Hello, hello, good to see you, everybody.
Welcome to today's edition of the Blockchain Arcade.
I'm really excited to see you here
and we have this first batch of speakers joining us.
I'm leader of a company called GameMe.
We are in mobile gaming space.
We're authors of the Beast Arcade game.
We have around 50 million players playing our games
on Telegram, so we're really much into gaming
and making that famous with Web3 and ownership.
And I'm the host of this show.
We have been discussing various different topics
over a couple of months right now
and decided to change the structure a little bit
So rather than taking a look at a specific topic,
we will look back at what happened in February and March.
What are the exciting evolutions?
What are exciting games that are launching in that space?
So hopefully we will inspire you to play more of them,
and maybe even build some of your own.
Now I think it's time to welcome our speakers.
We will have two times 45 minutes.
Each time we will have a set of speakers
that will discuss with us the February
slash half of March review.
And then we will invite a second batch of speakers
So it will be two times 45 minutes.
We will get different perspectives and different opinions.
we will start with a round of introductions.
So we know who we have today speaking with us.
you don't have to wait for a question.
You don't have to wait to be called on that stage.
Just grab a mic whenever you want
to contribute to the discussion.
This is how we usually lead it.
we follow the discussion wherever it takes us
throughout the 45 minutes.
And yeah, I'm really excited to have you here
a quick round of introductions
and then let's go into understanding
what's hot or not in February and March.
My name is Travis over at Vayner.
I do business development and communications here.
We are an L1 for the billions in the entertainment space
where the testnet just launched about two weeks ago
with a few different campaigns going on it
and excited to be part of the space
and catch up on the February review.
I always learn a ton in these kinds of spaces
and hear about what's going on.
Sometimes it's hard to keep up with everything
while you're working in the space.
So I rely on a lot of the deejans out there
Totally with you on that.
Hi, this is Adil, co-founder at Search for an Amerastar Siege,
which is a PVP only Sapphire space shooter
that's about to go into private bid in a few weeks time.
I guess I'll jump in from here.
Thanks for having us again.
I see a few familiar accounts here.
Happy to be speaking with you guys again on the spaces.
I'm the CEO of Haven's Compass.
If you don't know Haven's Compass,
it's a first person shooter game.
And yeah, I look forward to a great discussion with you guys.
I feel great to have you.
Thanks for having us on the space today.
I'm Matthew here at Game of Sults
and part of the marketing team.
What we're doing is we're digitalizing the sport
of thoroughbred horse racing.
So we're creating actual representations
of living, breathing, real horses as NFTs on the blockchain.
You could purchase them and you earn rewards
based on how your real world horse performs.
Thanks again for having us.
Hey there, I guess I'll kick in.
I'm the founder and CEO of Arcus.
We are building an Unreal Engine 5 competitive ape shooter
leveraging skill staking,
which is a new Web3 gaming protocol
that we have developed combining revenue share
and vote delegation to empower players.
Hello, I guess I'm the only one left here.
This is Mindless, I'm from the BSC in gaming team.
We are traditionally a media company
from the blockchain space,
having transitioned over into the Web3 gaming space.
We keep our finger on the pulse
of everything that's happening in this industry.
We touch base with most of the founders and builders
and we hope to try and put content out,
cover media news of anything that you're doing
to get yourself in front of the audience
that wants to see what you're doing.
Okay, I'm great to have you.
Yeah, this is Smeek, I represent Puffverse,
a Web3 gaming and metaverse company.
We are behind the game Puffgo,
which is a mobile game that's inspired by fall guys,
And we are currently in the middle of unveiling
sneak peeks of our Puffworld metaverse to the Puffgo app.
Happy to be here in this AMA
and looking forward to the discussion.
So we have a great selection of speakers and builders.
So I'm super keen to hear from you.
Looking back at the couple of weeks,
what are some of the best Web3 games
that in your point of view were released updated
that made it stand out for you,
that you played, enjoyed,
that you would like to point the audience towards?
I'm sure you're also, you play many games, right?
I think if I'm gonna kick it off,
then I'm gonna have to sound biased
if you're asking about the favorite game
or what games came up last on LinkedIn
and Web3, that's gonna be Haven's Compass.
We released our alpha, I would say,
for testing for the community.
We also had three minutes of NFTs,
so there was a lot going on for us.
So as I said, it's quite biased.
That's fine, that's fine.
So you have a 2024 generation of game, right?
Launching now, as you said.
Would you say there is something that makes people
excited about some type of feature, some type of economy?
What is the secret of a game launch early 2024?
How are the games built differently?
I mean, definitely there are a few trends
that we're seeing nowadays,
such as play to air drop is one thing,
and then we have NFTs is always a thing.
it's always something that gets the people excited.
We have multiple things that we're planning on doing also
without mentioning for the time being,
but obviously we have a lot
that we're still planning on doing
to keep everyone excited from the community.
But when it comes to the trends
that are happening this year, especially,
I think it's two things that we've been hearing a lot.
One thing, play to air drop, what I mentioned before,
and the second thing is interoperability.
So to say, just having the game function
on multiple chains at the same time.
So these are the main two things
that I've been hearing over and over and over again.
I would say everyone has their own opinion
of how they're gonna utilize that kind of a thing,
and whether they want to utilize,
for example, a play to air drop strategy in their game or not.
But it's definitely a trend nowadays.
And I think everything has pros and cons,
but I see more pros than cons for both of these trends.
Great opening, thank you.
So please, speakers, what do we have?
A game that made you excited?
Or if you want to react on the current trends
on play to air drop, pre-ment, and FTs,
or interoperability among chains.
How does it work in your projects
or projects you watch closely?
Yeah, I think the play to air drop
kind of a meta that's going on.
It's great for acquiring users.
It's great for marketing,
kind of spreading your name out there.
Kind of like it was touched on.
It can be done good and bad.
You want to make sure when you're doing those,
you're not selling the farm
to get that kind of short-term pop or hype
keeping the long-term goals in mind the whole way.
But they are great for bringing in users.
I think UGC and the user-generated content trend
And it's a great way to really bring in
but also market and kind of expose yourself
to a new and different outside market of users
than you may typically have.
