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The truth about web3 gaming w/ @brycent_ #CHAINREACTION
Recorded: April 2, 2025 Duration: 1:02:51Space Recording
Short Summary
The discussion covers significant trends in the crypto market, including predictions of Bitcoin's potential growth, the resilience of crypto markets amidst global uncertainties, and the decline of Axie Infinity's token value. It also highlights the launch of new tokens in the Web3 gaming space and the skepticism from traditional gaming platforms towards blockchain technology.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Hello guys, we're just letting people filter in and then we will get started. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome everybody to another episode of the Chain Reaction, Cointelegraph's
daily show here on X every single weekday. And we always cover the biggest stories in crypto with
the biggest guests, and we're doing it again today. Today Today we have Bryson here to talk to us about blockchain
gaming which as Gareth pointed out in a recent tweet is very much my area as well. My name is
Robert Baggs. You may be familiar with me, you may not but I ran the daily podcast for Cointelegraph
called Ryzen Crypto which has evolved into this new multi-faceted beast where we have
guests and conversations and it's not just
me spouting a monologue every morning. And joining me is my co-host Gareth Jenkinson,
head of all multimedia, everything for Cointelegraph and gracing stages left and right,
including Paris Blockchain Week next week. He'll be on stage there. Gareth, how are you doing?
All good, Rob, all good.
Like you said, I've been burning the midnight oil
and preparing hard for Paris and Paris Blockchain Week.
Cointelegraph's also got our phone.
Next week. I think that sounds like a terrible connection.
So, Gareth, if you can hear me, change room,
because if it's the same as yesterday,
you just wandered out of the right room.
And then the third person in this equation is Zoltan Vardai,
who is, what am I going to say Zoltan? Markets wizard. He's our markets wizard every day,
giving us alpha and the latest updates on what's happened on the market in the last 24 hours.
Zoltan, how are you? I'm doing great, Robert. I'd actually love to just get started with my
markets update because we do have a big guest today and I think we need the room for discussion.
So without further ado, I'd just like to note that all eyes are definitely on Trump's upcoming import tariff announcement markets, not just cryptocurrency, but global markets remain quite spooked.
global markets remain quite spooked um now i actually have um charts are are providing a lot
of good news so bitcoin is trading just uh just under 85k at the moment um nexo analysts have
previously told us today that we need to see uh bitcoin trading definitely above the 82k support
um to avoid a bigger correction uh amid these tariff uncertainties.
However, the good news here is that despite all these tariff uncertainties,
we are seeing some bullish predictions, including from Arthur Hayes, who is the famous BitMEX co-founder,
who obviously has some very level-headed analysis rooted into the growing financial supply.
And he has reiterated his call for 250k Bitcoin,
but that is only if the Federal Reserve shifts from quantitative tightening to quantitative easing.
So that's definitely an announcement markets we'll be looking for.
And one more interesting thing that Mr. Hayes highlighted
is that bitcoin is still
mainly driven and catalyzed by expectations of a growing money supply and still very much related
to the wide wider um financial system which is why um today's tariff announcements will be very
important and uh just to just to close my update on a on a bright note. We did report on a very, very insightful data collection from
Nansen earlier, which predicts that there's a 70% chance that the crypto market will bottom
during the next two months. So before June, we will see the bottom occur, which will be the
foundation of the next leg up. However, as Nansen's principal research analyst also pointed out,
we will need to see some alleviation. So depending on how the tariff talks go, we could see markets
bottom sooner or later, but there is a 70% chance that the bottom will occur until June. So we'll
definitely be looking forward to today's tariff announcements. And Robert, I'll have a lot clearer signal to share tomorrow
once we know what the actual tariffs are.
Yeah, I've seen a lot of talk about how the tariffs are going to impact Bitcoin.
Obviously, Gareth asked earlier in the week,
I think the question a lot of us were asking,
which is why it has any role in Bitcoin's price at all.
But obviously, it's a risk asset.
People risk off in times of uncertainty. But
I've also started to see in the last day or so that people are skeptical on how much it will
actually impact Bitcoin's price and whether people are just panicking over nothing. Do you think
that perhaps it's overblown what it will do to Bitcoin's price?
There definitely are some analysts who are saying that it's overblown.
We're also seeing some analysts suggest that crypto markets will actually weather this tariff-related uncertainty much better than global markets
because clearly traditional markets are much more in line with political decisions and global uncertainty.
So we might actually see the tariffs being an outlier.
However, one thing that's definitely giving me optimism
is that these tariff fears have been kind of a reality
since Trump's election odds have been growing.
So people and investors have kind of been pricing in potential tariffs since then.
So it might also be that whatever Trump's tariff announcement is,
it's not going to have a large impact on the market.
I mean, not a large downside impact, just because a lot of this uncertainty has been priced in.
And we've seen with previous events where the uncertainty leading to an announcement often creates bigger waves or bigger panic than the actual announcement.
I don't know if that makes sense to you, Robert.
Yeah, it does. And I kind of hope if that makes sense to you, Robert. Yeah, it does.
And I kind of hope that that's the case going into tomorrow.
And obviously, Arthur Hayes with the big prediction, once again,
he does like to do those huge predictions.
So it sounds good.
So it sounds really like we need, we're just, everyone's in a holding pattern until tomorrow, right?
That's precisely right. We can see from whale activity and long-term holders that everyone's really just um hesitating to take any decisive action um we've also seen growing stablecoin
supplies and while those are used for payments as well it's evident that they're not being deployed
um not on ethereum not on Avalanche, not on exchanges.
So I do feel like traders are really just waiting on the sidelines and waiting to see what happens with these tariff announcements.
And a lot will also depend on how much other countries are willing to negotiate and willing to work with the U.S. in finding a good resolution that fits everybody.
