GM, GM everyone, we get the room settled here and get some speakers up on the panel.
Appreciate everyone being here.
And that being said, I got some tunes for y'all.
Ladies and gentlemen, GM, GM, how are y'all doing today?
GM, GM, stoked to be here, folks.
Let's hear all the GMs from all these amazing panelists.
I see GM, Randy, GM, Dub, GM, Andy, you can, all these amazing people.
Guys, welcome back to another shrapnel space, man.
I'm super excited to talk about this one because this past weekend was probably one of the
most memorable gaming Web 3 events of all time.
I think, again, I don't even want to say it myself because I want the team to say it.
But, guys, before I proceed further in today's space, let's raise some awareness in this
room by hitting that bottom right button for me.
Let's get some more reposts, some likes, some comments, all of that.
Always goes a very, very long way.
That being said, I don't want to waste any more time.
We have a stacked, stacked panel today.
Let me just quickly check in with every single one of them and then we're going to go right
into the STX1 recap, everything that has happened this past weekend.
Let me first check in with Han Tao.
Han Tao, my friend, what is going on?
Dub trapped me in the dungeon for 20 hours straight to play STX.
Doug, what are you doing?
I appreciate that amazing intro.
Let's go to the man himself who just called you out.
Doug, how are you doing, man?
Oh, I thought it was Doug.
We're both very, we're both very handsome.
He's much more handsome than me.
Literally the only time this has ever happened.
And yes, I did trap me at Han Tao.
He thought we were going to go out to dinner and then I was like, no, bro.
I'm trying to compete on this leaderboard.
So, yeah, it was definitely a great time and stoked to play.
WFP reminds me of like Lord of the Rings or something.
That's been brought to you by Doug Hype.
So, this is where Doug comes in.
I think your PFP stands out the most out of all of us here, Doug.
You got your hand raised.
I'm getting a immediate mission transmission from the Val Dacha HQ.
So, I am hearing that they want all operators in the audience to hit that
bottom right comment section and let people know what they were most excited
about for this past STX and what they're looking forward to for next week.
And apparently the mission reward I'm hearing is we've got 10 heavy
extraction packs to give out to folks that do comment on that bottom right.
And if we hit a certain number, we will be giving away an operator NFT as well.
I just wanted to let you know that that transmission came hot across the wire.
You guys, you've heard of themselves giving away one operator at the end of
And again, I encourage everyone, please keep posting your clips, your content.
The most funniest, savagest moments you have playing STX 1 because, dude,
the amount of content I've seen the past couple of days regarding the event,
And then there are some clips where I'm like, oh, my gosh, that guy just got
Can't waste no more time, though.
Let me check in with these other panelists very, very quickly.
I'm doing better today than I was yesterday.
Still a bit sick, but can't miss a trap space just because we're down a little
We're just glad to have you here.
Great to hear you're doing well.
Going to the next person.
Bossa, super stoked to be here, man.
You are quickly becoming my second favorite space host in all of Twitter
spaces, second to only Sam's staff because Sam is the GOAT.
I'm excited to be here with everybody.
I feel like we're enemies in the sacrifice zone because we're all trying
to get out, but here we're all friends and hyped to be here.
Safety mode is on here, guys.
Appreciate that amazing, amazing shout-out, Icy.
Going to the next person.
Randy, welcome to the panel.
I hope everybody's doing well after Valentine's Day, feeling like those
Thank you, guys, for inviting me again.
I had such a good time playing shrapnel and getting after it.
Speaking of Dub's hair, I did promo this space on my morning show,
9.45 a.m. Eastern Monday through Friday on YouTube.
I was promo-ing it, and I was talking about how beautiful Dub's hair was
and how he's just so zesty and people have to come to experience Dub.
I also earned not only five sigma playing the game, but five points on Dub's
leaderboard, his own personal one.
I was honored by that as well over the weekend.
Five more points for Randy for that comment too, man.
I love the shout-outs in this space so far.
Randy, pleasure to have you here.
Thank you for setting time aside.
Cairo, welcome to the panel, my friend.
I'm having withdrawals because I can't get back into the sacrifice zone,
but overall, I'm doing good.
Going to our next panelist.
We already checked in with Dub going right over that.
Andy Slaps, how are you doing, Andy?
Excited to see the discussions.
Had a great time with Shrapnel.
Just doing like 10-hour days back to back to back, man.
Spent nice meeting everyone in the community.
It was so hype that even before the stages would open for the event,
we could get like 30 to like 50 people just sitting in a normal Discord channel.
Everyone just ready, ready to queue in.
So super excited for what's to come, especially this next STX.
Youkin, how are you doing?
Hey, thank you guys so much for having me.
I appreciate the love, man.
First time on a Twitter space.
So this is really awesome to join with a bunch of great influencers and,
you know, beautiful people out there.
Yeah, I'm doing good, man.
Enjoying the space, enjoying the game.
It did place pretty high into the leaderboard.
So I'm a little bit biased on that, but had fun.
Definitely took a lot out of me, but it was a great experience.
And I know this is going to be not the last time we hear you on spaces.
So hope to see you in future ones, as always.
And last but not least, we got relaxed RPG.
How are you doing today, man?
Thanks for having me up here.
Enjoying a beautiful day outside right now.
Sorry if you got some background noise.
Just excited to be up here and thanks for having me.
Thank you for being here.
That being said, guys, we are officially about to commence the official start of
And the way I want to kick this off is actually by tossing this microphone to
Because, Tony, I want to hear from you.
What did you think of this past weekend?
And were there anything that any things that kind of like stood out to you kind
of playing the game, just watching people play?
Tony, please take over, my friend.
And I am absolutely going to talk about how exciting it was to play the game with
But first, I do want to just say the most exciting thing for me about this
weekend was seeing everyone show up and hang out and have a good time.
It really felt like we had like almost like an old school LAN party going with
the people that were in the Discord.
You know, Hantau and Dove and I were sweating together in the office for two
And Andy and Icy and Cairo and Doug and Randy and all these folks were just
hanging out in the Discord with us.
And we were talking shit and playing.
And honestly, you know, it's funny.
We were sitting around last week talking about a bunch of the sponsorships and
media buys that we've done over the past few months as we've ramped up.