People that may not be there just to play the game
or just grind along or participate,
but they may be there for artistic
or trying to get some of their UGC stuff out there.
So it's another awesome angle for exposure and stuff.
and two that really pop out
or a few that really pop out to me
is I think Nifty Island's really doing some great things.
I think Pixels is really doing great
and doing some cool things there
as far as attracting players and then retaining them as well.
with their continuous kind of updates and engagement
with the communities and the space as a whole.
I think they're doing a great job.
Yeah, I'd just like to piggy bank off the back of that.
there was just so much activity going on
It was almost difficult for us to keep up here
We had to try to be unbiased and neutral,
but there was an awful lot.
I mean, Shrapnel, obviously,
doing the rounds done incredibly well.
I think it was received very well from the Web3 space too.
I'm also, just to Abood's point,
very interested in Haven's compass.
I don't believe there's actually anything live yet,
because I would have loved to get my hands on that,
And again, it's one of those
that's been building for a very long time.
We also had, obviously, Heroes of Marvia, right?
It's done incredibly well in the mobile space.
I think it broke a bunch of records
from Web3 terms on the first release.
Some people may disagree,
but there's an awful lot.
I don't think it was a mistake.
I do that a lot, fat fingers.
But you've also got some of these older projects
that were considered to be down and out for the count
just because they may have dwindled on the timeline.
So things such as the Orori project
building on Solana with their Heroes of Token launch.
They suffered a lot of setbacks in the bear market.
I think the takeaway for me through all of this
is essentially pay attention to who had been building
over the last couple of years,
ignored the winter season,
the hardships that came with it,
and they're still standing.
I think for me, that's the takeaway.
And if they've got an active community
that's been with them through that,
that's also something I should pay attention to.
And I think a lot of our friends and partners up here
have kind of managed that too.
you've built through the worst parts of the market
and you've maintained the community.
I think those are some really good metrics to look at.
Yeah, for me, it's not any political game as such,
but I think I'm starting to see fractional ownership
of NFTs as well pop into my feeds.
I came across ERC 404 standard.
So essentially it's connected to your ERC-20 tokens.
If you hold the ERC-20 token,
the NFT is gonna be in ERC 404 format.
And if the token goes away, the NFT goes away.
Now, what I'm seeing with one of the new games,
I think it's called Xtreme was,
So it's the same concept,
but I think it allows for a fractional ownership
I don't think they're live yet,
but it's starting to show up in a couple of games.
I think Star Heroes, they did a fractional ownership
of the space shooter map as well.
I think they just did the sale for that week ago.
Maybe in this particular cycle,
like in order to improve liquidity in the NFT market
and not set the bar too high,
I think that might be something that, you know,
games will start to look at.
Yeah, I completely agree that there's a lot of potential
with regards to ERC 404s,
especially for potentially games
that are looking to use limited supply NFT model,
but still, you know, be able to benefit from DeFi
and from things like exchange listings, et cetera.
And, you know, just to benefit from more liquidity,
I do think that it does make sense.
There's a lot of cool things that you can do too.
You can do like endlessly randomized loop boxes,
for example, using an ERC 404.
That's the use we still with Pandora,
but yeah, completely agree.
So when speaking about success,
there have been a couple concepts mentioned
and I was wondering if you think it is important
on which chain the game launches,
because maybe there is a trend wave or excitement
for a specific ecosystem or chain
and having and knowing the choice right at the right time
actually influences the success of the game.
Maybe it can even work the other way around
as it seems to be the case of running and pixels, right?
So what are your thoughts around that?
What is the, how does the marriage between the game
and then the chain and the right timing look like?
Yeah, I think, so for a game overall,
I think the chain, for the long-term vision,
you know, short-term there's a lot of hype
with certain chains and you can get a lot of exposure
to certain chains, but it's very important I think
to remember and realize like,
is this going to be something that still works
for you in the long-term?
Well, you know, there's various factors.
It can be gas fees, you know,
when we scale up to a million players
or we're gonna start running into major gas wars.
Is the infrastructure gonna be able to handle
like a huge load of players
or even different concepts or things we wanna do
within our game, you know, is that available
or is that something that can be done in a seamless way
but where it doesn't create those kind of pinch points,
you know, as many of those kind of tech things
that can be removed from the front-facing consumer,
I think the better, you know,
when you can get the bridges out of the way,
you can get the wallet connects,
you can get the exchanges,
all that kind of stuff in the background as best possible
makes for a easier, more seamless user experience
because most of the gaming market right now
is still used to very much signing in
with like a username and password
or with their Google sign on
or, you know, their Play Store sign on
And a lot of these other elements can be very foreign.
And when someone's first entering your game,
those can be those kind of hurdles
that really cause a large drop-off rate.
Someone comes in and checks out your game,
says, this trailer looks awesome,
and then all of a sudden they run into,
you know, hey, you need to download this wallet,
you need to, you know, move stuff from,
you know, move a token from this exchange
and fund it here on this chain
and it starts creating problems
where people will say, oh, you know what,
I'm trying to move on to the next game.
So, you know, I think for, you know,
that's definitely an appealing factor.
Like, oh, look, if I go launch on this chain
or I launch with this launch pad or whatever,
I'm gonna get a huge influx of users.
But, you know, kind of going back to what I said earlier,
you wanna make sure it's not gonna handcuff you
or throttle you further down the road.
You know, I think that blockchain for the most part
should be just the tech layer in the background
and the user experience of the game
is what is going to be your biggest success factor.
Using blockchain where it makes sense
and not trying to force blockchain
where it may not make sense.
You don't have to use it just to use it.
You don't have to say, hey, look, let's, you know,
do the staking just because staking's available
if it doesn't make sense for your game.
So I think those are, you know,
some important things to keep in mind
when it comes to the chain and just tech as a whole
is that at the end of the day, it is just, you know,
Yeah, to add to the point that the previous speaker
had said that it's really good point actually
about not letting the tech dictate the overall direction
of the game, although that's also important.
I think it goes both ways.
So the underlying blockchain technology,
aside from providing a, like a talk,
like a economic model for how you want to progress the game
if you want to involve the participants,
the gamers in a more participatory manner
by having them being involved in governance decisions
Yeah, that's of course crucial to emphasize the value
of the blockchain brings.
