There's always question these things. One thing is when I think about what players want
is based on all the vehicles.
good morning. Good afternoon, everyone going to start with some music while we wait for
the rest of the panelists to come up. Morning afternoon to everyone.
Morning, guys. Just do let me know if you can't hear me well. Sorry, I'm in a place that has a kind of shitty internet. Sorry for that.
Wake up, Mr. West, Mr. West, Mr. France, Mr.
All righty, good morning, good morning.
Are you guys able to hear me?
I feel like they can't hear Nick.
Anybody else can't hear Nick?
I don't know if you're messing with me or not.
Are you able to hear me now?
You got to kick off the Wednesday space the right way,
We got to get everybody going, man.
If you think games need NFTs or they don't need NFTs,
then I need you all to make sure you comment, tag your friends,
tag your besties, tag whoever you need to tag,
but I don't care who you tag, tag whoever the competitor is
and tell them to come in and let's battle.
Let's talk about if games need NFTs.
We're here to talk at all unfiltered.
It is recorded, but it's not recorded, so don't worry.
It just lives in outer space in the metaverse,
but let's kick it off, Nick.
I want to thank all the panelists for joining.
Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy days
We do have a big panel, so I would
like to head into intros.
If we can keep this short and sweet, who you are,
what you do for your game or your project,
and a quick intro of what your project or game is,
I would like to add an icebreaker question.
After introducing yourself just really quickly,
what is your go-to game when you just want to relax and unwind?
Maybe you're drinking wine, beer.
But please let me know, and we're
going to go ahead and pass it over to Jorge first.
As y'all know, Jorge here behind the account,
I am with the gaming strategist.
We help games with marketing, feeding, and partnerships.
And just really excited to be able to be
with these amazing panels.
Damn, this fucking lineup is killer.
I forgot already what the icebreaker was,
because I just went right into my normal stroll of who I am.
And so I'll kick it over to Mikel.
If you know the icebreaker, start with that one.
Yo, the icebreaker was what game do you
play when you just want to chill out?
And I honestly, I play Twitter these days.
I just D10 on Twitter and shitpost.
And it's play to earn, too, because I earn when I do it.
I am co-founder and CMO at Sedona,
Platform as a Service for Web3 Games.
Also advised for the crypto recruiters on the side.
I've never been on a mixed mod space before,
but I am a big fan of your guys' game.
Excited to hang out and talk with you guys.
Mikel, thank you so much for being here.
We're a big fan of you and Sedona as well.
I see you in tons of spaces.
So thank you so much for contributing to spaces.
And I'm glad that Twitter is your favorite game.
I think that's Jorge's favorite game as well.
Gives me lessons every single day on it.
We're going to go ahead and pass it over
to my good friend Shubzy.
Really quick intro of what Spicy Capital is.
And what is your go-to game to relax?
Thank you for having us on the stage again.
Always a vibe to be here with mix, bob, and gang.
Yes, Shubzy Baker behind the account and CMO at Spicy Capital.
We are a venture capital fund in the crypto space.
Interested in layer one, layer two's,
defighter, gamefire protocols.
And we're also definitely going into the DAP space
as well, especially on Bitcoin.
My favorite game to play at a moment is probably Overwatch.
It's definitely not a game to be playing when you're chilled.
But they have these segments in Overwatch
where you can just, it is used for chilling.
So you don't have to do crazy stuff like play competitive.
You can just be an idiot in the game
for about half an hour to an hour or so
Shubzy, thank you so much for being here.
You're a terrible teammate if you don't take it serious
in Overwatch because everyone's sweaty in that game.
But all right, we're going to pass it over to James
Actually, I'm assuming it's James.
Really quick intro and your favorite game to unwind.
Yeah, thanks, Nick, for inviting me.
I'm the founder of Chain Crisis.
Chain Crisis is an MMO shooter on the Solana blockchain.
And the games I play nowadays are two games.
If I wanted to be toxic and really just
want to unwind some stress, I would play Valorant.
But if I wanted to just focus on having a chill day,
I would play either Destiny 2 or Project Zomboid.
I'm not sure if you guys know Project Zomboid,
I have not tried that yet.
But James, thank you so much for being here.
I have to try Chain Crisis this weekend.
Go check that game out in the Epic Game Store
if you guys have not already.
Already, we're going to pass it over to Matthias.
Am I saying your name right, just to make sure?
So I'm a content creator from Brazil.
I'm building the P3 crew that is the biggest guild here.
I love to play Web 3 games.
So I'm playing a lot of games right now.
And thank you so much for taking the time to be here.
Excited to deep dive into NFTs and gaming
and hear your perspective since you play so many different Web
I'm going to go ahead and pass it over to Peter.
I was not able to hear you.
Was anyone else able to hear you?
I just didn't want to cut you off.
Peter, you might need to disconnect and come back up.
I think Elon is ragging you.
Peter, you've got to pay for the Twitter blue, man.
You've got to pay for the premium, man.
You've been making all that money off those NFTs, man.
My Twitter has been ragging all day, and I pay for it.
So I don't know if that's valid for A.
Elon is ragging us as always, but hopefully we'll
be able to make it through the space.
Oh, I believe they just dropped down.
