirely optional
You could double your gems
Or play again for an ad
And people complained bitterly
The farmers
We had a very heavy farmer contingent people complained bitterly the farmers we had a very
heavy farmer contingent they complained bitterly that they quote unquote had to watch an ad for
that that they assumed that we should just give them the free money and they didn't really even
like interfacing with the game as much as they like the free money which um you know was a point
but you know ad monetization like that's the whole point like
your game does not make money but that's the thing
Matt like did they complain because they
wanted the free shit on top of the ad
like or did they just want
like did they just want the free shit without the ad
or did they watch the ad
did they still watch the ad
oh yeah they still watch the ad
bitch about it all you want
bitch about it all you want. Exactly. Bitch about it all you want.
Exactly.
I mean, guys, Discord does it.
Hamster Combat did it.
And people had millions of idiots.
Sorry.
Gamers playing that.
But I swear, nowadays, I'm surprised they're not putting any ads in games like Call of Duty.
And actually, I heard of technology that will implement subliminal ads inside games coming up.
So, guys...
Oh, my God, that's like Futurama, where they bring adverts straight into your dreams.
Like, I swear to God.
I swear to God that there are so many
potential futures that we could end up in.
Futurama is probably, in a way,
one of the best.
I wouldn't be surprised if we do have
Mitzon's head in a jar running the United States
in the year 3000.
I wouldn't be surprised having a crocodile
leading the church as well.
Yeah, but for ads in a game like Call of Duty,
all you would have to do is put a fucking poster on the side of one of
the buildings that are commonly clavid.
I'm surprised they don't already do that.
It would be so stupid simple.
Yeah.
That's pretty much what I would expect
most companies to do.
Not advertising and not putting stuff
in your game to make money is like
it's the number
one crime of these games.
But the thing is that they are usually so far behind getting to that stage where that
could actually have any meaningful effect.
Because, you know, I have people touting to me impressive numbers such as 500 people
played this game.
I'm like, bro, you like, you would sneeze in a Web2 company and get 500 people play your game.
You would just have to click the wrong button
and 500 people will play your game.
This is not impressive.
It's not impressive at all.
People have no clue what the standard is.
That's the thing.
The standard is you've got to make a game.
If you want to be a top-grossing game,
your game has got to make 100 million a month.
Can you, like, anyone in this space
ever worked on a fucking 100 million a month game
and then gone on to actually found a studio
and not instead just been some guy
who founded a thing?
Yeah, well, I mean, that's the difference.
That's the difference.
And no one wanted to back that
because I wasn't like, oh, token, token, token. Anyway, aside from that that's the difference. That's the difference. And no one wanted to back that because I wasn't like,
ooh, token, token, token.
Anyway, aside from that, we got Ryan.
Ryan, we're going through all of our unpopular opinions today.
While you get yourself situated,
that's Crypto Grit with his hand falling off.
Yeah, I just wanted to go back,
maybe I articulated it in a wrong way regarding skill turn.
You know, it's what Terry said.
Like, it's more about people getting perception that it's skill turn, while there is actually
either no transparency about rewards distribution, whether it's based on a share, whether it's
based on a position or something else.
And I think we're seeing this across the whole web3 gaming
and and i feel it's like a big problem that like the expectations that are kind of built within
the people are like it's almost never met you know and they're consistently created created you know
and i think this is like also another reason why why we're, you know, and like these Kill Turn games, many of them now,
they're like played with AI agents, not even the real people. So like, what's the odds, you know,
like of beating someone that is like playing close to perfect for a regular player? And as you said,
Matt, like many of the people that actually join like Web3 Gaming never even play the games before the Web3 games, right?
So it's another fact.
I mean, look, if Web3 Games are having to have agents play their games because they're that unpopular,
that tells you everything, really.
Ryan, your hand is up.
What's your unpopular take of the day?
First off, most unpopular take.
All of Web3 Gaming is in this room right now, less like two guys.
So what's up, friends and family? Appreciate you holding down the fort still after all these years bunch of losers
all of us um i uh i i heard some talk of uh of kill to earn i didn't even know there's other kill
to earn games out there um but fuck i guess my most unpopular opinion is the investors and the biggest supporters in this space have all walked away in the pursuit of money.
And, you know, money is important.
Money is what makes the world go round.
But we had a saying internally about like paid mercenaries versus people who do do things for the love of the game.
And, you know, many of us do do what we do here for the love of the game.
We didn't make video games in the pursuit of making like millions and millions of dollars.
We did it because we like making video games.