And it's also important to keep in mind
that the progress made in the tech side for the blockchain
it would also affect like the viability
and like the speed, the performance of a website game.
So for instance, I think a big thing
that people are looking forward to
is the Ethereum then can upgrade,
which would happen sometime tomorrow, I think,
But the main, one of the main things
that will be updated during that upgrade
is having lesser fees for L2.
So I think it would see an even fiercer competition
between platforms to market themselves
as the layer to platforms in particular
to market themselves as the more viable tech stock
to use so that you have the best possible progress
for developing your game.
But of course, well, that's also important.
It's also important to not get too much into the tech,
like don't expect your audience
to understand immediately what the function
of the blockchain in your game.
Sometimes, especially in the cases
of more casual games like ours,
it might even detract from the experience.
So what we do, for instance, in our game
is we make the game open to both web two and web three.
Those who already know web three would use their wallets
by the NFTs to enhance their gaming experience.
And then those who are coming in from web two
can still just log into the game using
whatever methods comfortable with them
by an email, by username.
So they're not still in the web three,
but they play with fellow web three gamers
and they interact, they would observe the progress
being made by web two versus web three.
And while the game is still skill-based,
there are some cooler features that are available
for those who buy the NFTs.
So that way, people are incentivized to explore web three
at their own pace and based on their own interest.
So it's perfectly fine for us
if they don't really make the jump to web three.
But of course, we're gonna continue to do our best
in the community and marketing side
to emphasize the advantages that gamers have
when they shift to web three
instead of sticking into the web two version of the game.
So there are all those nuances.
And of course, for each web three game,
there would be, you know, execution could vary
But I think overall, the development
in the blockchain tech side of things
would serve to make the web three gaming experience
And it's all up to the projects
to actually take advantage of the,
and the increasing competition between these blockchains.
I'd like to chime in quick if that's okay.
So this is actually a great question
and a great point to consider.
Like what I'm seeing or what we're seeing
with a number of our partners and teams that we speak to
is the realization now that it's the first step
usually shouldn't be what chain you're launching on.
It should, that's perhaps a second or a third decision
that comes down the line.
And even that, the tech of that specific blockchain itself
isn't even the first thing to consider.
So I'll give you a couple of examples.
Within the blockchain space,
you've got networks that have historically
some of the biggest liquidity available.
So Ethereum is obviously up there.
I think it dwarfs everything else.
Considerably second one down on the list
is still 10 times less than Ethereum per se.
And then there's obviously daily active traded volumes.
There's historic active wallets
that are not just sprung up in the last month or so.
But it comes at a trade off, right?
It's slightly more expensive.
There's a bit of resistance there.
So it might not be catered to the newer user,
but everything from Ethereum down on the list
is sort of competing for second best now.
And that's still a bit of a free for all.
So what I'm seeing now is becoming more and more apparent.
I think heroes of mafia were perhaps
one of the first to do it so openly in public.
And that is to just launch
without being on any chain ecosystem natively.
Get your game out there, get it in front of the users,
get the metrics, get the play tests,
get the games going, build and foster that community.
And then take your time to figure out
which one of these ecosystems you want to go to.
It shouldn't be the very first decision you make.
And I think that's an interesting approach.
And when we look at it back in previous years,
Axi and many other large gaming ecosystems
actually launched on Ethereum first.
The sophisticated web three users
of all of the DAP utility that's on there.
And they launched on that as a really strong
foundational base and then branched off into other things.
And some of these games, some of the friends
that are down here, even depending on how successful you do,
you may end up going and building your own layer two
at some point, who knows, right?
It's about whether you can take that community
with you into another ecosystem.
And if you have a large enough community,
you can perhaps even branch off into your own layer two.
That's a conversation I think perhaps we're not considering.
I think for a lot of the partners we're working with now,
it seems to be a very easy decision.
Where's the biggest liquidity available?
What has the largest user basis
in terms of active participants on that chain?
And perhaps we should launch there
as a soft launch or an initial launch,
get the foundations in place
and then transition onto another chain.
Anyone else wants to comment on the chain?
I think that's super interesting topic
because it's sometimes tempting to jump on a trend wave.
But then like taking the decision
and like really looking long-term,
like how are we going to build our own community
and community around the specific game
rather than trying to like hop on whatever's hot.
And you can get yourself in a very difficult position
like jumping from one to chain or another
without the interoperability being,
like as similar as it should be, right?
So we're not exactly there.
So before we jump to a new topic
and I have a couple more things
I would like to hear from you about.
but this really helps with the X algorithm.
If you, I don't know, like, comment, share the spaces,
it just reaches more people
and this is what we want to see.
So please do that if you like.
We really happy to see more listeners.
And one more thing I would like to hear
that taps into actually jumping on the trends or not
or leveraging the trends for the good of the project.
And the topic is meme tokens.
So meme tokens and gaming could be closed
or do not have to be closed.
I'd just like to hear from you.
So we have seen a massive attention shift
maybe that like focus on AI,
like everything AI is super hot,
like you're using AI or you're hot.
Now the shift is more into memes.
The trend, the next trend might be something else,
but I would like to hear from you
like gaming memes in February, 2024.
I'd like to jump the gun and be first.
I've said this for years and I'll continue to say this.
There is an awful lot of cultural crossover
between the gaming community and the meme community.
It's almost identical in a lot of ways
and you would be foolish to ignore it.
In fact, a lot of internet memes
come from gaming culture specifically
from within gaming ecosystems or gaming groups
on subreddits and forums and obscure parts of the internet.
So you would be a little bit silly
to just write them all off as if it's nothing.
Memes specifically are an internet phenomenon
from the last two decades.
So again, it's very much enshrined
into the digital economy and the digital communities
You can think of it like metaphors or tons of phrases
that may have been prevalent in sort of literature
from previous decades, right?
Well, now the tons of phrases and metaphors
on the internet, it's memes.
Again, so there's a lot of crossover
What I haven't seen yet is,
and maybe it's a long-term thing,
it's probably a social thing or sociological phenomenon,
is memes born from long-running gaming communities
that then become tokenized
and become meme tokens on crypto, for example.