Well, while we try to get them back up, Jordan, how you doing,
I'm building Eureka, which is an upcoming game where players
discover a new continent in 1850.
It's an actual full-size continent.
You actually move around at real 1850 speeds on the ground
in first person, and we're using all this crazy AI
to basically perfectly simulate 1850.
For my game, I cannot believe that Shubzy is over here saying
There's dozens of us, I guess, who still play this game.
I play Overwatch all the time.
It is not at all relaxing.
My second answer would be Dark Souls games, which also
There's this little RTS I play called North Guard
that I played multiple times a week for five years now.
It's a very chill, little Viking strategy game you explore,
and make your little eco, and then you attack each other.
Jordan, thank you so much for being here.
Overwatch is not a relaxing game.
I don't think many games are relaxing games,
so we're going to go ahead and pass it back over to Peter.
I'm an ex-professional Dota 2 player,
and now I'm a core contributor and builder
at Nouns Esports, which is an esports team funded
I absolutely love that esports is
going to be massive, huge fan of esports myself.
And we're going to go ahead and lastly pass it over to Mythica.
I believe this is our last speaker.
Oh, and then Sam after that, and then we can hop into the topic.
Oh, good evening, Jans, and ladies, and everybody there.
Humans, thanks for waiting for me there.
It's 10 PM here in Chile, Athens,
and it's been a long, long day.
Online moniker is OFID, which stands for One Fat Irish Dad.
And yes, we're at Hex Mythica.
We're making a flagship game, which is called Hex Mythica.
Our general ecosystem is called Myth.
And yes, after a long day, I'm just
going to sit out here in the balcony,
because it's the best place I can get some reception,
and shoot the breeze with you guys for an hour.
So looking forward to it.
Thank you so much for being here.
Cyberly, I know that we also forgot you as well.
So we're going to go with Sam, and then cyberly,
and then we can hop into the topic.
Thank you for unmuting me.
Sorry, I think I'm not the only one with internet issues here.
It's also 9 PM, working off in the streets under the rain.
So yeah, I feel you're a Hex there.
I'm part of the core team at Blackpool.
So we basically are a collective of gamers to DAO.
And we play a game at the highest level.
Favorite game or game I'm playing at the moment
is going to be Builders Gate 3, because that's
the best fucking game in the world, I got to say.
Sam, thank you so much for being here.
We got to get you guys into some mix mob tournaments,
test your guys' racing skills.
It's Jeffrey Monis, co-founder of Cyberly.
Cyberly is a massive social application with competitive features
for gamers embedded with an AI anti-cheat technology
and a biometric player verification.
We started this journey to stop the plague
of cheating in online games, trying
to create a level playing field for all.
Cheaters are the absolute worst.
It does not enhance the gaming experience.
So thank you so much for your help
trying to enhance the gaming experience.
Really quickly, I am Nick, the partnership manager
My favorite game to just chill would probably
be Madden or some Palworld.
My competitive nature takes over.
So now we'll head into the topic, which is NFTs in gaming.
What are the use cases for them?
What are our games using for them?
And so this is going to lead me into my intro question.
Feel free to unmute your mic and hop in.
I would love to have just an open discussion.
If it makes you feel comfortable raising your hand, go ahead.
But the first question, I know that we
talk a lot about ownership, ownership of assets in gaming
and how this is such a huge thing.
We see use cases like CS2 with their marketplace
and the value of assets in games.
And so this is going to lead me to my question
because I would like to hear other perspectives on NFTs.
And so my question is, what do NFTs in gaming
bring to the table in terms of player engagement
Jorge, I'd love to pass this one over to you
to get the conversation going.
I'm having issues with the, yeah, I guess Twitter is running.
It won't let me, it wasn't let me unmute my mute.
But I think a couple of things.
It's, I guess my first thing is, how do we evolve as a space
and how does the games evolve in this space?
And I think just from a broad, I'm
going to zoom out out of the question in a sense
that how do some of these games enable themselves
to be able to be better, right?
And I say that in a sense that there
are a limited amount of gamers.
There are a limited amount of even meta gamers
that are trying to play the game.
When you go back to, I think, looking at this,
I think it's several things.
I think I'm trying to get to you that when it comes down
to the way that they get engaged and being creative about it
is, how can they do that when there's a financial tool
and also the game is still in the beta?
So I think there's just a lot of obstacles still.
But I mean, I'm fucking super bullish on the space
and super bullish on a lot of the games.
I just think definitely it's such a hard thing
to gamble right now or handle.
I wouldn't tell you, man.
I wouldn't mind throwing something in there.
I think I agree, I think.
I mean, I've been saying in a lot of spaces
over the last couple of days that primarily games
need to be fun now for us to enjoy them.
So you can come at it from two ways.
Some games don't need NFTs because they don't.
Wait, I can't start again.
There are games that don't need NFTs,
but NFTs will enhance the experience,
be that through skins or that there and things like that.
Whereas there are games that are specifically set up
So in other words, you have a horse racing game or a breeding
game or a racing game, car racing,
where your car is the NFT.
And if you don't have or own that NFT or can rent that NFT,
well, then you can't play the game.
And I think that's kind of taken away from the fun.