Okay, so big day tomorrow.
Everybody, make sure you tune in same time again tomorrow
and we'll be speaking to Zoltan.
I imagine, Zoltan, you're going to have to have a bigger section tomorrow
to cover all of the news.
Gareth, let's check your connection before we jump into the main part of today.
How is it? Can you hear me okay?
Can you guys hear me?
I'm sitting in a cafe so hopefully
there's not too much background
noise and you guys can hear me all good.
Yeah, sounds fine now.
Thumbs up is always good.
It is. Yeah, so you're all
prepped for Paris Blockchain Week or nearly
prepped? Yeah, yes. I'm
mostly prepped. I was just saying before
my connection dropped that
we'll be in town
The whole of next week
So if you are going to be in Paris
And you're on this space
Please feel free to sign up
For Cointelegraph's Longitude event
That's on Monday
At the Shangri-La Hotel
Starting at 5 o'clock
We've got some fantastic guests
And speakers joining us
So go ahead and sign up
Through the Luma link
You can find that on my X page
Or the Cointelegraph main page or our website.
And then, of course, I will be moderating quite a few different panels and fireside chats at Paris Blockchain Week.
First and foremost, I'll be sitting down with Adam Back for the opening fireside chats of Paris Blockchain Week.
That's on Tuesday morning.
So please do.
If you're in Paris, come down.
Come say hello if you see me around the venue.
I'm a friendly guy, I promise I don't buy it.
So come and say how's it.
And yeah, very much looking forward to next week.
And I'm looking forward to today's next space.
I think there's a lot to talk about
when it comes to Web3 gaming.
And I'm sure that we're going to have
a pretty dynamic discussion with Bryson this afternoon.
But I'll let you guys do most of the talking for now,
and I'll jump in as we get along.
Yeah, the thing about Gareth is he's a gamer as well.
Just in case you don't know, it's not worn on his sleeve quite as much as me
because that's what got me into the space.
But with no further ado, let's move over to Bryson.
Bryson, how are you today, sir?
Yo, what's good, Robert? Thank you for having me on the show. Excited to be here. I mean,
we all know the Web3 gaming industry has seen its ups and downs, and we've seen some pretty
big tokens coming out here recently around games that are pretty hyped and pretty important to the
ecosystem. So I'm excited to get on here and chat about gaming, hopefully shed some light,
bring some context to some things that are happening, but also be able to just keep the conversation
going from where we are in a very transparent and organic way.
Absolutely. We've been following each other for a long time. And you're one of the people that I
remember as like an early adopter of blockchain gaming and i remember seeing your content very early on
but what got you into blockchain gaming what because you've always been from what i can tell
a traditional gamer and obviously there's a bit of contention there that we'll get into but what
got you into blockchain gaming so i mean i got into blockchain gaming of course like in the 2021 boom
um covid was prevalent and and we were all at home.
And I was listening to a podcast from Karush AK and he was chatting with Andrew Steinwald about like virtual and video games and virtual Pokemon on the blockchain.
That ended up in me going down a rabbit hole and finding Axie in 2021, realizing nobody was really making Twitch content on it at the time and jumping in headfirst.
And my original premise behind it was just, you know, I grew up playing Pokemon and the idea of playing Pokemon on the blockchain and being able to buy, sell and trade Pokemon sounded fun, especially after years and years of playing Pokemon and playing video games and not being able to own skins like some of the I mean most some of the major games in the world right now you still don't have true ownership
over your skins you can't buy sell and trade them so the very root for me it was just like
seeing that there were markets attributed to game assets was something that was super
interesting to me and it seems like a better usage of my time. 100%. And that's, I guess you've touched on what all of us
resonate with if we are into Web3 gaming, into blockchain gaming, which is digital ownership.
It took me a while to get, I've mentioned this on the show before, but in about 2017,
I spoke to an indie developer in the engine blockchain ecosystem he was trying to implement
uh nfts in his game and I couldn't really get it for a while I I wasn't sure how you could have
digital ownership until eventually the penny dropped with with blockchain and then I I was
I mean quite literally all in I had started a website and that was it. I was just I wanted to be in the space and I just understood the value of blockchain.
And and now we I mean, like you say, there's the skins economy in certain games is absurd.
We mentioned this yesterday, actually, in the episode.
I think Counter-Strike has got a market cap of about 40 billion on skins you don't own.
And then some of the most egregious examples to me are like Call of Duty and
FIFA where you're buying these players or skins and then the next year a new game comes out and
you basically lose them so you were just paying to to rent them and extremely expensive you mentioned
Axie Infinity and I think that's a really good place for us to start because that's what put blockchain gaming on the map but the
reason it really did it is play to earn and once again I'm going to give a shout out to Leah Callum
Butler who did a documentary on Axie Infinity and its impact on the Philippines during the
COVID pandemic it's on YouTube fantastic watch and it really shows you the difference it made to people's lives.
But now we've had a bit of distance from...
Actually, first, I've just seen Gareth's hand go up.
Gareth?
I just want to say I had the pleasure of meeting Leah two years ago at Token 2049.
And she introduced me to a handful of some of the most influential Axie streamers and community builders from the
Philippines. And honestly, hands down, it's one of the most amazing stories I've heard of the
impact of Web3 in people's lives because, you know, the Philippines is a developing country and
a few hundred dollars goes a long way for a lot of those people. And I spoke to quite a few of
these different individuals and some of the stories they told me about,
you know, setting up becoming streamers,
helping other people play Axie,
helping them breed Axies,
helping them sell their Axies was just crazy.
And then obviously you saw the pump of the price.
I think it was around 21, 22,
you know, changed people's lives in that country.
And it was a beautiful example
of what play-to-earn games could be.
And I guess we'll discuss the longevity of that
and the lack thereof,
but still an amazing story.