If you made money, it's a fantastic byproduct of what happened.
I don't know many people who had that fantastic byproduct, me included.
But, you know, like, it just sucks.
It sucks to see how many people were leeches on the space.
And I wish I didn't lend so much support
all those years ago for those guys not to be around today.
100%, 100%, man. I think one of the things that has always been tough about this space is that,
you know, we have a lot of optimism, right? We have a lot of optimism. I am not against people coming into the games industry
if they haven't made games before.
What I'm against is people not doing the research.
Like, if you want to make a mobile game,
play the top mobile games.
If you want to make a shooter, play the top shooters,
not just your favorite shooter that you've played for 11 years
and that was actually released 16 years ago.
Like, play all the top games,
look at the games industry's sort of billions of content
that it puts out there in terms of industry content,
like download a data thing or get a subscription to Data AI.
Actually learn the fucking business you're trying to get into
on that side of it.
Don't just think because you know this other business
that that can be
applied to making a game and that's a known quantity 90% of the games still fail that's
never a known quantity so I think you know that's the thing is like you can be extremely successful
in mobile games or games coming in from outside right but the people who were successful doing
that looked at the things around them and made
something different or they made an iteration of that thing that was just generally better
like if you look at say candy crush that was like um there were that kind of thing but they made it
like really really popular and addictive because they just put in a few things like you could see
where your friends were like that wasn't a lot of innovation. Now more innovation is going to be needed.
But you look at, like, Royal Match, right?
There was total domination with Candy Crush
and all of the other big games up there.
With the match titles, there was, like, homescapes,
gardenscapes, fucking all of these kind of games.
And Royal Match just came in from fucking nowhere
with an irritating advert, that dumb fucking king,
and made billions.
So, like, the fact dumb fucking king, and made billions. So the fact is
that we haven't made billions
off one simple fucking game
is pointing to the fact
that the majority of people
backing this space
and the majority of people
raising this space
are functionally retarded.
All the money went
the wrong direction.
I apologize.
I didn't mean to cut you off, Nadim.
No, no, go for it.
I like people jumping in. I my my most important unpopular opinion no safe takes whatsoever
is these fucking kols who everyone praised even some of us here and they all jumped ship on the
ecosystem because nobody wanted to pay them 250 to 2500 a video500 a video. And that, that was the single most damaging thing to this entire ecosystem.
Everyone has a username and a PFP in mind when I say it.
And truly the most damaging part of all of Web3 Gaming were the people that got paid
to tell the narrative that don't celebrate and push Web3 Gaming today.
And I got a DM from some of the audience
and he gave me a really good one.
He says, if you are not actively building a game,
your opinions aren't valid.
Why did we give money to KOLs
who don't know anything about development
and trust those opinions?
Oh my God, hard facts.
Oh, I mean, you know, I think there is the whole thing of like,
we built an industry basically wrong.
And I think that's the thing.
I think we need to acknowledge that Web3 Gaming, as it was,
was founded on a game that should have never been successful
and was only successful.
And it was successful at the time
because of the insane run on coins
that we're never going to see again.
Because back at that point,
when 2021 and Axie was kicking off,
there were not that many alts.
There were not that many different coins.
There were not that many places to put your money.
Literally everything was going up.
You could get a free NFT one day,
make three grand on it the next.
I mean, that was a special time.
And if you base an entire
industry on something that was literally created and worked only in the most feverish time of the
industry i think you're gonna have a bad time like big props to what they've achieved but that's not
achievable on any kind of long-term basis it is the definition of a ponzi nadim i've been thinking
about this for a while um and i think i figured out what the best product market fit is for Web3 Gaming.
And I don't know if you guys are ready for it, but here it is.
Money laundering.
Okay, so hear me out for one second.
What we're going to do is we're going to team up with drug dealers,
terrorist regimes, all sorts of like illicit shady organizations around the world.
We're going to have them funnel money into a Web3 game.
We're going to run massive advertisements in third world countries
that need the US dollar.
And then the proceeds from the money laundering
will go to those people that need it.
And the Web3 game will have hundreds of thousands of players
and everybody wins.
So I think that's the ultimate fucking deal.
And everybody wants to join me on starting such a thing.
I'm ready.
Oh, wait, I know the name.
Silk Road.
Oh, oops.
Maybe they already did that.
We've already done that.
We already did that.
Like most of that VC money
came straight out of SoCal
and ended up all over the best parts of the world.
And I think that's absolutely fantastic.
You know, this is probably the most socialist thing
that VCs in California have actually managed to pull off.