So I've come more from the school
where plus you build a game, you make a game,
and you can introduce NFTs to enhance the experience.
But really, it shouldn't be the be all and end all of that game.
And that's where we're coming from with Hexmith.
Yeah, I agree with you completely.
I think that the issue is more in the space.
I mean, in order to build some of these games,
And that's the only way to get funding, right?
It's a little bit about the right word almost
is ass backwards system that we're in the web three space.
That we've got to go sell somebody dreams and hopes
in order for us to raise money to build out this game.
And then next thing you know, it might not even
be the game that you thought when you first saw them,
pretty pitch deck with all the really cool things.
And so while I agree completely on your take,
I think it also maybe depends on the type of game it is.
Some of these AAA games or even higher end games
do require some serious development and developers
And I think, again, that costs a lot of money.
And it's like, how do you even get to stage one sometimes?
And it is, maybe you have to sell these NFTs
unless there's a VC that truly believes in your vision.
And I think as we're knowing is that VCs are definitely now
a lot smarter than they were two, three years ago, right?
Before VCs, you would sell them on a really, really pretty
pitch deck and the VC would write you
Now they're asking like, hey, what's your resume?
Have you ever built anything?
Hey, do you know anything about business?
You know how to run a business?
Hey, do you know how to hire people?
Which are like, I come from the web two space, right?
And these are like the most common questions.
And I could tell you how many, I can't tell you,
I've probably been maybe over 5,000 VC
calls for different clients.
And there are certain things that they just don't ask
that I always like, man, like that was easy.
Well, we just got a $250,000 check.
So yeah, it's definitely possible over the job
because I know he's going to have great take.
Yo, that was a sick take, man.
I would say I think something that it brings to the table
is another level of sense of achievement for a team that's
Because the way I see this game development in general,
If you don't remember Need for Speed Underground,
that's Snowborne in game.
I think it was like XX Tricky or something like that.
Simpsons Hit and Run, like these games that came out
at that moment in time, it was absolutely insane
to create a game like that with those kind of graphics
It was just amazing to see.
When you look back, you're like, damn, bro,
I can't even see like 50 pixels down the road
when I'm playing this game.
But back then, it was like, yo, I
can see the road on Need for Speed.
There's puddles that I can see.
But then when you look back, if you crashed into a car,
And you instantly would stop.
But now, if you fast forward, if you crash in a GCA,
your character flies through the window.
Those little things that happen in video games,
like that level of development, is something
And I think that when teams are building these things out,
like Rockstar, 343 Industries, Bungie, well,
Bungie's no longer around.
But shout out to them to create Halo.
But all these other people, all these other teams
that created games, created it on Nintendo, GameCube.
And when it first came, those first editions, it was insane.
It was crazy to think that we could create things like that.
I was just talking to my partner just literally two minutes ago
about Habbo Hotel, Spyro, Crash Bandicoot.
What was that game called?
Shout out to the people that don't know about Banjo Kazooie.
You're dating us right now.
Couldn't anyone hear anyone?
OK, we can't hear them either.
Shubzy, I don't know if you're able to hear us,
but you might have to drop down and come back up.
Shubzy, you got to pay for that Wi-Fi, man.
You got to ask for the 500 megabytes, bro.
Take some of that BT money and just pay them
We lost to a Banjo Kazooie, just by the way.
We're going to take over the next question.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
So yeah, this does lead me to my next question.
This is a little impromptu, but I really
like where this conversation is going.
So what I've heard is NFTs are a way for games to raise.
I know that a lot of games have done that.
Another way is to raise is through VCs, right?
And so my question to you guys is, are NFTs,
and especially in gaming, should these be freements?
Should they be paid mints?
What are your guys' takes, and what
is your solution to the current issue that's going on?
They should be whatever they should
be for the specific asset and the specific game
in the specific state of the community, right?
Like, these are all good solutions.
It's just important to not pick one
that's going to hurt your growth, hurt your longevity,
You don't want to get people to overspend too early
on some super high-price NFT.
But the free giveaways, you need to have
the second step of that puzzle set up, of that funnel, right?
If you're doing play to airdrop, you
better have a game that's going to retain those people once
they've gotten the token.
Guys, feel free to jump in if your hands up.
Yeah, that was well said.
I think NFTs are, they can be very useful,
but they can also be very damaging.
So if your goal of your NFT is to make your game more sticky
and help users feel more connected to the product,
then yes, by all means, you can do that.
And you can charge money if you feel it's justified to do so.
But oftentimes, holders or purchasers
are looking for that value to be returned in some way.
And so if you don't have a plan in mind of how to do that,
then you probably shouldn't be charging up front.
It seems like it's all situational, correct?
We do see some prices of $250.
Sometimes we see mints at $15.
I think figuring out that sweet spot
and also targeting the right audience for it, right?
Sometimes you'll attract flippers depending on the price.
Sometimes you'll attract actual gamers.
I don't know who had their hand up first.
So I believe it was BSC, if you want to hop in.
Very interesting discussion.
I'm going to try and be a little controversial here.
I think, in my opinion, emphasis should
be more on the transparency and complete openness,
whether it's a free mint or a paid mint.
Just because it's a free mint doesn't mean it's OK.