And shout out to Leah.
I've met her in person and she's a fantastic human.
And that whole ecosystem of developers and gamers
and people that got around that was really amazing.
One of the coolest things i've experienced honestly yeah and i i kind of see it as this extension of
uh how gaming has become this career choice when i was you know 18 if i said to my parents i'm
going to be a full-time streamer and youtuber they would have i mean kicked me out of the house like
i'd have to go get a real
job but now i mean it's still going to be a difficult conversation with your parents i think
i mean i've got a son he's three years old maybe he says this to me at some point although i think
as fathers go he's probably picked the right one to say it to and but now i mean look at the look
at the youtubers look at the twitch streamers making crazy amounts of money and play to earn kind of I think the initial conception of
it was to be an extension of that where you you play a game and you can earn money from playing
this game but it I think it morphed into something else which I'll give my opinion on in a bit but
first Bryson what do you make of play to earn its initial impact and what it's become?
So, I mean, I thought a play to earn was like, I thought it was a good thing.
I thought that the idea of being able to play a video game and like earn in the game was a great, was a great way for people to be able to like create additional income.
People could own assets and, you know, trade the skins, but also being able to lend them to other people and they can earn um but you know in 2021 it was my first for foray deep into the
crypto space uh everyone's first foray into web3 gaming and i think it was like a time where a lot
was learned um and and there are some like very significant problems with like the initial idea
of what play to earn was you know like in 2021
the idea of play to earn and i try to tell people this all the time was you buy assets in the game
and as a byproduct of just playing the game you would earn money that was play to earn you didn't
have to be incredible at the game you didn't have to be the best player it was just you own these
assets you jump into the game. You play the game.
You earn.
And that's just a byproduct of you existing in an ecosystem.
And I think that, like, 2021 was an important year because at the beginning, it showed,
okay, like, this is an interesting and can be a sustainable ecosystem.
And over time, we saw the negative impacts of that ecosystem when everyone's earning
and the hyperinflation kind
of takes over. Um, and we got into the point of people saying, oh, well, we just need more burn
mechanics, more burn mechanics, more burn mechanics. It's like, well, a burn mechanic
can be interesting, right? If there is a level of entertainment that is strong enough or a level of,
yeah, a level of value created for a user that is strong enough to
make them want to burn something.
And the two, the two things that I realized about play to earn, it was like January of
2022.
One is like the initial idea was novel, but two, uh, in developing countries, there's
no world where people are going to be willing to sacrifice living or sacrifice making an
income just to be entertained right like if i told you
if you told me okay like you have the choice between getting ten thousand dollars for existing
and playing this game for a couple hours or you burn that ten thousand dollars in the ecosystem
to get more of that same asset or get a get like a cool sticker or something you know you're going
to always choose to just take the ten thousand dollars and that's kind of like what we realized
or at least what i realized about play to earn was like the initial idea might have been novel
and good but what it became was kind of this unsustainable merry-go-round of someone has
money someone in a consumer like world puts in money they lend out these assets
those assets start depreciating almost instantly and and they're almost in a race to zero because
there is no new money coming into the ecosystem for people to actually from people who actually
enjoy the entertainment value of playing the game and you see this like when you look at a
traditional game like whether it's like a fortnight or a counter-strike or you know any game
you have people who you know play from a competitive aspect and they earn money
but the majority of players aren't earners they're people who are just right they're just playing for
entertainment it might be the guy who gets off of work and he jumps on call of duty and spends a
couple hours but he buys the battle pass he plays the game he only cares about entertainment and the narrative of where played of how played and was marketing created a world where.
It was always going to be a thing where people prioritized profit over entertainment, and I don't blame anyone in the Philippines or any developing nation, because if I'm in a developing nation and you're telling me I have I have the opportunity to make five times the average salary in my country from playing a game for, you know, four hours a day, I'm always going to prioritize making money over entertainment as well
in these games. So I think a lot of it, you know, what play to earn was initially was from how it
was marketed. Now, I think over time people have learned like, hey, some of these models aren't
sustainable and we need to create better models in ways for people to actually want to do this.
But of course, it has to be directly correlated to some level of entertainment to get spenders willing to spend for the purposes of just being and existing in a game and flexing and looking cool.
I think that's like a bit overkill for where we currently are in the gaming space.
But I also don't think it can just all be pixelated environments that are like 2D.
You know, like there has to be some balance of finding the equilibrium of this game is actually entertaining and people enjoy playing it and will spend money in it.
And then there's also an economy that keeps people enthralled and intrigued.
And even though it's like completely left field, right?
You kind of, we've seen this kind of with with meme coins right you always have winners and losers
the game for the most part is there is a level of entertainment and people willing to put money in
to see if they're going to like hit the big check right but there's no one who just wins as a as a
byproduct of just being involved just hey i jumped into this and i played along and as a byproduct of just being involved. Just, Hey, I jumped into this and I played along.
And as a byproduct of that, I became successful or I made money. No, you, you, you either have
some sort of competitive edge. You have some sort of information you're early, but there's some
trigger. There's something of value that you have to be able to create to get to the point where
you're actually earning something right outside of just existing and playing and i think that's an issue that web3 gaming ran into and because the euphoria of
tokens and i know i'm spewing but the euphoria of token prices and things were at all-time highs
there was no turning off the faucet it was like hey like we're you know we're raising tons of
money we're we're making tons of revenue like there are multiple web three multiple played
earned games outside of axi that were doing really well and i think that like it was a
hey we're just going to keep status crow until until this thing like pretty much eats itself
alive i mean a hundred percent i agree with so much of what you've just said and i think there's
so many good points to be pulled out of it i think me, one of the problems was when you have financial rewards
from like a meritocracy where it's like eSports and you're competing
and you get money by winning, that's fine.