And it was really easy for us to just like share screenshots and clips of some
of the folks that are here on stage with us, Doug and Icy and Hantau and Randy
and Cairo, folks that we've been working with a while now and be like, you know,
These people are bringing their friends to show up and play the game.
And it's just it's pretty it's pretty fun to see this community coming together
and bring other people in and get excited.
From a gameplay standpoint, the thing that I'm most excited about is the
It's so fun to shoot people, blast people from across the map with the
Sigma push or the Sigma blast to jump on top of cars, blowing yourself up.
And I've enjoyed watching Dub master the camping of one of the parks in the game,
Bradley's Park, and his mastery of the grenade as well.
Like, it's just it's fun watching people find new and interesting ways to use
I got I got slide killed like three or four times.
I like jumped out of my seat.
And so it's just it's really fun to watch people like Cairo and the other
and the other really good gamers that play with us use the mechanics in different
And also fuck you Hantau for killing me over and over again and then making a
video about how bad I thought.
Hantau, did you really create a video about him of how much he sucks?
I'm going to share it on top.
I imagine like every time I see a slide cancel kill, I immediately just think
of the sweaty Call of Duty players, man.
One of the most toxic things I hate about that.
But dude, I love it, Tony.
So here's what I want to do because we have a bunch of creators on this panel
who also play the game, right?
And I want to gather their feedback.
What did you guys think of this past SCX one event?
And the way I wanted to actually start this off is by asking you guys,
what was your favorite part, right?
I'm going to pass this to Doug Hype first and then to anyone who wants to contribute
add on, please just feel free to raise your hand and then we'll just pass the
Oh, we got to have intro music for this also.
Look, it was very smart of you to pass over my intro because I would have taken
over the entire show and played this song that I'm playing right now.
There's something that you need to know.
There's two things about video games that I really care about.
Well, one of them is friendship, but in the game itself, when I was there
streaming, playing with Randy and Misty Crypt over here, the number one
YouTube show in morning, we had so much fun.
Like the atmosphere of the game, the thrill, the adrenaline rush when you're
trying to go in there and get the Sigma.
Should I go to like an extraction zone?
Who should I look out for?
Like the game within the game is thrilling and exciting and it's amazing.
But on top of that, the atmosphere in the game, the feel of it, the surroundings,
the Sigma storms over your head.
They create a story, a place that you can live and be in and just enjoy and
I swear like I have never in my life heard so many people and creators and
communicators say, man, oh my God, I'm having so much fun.
Randy's like, Doug, I'm having withdrawals.
You know, the play test is over.
Like I want to go back in that connection to the human soul and experience of
just having pure fun doesn't happen in a lot of video games and it sure as
A lot of Web three games.
So when I was able to see and feel that myself and I already kind of had like
a taste of it because I had played a little bit before and I had seen people
play and I had a sense that this might be the case, but I love that like
cinematic, just exuberant realism that's been put into the game.
And you know, there might be things like bugs or things that fix or whatever,
but I'm telling you, man, the heart and soul and feel and fun of the game is
already there and it makes people freaking excited and they want to play
It's just like when the Apple Vision Pro came out and they're like, wow, I
want to wear this all day.
This is the first time I've had like an experience like this before.
That's kind of what we had here with this play test.
So thanks also to Dub and to Tony and everybody that also were part of that
experience and made it just absolutely amazing and fun like in every aspect
Man, I'm having so you know, it's funny guys is I because of STX one and
the amount of FOMO I had, I literally bought a bunch of new gaming parts.
So I'm rebuilding my PC this week.
I want to have it set up by next weekend.
So I can fucking join in on this hype man.
I want to hear from Cairo though.
What was your thoughts, your recap on the STX one event?
So overall, I spent like 30 hours between the four eight hour sessions and
it was really easy to spend those 30 hours in the game.
I think on the last day I tried to get off the game for like three straight
hours saying it was my last game and couldn't get off.
Even at the base layers that we have right now, I think it still has a very
addicting personality to the game.
And I think overall the foundation is there for a very great game.
A lot of things were iterated on from the last play test that I was able to
participate in, which is a very good sign.
That's happened now like two or three different times since I've played.
Things have changed massively in just a very quick span, which is really,
Overall, like I said, foundation is super fun.
The game has so many little hidden secrets that were really fun to find out.
Learning the entire map, like learning the map, overall I think the map is like
If you go to like the high fidelity part, it's really beautiful.
It's nice, but I stayed away from that part so I could get max frames and was
just running around in all the gray box areas just trying to kill everybody I
There were definitely a lot of bugs, but that's to be expected in a pre-alpha.
And I know that the team's going to get those handled.
It was really great seeing everybody show up.
I mean, the leaderboard was super competitive.
Everybody was super hyped.
The Discord was popping off the entire time.
And I think overall, like if you are a fan of shooters and FPSs in general, you could
play this game and you could not tell that it is a Web 3 game.
I mean, obviously it's in a pre-alpha, so you're going to be able to tell differences
But I think that this is definitely going to be one of the few games that we have in
Web 3 right now that is going to be able to onboard people from traditional gaming,
which is super important in my opinion.
Dude, that's first of all, I love what you said about the bugs because it was honestly
And what's crazy is I remember Alex saying that you guys essentially almost had a server
And while that may seem bearish for the gamers, dude, that's actually really bullish because
that actually shows how many people are interested in playing the game.
And I would want the servers to like crash because of that, because of how many people
are dying to play the game.
I want to pass this to Andy and then we'll circle around to Icy afterwards.
Yeah, I had a very similar experience to Cairo.
You know, I wouldn't have any other way though.
It was actually, I guess, like one of the biggest, I guess, bullish factors you could
say is on day one when we had all those server issues, like I was still alive the whole time.
I think Cairo was live like the whole time.
Like everyone was waiting, but everyone was still there, like chatting and participating
because like the service was down for a couple of hours.
Like a lot of people could have just left, gone home.
The Twitch viewership was still over like over a thousand plus people in the category
despite no one actually being able to play, which I think speaks volumes.
And it was really unique just being able to hang out with everyone in the community.
Like before the events would start and then during the events and then after the events
even, I was doing kind of like a cool down session.
I give away some extraction packs, just a ton of fun.