They've redistributed billions upon billions of dollars
to people that they wouldn't even let billions upon billions of dollars to people that
they wouldn't even let in their country um i think that's fucking hilarious and um more more power to
them for it so i'm i'm dead i'm dead happy that i managed to do that but if you want to look at
money laundering you can't forget wargaming oh my god wargaming is a money laundering outfit
i have some fantastic choice stories like like the CEO of Wargaming,
he was a Russian guy,
and he used to come into the meetings covered in Coke.
And the one time that they were going to cross into Europe,
he realized he couldn't take cash more than $5,000.
So he put $5,000 in about eight people in the team's backpacks.
And at some point, some of the team got very, very drunk.
And then they ended up in a strip club
and found out they had a big wadge of cash in there.
And they proceeded to spend that on the champagne room
and all of the rest of this jazz.
And after that,
when they kind of sheepishly went to the CEO
and was like, bro, we spent your 5k,
he looked at them with his like,
I'm going to kill your face.
And was like, but did you have a good time?
And they were like, yes, brother. face and was like but did you have a good time and they were like yes brother and he was like okay then and that is one of the one of the
battle stories of web 2 gaming you know web 2 gaming used to be actually fun before it was
co-opted by this horrible kind of clergy splurgy kind of stuff that makes no good games and
just bullshits everything into oblivion so we do have a chance right um and i think like the space
has gone a little bit over but i love having everyone here i love everyone's takes we've got
fantastic people in the audience as well i love everyone to sort of like give a take of like
since we've been doing all of the unpopular opinions i'll give my final unpopular opinion
then we'll go around the room my unpopular opinion is i do think Web3 Gaming can make it. It'll be different, but there will be things in it
that people were crying out about that would have been successful.
They just didn't have the teams to make it.
I got an unpopular opinion.
Stop calling it Web3 Gaming.
Oh, fuck off.
I'm just old.
I still call things Twitter.
I mean, actually, X still has in the help pages
things calling itself Twitter. So I think that's hilarious. I mean, actually, X still has in the help pages things calling itself Twitter,
so I think that's hilarious.
But yeah, let's go around the room.
Who wants to give that kind of
positive unpopular opinion?
If you've got any.
Gaming will continue.
What a better mark.
I'll hear a pin drop.
Web3 Gaming is inevitable.
There's a steep reality, and maybe I'll like i'll be like it's not positive web3 gaming isn't gonna make it but like it's just that word web3 gaming
and i look at products like collector crip and collector crip is one of the first products that
integrates nfts in web3 in the most meaningful way it's simply a digital representation of a
card in a vault and web22 users love CollectorCrip.
And they love using this platform.
And they sign up with email.
And they use their credit card.
And the Web3 element is hidden in the back.
Nobody really needs to get it or understand it.
But it creates a flawless product experience.
And it is the most efficient way to create a true digital representation of this thing that's stored in a secure vault and you burn the NFT to get the physical thing sent to you.
So I do think these types of integrations will exist in products.
But as somebody who's built, you know, I've been working in gaming the brunt of my life.
Between BR1 Infinite and Honeyland,
which are two very complex Web3 products specifically,
I've changed my vicious opinion.
As a gamer who played World of Warcraft and RuneScape,
I used to always ask myself how many party hats exist in RuneScape.
I wish I could see the true number so I can know how scarce this item actually is.
Because I always felt that devs are duping them or somebody has like this big inventory but the point is now as a game developer in hindsight
i understand why they never gave me clarity about that question because it's bad for the economy
and as a guy building games to an extent showing scarcity has value hiding scarcity has value
that's how you continue to be able to sell in-game currency to these users and create a truly scalable business.
Talk about scalable economy.
RuneScape Gold, it's an inflationary currency.
But damn, is their business a banger.
Billion-dollar valuation.
And they did it by inflating their gold and building a fun game.
It's like tokens were super damaging web 3 is not required
games are forever and i would love to see one of us implement the back-end tooling the right way
like collector crip-esque in one of our games and i'm confident someone will do it
i love this take i love this take i can tell you there were probably about 40 party ads because
when I was working at RuneScape, I looked through to see which ones were rare. Apparently,
it seems like black ones, there weren't as many. And we almost, well, the founder's brother got
in trouble because he got catfished by some Canadian girlfriend, literally a Canadian
girlfriend, and he dropped a party out on a map square and for her in the wilderness so he was in big troubles for that so there we go
darius mine isn't positive
but i i will say this we love you there this unpopular take it's not just about web3 i think
gaming in general right now is dying.