I've seen a ton of free mints in previous years
that had over half the allocation going
to insiders, the team, advisors, ambassadors, and all the rest.
And essentially, they were marketing.
This is, oh, everything's fine.
But we've just allocated 50% of the supply
to ourselves and our friends.
And that leads to all kinds of disasters.
And similarly, with paid mints or mints
that you have to get a community to jump backwards
through all sorts of hoops and help market your product just
so they can get into a paid mint,
only to find that, again, 30%, 40%, 50% of that
was allocated already for free sometimes
to all kinds of actors in the space.
I think transparency and openness
needs to be installed into the NFT space.
We already have it in the crypto space,
particularly when VCs are involved.
Because there's fiduciary responsibility,
they can be taken to court.
There's all sorts of financial regulations.
They have to declare these things,
and so do you as a founder.
But when it comes to NFTs, sometimes I
wonder why is there not the same level of transparency
and openness there that we apply in the NFT space?
So my answer to this is it doesn't
matter if it's free or paid.
As long as it's transparent or open
and people know what they're walking into,
I think that will actually solve most of the problems.
I love that due diligence, right?
I believe that we saw that with AOF where it was a free mint.
And there's a lot of speculation,
and that speculation led to a lot of people
So we definitely do need to make sure
that we're transparent about tokenomics and future roadmap.
And so this is where it comes to fruition
in terms of shipping a product or shipping things
before actually gathering communities around it.
I believe Mikel was up next, and then Shubzy.
Yeah, I agree with a lot of what was said.
Free mints, it's a no-brainer if you
can afford to do it, I think you do it.
But we just, as a space, it's so speculative, right?
We're talking about people being dissatisfied and prices just
getting astronomical, running away,
and influencer pump and dumps.
We're using the NFT kind of PFP model
from 2021 with these gaming collections,
and I just have to think that there is a smarter way
to allocate access to just play these games, right?
Because the point is playing games.
It's not so much ownership and speculation.
It's not to allocate better the ability to play these games
to where it doesn't destroy people who are coming
They're not getting financially wrecked
and all these other things.
I think we have to innovate there,
apart from the NFT PFP collection,
kind of the model that we're using
that we just adopted for gaming.
Damn, Mikel, man, don't take my back to zero now.
Yeah, I think I would say that mint should be free, man,
I don't think it's a good idea for a game
It's just, to me, this doesn't make sense.
You're already gonna be charging people
and DLCs isn't gonna be coming out anyway.
We all know that DLCs aren't gonna be free.
They never, they never are.
And if they are free, there's always some overpriced
character skin that's gonna be coming in.
If your communities die hard and there,
and you do the marketing correctly
and you provide what you said you were going to,
then yeah, you don't need to worry about paid mints.
You'll rip, you'll do your thing,
and then you become a pretty dope game.
you didn't have to pay for the game, right?
But look at all their DLCs.
Their DLCs are free, but in order to get the things
in the DLCs, you need to have like a frick ton of money,
but everyone goes and blows their money
on weapons they don't need.
So then what does everyone do?
They go and buy shark cards,
spend 60, 70 pound on like a million pound in the game,
and then go and get what they need to get.
So even though DLCs come out,
like I said, the DLCs might be free,
but you still need to pay overpriced stuff
So if you're going to do that as a game, it's fine.
I just don't think you should charge for the mint.
I think it's also about like viewing the mechanics
of how you decide to mint, if it's free,
if it's paid the size of it,
as a really important way for you to communicate
what the value you're trying to propose is.
Like shout out to Meiji on,
they did a free mint on this black card, right?
But normally you correlate a free mint
with something with super high numbers.
They did a free mint for only 88 of these things.
And they did that specifically to communicate
that this is about rewarding people who care
and this super exclusive little club.
And so same, like you could have a game
with free mints for a bunch of stuff,
but they could also, you can sell combo
and do high price mints for other assets.
Those are the ones you're trying to differentiate
I think that free mints are a good idea.
And I also think if you did a $5 or a two and a half dollar
mint per se, something that's feasible for everybody,
kind of like if you think of Counter-Strike
and how they do their centralized NFT marketplace per se.
If we were able to mint things at a cheaper cost
comparable to this expensive outrageous cost,
then people would be able to do different things
with these assets in their games
and a different sense comparable to where it is
When you think about it, like Steam has a very good example
of what a centralized NFT marketplace could be.
Is this just you or is everyone muted?
And do you not hear me speaking?
No, Shabji, we have someone speaking.
You possibly might be getting rugged.
I can hear you there, but I just had a similar problem
in the space earlier on where I couldn't hear
certain speakers, but like just to kind of top them
and I think it's also how you pitch your NFT.
So whether it's paid or whether it's free,
where we're coming from is the sort of idea
that an NFT should be giving constant value,
So it's not just you buy, say you buy an NFT for $50,
thinking then maybe down the line,
you could sell it for a hundred.
Maybe you can, or the opposite, which is what's happened
the last couple of years.
People have bought NFTs for hundreds of dollars,
thousands of dollars, and now they're worth,
jack shit, they're worth nothing.
So the point where we like to come is if you have
one of our NFTs or one of our partner NFTs,
then you will constantly get something.