And in terms of gameplay, it had an actual gameplay loop, which is nice to see,
You wouldn't think it'd be that big of a deal.
We should have a gameplay loop.
But so many games now that are releasing, especially in Web 3, just don't even have an actual gameplay loop.
They got flashy graphics, you know, they got a cool IP, but there's no actual substance.
So despite the fact that there were a lot of bugs because it is a pre-alpha,
technically not even an alpha, right?
Like some of them, they get a little annoying.
But the other cool thing that you're bullish about is every time that we've had an STX
or an operator test or even from when we went to Seattle and tried out the game,
every next update, they've identified like the top like 10, 20 issues
and they fixed like all of them or most of them.
So every single test that has happened, even from just like February 2nd to February 8th,
even that short period of time, they like fixed sliding, they've fixed most of the mantling,
you know, like they're constantly fixing things and constantly taking feedback
and actually implementing it this early on.
So there's no like speculation as to are they listening to us?
And every single test and every single play test, they're collecting that data and making the game better.
So I'm super stoked for that.
I'm really excited for the STX coming up.
I think we might be doing like a slightly different, you know, leaderboard, probably a lot of bug fixes.
I think it's going to be a night and day difference.
And, you know, I'm hoping everyone here is going to be there.
It's going to be a great time.
I'm going to remind people in the audience, right?
We're going to be giving away one operator to a random listener down below.
Here are going to be the requirements, right?
You have to make sure that you have we posted the room, right?
Make sure you like comment something.
And what I want you to do is either post a screenshot or your own clip that you recorded from this past weekend.
Post on the comment section below.
I will be checking that out frequently throughout the duration today's space.
And at the very end on who at least the judge is here.
I'm going to let everyone here on this panel has become a judge on who we think is the best clip.
Right. You will receive that free operator.
Again, guys, make sure you post in the room.
You have to stay throughout the duration today's space.
That being said, let's keep moving forward because I'm loving this feedback.
I'm loving this feedback.
I believe next we had I see.
And then from there, we're going to work around.
What can I say that hasn't already been said?
I completely agree with Doug Cairo.
Andy, I had the same exact experience.
If anyone in the audience has played the game or had had a chance to play in the STX event,
you know exactly what we're talking about.
You had that same feeling.
If you haven't played, find a way to get an extraction pack and join the next STX playtest,
My favorite part was exactly what Cairo said.
I could play back to back to back.
The queue time for lobbies was like under a minute.
And the game is so addictive that you just want to get back in and play.
I was, you know, as soon as I like and I had to go to dinner with my girlfriend and all
that stuff, as soon as she went to bed, I snuck back onto the PC so I could play some
I really want to reiterate what Doug said about the atmosphere, the graphics, the map
And also the sound design is fantastic.
It's like very addictive.
It really puts you into that world.
So I really, really enjoyed every aspect of it.
And also, I just want to commend the team and the community.
It was really great to be a part of all this with you guys.
Like Doug said, the team was in the Discord streaming.
Shout out to Dubb, like eight hours, three days back to back to back.
You could jump into the Discord.
You could talk to the team.
You could just like vibe out with the community.
That was really impressive.
You guys showed up on Super Bowl Sunday, turn the servers on.
Like this is something special that you guys are doing.
And it's really cool to be a part of.
And I'm really grateful to be able to experience with you guys.
Because like Web3 Gaming was so bland for so long.
We didn't have games that we could stream and get clips and dunk on our friends.
That was the other fun part.
Like getting killed and realizing one of your friends killed you and taking a
screenshot and DMing them and talking trash.
I'm like, I can't believe you got me.
There was a bunch of those going around.
And that was also just like super fun.
So I am like Tyrone Biggs from Dave Chappelle show.
Like y'all get into any more of them extractions.
I can't wait for next week, man.
I just dropped the meme here.
And I'm really glad that you yourself are enjoying it, dude.
I want to see more of the homies getting destroyed.
Next up, one of the passes to dub dub.
For me, I had like two or three favorite moments.
I think it's hilarious that everyone's bringing that the server is not working
in the first like four hours was Andy's favorite moment because that was
actually one of my favorite moments.
Like looking back on it now, I'm literally having 700 people in our
discord looking at me asking like why this thing isn't working and how
can we get in the game as soon as possible?
Like I, it was that moment that I was like, holy crap.
Like my decade that I spent in retail fighting off armies like this in the
past was like, what, why I was like, I was born for the shit like that easy
peasy, but let's hang out and have a good time.
And I thrived during that like four hours, probably compared to the rest of
That's when I performed at my best and I got a lot of props from like our team
around that as well and how we handled it.
So just super proud of that looking back.
And then for me, my other top two moments around gameplay was the very last like
five minutes of the thing of the whole event.
I was basically trying to get to top one thousand on the leaderboard and I was
like 300, 400 Sigma off of that.
And I was pulling those numbers during my last match and just had my heart
absolutely racing and everyone was cheering me on to pull it through.
I ultimately did extract, but a bunch of other people did too.
And I didn't make it to top one thousand.
I was like a thousand and 68 or something like this.
So that, that moment in itself was a really cool, like all or nothing
Everything's on the line.
And then the third moment for me, that was just freaking fun and hilarious was
when me and Andy decided to get as many people as we could to cue at the same
time and then drop all of our weapons and only use Sigma abilities.
And we were essentially running around emoting with no guns or anything like
that as a little squad of like four or five people.
And we just we kept running into other people with guns and getting slaughtered.
So we never like got our full Sigma ability gang kind of going.
But the attempt in getting that going was, was something I'll look back on and
And it was just super fun.
First of all, that I think what is it?
I think you can you posted a clip here that's on top of Jumbotron.
I can see that exact experience you're describing right here.
Dub is it's a mixture of like, all right, I'm on my toes, right?
I can see some of you guys are moving very slow at times, right?
But when the gunfights do like when they lash out, you guys are going crazy with
I'm just seeing the amount of movement some of these guys have, man.
I want to pass this to Tony real quick because I know for some people down in
the audience, this may be their first time hearing about the STX one event.
But Tony, if you can kind of just describe how the leaderboard is going to
work, what is the reward system for the leaderboard just so that people who want
to participate in the next upcoming STX one event have an idea what to look
Tony, if you don't mind, please go ahead.