So we've got Dogecoin, which was a crypto-centric,
cryptocurrency-centric meme
that then gained exposure to the real world.
which is a long-running real world meme
that then got tokenized and came into the crypto space.
Two very interesting examples to study.
But I want to see perhaps something from the gaming world,
maybe something out of CSGO,
or one of these long-running MMORPGs at some point
get tokenized and become just a silly meme coin
It might take another five or six years
before that generation finally gets here, right?
I think even the most notable memes
are things we all refer to and understand.
but I think we're going to see more come out the works
as that internet generation hits their mid-20s and 30s
and finally realizes, hey, I can tokenize
some of this historical, cultural memorabilia
that meant something to us as a generation.
But yeah, I think gaming and memes,
You can't actually divorce the two.
No one else on memes, can't believe that.
How about this for a phenomenon?
So we're seeing obviously initiatives
from the Solana Foundation,
as well as the Avance Foundation
to try and encourage that type of,
I think, playfulness on their chains.
Maybe there's a lesson there to sort of inspire
some sort of creativity or silliness
within the gaming communities that we have.
I think we should just open that door.
It might be a bit of a Pandora's door,
Just entertain it, see where it goes.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Well, I'm really curious how this is going to under all.
We have some ideas around that at gaming as well.
And I think these are such a strong excitement trends
when you're in the entertainment business, right?
So if something people find entertaining,
we should figure out how to bring it to them.
And that does not mean necessarily being reactive
and jumping on specific micro trends,
but really figuring out what people love
and how do we build what we do
in line with what people like to consume at that point.
Because I really think it does shift
that can make a game super popular
or a project super popular
because it's just timed, right?
And with that, I wanted to ask about,
so there has been some gloom around mobile games
Because the clarity about the rules on App Store
and Google Play wasn't really like,
or are we going to be friends or enemies?
And now, at least my observation
from the beginning of this year
is maybe App Stores are the way
where to launch web3 games
because we are seeing more
and more successful launches on App Store.
So I would like to hear from you.
How big is the trade off?
Do you plan launch a mobile game on mobile stores?
How do you think about it?
I think mobile's good and good for web3 gaming.
and it's such an easy access point for so many people.
You know, not everyone has a gaming PC,
not everyone has, you know, an Xbox or a PlayStation,
but almost everyone has a smartphone in their pocket.
And it's, you know, an easy,
I don't want to say it's an easy market to tap into,
but it's a market that is very saturated
that can be some low hanging fruit.
And if you kind of brand it in the correct way,
market it in the correct way
and then have your rollout,
your user experience done correctly,
it can be a great onboarding tool.
And like most of those mobile games,
you'll have a vast majority that are just casual players
that will jump on there when they're waiting
for their kid's soccer practice to be done
or they're on the bus or whatnot.
But you'll have a segment of that
that will want to go deeper
and they'll want to get more and more into it
and more and more experience.
And I think that those can be an easy lures for people
to, you know, kind of guide them along
into a larger ecosystem that you may have.
You know, I think about it all the time.
Like I have Candy Crush on my phone.
I've probably, I don't, well,
I can say I haven't opened it at all in 2024.
I might've opened the game one time in the last year,
but my wife, she's on like level like, you know,
600,000, it's concerning how much she plays Candy Crush.
So, you know, you have those players in each game
where, you know, you have people like me
that, you know, might hop on there, you know,
once or twice a week or something like that.
But then you do have a segment that, you know,
is in there, they're buying everything.
They're wanting to, you know, experience more and more.
They're wanting, you know,
to get deeper and deeper into the game.
And how to, you know, experience more into it
because they just have that passion
because they love the game so much.
So I really like, you know,
the mobile gaming market with Web3,
but I know that it doesn't fit everyone's kind of game.
You know, not all games translate well to mobile,
but for the ones where it does
or even where you can kind of have some type of experience
on a mobile level that's engaging and can be,
you know, fun and bring people in,
I think that it's definitely something for people to explore.
So there's a bigger discussion here
and it's actually been ongoing for quite a while.
So going back to the 2017 and 2018 cycles
when, in my opinion, I think Web3 Gaming really took off.
We've just not paid attention to it.
And one of the big discussions back then,
and there were several projects that tried to attempt
to corner or solve this problem,
was with gaming platforms, launchers, app stores,
the likes of Steam and Microsoft stores,
and especially on mobile too.
And the discussion was that these are very, very
value abstractive and become a hindrance to any studio
or gaming ecosystems that's looking to grow
to become incredibly successful.
So Apple specifically can take up to 30% of,
in-game transactions and revenue generated
Steam, I believe it's higher.
And then you've got fees on top of that,
depending on what gaming engine you use,
whether it's Unity or Unreal Engine.
And those themselves can be five or 10%
depending on how high you scale.
you abstract all of this apps of what you've built.
You're left with sort of less than 50% on occasions
as to what you would have actually made.
Now, imagine in the web three world,
let's say you have a very, very successful game
that ends up becoming billions of dollars of value
traded every week through your gaming ecosystem
at the height of the bull market.
I mean, take a nice 30% chunk out of that.
What are we talking about?
There's a very strong case there to say,
actually we might need to reconsider
how this entire gaming app store platform ecosystem
is set up and try to build something
that's more akin to infrastructure
that's for the greater good of everybody
as opposed to the greater good
of just me and my corporation, per se.
Like some sort of public service good gaming platform.
There were attempts that were made back in the day.
which is a blockchain based gaming launcher and platform
I don't think any of them have actually nailed it.
Now you see conversations of Epic.
Epic game store going down the web three friendly route,
but I'm still very suspicious.
but I don't think it's friend or foe.
I think we should just remain cautious as an industry
and as builders in this space,
because we are customers.
So like it is our economic activity
that everything depends on here.
And we are customers to the platforms.
We are customers to the devices
and sometimes we can be held captive too.
So yeah, I don't think we should let the ball down
It's actually part of a much, much bigger solution here.
I know the grammar in our 10 years history
of publishing games on stores.
We had couple moments where we crossed the line
of innovation and we're kicked out of app store.
So that's not a great thing to do.
But it's always back and forth, right?