So you might get, you get assets within a particular game.
We bring another game on board into an ecosystem,
you're going to get assets in that game.
You're going to get access to partner project token launches,
you know, preferential rates on this, discounts on that.
You know, so when you, you know,
if you're going to go down the paid route,
it shouldn't just be a one-off value
and it either goes up or it goes down.
It should be constantly given back.
And that's the approach that we like to think.
And, you know, we're confident that it will work
I think that everything depends a lot of the way
that you communication with your community,
because we, in web, we expect value from assets
and you can give it this for free, you can charge for that.
But if you give it for free, build a lot of hype
into the energy, this price in the second sales
probably will get a lot expensive
and people buy this off in the second sale.
So I don't think that matters that much
if you be free or you pay.
I think everything that matters is the way you communicate
with your community and the people
that actually support you.
And those are all such amazing takes, right?
I think that's what this past two and a half years
has been, you know, the past three years.
And what we're gonna continue to do
is understand this balance between NFTs and gaming,
understanding the price points, understanding the supply,
the accessibility, what do we want these NFTs to truly do?
What kind of audience are we trying to attract?
And how can we plug this into the game?
There's so many things that we're trying to figure out,
And that's the beauty of Web3 is that there's no playbook.
We're all figuring this out as we're going.
We're all trying to set up our own playbooks.
It's very exciting to see where this will be in the future.
And so this leads me to the next question
that is still NFT related, especially with sales.
And, you know, we've seen a lot of issues with whitelist,
There's a lot of interest, things are picking back up.
There's only so much of a supply.
And so I wanted to hear your guys' ideas
of how can we fix this whitelist issue?
You know, there's a lot of people that are blocked out.
Maybe they're not in the right communities.
Maybe they're not given the opportunities others are given
And so I'm curious to know,
how would you guys solve this current whitelist issue
of overallocation and making sure that these assets
Like this is a voluntary problem.
Like this happens because the project wants the hypes.
So they want to get all the different wallets on it.
They want the numbers of people on their whitelist.
They want to post that they, you know,
10,000 whitelist spots are gone.
It's the same as like a concert or any freaking airplane
selling more tickets than they had.
Like it's, I don't think it's like an endemic problem
with some solution that has to be sussed out.
Projects just need to not do it.
Like you should be, you know, your NF,
NFTs can be used for so many different things.
There's not really like a blanket solution for all of them.
It's like, just use the NFT as a product
that you're selling to your community for a specific reason.
If that reason is to raise funds,
and then have a plan for that money.
And if, you know, if your goal is to raise money
on the idea that you're going to what, you know,
use this NFT as like a gated way into the game,
like that's probably just not a good strategy.
Like you're attracting a lot of speculators
and people that are more so investors than actual players.
And you won't be obtaining the audience.
You probably won, I would imagine.
I think this is perhaps the side of the discussion
that we don't actually have enough in the space.
And I think founders and teams could probably do well
having these discussions very early on.
And I think it was Jordan that just mentioned this,
the problem is very self-inflicted
and it's also industry-wide.
So what we're looking at is essentially, you know,
incentives that are skewed in such a way
that it almost often or always leads
to some sort of negative outcome.
So the problem is this, you as a team or an entity
are looking for some sort of fundraise essentially.
Or if you're not, it's a free mint,
but you're trying to incentivize or encourage people
And the best way in the Web3 space to do that
is with economic incentives.
That means people have to be able to understand
that as soon as this thing hits the secondary market,
there is some sort of ability for them
to sell this for a profit.
It's that incentive that you're trying to sell to them
without actually saying that, that's the problem.
And the moment you go down this rabbit hole,
you're immediately in this problem of,
okay, well, to encourage people to buy or allocate resource,
I have to be able to over-allocate this stuff,
which means now I am inevitably going to have to burn
a large part of my user base
who's not going to actually buy this.
And most of them will have to buy in the secondary
And you have a large part of your audience
that's almost immediately just disenfranchised
because they got hurt from the get-go.
This sort of problem, there's no solution to this.
You almost set yourself up for some sort of failure
if you go down this road.
I don't think there's an answer.
I actually think this is an industry-wide problem
that we don't really have an answer to.
We can try and mitigate some of these problems.
And I also think there's an awful lot
of really, really bad advisors in this space
who are so-called went-free native,
but they just emphasize and push this problem
so far down the hill that you can never recover.
And I see an awful lot of that,
especially teams or projects that are advised
to over-allocate three, four, five times even,
just so they can get 10, 20, $30 million.
But that's probably the death nail for your project
because you've burned so much of the community.
Immediately after that, it's just good luck.
You're going to be firefighting them forever.
Yeah, you may raise some funds
and a bunch of advisors may make some decent money.
And some people will flip on the secondary,
but you've really hurt the longevity of your project
if you go down these problems.
I don't think, I don't know the solution.
I wish somebody could come up with one.
I would say if you're going to go down the whitelist route,
then you probably should,
okay, let's keep it gaming-related.
If you're going to go down the whitelist route,
the way to get the whitelist needs to be gaming-related,
not tweeting about the project,
not how many freaking sentences can you send in a Discord?
How many invites can you get?
Because obviously you're going to get the people
that are grinding for the whitelist to then sell.