And thanks so much, everyone, for for hanging out and talking to us.
I see a bunch of people in the crowd that are always hanging out in the
McKenna and Benny's down there.
Benny wrote a rap for Shrapnel.
We listened to it during STX last time.
We'll do it in the Discord again.
And then just real quickly, it was a little heartbreaking when Dub got murdered
during a few of his extractions trying to hit the leaderboard.
But I would like to say that I personally found it amusing, gratifying.
I don't know what the right word is, but it made a part of me real happy and
I enjoyed that part of it.
In terms of STX, we will have these training exercises.
That's what STX stands for, is shrapnel training exercise.
We will have minor releases effectively every two or three weeks.
The next one will be next week.
And that'll be like we were calling it 1.1, I think.
And in these minor releases, players will have new missions to engage with
and new exclusive skins to collect.
And so like this last STX, the missions were like play one session, play five,
or get five kills, extract 20 sigma, and there might have been a play five
And each of those generate an exclusive skin that you'll only be able to get
So for example, we know that like 7,000 people completed all of the missions
and I completed all the mission skins.
And so if our game is a million person game next year, those 7,000 people will
control the supply of that particular skin.
They'll be the only people that own it and can buy and sell and trade it in the
So every STX, there will be a new set of missions that you can complete to get
They will get increasingly harder as the more people start playing and you all
start playing more often.
So I think it's like it might be get like 10 kills instead of five kills in
STX one or extract 100 sigma or 200 sigma instead of 20 sigma.
So like you have to play a couple of matches to get it.
And we are also we're in the process of revamping the way the leaderboards work.
Hantau, I was messing with you earlier, but I cannot thank you enough.
Hantau was gracious enough to spend about an hour and a half of his time on
Saturday, I think it was Saturday, whiteboarding with us, all of the feedback
that we got on the leaderboards, helping us put together what effectively turned
into a five page doc that we reviewed with the organization yesterday on all
the feedback we got and how we're going to implement it.
And so the net net is over the next several weeks or months, you will see
pretty dramatic changes to the way the leaderboards work.
We have not yet specifically nailed down what is going to happen next week.
We have some key technology people that are at Disney World with their families
this week, and so we're figuring out what we can change for next week.
But at a very high level, we've identified that the leaderboard probably drove
a little too much of a grind mechanic where people felt like they had to play
the game for three days straight in order to really participate.
There were a lot of people that felt like they should have been rewarded more
for the level of efforts they put in.
We've built a number of mechanisms that we think are going to be helpful
in addressing those issues.
And again, just Hans, I cannot thank you enough for the amount of time you spent
with us just giving your candid feedback.
So again, sorry, the question was, STX, what is it about?
It's limited play sessions.
They'll be up for about eight hours at a time.
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, every two or three weeks.
I don't think we've announced this yet.
My team is going to be sad, but it's next Thursday.
I don't know what the time is yet, but we're going to split it up between times
that are good for U.S. APAC and times that are good for Europe.
So keep an eye out on our Twitter feed, our X feed, our excretion feed,
Keep your notifications on, and we'll let you know more details real soon.
First of all, I want to pass this to Hantai himself because Hantai,
what were those things that kind of caught your eye of what can possibly be
changed to improve the gameplay?
And you don't have to list all of them.
Just kind of the key ones that you've noticed about this past event.
That sounds like I might break a friendier that I didn't sign.
But my personal opinion on this is that I think like the hard part of releasing
a game, especially in Web3, is like how do you cater to different people within
And even in Web2, there's like so many player personas that you kind of have to
attract and build mechanics for.
And in Web3, we have a subset of people that is Cairo, Andy, Dub, and not including
Icy, but they're the tryhards who are really, really good at the game, right?
And these people will play and grind because they want to get on the leaderboard
because it's like an honor thing for them.
They just need to prove they're better.
And there's also the people that are like myself and Icy who are more casual
players who also want to play the game.
And it's like, shit, now that I'm so behind, how do I catch up to somebody like
Cairo who's just absolutely cracked in slide canceling?
Cairo actually killed me twice, I think, in the game.
So I speak from her firsthand experience.
Yeah, balancing those player-like personas and how to attract those different
player types is really difficult.
I want to hear from Sam, man.
Yeah, I really loved what Tony was saying about how they're taking so much of the
I think that's one of the things that really sticks out about the shrapnel
team, their willingness to absorb the feedback, try to iterate, and then
hopefully deliver a better product really quickly in the next couple of weeks.
I mean, the example of Cairo asking for them to reset the leaderboards, they took
care of that in, like, an hour.
It was amazing how quickly they were able to adapt in that situation.
My question, though, for Tony is there are certain circumstances where people like
myself are bad at, like, aiming, at movement mechanics, at inventory mechanics,
Is there any way for people like us, what patches maybe could we expect so people
like myself could be at the top of the leaderboard?
Is there anything you could do for me, Tony?
Yeah, and Sam, actually, I've been really working on this, the Sam, Stephanie,
But, you know, what Hontow was just talking about is along the lines of what
It's not really about putting players who might not be as good as other players
on the top of the leaderboard, but rather finding ways to reward people for
non-leaderboard activities.
So, again, we'll release a bunch of details, but what you'll probably see is
a reduction in the total value of the 1,000 person leaderboard and the
introduction of ways for people who might not be grinding to earn trap as they
play through the SDXs, right?
So there will still be an opportunity and a reason for the people who are sweaty
to grind and be sweaty, but there will still be a reason for the people like you
and me, Sam, who were populating the 2,000th of the leaderboard to feel like we
can participate in some of the rewards pool as well.
So I'm not going to go into any more detail.
You squeezed all the alphabet out of me that you can't, but that is a lot of
specifically I sat Hontow down and I said, Hontow, I need you to help me make Sam
And he said, Tony, I got you, dog.
I'll just wait for the download code for my aimbot for the inventory assist.
Actually, if you could just have Cairo dial into my computer and I'll just
pretend I'm playing, I think that's a pretty ideal situation for me.
I can't believe you actually had a genuine resolution for me being this trash.
Maybe just an idea that just came out of my head, right?