But what Play2Earn did is it exacerbated the worst parts of gaming
parts of gaming where there's currency involved and that can just be an in-game currency but
where there's currency involved.
And that can just be an in-game currency.
there's often been criticisms of developers in mmos where they incentivize players to go to certain
gameplay loops to get the most amount of that in-game currency and they they incentivize you
to play what they want you to play rather than what you enjoy the most it's been a common criticism
and what play to earn did is because you're now looking at that as a fiat currency amount, even if it's not, you're
looking at it as, you know, this is worth X dollars, then that becomes a completely different
proposition. And then you feel almost guilty for not doing the most profitable gameplay loop you can possibly do rather than looking for fun.
And I think it just reframed gaming
in a way we didn't,
we should have predicted it would have,
but in a way that we didn't really want it to.
And in a way, Axie Infinity kind of epitomized
the rise and fall of that kind of gameplay loop
where, I mean, Axie's AXS token was at a high of
$159 in 2021 at one point. I mean, God knows how much people, some players had and could have sold
it for. Now it's $2.84 today. And it's not like it crashed suddenly. It's even down another 70% in the past year.
I mean, the team does have a new Axie-based MMO coming out
called Atia's Legacy.
So that could improve things, sure.
But I think the problem was play-to-earn became all about the earn
and not about the play.
And then the game doesn't really matter. i'm not i don't i'm not above
this i was critical of it but i i'm not going to name the game but there was a game that launched
i was very communicative with the developers and the team behind it and i played i played it as
soon as it came out and i realized that i was just being sold lies essentially essentially. It was just a clicker.
It wasn't a game.
It was something you logged on and clicked every hour.
But the thing is, it started to get some hype.
And I felt obliged to log in and click every hour.
And then I realized, like, I'm a unique active wallet on this game.
And they're saying, oh, you know, look how many players we've got.
They're not players.
You're logging in and you're clicking a button.
You're not playing a game.
You're not a gamer. This isn't a game a game well you know a question i want to i want
to pose to you right because you've seen you've seen web3 gaming we've all seen it um when you
look at these games like because a lot of especially coin telegraph's audience it's not just
people they're not just people play looking to play games of course like let's be honest like
everyone wants to be able to figure out how do we how do i make some sort of profit like how do i make
it i like sitting here with you honestly and i support a lot of tokens and games and i'll and
i'll tweet about projects um even when i'm not paid to just because i think they're cool um and
i want to share what they're building but like if you ask me to sit here and be like hey create a create an index of like five web
three gaming tokens you would recommend somebody else to buy regardless of if i hold them or not
right like because i'll hold stuff knowing that it might not do anything but i couldn't responsibly
create a list of things that i would tell you to buy right now and that's kind of like concerning just because i don't see anything like like that is a
game that just where the token is just okay this is promising oh you can say like okay guns off the
grid because they do have a little bit of money in runway but it's like as a savvy investor i
wouldn't be like hey you should go buy this token because i'm like it's not it's not as easy to predict as like uh
oh my goodness i look at you know a chain launch that like has some sort of like you know some
sort of value to it like if abstract had a token right now i could be like okay here's where i
think abstract is great here's what i know luca can do this is why i think i'm bullish on this
token and this is why i tell you to buy it i i can't i can't like create a list of games where
i'm like oh man i would buy the token but there can't create a list of games where I'm like, oh man, I would buy the token.
But there is a list of games where I'm like, okay, I'd play the game in a sense.
Yeah, so I can't think of a single token I would recommend, let alone five in blockchain gaming.
And I remember saying it in the last ball run that I was even skeptical then that it felt a bit bubbly.
And I once did a podcast episode where I slammed Decentraland for being just an absurd proposition as this crazy metaverse when it looked like a browser game from 1990.
And it had no fundamentals, but Mana, token was absolutely pumping I was I I don't
get it I don't see what's what's propping up this value other than hype and I think that's probably
true of all of them and the reason you could right now say oh well you know the gun token is doing
really well but it's only just launched and arguably already it's not doing that well um
because it launched on Binance only six percent of the token is circulating and the fully
diluted valuation is rough it's already lower than than ronin and axi so um yeah from a financial
perspective it's pretty hard to recommend any gaming token yeah i mean like I said, I agree with you on that front. And I want your thoughts because when I look at these low float, high diluted, like high
fully diluted valuations, of course, like I feel like they're deceptive.
I feel like there's a there's a part of this where it's like this.
This is a way of putting something out to give off like this visual perspective that
of putting something out to give off like this visual perspective that something is like doing
something is like doing a lot better than what it actually is.
a lot better than what it actually is however right from the perspective of everyone in crypto
i feel like everyone in crypto knows this right like you don't look at a token like that and think
oh man like there's a lot of upside here you look at it and almost you feel like it's like okay this
is like a slow bleed in a sense like at least that's what that's what it gives off right i'm not i'm not a token
omics expert like i know a little bit right but i'm a gamer at heart but i do think that there is
at some point we have to decide what when is enough enough with these like low float
high fdb gaming or project tokens i'm not saying they had to go out and drop all the token at once,
but who knows?
Maybe it would have been,
maybe it would have been better.
Right.
Like versus like,
I don't know if you heard about the drama of them going back,
like,
the,
like the off the grid,
changing,
changing the terms for seed stage investors and then giving them the
opportunity to like basically be paid back in a
sense yeah it's it's not a it's not a great look um gareth sorry you got your hand up yeah i just
wanted to say like i i think for me one of the most interesting questions that we we should be
considering is like what is the incentive you know both of you have kind of said, well, what gaming token would you advise me to buy? And I agree with you, I can't tell you any gaming
tokens that people should buy. But also, my kind of question is, why are we buying gaming tokens?