You push and do something new
and then Apple comes and says like,
And then couple years later, it's okay.
So I still think that even within the terms
and conditions and all the limitations,
we should be brave and push forward
because it's just a great way of distributing
and getting content safely to different devices
all around the world with all the taxations
and everything figured out.
If you have to do the billing directly,
it's just a big, massive nightmare.
So as much as I'm a fan of decentralization
and everything around it,
this is like the infrastructure
beyond distributing games through the stores
actually make mobile gaming where it is right now.
So that's how we will get on better terms
So, yeah, they get to protect their business model
in some way, but it still makes sense
We haven't heard as much from Matthew,
What about, what was your experience?
How have you seen the trends and role
at the beginning of this year?
I think interoperability we talked about
a little bit earlier on in the space.
I think that's a big one.
I think that also ties into the memes
and Game and Mindless mentioned
how much of a correlation there is
between the two communities.
And if you guys are building a community right now,
I'm sure you see it in your Discord and Telegram,
like 50% of the communication is done
So I think that going through
and having interoperability,
being able to accept other chains and other coins
is important and that ties into the memes,
being able to take in meme coins.
If there's a trend that's going
and a new coin is coming up,
as a community or as a company,
you should be able to tie in to that
and be able to accept those coins
and it'll help you as a company
to be able to be around for more people
rather than just stuck on one chain
where you're limiting your exposure.
What is the chain of choice you have in Game of Selects?
Well, right now we're on just one chain.
We were built on Ethereum,
but interoperability between chains
is something we're definitely looking into
and I think every product should be here for the long time.
like a full one, seamless, nice one, for sure, great.
So we're getting towards the end of the first segment.
It's been an amazing talk with you.
I have a paper full of notes from what you've said
and some ideas that sparked out of it.
Thank you so much for contributing.
If you would like to stay for the second segment
and hear what the other set of speakers have to say,
and now we will be changing the speakers.
we will be taking new speakers on the stage
and we will continue in the next 45 minutes of discussions
around the trends, what's been hard
and how the beginning of 2024 enrolled in Web3 Gaming.
I'm really excited to be here with you today.
I'm a co-founder and leader of a company called GameMe.
We're in mobile gaming and Web3 Gaming.
Mobile gaming almost a decade, Web3 Gaming for years.
So we have seen quite a few trends
and still learning all the time, right?
We all are in this industry figuring out
what is the way, how do we intrigue the billions of gamers
and make them excited about digital ownership.
Thank you so much for everybody who has been with us.
If you want to like, comment, share this little space,
it does help us spread and get more audience.
This is what we like to do.
So thank you very much for joining
if you haven't done that yet.
And now I see already new speakers coming up.
So we will give them a couple more minutes
and then we will start again
with a round of introductions
so we know who the second set of speakers are.
we will again go directly in the discussion.
We will kind of repeat the same things.
Like what is it that popped out?
What are the trends that stand out for you?
What have you played and enjoyed and why?
So I'm really excited to get more inspiration
as I always do in these spaces.
And I already see the first speakers joining.
Well, I hope my connection is still fine.
Can you give me some emojis, please?
Because I'm not sure now if I disconnected
or if I'm still with you.
Yes, yes, I'm still there, amazing.
Okay, I see the speakers popping up.
We will need to give them a couple of minutes
because I ripped up the first segment a little bit early,
something like one minute early
and if everything's on time, then we're one minute early.
But it's going to be fine.
So again, just a quick recap for the roles.
We'll start with an introduction of speakers.
Then we will open up the discussion segment.
Some of the speakers have been with the blockchain arcade
For some of the new ones,
there is not a specific sequence of questions.
I will not, unless you don't speak at all,
I will not call you out so you can grab a mic
whenever you want to contribute to the talk.
And kind disagreement is always welcomed, of course.
Some topics have seen some disagreements and discussions.
Some topics are more consensual.
So we'll see how today goes.
Typically on the trends, people do not argue.
I don't know why, but that's what I've seen.
And I think maybe we can kick it off.
So let's do a round of introductions
and then go directly into it.
Hey guys, I can jump in here.
I assume that's all good with you, Bizana.
Hey everyone, my name is Justin Kruger.
I'm the director of marketing over at N-Way Games.
And I've been in marketing and in gaming
for the last 15 years and blockchain gaming for the last four.
N-Way Games is a long standing studio
that has been building games for over a decade.
And we have some really exciting games this year
that we're gonna be working on and advancing.
One that we launched last year called Rec League
that we're really excited about
announcing more features on soon.
And then we have a few more games.
and one with a couple of different web three projects
that we're gonna be talking about pretty soon.
and thanks for having us on Bizana.
Welcome, great to have you back.
We're also part of the same family, right?
So give me an N-Way has collaborated in parts
and I hope to see more of it.
Hey Bizana, thanks for having us.
It's Sneaky Che behind the shrapnel account.
We're a triple A first person extraction shooter
building on the avalanche blockchain.
We've given away over $600,000
of our native shrapnel token to our players
So hopefully some players out in the audience
have been able to compete for that leaderboard.
We have heard a lot about you.
Already got some mentions in the first segment.
Yeah, thanks for having me on here as always guys.
Yeah, it was good to be a part of the crowd as it were.
So yeah, my metaverse we've been building out since 2021.
We've already built and tested our first platform
as well as also built our first game as well.
We're now currently building our second game
and yeah, we've also been hosting our air drop as well
for the past couple of weeks now.
Already given away roughly $20,000 worth of the token.
We've got a lot more to come as well.
You know, all sort of in preparation
for the token generation event in September.
So, and with the release of the game as well.
So yeah, it's all cooking
and yeah, thanks again for having me.
I'm the marketing manager of Chibi Clash.
I'm also a three gaming KOL and a community owner.
we are actually a fantasy gaming
an expansive fantasy gaming universe
that leverages on blockchain and AI.
We just launched our metagame kingdoms
this February moving into mutable CKVM.
And we had our second playtest
and our leaderboard competition.
Second leaderboard competition just wrapped up yesterday
and we're hoping to have our third leaderboard
We're also going to be announcing
a lot of other things is gonna be happening
if you could follow our social center channels
so you can keep updated with what's happening with us,
that would be awesome and appreciated.