Is like, Tony, will we ever see, for an example, a Sam Stefanina, like operator
like list, like the loadout, right?
And then you can actually per se play as Sam in the game.
I don't know if I'm speaking too far ahead here.
And boss, Sam will be able to monetize that shit.
He'll be able to mint his fucking loadout as a product, right?
And be like, if you just want to use this thing, use Sam's fucking loadout.
And then, you know, we'll have, we'll have like, I don't want to call him bots,
but like helpers or whatever that you can say, like, whenever I run out of,
whenever I suck and I lose all my fucking machine guns and I don't have any
more submachine guns and that's the gun that Sam uses for his loadout, just go
buy me the cheapest submachine gun off the marketplace.
So like, and then Sam will get, you know, some sort of reward for people using
the same Stephanie to build out to fuel their, their marketplace activity.
So like, as an example of the way that people will be able to do that, not
only are we going to give people the opportunity to curate their content and
curate their loadouts, but they'll be able to be rewarded for that as well.
Dude, Sam, I know you want to say something. Go ahead, bro.
Yeah, I just wanted to let everybody know this is an amazing idea.
And don't worry if, if this does come to fruition and I have my own download
code, I will just copy Kairos and make one small adjustment.
So you don't have to worry about my terrible decisions affecting your
ability to succeed with the Sam, the Sam pack. Okay.
You know, Sam, Sam's joking, but, but really like what he just described,
we expect to be a pattern, not quite in the scummy vampire way that he just
described it, but like, I call it like, you know, like curation weapon curation.
I think there are going to be people who are out there that are playing a
shrapnel, the meta, right? They're not even like they suck at shrapnel on the
sticks. Like me, I suck on the fucking keyboard and mouse, but I love playing
and I love watching other people play. And so I think they're going to be like
the equivalent of like shout casters that turn into shot callers that are like,
you know, I, I watch a thousand hours of shrapnel competitive play every month.
And I know that Hantau's loadout mixed with Sam's loadout mixed with Kairos
loadout, which is really just a copy of Sam's loadout slightly altered is really
the best thing. And so I'm going to curate that list, right?
I think those kinds of metas are going to emerge and we want to be able to reward
the people that are being tastemakers, that are helping fuel that meta.
I think some of the people on this panel have been on panels with me before and
they've heard me talk about when I was at Madden, but it was a huge part of the
economy there on Madden Ultimate Team was our ability to empower third-party
websites, third-party communities like Mutthead and FUTThead that really plugged
into the Madden APIs. And before I worked there, they were scraping everything.
Like EA just wasn't working with them. And then we started working with them
because it made sense, but they built this whole toolset for people to use the
Madden Ultimate Team marketplace better to like know what was trading and all
the shit you guys used to trade trick coins and NFTs.
Like they built that for Madden Ultimate Team, you know, eight years ago.
And I think that all of that stuff is going to be true in every Web 3 game that
gets bigger than 100,000, 200,000 MAU. And we want those curators to be
financially rewarded for their curation.
Woo! Guys, we are getting the alpha today. There's so much to look forward to.
I hope that everyone down there in the audience, I hope this just brings you FOMO
honestly, because there's just so much to participate in and I hope to see more
players grow and participate in this event. Really quick though, I do just want
to get a new voice into the discussion. I want to welcome Champ. Champ, what is
going on, man? Thank you for hitting that request button and for making time to be
here today. Let's get a quick take from you. Go ahead.
Of course, I wouldn't miss it. First of all, guys, this is my first time speaking
here. Huge congrats on the first STX activation. Second of all, I actually have
a question that I wanted to ask specifically directed towards you, Tony,
given your experience with Madden and what you just mentioned, sort of managing
that economy, I'm curious, how are you and I suppose the larger team thinking
about balancing focus on the core game user experience, that being movement
mechanics, things that are going to be felt by the people who are streaming this
game, who are hardcore gamers, how are you thinking about balancing that piece
of the puzzle with sort of like the larger economics and reward systems that are
also designed to appeal to people who maybe aren't even good at the game and
also as sort of an addendum to that question, what do you think is more
important out of those two things when it comes to sort of catalyzing adoption
for this product? What a great question, Champ, and I love Champ. We met him down
and he's just a splendid, splendid person. I'm so happy to have you up here. Thanks,
buddy. So I think the second question is easier to answer than the first. We have
100%, the game has to be compelling, and I don't want to say fun because everyone
keeps saying the game has to be fun. When I say compelling, I mean, it has to have
a lot of fun games out there that aren't compelling for longer than a 30, 40 hour
play session, and that's great. I play the shit out of those games, but that's not
what we're building, right? We're building a game that should be compelling for
years and years, like a Destiny or a Fortnite or a PUBG, and in order to do
that, we really have to focus on hiring not only people that understand deeply
how to make sure that the guns fire in a way that's good and the slide works well
and the mantling feels good and that they can take feedback in from Andy and Cairo
and synthesize that in such a way that makes their really professional feedback fun
for a casual player. All that shit's important. But additionally, it's crucial
that we develop and we are developing a live services motion or a live services
function within our company, and so that's really a big part of what my team's
doing. Alex, beyond this shrapnel account, is our first product marketing manager
for live services. We have a head of economy, Francis, who's hiring another
economy person, and basically a bunch of us get in rooms and map out a couple of
things like what our pro forma says we need to make from a money perspective
every year, what products we have that are going to be in the marketplace that
can help us meet those goals, and when the market or when the game is really
ready to have those things. For example, you'll notice we're not selling
skins right now, right? You can't go to shrapnel.com and buy a pack of skins
or buy a gacha or anything, right? And the reason for that is you can't use them
in game yet. There are no skins in the game. And so you can buy extraction packs
which give you early access, and they give you some of that exclusive content,
but it's really like a founder's past, right? Alex's job, my job, people that aren't
making sure that the guns fire the right way and aim down sight is fast enough,
are really responsible for determining when those products enter our ecosystem,
how much they cost, and the level of customer satisfaction with both the
purchase and the use process. So that's the second half of your question is what's
more important? What do you focus on? We've got to make sure the game is compelling.
Part of making a compelling game is not only making sure that it's fun to play,
but also that there's enough content that comes out on a regular basis to satisfy
a group of players that want to experience new things or updates, right?