You know, we should be playing a game for the tokens. of one of the most interesting kind of trends that i saw last year
was the rise of tap games or clicker games on telegram and um you know the virality uh that
this introduced to the industry right like there were a lot of people that were playing these games
in the hopes of um you know earning a lot of tokens for playing the games and then selling
them for a profit later but if you look at something like Hamster Combat, I think they completely botched the way that they did their token rewards.
And if you want to create a virtuous, this is my own opinion, by the way,
if you want to create a virtuous cycle or tokenomics that kind of have some longevity,
you should really be offering the gamers
or the users themselves
a share in what you're generating. So something like
Hamster Combat was really smart
they used the virality
of the game and the mechanics
of the game to build a YouTube channel
and one or two other social media
platforms. So like if you
wanted to grow your exchange on that
game, you could go and watch the YouTube video of the day social media platforms right so like if you if you wanted to grow your exchange on that game
you could go and watch the youtube video of the day and when you watch that youtube video
through the app it registers that you've watched the video and then you get a certain amount of
the in-game tokens that you would use to build your exchange and the the premise of the game is
you needed to upgrade your exchange and then the
exchange itself generates more in-game tokens. And then you would eventually earn a token airdrop
from the revenue that your exchange was generating. So people were incentivized and they had a huge
following, right? Like 300 million players at one stage, something crazy like that. People were
incentivized to go
and watch their YouTube content.
So what happened?
They became the fastest growing YouTube channel.
I mean, they outpaced MrBeast's growth
to 10 million viewers.
They were generating,
I had insiders that basically told me
that they generated 100 to $200 million
worth of advertising revenue
from their YouTube channel alone, right?
So they were generating a huge amount of money from the advertising revenue that the YouTube channel was generating through the clicker game on Telegram.
If they were smart, they should have offered the players some sort of revenue share in the form of the tokens that they eventually airdropped, right?
some sort of revenue share in the form of the tokens that they eventually airdropped right like
if your game is already generating a whole load of revenue through various different avenues why
not share that with the gamers because then people realize like hey i'm going to keep playing this
game because the more we watch and and share uh and um interact with the content that we're
generating the more money i'm going to make playing this game.
And for me, the biggest failing of the entire industry,
and I mean, that's not to say the Web3 games have failed,
but the lack of longevity has been the continuity of the revenue models, right?
Like, what is play to earn if the price is just going to go up and then go down?
Like, the tokens that you're playing for eventually become worthless.
So what is the long-term incentive for people to play these games?
And I look at things like Hamster Combat and I just think, man, you guys were generating so much money.
If it wasn't just max extract value from the ecosystem and the people that have built up your audience or make part of your audience,
they all could have shared in the success of the game.
Everyone could have made a lot more money
and the game would probably be still quite successful
and still played by loads and loads of people.
And I don't think it is anymore
because they didn't think carefully
about how they could share some of the money
that they were generating.
And if you ask me,
that's probably one of the most successful
cricket games there ever was. And the amount of money that they generated in a short time was staggering and if
they'd shared that with their player base they might they might still be the talk of the town
but they didn't and that's how i saw that playing out yeah so i just want to jump on one of the
points there so i didn't really play hamster combat i tried it just to get an understanding so i could talk about it and stuff but i didn't it's not my sort of game So I didn't really play hamster combat, I tried it just to get an
understanding so I could talk about it and stuff. But I didn't. It's not my sort of game. So I
didn't really play it. But they got one thing right that I think a lot of blockchain games
completely miss. And it's just, I mean, I'm not an economist, it's just basic finance. And that
is there isn't enough of a demand for the token. There's just ways of generating it.
And then people are trying to sell it to get fiat currencies out.
And there's nothing to do with the token.
Like any game that has an in-game economy, you need a sink.
You need things that people want to spend that token on within the game.
That token has to be valuable above and beyond the hype.
It has to have a use.
You have to be able to buy skins in-game or buy anything in-game. It has to have a use. it has to have a use you have to be able to like buy skins in game or
you know buy anything in game it has to have a use it has to have a sync somewhere for the token to
flow to otherwise there's no buyers and if there's no buyers then what's the point if it's just
speculation it will fall apart and that's exactly what we saw with so many of these games and you
know off the grid is probably the what the biggest web 3 game to ever have released
really is properly triple a looking um and I haven't I haven't had a chance to play it yet
so I don't know but I'm I hope that they have figured out that the gun token for it to succeed
needs to have a use um Bryson I want to get your thoughts on Off The Grid I've seen you've spoken about it a lot
I think you've got some content on it too
You may have done some sponsored stuff
So I don't want to get you into any trouble here
But what are your thoughts on the game?
Has it been a successful launch?
And are you excited for its future?
Yeah so I mean I'll like fully disclose
So like I have not done any like direct sponsored stuff with Off The Grid.
I did invest in their KOL round, like transparently.
I only put in 2,500 bucks.
Like, I don't like to really invest high into gaming projects just because I don't think that like, they don't give me, gaming products don't make me feel like there is a sustainable world for the token to actually do well.
So I always normally, if I'm going to invest in something, I'll go like really small.
But like I said, I'm not a big fan of the low float, fully FDV launches.