Thanks for having us, Bozina.
This is Ray behind me, third wave profile.
I had market development over here.
Third wave is a wallet intelligence company.
Our free wallet intelligence tooling
is dedicated to really just unlocking
the full potential of blockchain wallet awareness.
It's designed to provide deep actionable insights
into blockchain wallet activities,
really just bridging the knowledge gap
for developers and marketers alike.
So we're gonna be launching at GDC very soon.
And if anybody wants a sneak peek before,
Hey guys, my name is David.
I'm the lead developer of the GDC team.
The chief growth officer on Manic Panda Games,
which is the study behind BlingGalaxy,
which is our distribution and discovery platform.
And we are the minds behind OntoRing,
Razorloop and other several games that we are developing.
And 2024 for us is the year in which we will open the gates
for everyone to play our games.
We were building a lot from 2021,
all the pieces that allowed us to create
all the content that we are doing right now.
We just also announced that our first physical game
also on Switch and PS5, which is One Last Breath.
And so we are a web three native studio,
but we also are doing some web two games on the side
so we can get everyone into know us
and start getting them to the dark side of the moon,
as you can say, and get them into the web three.
So yeah, we're OntoRing is our biggest game.
It's an MMORPG that we are treating as a leaf service
and building in public since June of the last year.
Then we have Razorloop, which is a zero gravity racing game,
much like Wipeout or FC Rex on Nintendo 64.
If there is something as old as me here in this.
And also we have some Android and Wifus TCG battle game
with cards inspired on Japanese anime Wifus.
So we are doing a lot at the same time.
We're all with our PBB challenge,
giving more than $10,000 going on there.
And so yeah, I'm super happy to be here
to talk about gaming and web three gaming,
which is what I love to do.
And yeah, thank you for having me.
And we have one more, yes.
Sorry, I have a feeling that that could be me.
So it is, you have to apologize.
I'm suffering from a bit of a cold or something today.
Yes, I'm Paul, I'm the general manager here at Myth.
My goodness, my brain's not working today.
Yes, we're basically, we're into web three gaming.
So no, we might have a little bit of a delay here.
Let's have Myth complete, the introduction.
So yes, we're web three gaming,
basically digital entertainment, IP.
We would be heavily involved into anime, IP.
We have a couple of things in the pipeline,
But yes, we're currently closing out privacy
But yeah, I mean, that's all,
that's all the kind of boring stuff
when we come with that later.
I just prefer and reduce spaces
just to shoot debris with people, have a laugh,
learn some information and just for an hour,
So looking forward to getting engaged
and having a challenging day.
All right, have a good one.
So Salsa, I don't know if,
whenever you are able to reconnect,
feel free to answer and contribute to the discussion
and do the intro while you're ready, okay?
So I hope the audio will be fixed.
And now I think for us is the time to open the topic.
And just, I would like to hear from you,
what are some of the best web three games
or something that stood out for you
at the beginning of this year,
content-wise specific game or even a mechanic
as we have been touching the first segment
on how some of the mechanics
became really popular recently as of play to a drop
or perhaps treatment NFTs or specific chains.
So would love to hear from you.
What have you seen this year that stood out for you?
And why do you think that happened?
So for me, okay, I'll go first.
So for me, it's the, you know, one of the games
because it kind of got into my, all my weak spots
which are Mecha's, Dragon's and Anime.
It was the last game that got into the running network
For me, it was super awesome that they are already
building an IP with comic and in an animated series.
And that's something that even though we are native digital,
we kind of reach for physical things
and things that are more used to what we are,
you know, what we know already.
So for me, Kaido are doing things very, very interesting
and very, very good and getting some dots
like together to make like something really,
And for me, that's kind of the top peak
for the beginning of this year.
You know, I think first of all,
shout out to the great games in this panel here.
You know, I'm a big fan of shrapnel as well.
You know, I think they do a lot of great things.
And, you know, I think certainly you hit on a couple
of topics here, Bizena, right?
And, you know, I think it's definitely calling out
something like pixels that saw a tremendous growth.
One by switching over to Ronin
and then also doing a plate airdrop campaign.
I thought that was a really incredible experience,
you know, and then I think you're seeing a lot
of really interesting things come out around like Nifty Island.
And then there's some broader trends
that are really interesting to kind of see,
like almost kind of the comeback of some of these games
that may have been lost and forgotten.
You know, I think towards the end of last year,
Pixelmon raised $8 million in a round
and their game is actually looking really, really solid.
You see projects like Mechaverse really starting
to really kind of come back and build out their ecosystem
in really interesting ways.
And so, you know, I think what's really exciting for me
as someone who's been in this space since 2020
is seeing these projects that were,
had so much potential and excitement around them
that may have sort of, you know,
kind of were given up on maybe a little bit too quickly
and then actually have had the sort of development cycle
that they needed to kind of turn things around.
And, you know, for me as a game designer,
as a game player, as a game investor
in tokens and speculator,
I love seeing these kind of turnaround stories
and I think we're gonna see a lot more
in the next few years as well,
where more of these projects
that may have been forgotten are picked up again.
Yeah, I like to, I'm sorry.
If I can, I just like an add-on question to Justin
and sorry to interrupt, which is really curious
because you have a game that has been around
It's been launched the Rec League last year
and you have some games that are coming up this year.
So we'll just be really curious
if you plan something differently for the releases
or if you're looking at the trends,
if you're watching the trends
and if you're like looking to implement the trends in the game
or even like figuring out the comeback
for the games that have been launched.
actually starting Thursday,
we're gonna be announcing our major roadmap correctly
where we're gonna be talking about an updated
talking a lot about our value generation
for holding these assets,
a lot of benefits for holding Rec League next.
And then also sort of an updated ecosystem
around the Rec League game modes,
which are gonna be really kind of an innovative advancement
using some AI combat mechanics.
So we're really excited about
where we're going and we're really paying attention closely
to what the community is telling us around
what they wanna see from web-free ecosystems.
And we're really taking a look at the market as a whole.
It's so hard to, I'll say this,
it's so hard to develop in web-free
because you might chase an idea
or you might chase a trend
and then that trend dies in a week, right?