However, if you made it gaming-related
well, not everyone can play the same games.
Well, make it bloody simple.
Play Smash cards or something, I don't know.
Just do something that's always going to get people
engaging with the community.
imagine how cool it would sound that,
okay, cool, we have a whitelist competition.
It's going to run for a month or two months,
or however long you're going to run it for,
and to get it, come and play Smash cards with us.
The people that win every five games,
or whatever the bloody thing is,
they get a whitelist, right?
And once you get the whitelist, that's it.
You've got the whitelist.
Now you know who's playing.
You know who's playing the game.
Obviously, there are other ways to track and everything,
but the other thing that you can do,
let's say you're playing not Smash cards,
you can play another game.
There's a thing called Stumble Guys.
Everyone can download this game.
It's on mobile and on PC.
You literally can download it from anywhere,
and you can play from anywhere in the world as well.
Both of those games are insanely fun
to play with the community.
You can play it in the VC as well.
and you get to know your community all at the same time.
And then let's say, for example,
you do have the people that just want to flip it.
Get the whitelist, mint, and then flip.
I guarantee you that the amount of people
that you'll get doing that will be cut in more than half,
because the people that are grinding for the whitelist
are gamers, and they're more likely to keep the NFT.
It doesn't matter if they sell,
because they're still going to keep a bulk.
Why? Because they're there for the freaking game.
They played a game to get whitelist.
So I think that will not solve the entire issue,
but it will mitigate loads of problems,
especially a few that were said already.
If you're not going to go down that route,
don't do the whitelist thing.
Just leave it alone, man.
There's no point, because it is destroying communities,
So whitelist in the gaming area right now,
as I agree with the BSCN,
it's just overused, overpopulated.
It's not meant for gaming.
Why would we sell 10,000 game copies in an NFT
when you want millions like PowerWorld?
Why were we going to limit ourselves right at the door
with limiting how many people have access to anything?
So the reality is we need to expand
and make it easier for people to join.
If we're limiting ourselves now,
then it's all money grab.
And that's going to be noticed by the community,
because you're not thinking of the community,
you're thinking of the money.
And I will use Counter-Strike as an example.
Counter-Strike grew through server-based communities
in the 90s and early 2000s.
And it was the servers, the people of the community
buying the servers and hosting all the stuff
and doing everything with the community.
They were the ones having the community.
It came from the communities and the gamers doing it.
It didn't come from the top down.
Yet again, this is a top down problem.
And we need to build from the bottom up.
And we're at the beginning of this industry
and we're all trying to build from the top down.
We need to start with the community
and the community is going to choose the game
and the community is going to speak.
We just got to build the tools for the communities to roar.
And that's where we're at right now.
Let's get past this whiteless conversation
and limiting ourselves over it.
I absolutely agree with all your guys' takes.
You know, there is an issue, right?
And we're all trying to figure out how to solve this issue.
I know BSCN mentioned there is no solution, right?
And so I think that all of our jobs
is to at least start trying, right?
Trying to figure out the solution
and taking it step by step to actually get
to the root of this problem.
And so this leads me to my next question.
And I'm very curious because I know
that you guys are all industry leaders.
You guys all pay attention to what's going on pretty
And I'm curious, is there any playbook, any mint,
any whiteless distribution, anything
along those lines that you guys have seen in the recent years
that you think that is the playbook,
or at least close to the playbook,
that we should be following?
I would say probably FF4 is doing it pretty well
They do do it quite like the old way.
I've seen a few of their whitelists and stuff.
They've done it in the past, maybe like some retweets
But they're definitely getting more engaged
with the gaming community via playing certain games
and stuff and collaborating with other gaming communities
So they're all keeping it in-house in the gaming realm.
But I would honestly, I haven't seen any projects out there
that's done it the right way yet.
I guess the only way to know that if they do it the right way
is the people that are doing it currently right now.
It destroys their projects or not.
That is literally the only way we're
going to see because we can say someone's doing it right
But until that whitelist is done and the mint is done
and the community is still around six months after,
Everyone in the past has done it is obviously flawed.
And it's finding that game or that project that's actually
willing to take that risk.
We also run into the issue of doing a mint.
If it's a game's first mint, they
might not have a product ready to some of your guys' points.
There's other games that they can play.
But we can definitely see how that might still
be a huge risk because they're not playing your game,
And you want to actually onboard these users.
One idea that you just gave me, Shubzy,
it would be kind of cool is FF4.
You mentioned how they're doing these partnered whitelist
distribution and everything.
And if they're games, it'd be kind of cool for them
to host a game night with a partners game, right?
And then the people that actually participate there,
then they get the whitelist.
And so you at least know that you're bringing gamers.
That's just an idea that came to my mind.
But these spaces are so great, right?
Because this is how we start coming up with the ideas.
We start spitballing, all that kind of stuff.
I was just going to say, one of the early projects I worked on
built a slot machine, like a spin to win whitelist mechanism.
And so the entire whitelist was built out
You had to come in, you had to play,
you could keep trying until you were whitelisted.
I think that seems more fair to me
than any other type of allocation.
I can tell you, I can DM most projects and just say,
hey, can I get a whitelist?