I do think that like optics, investors, like, you know, like the VCs and different groups like them, because like it's a notch in there about, oh, our token hit a fully, like a FDV of a billion dollars, you know like the vcs and in different groups like them because like it's a notch in there about oh our token hit a fully like a fdv of a billion dollars you know so they
do like the low float i would say um from a pure game standpoint i think the game is far and away
the best thing we've seen in web 3 and it's exceptional it's fun to play uh and it's something
that i think can do well from a gamer perspective um but it'll be very interesting to
see how that like how they get people to be i would say like consistently actively playing the
game because you you know with an ecosystem like what they're building you can't you're not going
to have the height of the project just on token launch or at least you would hope not right like
when you look at like games like counter-strike where they have like their their overall skin market places are worth billions of
billions of dollars like it's a byproduct of like over time people consistently finding value in
the product that's being created but there is a world where when you look at when you look at um
off the grid and you look at kind of like this triple a narrative there are a lot of people
were like oh well you don't really need triple a games and crypto gaming like we're not at that point yet
um but i don't i i don't necessarily agree with that i think that based on the type of game you
are building there is a different economic model and a different responsibility that you are going
to have to try to make your token work right like? Like the model that Axie used or the model that Pixels used
or the model that, you know, Zed Run or some of these other games used
isn't necessarily the model that would work for a game
that is like an off the grid.
You know, it's a larger game.
It's a full-scale game.
Its audience is a lot broader and wider,
and they're not as niched down as we are just in the traditional like crypto farming game world.
So I think that they have like a very large task ahead of like, how do you stimulate and show crypto investors?
Because that's where most of their token money is going to come from.
It's like, how do you show crypto investors that this is a longer term?
longer term like this is something they want to put their money in long term I think that a lot
Like this is something they want to put their money in long term.
of web3 enthusiasts have been burned by gaming projects so much that they are completely depleted
of any resources from a mental aspect that they are willing to commit to gaming projects because
everyone knows like the pie in the sky is like oh well gaming is the future like gaming is this
gaming is that it's like it can be but there's not a world that says that like it has to happen anytime
soon.
There also isn't a world that says that, okay, well, a game like Axie can reach a nine bill
FDB.
I mean, a nine bill valuation.
I think it was at the height, like AXS resource, $9 billion.
And gaming companies still not see the overall long-term value of like what web three can be or
bring so i do think that we need a game or it might take a couple of games that actually
ascend to the level of major traditional games like your call of duties your like your major
gaming studio games we need to hit that big because if not you're not going to be able to show
the business use case in a well enough manner to make a traditional gaming studio want to take
a leap and move their franchise into web3 knowing that it could cripple them right like
you might get games that are dying or franchises that are dying or ip that is like on its last leg
and it's looking for like one more swing at a home run opportunity but you don't see gta being like hey we're gonna go launch a token and like become web
three you don't see call of duty you don't you don't see games that i'll say this you don't see
games that are making actual money look over to web three and say we are missing out by not having
integrated blockchain in the things that we are doing yet. But there are a lot of games that are just watching from the sideline.
I was very close with the head of creators and content at Epic Games.
And I met with him in New York on multiple occasions where he said,
hey, you know, Epic is looking at blockchain.
We're not like oblivious to what's happening in the gaming industry.
And we know that there needs to be more models.
But in the same light, it has to be a game.
It has to be a model that is going to show them
they can make more money with this
than they could just being what they currently are.
And Web3 Gaming hasn't proved it yet, in my opinion.
Yeah. Oh, sorry, Gareth, you put your hand up.
That's all good.
Yeah, I was just going to say,
I think you're 100% right.
Like at the end of the day,
if you speak to people like Yatsu from animoka brands he'll espouse on you the virtues of of
blockchain and and web3 and why it matters and truly it comes down to the ownership of data
so if let's just say you like to play fortnite and you own a load of skins or you play counter
strike or you play play team fortress 2 and you own all these skins skins, or you play Counter-Strike, or you play Team Fortress 2, and you own all these skins,
if you get deplatformed, or, I mean, look,
I played loads of all the Warcraft.
I mean, I'm at least at 2,500 to 5,000 hours
over the 10 years that I played.
A huge amount of time spent playing that game.
They own my accounts. they own all the in
in-game assets that i have you can't go and sell them the the promise of of like web3 games is
that you should be able to play these games and collect in-game items but you have ownership of
them and um like part of the reason i believe that the sector could be so valuable is like all those that I played World of Warcraft, every raid that I played, there was a tiny, a very small percentage that the piece of gear that you really wanted or needed for your tank to really level up and be one of the best on your realm to drop was a small percentage you know so you're playing these raids they reset every week you've only got one
chance to kill the boss and then you have to wait another week and you're not guaranteed that that
piece of gear drops you know um if you don't want to keep it like why shouldn't you be able to sell
it on the marketplace i mean yes you could sell it for in in-game gold which was the um you know
which was the currency that worked but But people are spending their real time
and their real hours of their life playing these games.
Why shouldn't they stand to gain financially from playing them?
And that, to me, is the real reason for Web3 games.
So when it comes to tokenomics and that sort of thing,
we shouldn't bootstrap tokens onto games to make them Web3
or to make them web three,
you know,
or to make them work because really at the end of the day,
you're just kind of helping a few founders and investors make a load of money because they have a significant portion of the tokens.
And if the value goes up,
they stand to gain from that.
But if you build games that hand ownership to the players and allow them to
enjoy being a part of commerce in that ecosystem or that environment, that should be the premise of the Web3 games.
And if you look at things like the sandbox and these metaverse experiences that allow people to do that, right, you know, buy all these NFTs and collectibles and swag out their avatars with these things like that's kind of moving in
the right direction but they're also not that fun you know like i wouldn't spend hours playing the
sandbox unfortunately but i would spend many many hours playing lots of the different games that i
like to play you know um i'm sure you guys don't even know what escape from tarkov is but it's a
you know a real a hyper realistic um uh first person shooter you jump in
and out of raids um and you know if you die you lose everything that you take in so you're spending
all your time playing you know playing this game and it's a very very hard um why shouldn't i be
able to sell all the all the guns and everything that i've collected when i run a raid and i managed to survive for real
money um you know or at least uh be able to to gain gain financially from it and i think that
that is where the secret lies but the other problem is is that all these major sort of
platforms you know like like you mentioned um ea and battle state uh like uh steam all the the distributors um i think they fear what what
blockchain how disruptive blockchain can be to their revenue model and their distribution and
and this has been a major hurdle for the industry and i don't know i don't know what the solution
is for that to be honest i think you hit the nail on the head there with um it's about digital ownership not tokenomics
that's it that's always been the case for me that's what got me interested in it originally
is owning these in-game items and i mean world of warcraft is the perfect example to bring up
also ethereum basically only exists because vitalik played wow um so there's a little bit
of law for crypto uh So I completely agree.