And I'm not saying that it's going to die.
I'm saying it's dying.
I'm saying that across Web 2 and Web 3, we have seen time and time again the same garbage being remade,
the same mid-games that people end up falling in love with and then having a problem with later on.
I mean, look at doug and
his love for friggin arc raiders i think it's a mid game i'm gonna call it a mid game until the
day i die um but when when it comes down to it we're we're looking at uh an era of gaming where
everything's been done for the past 20 years over and over again slight differences slight
like genre changes the the big genre changes we've seen
are, are things like escape from Tarkov and in other games, redefining like shooter genres into
new styles of play. Um, and I, I don't see us doing well until we start to really change
like some of the mechanics and some like really looking at innovating things that are coming out
because right now we're just doing the same things over and over again and until then i think the gaming
industry is going to suffer as it has been for how long now you know i mean that is an interesting
take because if you look outside of like the western bubble um and you look at like asian
games companies that going from strength to strength, there was like one of them gave a 30% pay rise to all of its starting employees.
And I think the thing that I identify personally with what's happening with Western game development is it basically, Western game development is in the state that Twitter was before it actually got like, you know, taken over by Elon Musk.
before it actually got taken over by Elon Musk.
It got to the point where you couldn't do anything
because you would offend someone in 99% of all of these studios.
And they did attract all of the kind of people
that everyone loves to hate on now.
And some of those people did make incredible,
exciting games in the past.
But it got to the point where that kind of attitude,
they lost the punk side of it attitude they lost the punk side of
it they lost the punk side of it they lost their like aggressiveness they lost like if you look at
abe's odyssey the abe's odyssey is a game that kind of everyone likes and that is a very left
wing game if you look at it you know like on the surface but it's about a story it's about characters
and the believability dropped you know that's where it went gaspode
my final positive take is contrary to everything we've said about knowing what you're doing
going armed build something good we need more volume so if you have a dream even if you're
retarded start making a game because we need more shots on goal before we're even a score and I think
So just try the pipeline of web 3 is dry at this point
Even if it's shit just start throwing more stuff out because we're never gonna get anything if it's just the way it's going now
I'm under the impression
Like the space is so dead if anyone dropped a game right now that they would just win.
It's like nobody's dropping a game.
Someone should just drop a game.
You get the whole market share.
We used to all compete 10 games on the timeline every day.
It's so funny.
I think that's part of it.
It's the fact that we don't have anything new coming out and people losing interest.
Like you said, we had 10 new games every week or every day
where people were just diving in people are bored people don't have enough to keep keep them
stained anymore besides the games that they've played and extracted from already so they don't
care about those anymore but that that's part of the problem but i don't have any more money
to create an extraction simulator i can't give away any more free airdrops it doesn't work where's the last
of the sucker vcs at oh my god yeah i i always wonder if you're the first of the smart money
or the last of the stupid money when you're raising web 3 um and it is it's interesting
like i do think that that is that is the case there isn't enough games there isn't enough
games in web 3 there's plenty of games in web 2 in fact there's too fucking many games in web 2 and that's never a problem that we have had in web 2 is that not
enough games not enough games in web 3 definitely then you go back to how do you actually publicize
your web 3 game in web 3 and then you have to do the deal with all of those lovely calls who aren't
being paid they're probably really broke by now and um maybe you could start offering them web two prices and see if they'd
accept it but I think you will get funded if you try I don't know back in the day in 2020 I had
this esports wagering platform and we used to offer influencers real influencers esports athletes
guys who are you know playing in the fortnight world champions and things and you tell them
I'll send you this like 250 keyboard and they'd be like bro that is so fucking cool thank you so much and they would make insane
content and they would do it from the heart and that was the the huge difference okay i don't
know what happened we don't have enough poor people who have cameras in web3 um gaming to
advertise everyone else got rich for all of the previous
games and now we have to find newer poorer influences i think that's that's the trick
you know what there we go oh go dude like somebody said that gaming in general not
web 3 gaming in general is going down i don't know maybe like to some extent right now but
like when oil and gas prices go up and shit gets more expensive just to move around
and to travel,
what do people do?
They stay home
and they play more games.
They work more.
Because life sucks, dude.
They're going to fucking
play more games
when they're back home from work.
You escape reality
and the only way to do so
is gaming.
Exactly.
Life sucks.
Or philocybin,
but I'm not suggesting
the second one.
Yeah, but people will not suggesting the second one.
Yeah, but people are doing that with mobile more.
One last popular opinion is that we should bring back COVID.