And they give them to you.
That's not really fair, right?
I've spent a couple of years on Twitter.
I have a following and they just know, oh yeah,
she'll probably tweet about this if we give it to her.
That doesn't make it easy for new people
to come in and have success in the space.
And that's the only way they're going to stick around.
We can't have all the good whitelists
for the people who have been around for a couple of years
or will be the only ones left.
We need fresh liquidity, right?
100%, Peter, over to you.
Yeah, just wanted to add, I think
one of the coolest things about crypto
is it enables this high tide races all ships sort of thing.
We can all kind of grow and build together
alongside your community.
And so I think you definitely want
to have scalable solutions in mind
when you're designing your core game loops
and the culture outside of your game.
But maybe start really small, build something really niche
And then if it's actually really good,
then I think it will spread pretty naturally
through word of mouth marketing.
People just onboarding their friends one by one.
Onboarding your friends one by one, I have a funny story.
So MixMob currently just had our token sale, right?
And we just launched our token.
And it's funny because I have a few IRL friends that
are somewhat familiar with crypto, somewhat familiar
And I talk to them a lot about it.
And so they were like, oh, how can I get some MXM?
And so it's those little engagements, right?
It says onboarding one by one by one until it's the masses.
And so it's just very exciting to think back
of where web3 gaming was two and a half years ago,
where it is now and where it's going.
And so I know that we have about 12 minutes left.
So I would love to just end on an outro question, right?
We've talked about a lot of things.
Whitelist, freements, payments, how
we can solve these problems.
And so that leads me to my last question of what's next?
What do you guys foresee?
Because we've constantly had these problems.
And we're constantly adjusting.
Web3 gaming is all about pivoting and consistently listening
to your community, see what's going on.
And so I would love to hear some predictions on what's
Do we think freements are going to be the route?
Do we think playing the game for whitelist
is going to be the route?
Do we see another route going?
I would love to hear some takes.
Shubzy, I'm going to put you on the hot seat
because you always have amazing takes that
spark amazing conversations.
So I'm going to put you on the hot seat.
So what I foresee for the future in this space
in terms of whitelist, OK, cool.
So I definitely see more games coming out with freements.
And they will be charging for their DLCs.
But their DLCs will be in the form of mints
that are going to be paid.
And then the other thing I see as well
is when it comes to whitelists, I
don't think they're going to be as big as they have been
I think the idea of whitelists will begin to die out.
Even if it is done in a way that's
going to be fed to the community,
whether it's a raffle, whether it's done through gaming,
or whatever it may be, I do believe that it will die out.
And it will just become a thing that we used to do.
I think what will replace it is the idea of people
focusing on in real life events where we bring these gaming
Because you mentioned, imagine a game,
let's say like Jordan's game, right?
So let's say Jordan's game, he wanted to play it,
and he wanted to have people come in and experience it.
He could collaborate with another game or another studio
in a disco, and they could play it together,
and they could host a gaming night.
But imagine if the events that we have now, like NFT NYC, NFC
Lisbon, all these other conferences that are
happening, I think the energy that we've put into whitelists,
the energy that we've put into DLCs,
the energy that we've put into games in the past,
and these studios, and all this time and money
that we've put into it, I think that's
going to transfer over to making game nights, gaming events,
where we go and play each other's video games.
I think that's probably where we're going to go.
Now, that's way in the future, but that's literally
I'm waiting and planning for that moment
where we can start hosting events for the video games
that we're playing and experience it all together.
That's where I think we're going to go.
I think we're going to grow out of the whitelist stage,
and we're going to go into where the big money is
and start experiencing things together in the future.
Feel free to hop in, guys.
I think we're waiting for our Web 3 gaming messiah.
I'm thinking we need some gigantic influencer who's
not going to care about the negative sentiment
around NFTs and crypto, and they're just
going to plow right through it.
I think you just need somebody with some good education
and some really, really talented in that content creation
space to bring in a lot of new people.
Yeah, I think collaboration, what
Chobji was saying there is collaboration
is going to be going to be crucial,
And I don't mean token as in crypto.
I mean, just piecemeal, just for the sake of saying it,
but actual proper collaboration in terms
of physically working with each other
and promoting each other's games through activities and events.
We're lucky enough that we have the goons of Ballet Rune.
We have Carpify's Eco Empires and Vendetta games
that the Cowboy Metaverse that they're building there,
which has got a great, and I love Vendetta,
they have a great new concept on Kill to Earn,
which for me beats Play to Earn hands down.
But it's like, you know, so the four of us as communities
will be hosting game nights and working together,
and then we expand out from that.
And I think, yeah, back to what Chobji was saying,
that's going to be the way because, you know,
we've got to show traditional gamers
that there are good games out there that are going to be there
and that we're all working together and trying to push us.
And I think, yeah, maybe not this year,
but I know, like, definitely saved by next year
and when the hype starts with huge ball runs again,
then we, I'd like to think, yeah, fingers crossed
we're all going to be in a better place.
Kind of like they're both saying,
like another way to say it is,
there isn't a Web3 gaming industry yet.
It's a pre-industry because there aren't the games yet.
We have years of, you know, all this other nonsense
and we're trying to figure it out.