Those two things are super important. On the other side of the fence,
how do we make sure we're doing that? You know, I've got a great example.
We were in a meeting yesterday, and we were talking about this is some alpha,
so everyone can lean in if you want. The way that skins will work in the future
is we'll have a class of skin that they're only, the only way that you'll be able
to acquire that skin is by finding fragments of that skin on the map.
And then you'll go, you'll find them on dead bodies or in boxes or on other people
or whatever, and you'll collect four fragments or three fragments or five fragments
or whatever, and then you'll craft them together using some of your trap token
and that'll turn into the skin that you can then buy, sell, trade on the marketplace.
One of the things that we're having a heated argument about right now,
and we haven't decided yet, is whether or not we're also going to incorporate
time into the crafting mechanic. Is it going to take some amount of time
to craft whatever you're crafting, and then should it cost trap or something else
to speed it up? And then the question's like, well, what if we proliferate
or propagate 100,000 or 200,000 skins over the course of STX
because people are winning missions at a rate of five missions for STX
and we have 20,000 players for STX, which is what we saw last time.
So what happens when we have all those skins floating around if they all get listed?
So we should probably have some sort of tool that allows people
to put all their skins in a blender and get something back
that they can trade up for value that they want.
So those are all conversations that happen both in the context of long-term
planning sessions where we all get together and we say,
we need to make this much money over the course of the next Y period,
here's how we're going to make it, and short-term opportunities.
And, Champ, I'd like to throw it back to you because I know you're working on some of this stuff with us.
Those opportunities can look like everything from partnerships with Puma
or Alienware or Razor, which are some of the people that we're talking about now
to produce skins in the game that people can buy and sell and trade,
but also Blue Chip Web 3 projects that are really native to the space.
And we think there's a lot of opportunity there for us to bring conversation
to the table that a lot of these Web 2 professionals that have made really awesome games
just don't have exposure to it.
So again, I'd love for you to dive into that a little bit too.
I don't know how much you want me to say or not say about it,
but I'll speak sort of with a wide net.
I think that a really, really huge opportunity for Shrapnel to drive growth
and engagement and continue to just be, I think, the most impressive gaming project in the space
is by activating a lot of the most important sub-communities, NFT communities, crypto communities in the space.
And the thing that was immediately really, really attractive about Shrapnel
just from purely a marketing sort of product and BD perspective
as soon as I came across you guys is that, because I say this because I view things oftentimes
through sort of like that lens, is that you guys are in a unique position
wherein you've already built this cultish fan base on Twitter.
And when Shrapnel approaches these NFT communities or these sub-communities,
people know who you are, right?
So you guys have or we have, since I'm an advisor, sorry, let me speak that way,
a really powerful lever in that Shrapnel can go to individual communities
and offer them really, really cool exclusive in-game assets, rewards,
opportunities to multiply their reward potential within the game
just by virtue of being members of certain sub-communities
that a lot of people who will be adopted in this game already are, right?
So it's this thing where it's like, hey, there's this game that is really, really fun to play
that is great, that's going to be a AAA game.
By the way, because you are a member of X and Y community that are leaders in the space,
we can make this an even more engaging and exciting experience for you, right?
And there's a million ways to do that, right, whether that be with giveaways,
whether that be with some stuff that we've talked about on calls,
Tony, that's a bit more technical and that I won't reference on this space,
but I think you know what I'm talking about that hopefully we'll be able to roll out soon.
And I think that we just have a massive opportunity to take all this attention that's already on Shrapnel
and just like light it on, well, sorry, light it on fire kind of sounds like we're fucking it up,
multiply it by offering just like really, really unique and fun incentives to people
who are members of communities that are already leaders in the space, right?
So I almost think of it as like, I don't know, you mentioned Fortnite earlier, right?
And it's, you know, all of the, all of, okay, Travis Scott already has a massive fan base.
So they throw a Travis Scott concert, a marshmallow concert in the game, right?
Everybody just by proxy of being, you know, a member of the Travis Scott community gets to come in the game,
have a cool experience, get a skin that they can use in the, you know, Fortnite.
I think of it as like a metaverse, right?
So the Web3 version of that is much cooler because A, it's actually trackable whether somebody has been a part of
and is or isn't a true member of a community because, you know, blockchain doesn't lie.
And B, we can offer them rewards that are much more meaningful than a skin that they don't actually exercise any ownership over
because of how non-blockchain integrated games work.
So I'm really excited for a lot of the stuff that Shrapnel is going to be able to do over the next six months.
And I think that we're in a position to really kind of lead the way and be a catalyst
for what Web3 gaming can do when it comes to engaging communities and showing the world like why this is such an exciting industry.
And the way that it's sort of aligning with directions in the market and Bitcoin, maybe Ethereum, ETFs, it's all very exciting.
So anyway, I'll shut the fuck up now.
I've been talking for like 10 minutes.
I was supposed to talk for probably like two, but yeah.
I appreciate that back and forth.
And again, I can really see the attention to detail that you guys are really putting into the game.
And it really shows, man.
But hey, guys, we have 10 minutes left in today's space.
And we also have to announce an operator giveaway.
I want to go to these hands.
Let's go to Cairo first and then work our way around the room.
Yeah, I just wanted to bounce back earlier to Sam trying to say he's going to copy me.
Often imitated, never duplicated.
Just want to put that out there first.
Secondly, you know, there's a lot of questions about how, you know,
casuals are going to be involved in a game like this.
And everybody knows FPS is usually get sweatier as time goes on.
And I definitely think that a lot of people in Web 3 aren't extraction shooter players.
And recently with like Dead Drop being dropped and then now shrapnel,
Web 3 is starting to get a taste of what extraction shooters are.
And in my very long FPS career,
I haven't had a game genre that has been able to include all types of players as much as an extraction shooter has.
So I really do think that, you know, if you look at how the missions were made for this most recent STX,
there's basically five missions that you go in and you do various tasks.
And once you complete those tasks, you unlock a weapon skin.
And that can be used for many things besides weapon skins in game that will be able to reward all types of players
and, you know, the player archetypes that are out there.
And I think that that will be a very big unlock, especially for shrapnel.
So, yeah, I really think that anybody is going to be able to get involved with a game like this.