But I also think there are a number of problems.
So Epic Games that Bryson mentioned, brilliant example.
Tim Sweeney gets it.
He's the founder and CEO of Epic Games.
That guy, he gets it.
So he did a talk in GDC 2023 talking about the metaverse.
And he's like, there's loads of hype around the NFTs and metaverse.
Here's why this is important.
I mean, anyone listening, go and watch that talk because he really does understand what you get from this, what the value add is of blockchain.
But there's a problem that I said when I got into the space in 2018, I guess,
is when I started really getting into blockchain gaming and writing about it. What I could have
never predicted was traditional gamers suspicions of NFTs. I did not predict that they would be as
resistant to them as they were and still are. i looked at a review of um off the grid
earlier on youtube and one of the top comments thousands and thousands of likes was something
like this game looks amazing i really like the look of it i'm really interested and then i saw
it has nfts and basically i don't care anymore. I won't play it.
And that's been the case for a lot of games that have looked into using blockchain technology.
I think Ubisoft did a lot of damage in 2021
when they started tacking NFTs on.
Although, to be fair to them,
they did build an NFT platform called Quartz,
which I believe is still under development.
And they have released two blockchain games
in the last year to 18 months.
So they are still working with blockchain.
But the whole industry is still incredibly suspicious of NFTs.
And the digital ownership conversation doesn't even happen.
You don't even get that far.
And so I met with Unity at Gamescom 2021 or 2022 and I spoke with them about
blockchain and they were looking into it and I ended up working with Unity for several months
and I wrote their entire web 3 module for game devs on why it's important to use blockchain and
why it's a technology at the end of the day it's not a scam it's a technology that can be harnessed
in multiple ways here's why it's good here are the different chains use cases blah blah blah i wrote
the entire thing was like a giant wikipedia section and they published it it was live for about
four or five days they started getting heat over it and they pulled it and they and then they they
didn't do anything else to do with web3 again i don't think um and obviously they've continued to upset people from
that point on with uh their pricing models but we're in this this state where at this point
i don't know how we get traditional gamers to to understand the value out of nfts because they
won't go near it unless we do what like mythical games have done with NFL rivals, the mobile game, where they've partnered
with the NFL. It's an official NFL product. And the players in the game you actually own.
And when you trade them on the marketplace in the app, you are trading NFTs. They've
just built it into the back end and they don't talk about it. It doesn't say blockchain or
NFTs anywhere, but it is it's on. i've met with mythical games a lot a lot of times and they
they're a blockchain gaming company they've just absolutely smashed it with um nfl rivals sorry
gareth did you put your hand up i did yeah um i just wanted to say i think one of the the other
hurdles is just you know like what the beginning you know like how you start and how you get into
the game i remember when i first played axie it was like oh no you need to buy an axie and then i had to go and you know get some eef and buy them
on a marketplace and then connect my wallets and then i could you know start playing like
you need to remove all those barriers to entry and i did want to say that i actually i met the
the ubisoft team um uh in paris at paris blockchain last year. And they gave me a firsthand playthrough
of their blockchain-based game.
And it's like a figurines-based game.
Really, really cool.
Very similar to Axie, turn-style type gameplay.
Kind of similar in a way to Dota
where you can get a load of different characters that have different skill sets and different strengths and weaknesses versus other specific classes.
And yeah, like at the end of the day, there is the blockchain component, which they were trying to abstract away so that people don't get hung up on it.
But it was all running on Ethereum.
And at the end of the day, you own the assets. So when you create these figurines or unlock these figurines you own them um but it
was more centered around the gameplay and it looked amazing you know it's it's ubisoft triple
a quality so we're moving in the right direction um and i i like unfortunately people in this
industry are so um fixated on token price that is very hard to focus
on anything else i mean even people with bitcoin it's like what's the price of bitcoin doing today
like forget about the price of bitcoin start thinking about the why you know like why is this
important why was this even created in the first place and like for me that's what's important for
web3 games is it should have a purpose.
People should be able to own the in-game assets,
own their data,
and potentially have a share in the revenue or have a sort of ecosystem
that does allow them to earn some money
for the time spent playing the games.
And it's just an added incentive.
But the game should be good
and you should own your data
and you should be able to own
some of the assets in-game if that's really going to be something that has a bigger use case other than just, hey, we built a blockchain game, buy our token and then hope that everyone plays and the token price goes up.
That's not sustainable, guys.
Yeah, 100%.
We need to just refocus back to gaming and less about the financial aspect.
Brighton, I want to get your thoughts on this.
How do we tackle the image issue with traditional gamers not wanting to engage with NFTs or tokens in any way?
So I think that NFL Rivals did a great job.
I know they're working on, I think, a soccer version of the same game.
And I'm a firm believer that most of these Web3 gaming studios probably should pivot to mobile,
just because I think that mobile gaming audiences are a lot easier to get interested in making those types of leaps
and not being kind of just so beholden to the, oh, this is blockchain blockchain this is bad thing and i think that we've seen that uh the pc gaming
audience is so permeated by former previous scams that happened you had phase with the save the
kids recently you've had you know phase banks shield the hell out of the ml the fake version
of mlg meme coin and for anyone who played mlg as a kid or played major league gaming and competed
you looked at that and you're like
yeah we know where this is going to go and it went exactly how we would have thought it so a lot of
the traditional gaming audience has just been very much like burned by crypto and in that narrative
but then you have like the trusted platforms like steam is the most trusted platform and they're
like hey like blockchain's not allowed here we're here. We're banning any blockchain-based games
that are launching with blockchains, et cetera.