And so what we're really focused on
is long-term growth and long-term planning.
And that's really the trend that we hope to establish.
We wanna have a game that's around for five, 10 years,
Well, I'd say at the moment,
we are just really experiencing the current meta, right?
With the ad, especially anything involving ad drops.
And it's not a new meta either.
It's something that we've experienced already in the past,
especially during like the ICO FAD
and everything like that in 2017.
And yeah, that's when we saw some of the first
web-free games come about as well
was during some of those periods.
So, and it's due to the fact that you can obviously
gamify the living hell out of, you know,
ad drops obviously, especially now
because there's a lot more tools
and a lot more features and services that are available
that allow us to do this.
And so, and Justin makes a really good point.
It's too often enough that you can throw a lot of time,
resources and effort into chasing trends
And I think if you can pinpoint it in a way
and use it to your advantage for growth,
But there's definitely a lot of situations as well
where a lot of games and projects are gonna
yeah, bury themselves through this as well
by either, you know, reducing their eradication.
And so, you know, the amount of, you know, financial appeal
that they may have to a VC or to investments, et cetera.
And so that plays into it a lot.
So there needs to be a lot of, you know,
you need to be really careful really with, you know,
with exactly how you're gonna approach, you know,
But the reality of it is, I think,
and one of the things I really wanted to sort of mention,
yeah, we say about, you know, what have we seen,
you know, this coming year so far or whatever else.
You know, I think it's very clear at this point,
you know, now that we're quite a few years
into this, you know, web free gaming,
you know, expansion, I guess,
that, you know, there's yet to actually be
a place where a model that actually works.
We know this because we haven't had any successful games yet.
About a lot of games that I've done well at first and,
I don't know if you agree on this one, you know,
I mean, by all means, you know,
if you think there are a successful,
I would love to have a look at that.
But yeah, I think in the moment that hasn't been,
you know, an actual worthwhile model
that's actually been conceptually put together.
So I think, you know, what Justin said,
in case of actually chasing after these things,
and especially if it's, you know,
a different setup or a different model,
you know, which is new to you
and new to the entire industry,
yeah, that might be the only way, in fact,
that we'll actually ever see a plausible web free game.
Yeah, that's just where we're at at the moment anyway.
I have to jump super quick here because,
and, you know, this is directly related
with how we think on creating games.
And we actually think that, you know,
web free gaming, like the play to earn thing,
it's a lie, like it's a lie.
I mean, games can be gifting tokens or giving tokens
just by making two clicks or doing things inside the game.
And for us, how we are focusing all our efforts
is in to create a player-driven economy.
Like they have been from the very beginning
on the games that had enough traction
to create a real offer and demand on the assets of the game.
So we can think about project entropy,
we can think about even line,
we can think about, I don't know,
like lineage or even world of Warcraft.
I mean, there were like the dungeon bosses,
epic weapons going for thousands of dollars
because, you know, they had real demand on the game.
So what we have to strive as game creators
inside web free scene is to give the environments
and the sandboxes for the users to be entrepreneurs
So the web free layer of technology has to put more value
and actually make sense with what you do into the game
because then your players,
which they are the pro traders of your game,
if they are smart enough are the ones
that are going to create the economy in the game.
Because the ones that are going to create the demand
and offer is the players in a fun game,
which is another thing that we have to do like a fun game.
And I know that, you know,
most of you guys may think that, you know,
even if you do a super fun game,
if people doesn't see that they can do money,
they're not going to enter into the game
because it is what it is.
You need to pump the token.
People doesn't care about that.
But you need to have a fun game that makes sense
with the web free layer, you're putting on it.
you're not going to be into a long-term growth
I mean, it's going to be an ephemeral thing
that it's going to last for a month and that's it.
But we're trying here to create an IP of games
and are actually make sense also between them
because interoperability is another thing
we have been searching for interoperability for years.
I mean, come on, I've been playing Diablo all my life
and I've been having to start from scratch
even though they are from the same company.
So the time and effort I put into Diablo II
didn't go to Diablo III or to Diablo IV.
So it doesn't make sense for us that
and so we want to do something with it
and what three is the solution for that,
but you have to use it right.
I would like to open here and hello, everyone.
It was some interruption with my connection.
I would like to add some vision
and some thoughts according to their speech
or the previous speaker that we are also related to that.
So we think that one of the main things
that we need to create the circulation
of the assets in the games
and in that case, people will not be like,
people will not just green on it
just to do several clicks to get the airdrop
or to get any tokens and so on
because it's definitely not the thing
that we would like to see, for example,
in our business and our economy.
And I guess that you think the same
and that's why we need to provide, of course,
the fun games, the fun activity to the people
that they will really play the games
and also for that, we need to engage the newbies
to the market from the web to the people
who really play the games.
And in a funny way, to provide them
in the gamified learning experience
and in the gamified learning process
to provide them the best features,
how to interact with that
and to circulate these assets
which they can get in the game, for example,
and can mint for the entities, for example,
they can use in the same game
or they can create their economy among the other players.
when everybody will use their assets in the game
in different ways, it will be the real economy
And in that cases, people will not do
just several clicks to get their tokens.
Because, for example, for about the Salsa Valley
a little bit more, this is our focus
that we merges the web two and web three
in our immersive game file and entertainment ecosystem
that we create the unique crypto vault
which is based on the Salsa Valley stories.
This is also the funny base
because this is the crypto cartoon series
Yeah, I think the audio good.
Yeah, so also we create the coop turn
and children in the moniverse
and we have to see like direction.
So according to the coop turn,
this is definitely what we are working on now.
This is the fast-paced casual mobile game
with web three features, with web three extension
where people firstly, they play free to play
They cook the sauce, they gather their vegetables,
and then they can create the entity
and to sell it, to stake it
or to use it in the future,
in the next game mechanics.
So we have the circulation of the same assets
among one game, among the mechanics in the one game
and among all the products in our ecosystem.
And this is our vision to create this network effect
and to engage other projects
to enter our environment, to collaborate with them,
to create the network effect of the whole market.
And this is also the vision
which is, we saw there that we are similar
to animocast brands vision.