Oh, God, no.
There we go. They were talking about the stimmies again because everybody's broke.
Run it back.
Run it back.
Let's run back COVID.
I do think there is also like a a there's an age element to this and
i have a brother he's five years older than me i am 32 i think at this point in my life and i'm
about to have a daughter and i see amongst many of my friends in my age group that many people are
having kids and getting married and the point is five years ago we were all ripping video games
and we were like kind of like going out and stuff and now we all have like wives and kids on the way
and within the next year even more of my friends will fall into this situation and the point is
they won't be online gaming because real life is serious as fuck and i don't even have the time to
play video games i only have time to make video games because it's my work as much as i would love
to passionately play but in five years years, six years, as my daughter gets
older, I am going to revert back to playing video games when I get that free time again.
And I think it's important to always recognize that success of a lot of these video games
is based on the demographic, who has the disposable income and the time to play.
income and the time to play and like gta may or may not do incredibly well amongst 30 to 35 year
olds because of this you know like some games may may not succeed because those of us that grew up
let's say in the pokemon generation just don't have the time to play the games and it's best to
reserve those types of titles for when we will get that free time again and it's something that i
think about a lot let me just say this before like somebody hops in like okay like dude ryan by
like congrats dude on your your daughter uh god bless you and your family uh but we are
definitely bro but we are living in a time where the cost of living is getting way way higher
cost of owning a home is getting very very high we are at a time where young men and women are
getting married way less than they
used to in the past especially in western world where it's just like fucking out of control and
getting a house costs like half a like a piece of shit half a million dollars or whatever
it's like yes sure people who did decide to have kids and do that will definitely not have the time
to play as much games but dude we're living in an age where people are getting married less less
less and less and i think a lot of them have a lot more free time to play video games.
And I'm one of them.
I would say there is a demographic component to this
because millennials are often called echo boomers
because their parents were boomers.
And they are like the largest generation that's functionally into video games.
And millennials, by and large, I'm one of the older millennials,
families and have kids and can't game um a lot of games are still being made for us and for also
the pokemon generation the like the you know the earlier millennials right so millennials as a as
a generation are the most busy generation right now at their stage of life and if you look at gen
z it's actually a lot smaller generation because their parents are gen x and so gen z there's about i think what is it half the number of um
gen z than there is of millennials or something ridiculous like that um and then you know gen
alpha is actually more because there are more millennials so i think the problem is that there's
compounded by the fact that no one makes video games for kids because kids just have iPads and watch other people play Minecraft.
So like, because there's no one making like tons of video games that are fighting for kids' attention,
the consoles are not coming out fast enough.
You know, we are breeding a generation of kids that watch games and not play them.
So like, I think genuinely, we're kind of fucked in Web3 unless Web2 gaming or crypto gaming we're fucked in
because we can't make games for under-18s,
like, with anything that we do
because we're basically cancer,
according to every kind of legislation in the universe.
So we have to make sure that, you know,
the rest of the gaming world starts actually making fun games
for kids to play.
And there are a lot of good indies that do that, right? And they're like Nintendo
Switch is one of the best places to find them. But I do think, yeah, you're right, Ryan, there's a
huge demographic component of this. And, you know, we're 20 minutes over this space. I've absolutely
loved all the takes here. Has anyone got any last takes to close us out? And then I'm gonna,
Loved all the takes here.
Has anyone got any last takes to close us out?
And then I'm going to finally end this.
We've had some very unpopular opinions.
We've had some unpopular opinions.
And despite the fact that we've gone 20 minutes ago,
the frog didn't fucking turn up.
You want this thing to go forever, man.
No, no, it's all good.
I was just hoping at some point the fucking frog would turn up.
But he promised and did not deliver again.
Tarish, close us out with something and then we'll... He's a frog. What are your expectations on it? some point the fucking frog would turn up but he he promised and did not deliver again tarish
closes out with something and then we'll he's a frog what are your expectation on it i just wanted
to say congratulations ryan i wish you the best with having a new child and it's tough good luck
man oh congrats everyone to ryan um and congrats to you all for coming um i think it's it's been
fantastic uh we've had a really
fun time today. I hope you had fun listening
as well. Please follow
these lovely people up in this space.
And yeah, we'll be back next week for
another episode of No Cap Gaming. Take us out, Grim.
Keep gaming. Stay No Cap.
Cheers, everyone. Have a great
one. Appreciate
you, boys. If only my investors
would accept the friends we made along the way as their ROI.
You guys would be big winners in my books. Thank you.