And I think that you get to a point
where people are brainwashed
into thinking a certain type of way
and they're unwilling to kind of look back
at the technology.
So I think in the current state,
if I was doing a Web3 game,
I would be building for mobile
because those audiences are a lot more open
and you don't have to explicitly state,
oh, this is a Web3 game.
But you can also do things like running ads
that allow you to reach your target audience
and get people who are willing to spend,
even if they don't know the backend
that they're spending on is crypto-based or crypto-native.
So I think that mobile probably is going to be
a consistent outperformer over PC-based games.
But then I also think that a lot of these games need to change perspective i know you're raising from vc like games are raising from vcs that want
token launches and tge events so that they can get out liquidity faster and look good in front
of their lps like great for them but in the same instance if you're dismantling an entire industry
before it even gets off the ground through these consistent
TGE practices, who wins? I think a lot of these crypto games need to go back to
raising a bit of the hard way. Go try to raise from a traditional VC that isn't going to make
you beholden to a token, but is going to force you to have to think outside the box on how you
actually reach a sustainable level of revenue. Because for a lot of these projects, after TGE, it's like, oh, well, we got our initial back,
we're just going to ride the rest. And, you know, that's what happens. But it's just not,
it's not a long term sustainable way to create a world where people want to invest in these games.
And we've seen that over the last four years. That's kind of like what's been happening. People
realize like, hey, this is going to zero anyway, why would I put my money into it versus at least having a chance when i swing the bat on a meme coin or some other
riskier asset um and then i also think that you kind of have to build for the audience that's here
i think for the last you know four years or so i've spent a lot of time being like okay like
this is what we need to get gamers in and i think a lot of these things are true but in the same
light build for the people and audiences think a lot of these things are true but in the same light
build for the people and audiences are here people want these hyper speculative hyper financial games
build something that's hyper speculative and hyper financial i think pump fun was just a
early stage indicator of like what you can do when you are creating these speculative gamble
fi hyper fi games like but who's just building a bunch of games that allow people to
speculate on the market and allow them to you know compete where there's winners and losers
like i think you could create a simple game where you have almost like two tickers paired up against
each other and your goal is to predict the ratio or the multiple by which a token will go up or down so will it go up like 0.5x 1x like and whoever's closest can win like i think there's going to be more games that
are just built on top of markets uh and like what's happening on the open market on a daily
basis that aren't you having a short like directly short or put your money online in that way but you
can still earn by a byproduct of playing something just because that's what the audience is more capable to right now in crypto or in Web3. They want games that allow them to
have a chance to make money. And the chance to make money is very synonymous with what gambling.
And I mean, we know how big some of the biggest gambling companies in the world are. So it's like,
I think human psychology and Web3 and crypto is not geared towards sitting and playing and grinding
an MMO or Axie or another game just because most of the people in crypto are older participants,
right? So if you are building a crypto-based game, I don't think it needs a token per se.
I'd love to see a game just raised on the premise of having a very, very good game,
saying that on-chain, the product is going to be on chain we're
going to take a percentage of fees for all on chain transactions or whatever the case may be
you have your traditional business model for your game like your your season pass or whatever the
case is but why not denominate it in usdc like you buy sell and trade in usdc like the only reason
why tokens are involved is because people see tokens as a stock that they can sell to make a quick exit.
But, like, you could build a more – these games could build more sustainable gaming ecosystems if they want.
It's that their investors are not aligned with it because it would mean that their investors would have to wait until a true product is created to see an actual return.
Yeah, I mean, look at counter-strike if you move the skins
economy on on chain made them nfts and put them on a marketplace it would be an unbelievable
economy that people could make genuine money just by playing the game if they get a rare knife they
can sell it as as an nft and make make the money through that then the developers are also making
money from every sale.
We don't need a token in many instances.
And I think that's a great point.
I would love to keep talking about this.
We're just going to have to have you back on, but we are running out of time.
This is great.
We've barely got into it.
We've barely scratched the surface, but we've been going for an hour.
barely scratched the surface but uh it is we've we've been going for an hour so i better call it
So I better call it a day.
a day unfortunately i think for the first 45 minutes of this conversation uh x was having
problems with spaces so we weren't getting as many people in as we should have been so what i'd like
to ask um anyone listening if you can retweet this space so people can listen to the recording
because they're all recorded um then more people will get the insight from this conversation. And, you know, Bryson's takes are just unbelievable and well worth listening to.
But that is the end of today's episode of The Chain Reaction.
Cointelegraph's daily show here on X every single day at 2 p.m. British summertime,
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We are back tomorrow with another guest.
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We've got so many guests.
We've got guests we're booking in for next week.
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We've got guests.
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It's incredible at the moment.
So make sure you tune in same time every day.
And can you please give these guys a follow?
Bryson, give him a follow.
One of my favorite creators in the gaming space.
Forget Web3.
He's a great Web3 creator, but he's also a great gaming creator.
And he's on Twitch and YouTube and TikTok.
Follow him on all of it.
Gareth, again, one of the foremost faces in the space these days.
He's got the opening Paris Blockchain Week at the Fireside Chat next week.
Make sure you give him a follow. He's incredibly interesting.
And if you have a third follow you want to throw to anyone, I will take it, obviously.
Thank you very much for tuning in.
We really appreciate you taking the time and we will see you tomorrow. Thank you.