And that's a beautiful thing.
And having that kind of player liquidity for a player like myself,
I love hopping in and just getting to kill a bunch of noobs.
So I definitely want there to be a place for casuals.
And, yes, overall, the only other thing I had to add was, you know, from my experience in Web 2 and traditional games,
getting feedback to developers is nearly impossible unless you are like just personal friends with them.
And even as like a professional player, it is literally impossible to actually get feedback to a developer
and help them understand what is going on in the game.
And shrapnel has been like on top of it.
Like any feedback list we get to them, like even within a week, we already see changes.
And for a player like me, that is an extremely good sign.
So knowing that they're taking in both casual and competitive player types feedback,
that is going to make a great game in the long run.
Absolutely. We love the feedback loop, right?
Cairo, thank you for that amazing take. I'm going to pass this to Andy. Andy, what's up, man?
Howdy, y'all. Don't worry. I'll make it quick, guys. Make it quick.
I got two cool points. One thing, similar to what Cairo said,
extraction shooters can be for casuals and sweats alike.
And I think that shrapnel is going to have a very interesting matchmaking system that I'm excited for.
But beyond that, shrapnel is a huge IP.
Everyone's all hyped up about the extraction shooter.
Yes, that is good. I love this game.
However, on a whole other avenue that people are not talking about enough is the user generated content.
I don't know if people just like obviously everyone knows that is aware of the project that is coming,
but people don't understand the level at which it's coming.
Shrapnel is basically doing an identical thing to Fortnite,
where creators, players will be able to run servers of their own games with inside shrapnel.
And that's part of the reason, in my opinion, why they haven't fully textured the entire map.
Like they want to texture one part of the map, get it perfect, and then do the rest of the map,
which I think is a genius strategy. But on top of that, they're building these UGC tools
so that creators like myself can build these amazing maps without it being super hard.
So when we were in the studio, we got to sit down with some of the artists
and we were able to see like those beautiful buildings in Tokyo.
They're like Lego blocks that I will be able to use in my own game.
So right now the extraction shooter is the hype,
but with how much time the game has and how much money, talent backing it.
For all we know three years from now,
the number one game mode could be like Capture the Flag in a shrapnel universe,
like an arena style like Halo. Like the options are literally limitless
and not enough people are talking about that and that would be for casuals as well.
And then the final point I'll make is shrapnel has one of the biggest abilities to collaborate with other brands.
Also similarly to Fortnite, it would not be hard to do collaborative skins
and then also artwork in game with the insignias.
So I'm sure there'll be a lot of crossovers.
One example I'll do before I wrap here is the other day I was in the STX
and I had a lot of my friends from big time were playing
and Morikai snuck up on me while I was drinking water
and I ended up eliminating him.
And for those of you who don't know, he was the number one leaderboard for big time,
one of the best players in big time, really smart guy.
And then he like messaged me like talking smack and stuff
and it was just really fun that I was able to like tweeted him like,
hey, like being number one in big time apparently doesn't translate over.
That unique weapon doesn't help you very much and everyone's had a good laugh.
Like it was friendly. There's no actual beef, but stuff like that's just so amazing.
And I'm hoping that we see a lot of collaborations with shrapnel.
You don't have to be a shooter game to necessarily get a skin and shrapnel.
Obviously, that's going to be up to like, you know, the marketing team like Tony and things
to see if they want to collab with you.
But I'm really excited for that because there could be an unlimited amount of skins
and signet in-game artwork, huge collaborations coming.
And that's what I'm looking forward to in the future.
Absolutely. Andy, thank you for that amazing take and the feedback, man.
It's one thing to hear, man, and I want to pass this again.
I know people want to say a lot more things, so I'm going to pass it to Icy
and work our way around the room. Icy, what's up, man?
Yeah, I'll try and be quick too, man.
I thought I was bullish before, but Andy Slaps is just like making me so much more excited.
I'm so happy that you brought up the IP because I think that that is probably the thing
that gets me the most excited. I literally have the comic books right in front of me.
I love the story and the lore and the world building and the time and energy that
Shrapnel has put into this. They literally have people on the team from HBO who have
produced movies and things like that, and they've produced live-action short films
before for Shrapnel, and we've gotten teasers that more is coming.
So there's just so much to talk about with this game.
When I first got into Web3 gaming, my big thesis was like there will be a game that
comes out of Web3 to use Blockchain that will be a mainstream success, capture hearts
and minds across the world, and so far, Shrapnel has shown me that they are leading the way
and have the best shot at doing this, and they just impress on so many levels.
I tweeted out earlier, one of the reasons I evangelized them so much, I'm so grateful
to be able to work with them, is because they're truly best in class.
In every interaction for the past year and a half on every level, whether it's community,
gameplay, listening to feedback, understanding Blockchain, and having a really clear vision
on how they want to utilize it to enhance the player experience and give power back to the people.
There's just so much to get excited about what this team is doing, and I just can't
thank you guys enough. To me, this space is like a celebration of what you guys have accomplished
and are continuing to do, so just thank you for that. I'm super excited to be here,
and I truly think that this is something special, and I just can't wait to see where,
to continue being a part of it, playing the game. That, for me, was what it's all about.
I didn't even care about the $100,000 leaderboard, which is cool.
I can't believe you guys are doing that, but I'm just here to play the game and get better at the game,
because this is something that speaks to that inner competitive gamer in me,
where it's like, I want to get better. Shout out to Hantau, but I do want to give Cairo a run for his money,
or at least be able to hold my own. I want to be able to clip up against Cairo,
and that's what had me loading in time and time again, so thanks, guys. Congrats.
We love, and I can hear the passion that you have for this game, dude. I see it, and it's amazing to hear.
Let's go to Yuchen, and then we'll go from there. Yuchen, what's up, man?
Hey, guys. I'll make it quick, but I thank you guys again for inviting me to the space.
I really appreciate the love. I'm just going to take you back off Cairo,
and literally pretty much say the same thing is that, again, even without the $100,000,
I was already invested in this game a year and a half ago,
and I was already excited to see a first-person shooter, extraction shooter, in the web3 space,
and actually finally get to play it. Really excited to see where it goes next and everything like that.