And there's never been an industry like crypto before
where an early audience member could make a huge amount of money
just from knowing about something early, right?
Like that confluence of incentives
between the audience and the project has never existed like this.
It's incredibly powerful. It's why we're all here.
And, you know, but the next move for this stuff
is there will be games that exist
and people will kind of stop caring unless there's a game,
like, you know, wait for the game to launch,
maybe watch a trailer or something.
But like, it's just going to resemble the way
that people get hyped for, you know, Web2 games,
especially because like the metric we're all looking to
to when Web3 gaming has made it
is when it's not called Web3 gaming anymore, right?
So, you know, I think all this stuff will kind of fall away.
I mean, though there'll be stuff that's taken forward,
we'll learn from this and everyone, you know,
they'll take some stuff from us, we'll take some stuff from them.
But once games exist, it's just going to be the games.
So I think what we need to stop doing here, too,
a different perspective here is we got to stop thinking games
We got to stop adding this tagline and this moto of,
Web3 needs to be this. Games are already fun.
We're all playing video games on our free time
and there's a lot of games out there.
So Web3 adds dynamics that are new of ownership.
So you get to own the things that are in the game.
So all we got to do is educate our communities
and everybody else around as we're building these
infrastructures and tools out for everybody to use.
And as we're educating, teaching them what ownership means,
I like to describe it as a problem like this.
When I was 12 years old, I was playing a game called Diablo.
And Diablo, I was grinding and I had level 92 barbarian
and I just got a bunch of stuff and somebody was hitting me up
on chat and I was gullible enough to give them my password
and they logged in and changed my password and stole my account.
That's the same thing going on right now with bots messaging you
and stealing your Web3 wallets. It's the same stuff.
I was just naive enough at 12 years old
to learn a very valuable lesson.
So what's going on now is education needs to happen
and then people will understand that their assets are secure
and their assets are available to them
and now they have ownership.
It doesn't necessarily mean they're going to make tons of value.
It just means that they have ownership in the community
that they're participating in.
So we've got to redefine some of this stuff at the same time
We just got to add the right tools for the community to be built.
BSCN over to you and then we can close out with Alchos.
Thank you. Definitely some really great takes.
I want to just go back a little bit to what I believe Shabzeer
that I said a while ago. I want to add a few more points to that.
So when you look at this industry overall,
you realize it's actually quite depreciative.
It's deprecating and it's self-harming.
It's self-cannibalistic in a way.
The entire ecosystem, the way it's set up right now,
and we can see it already.
So you don't see huge sales or narratives
around profile picture collections anymore.
That whole thing was just an entire matter.
You don't see things being pushed as just IP
and selling tens of millions of dollars.
That whole thing is just decimated itself.
So when you look at these ecosystems,
you realize that they are quite cannibalistic.
They're destructive and large parts of them can be abused very easily.
And also they're quite value abstractive.
Systems like this don't last very long.
And we had this with the ICO industry back in 2017 and 18.
I use this always as an example.
The top end of the biggest ICO sales in 2017 were $4 billion.
That was one of the largest ICO sales.
The bottom end were about $20 million being raised in about a day.
So between then and now, just take a look at the last six months,
have you ever heard of an ICO sale anymore?
When was the last time you heard of one doing even $5 million?
They destroyed themselves.
It just decimated itself.
It wasn't a sustainable industry.
So that whole thing got wiped away.
And I see the whiteness matter, the NFT matter, the whole NFT profile picture
It's got all of the same inherent flaws as the previous industry did.
It got replaced by a bunch of very articulate astute, well choreographed VCs
who come in with capital that is incredibly tight and allocated and milestone based.
And you don't have ICOs of that magnitude.
You have maybe a million or two million seed sale.
That's the biggest you're going to get.
And I kind of see the NFT whiteness matter industry go in the same way.
It's just got all of the hallmarks of the same failures.
So all I know is it's not going to be around.
It's going to change a lot.
I don't know what it's going to change into.
That question I think is very difficult to try and answer.
And I thank you for that, right?
Because there's no right answers.
We can't tell the future.
But what we can do is make predictions and work towards something.
And I believe that you guys are all working towards amazing things to move the space.
I want to thank all of you guys for joining.
I'm so excited to look back in five years, right?
And remember these conversations and see how we continue to grow as we do these
spaces and we continue to talk and have these conversations because they need to
And so amazing that we're able to have these conversations on this platform.
We are getting onto the top of the hour.
Nikhil, Spicy Capital, Jorge, BSCN, Peter,
Mythica, and Cyberly, and Jordan.
Thank you so much for all of you guys' opinions, takes, and expertise.
I know that I just got 1% smarter listening to all you guys give your take.
Once again, we have these spaces every week on Wednesday at the same time.
Once again, thank you so much to everyone that joined.
Thank you so much to everyone that listened.
So if you want to go ahead and go back, send it over to your community.
Anything along those lines.
I am going to close out with an outro song as people start to funnel out.
Once again, thank you so much to everyone that tuned in.
Check out MixMob, check out all the panelists, give them a follow.
And we will see you next week, February 14th on Valentine's Day to talk about
other topics in the Web 3 space.
Thank you so much for joining us, and we will see you in the next episode of the Web 3