But, yeah, it's really fun, really exciting. I know there's a lot of bugs and a lot of things that they have to fix,
but I think they will fix it eventually in the future.
But, again, just get excited, guys. This is only just the alpha.
This is just the start of something great in the space, and I'm really excited to see where it goes.
But, again, thank you guys for the love, and pass it on.
Absolutely, man. And keep popping up in more spaces. We want to hear you.
Going next to Randy. Randy, what is up? We want to hear from you.
Thank you. I appreciate it. I just had so much fun over the weekends, and Doug and I were streaming,
and he saw how passionate I got about the game, because I'm pretty competitive, and I just really loved it.
And I knew I wasn't going to make it to the leaderboard because I was just struggling to extract,
but that moment I did, and I shared it with the Discord, it was a mini party in there,
and I just loved the community, I loved the support, and I loved Doug just sitting there
as he's playing the game and hiding in the bushes, he's answering Discord tickets.
Just a really interactive experience like that.
And I also really like when you guys were talking about the servers before is pretty relevant in my eyes,
because as a creator, I think you look at numbers and community in kind of a different light,
because we could see, and I definitely saw it in the past, where games or projects would buy followers
and buy all of these things to make their community look authentic.
And then when it came down to the nitty-gritty, who was really there?
And when it came to the shrapnel playtest, and it was just a playtest, man, like pre-alpha,
and people just overflowed this Discord, like what's happening, what are we doing?
And that just proved to everybody that even if they had a doubt, which they shouldn't have,
that this community is real, it's very authentic, and it's very organic in the way people really care about it.
So I just really wanted to throw that out there, I just got a little philosophical for a moment,
but very organic, very cool, and just genuinely had a really great time.
And especially one of my favorite moments was not just messing around with Dove,
but also asking a question, and just Tony being that mystical voice in the background
where you'd occasionally see his hands, and we were all taking that.
One of my highlights, too, was where Tony just threw his little half-hands heart in there,
where we all took that picture, where we were all putting hearts on the screen and stuff.
I just thought that was really cute, like our group selfie, too.
So that was one of my highlights.
Again, I genuinely had a really great time, and I hope to be playing with you guys
for the forever future that you guys are doing this, because I don't see you guys going anywhere.
Like, I think you guys are really just passionate about the projects yourself,
and I just genuinely appreciate the community and the devs and just everyone being a part of it
and just showing face and saying, hey, we're here, and we want to talk.
And thank you, Randy, for coming up on stage today, sharing your experience.
And again, I know a few people here are dodging the stage right now,
but I want to shout out to everyone, all the panelists.
Guys, give every single one of these gamers a follow, please.
And again, participate in the upcoming SCX1 event, which will be coming up, I believe,
not this weekend, but next weekend.
Go on to Doug and then hand out after to conclude the space.
And we got an operator giveaway, which we will announce shortly.
You're such a genius in letting me follow Randy,
Mistine Crypto, the greatest YouTube host slash personality in Web3 history.
She also happens to be my co-host on Hyped, which is my favorite show because it's my show.
And I put a little clip up there, Randy, from our hanging out and playing in there.
I threw it up on top, so you can see Randy out there.
She's out there in the streets, and she's like,
oh, my God, Doug, how do I play this game?
But we are just having the greatest time and having fun.
Eventually, she found Five Sigma that's in there, too.
It's really great when Champ brought up things about culture and social things where you have this leverage
and you have kind of activated all these people.
It's a testament to the work of being out there in the streets, doing the footwork,
the work that Tony and Doug and then the shrapnel team is doing,
and then activating all the other people on these panels like Icy, Andy,
and everybody that wants to be a part of it.
Randy, that's getting excited about it, too.
That's how it really works.
And most people in Web 3 and tech don't understand these things at all,
that the social things are the most important thing.
Yes, you have to have a good game, but you need to do the other things, too.
So here's a really good example, especially because Dub's not here anymore,
I literally hired a whole animation team to create all these cool cartoons based around Dub camping by himself
and being sad in the forest.
The freaking whole country's power grid went down because of some political thing.
And now I don't have the cartoon for Dub, so he got rugged twice.
Tony, I don't know how you feel about that, but we rugged Dub twice in one shot.
Maybe that cartoon will come out as soon as their country decides to turn the power on.
But that's the example of the culture of what happens when you activate and support people.
And that is the magic of what's happening in that shrapnel.
And the game itself, of course, is fun and exciting.
And that's also a reflection of the team caring about those things.
So when you talk about how you need to have investment in a team and people,
as opposed to a product, that is like a perfect example of what shrapnel is doing.
Man, man, oh, man, Doug, appreciate your take, man.
I'm going to pass this to Han Tao to close this out.
I'm going to talk about a topic that was 15 minutes ago.
But on the art side, like the middle of the city where the sacrifice zone is with all the arts
and 3D modeling and animations done, like that's like the front end in the horse.
You know that horse meme when the first half is like really well drawn.
And then the rest of the map is like that other half drawn by five-year-olds.
Like if shrapnel wanted, like they could put in the full map.
But I think they're just waiting.
They're just waiting to lock everything in for us at the end and like really wow us and delight us.
Again, to all the panelists today, thank you for contributing in today's space.
It's been nonetheless everything of excitement and joy.
But hey, I have chosen the operator that I want to give away.
And I actually pinned it to the top here, the Jumbotron.
And it goes to edumock.ron.
And first of all, I want everyone to watch this clip.
It's like about a 30 second clip.
But I'm not giving this guy the operator because it was the best clip.
Look at the 1v1 situation going on here.
And then the clip ends with him dying.
And I was laughing because I was like, dude, this is probably one of the funniest clips I've seen.
So, guys, again, I want to let people know in the future, right?
It's not about the best clip.
It's about what did you do in that clip that deserves the reason why you should get the operator, right?
And that being said, Edumock, I just shot you a follow.
I will get in contact with you to claim your free operator.
And guys, that being said, this will mark the official conclusion of the STX1 recap.
Again, please shoot a follow to the strap account.
Click those notifications so you can know when the next STX1 event is going to be live,
which is, again, not this weekend, but the following weekend.
And again, to all these amazing panelists, thank you for setting time aside again.
We will see you guys next week for another space.
Have a good one, everyone.