So guys, let's create this operation
and move further together and give the people
the real world assets and the real world value.
So I think this is actually,
this is actually kind of an interesting point really
to what I was just making.
Yeah, it's an interesting one with Salsa,
what she was just saying there
and this is what I was talking about with,
certain place where models that don't actually work.
So things where you're actually,
where you're relying on the actual NFTs
or the assets, to provide value,
an income to your players.
That's only gonna ever be an inflationary
And so, and you end up having a similar situation
to actually infinity where those NFTs become so expensive
that it locks out new players
from actually being able to take part.
So, what I'd say Salsa is,
how do you plan to combat that?
Yeah, and unfortunately as well,
if your answer is, to add more NFTs as well,
then you end up with a deflationary situation instead.
Yeah, and then obviously people end up losing money
So this is what I referred to really
with these play to earn models
that have been around for quite a few years now.
And I think had a lot of buzz behind them,
especially because of things like Axie Infinity.
But, unfortunately now I know that that doesn't work.
So, this is what I'm really referring to
and this is one of the things that is interesting,
I think with the airdrop meta,
and how you could potentially take advantage of that.
And yeah, Justin already mentioned it as well,
but I'd love to also discuss where we think it's going,
how much longer we think it might last for,
and where it's really gonna be,
where it's gonna be centralized essentially.
But I've already got a few points on that,
but yeah, I'll let Salsa come back with that one as well.
For me the thing about having to add NFTs to the market
to keep people engaged and stuff,
for us it's not an option because in our games,
the players are the ones that are going to craft
So we're not going to like sell collections or whatever.
I mean, they will define the demand on which weapons
or which armors do they need
in terms of what content we will release as a game.
So we will create the environment so they can think
and they can make shenanigans on how they have to
use the game resources and materials
to create weapons and armors that allow them
to proceed farther into the game.
So we don't have in a way to worry about
creating whatever collections or doing things new
the ones that are gonna define that in our case.
So I think it's the way to go
with how it should be in economies, like any other thing,
like people do productivity and others buy that kind of time
and effort they put into a game.
For us, it's totally legit that a guy wants just
to buy the weapon to start killing people,
but they will buy the weapon from another player
that actually put the time and effort into three hours
or four hours or whatever into either the materials,
their tree of skills to be able to craft that item,
get the recipe for the item.
And so when he actually gets the weapon,
he will actually be buying time from another player.
So that's how we are thinking things.
That's still deflationary though.
So even though your players are making the NFTs,
that's just them making them instead.
So that's still a deflationary model.
At some point more players are gonna come in,
they're gonna continue making weapons
to the point where the price of those weapons reduce so much
that it's no longer viable to put the time in
to make the money from those.
And so you're gonna have to, you as a company,
as a project, are they gonna have to bring out new recipes,
your new systems, new items within the game
to be able to allow them to move on to a new system
and then that deflates as well.
And so you end up with the exact same situation,
well, the opposite situation to what Souls is going to
have with their game, obviously.
So yeah, once again, it's still comes into that.
It's even gonna be an inflationary
where you're just gonna flip the market with NFTs
or it's gonna be inflationary
where the price of those NFTs increase dramatically
because of the game mechanics are obviously in place.
So this is still the same.
Yeah, it's a double-edged sword, really, in that respect.
For example, in our case,
there are a lot of properties in the balance system,
well, economy, the separation of the entities.
Of course, firstly, the first point that people
and after there are some processes in the game,
they can create the energy.
Some kind of cool sounds can work out,
they turn it into a energy.
you can see it pairs off the inflationary part.
So we need to take it to earn the tokens
or to sell to other players on the marketplace
Firstly, they mint and then they convert again
to keep their avatar skills
and their leadership position
and to use this as a fuel in the next game mechanics.
So any player can to create the NFT
by playing the game firstly.
Or they can buy the NFTs from other players
and or they can create the energy and then burn it
and to use this again to create the energy
and to promote it by staking it.
So there are several people who interact with the energy.
I was going to say, your signal is really, really,
I don't know if anyone else is having
No, no, I can hear that here also.
Yeah, I was going to say,
Yeah, I don't know if you need to get it.
Okay, it might just be me, sorry.
Yeah, I think I have the same.
It was great, but then suddenly it was...
Sorry, I really want to hear what you're trying to say.
Obviously you're still so,
whether you need to get closer to the wifi
or turn on your data maybe on your phone or something,
but it sounds like you may be drifting a little bit far away
from wherever you're getting your signal from.
I think she's actually disconnected now.
So, okay, so one of the things that,
so one of the things I was sort of trying to get at here
a little bit with this and this is what I'm really referring
to with some of these new matters
and what really needs to change
within the web free gaming industry as a whole.
I think too often when we use the phrase like play to earn,
I think it's given too many people this very, very,
well, wrong idea that they can go on,
they can play and they can somehow earn.
there's always got to be someone that's paying.
We can't create a model within web free
where everyone earns, it's just impossible.
And in fact, to the point where the majority of people
are going to actually earn.
Yeah, they might earn, but they're not gonna profit,
And so I think that's one of the things
that we really need to start doing with the industry
as a whole and start being actually more honest
as projects and with our community
and the people that we're trying to actually pull in
as well, in terms of actually explaining to them
how the industry works and how,
why we believe that ownership in particular
is important within gaming.
Because I think that's one of the things
that a lot of people are lacking.
And I think generally as well,
for people that play web two games,
a lot of people won't understand that as well,
unless they've ever tried to sell their account
or tried to sell it like him
and had their account banned because of it.
And so there's very, very small percentage of people
that that really falls into.
So yeah, I think really what we really need to start doing
is actually working on models
where we need to be accepted to the fact
that people are gonna have to put money into these games
and that not everyone is gonna make their money back.
And so once we actually sort of get our heads around that
and stop trying to just use it as an opportunity
to try and make money as a web free project,
as many, many out here, obviously, I try and do,
not necessarily in this space,
I'm not pointing fingers, obviously.
But yeah, I think once we could actually start
being a little bit more honest
and actually start building models based around this,
that's when we're gonna start seeing web free model,
play to our models that actually work
and games that actually start doing well
I just wanna jump in on that thought.
we kind of have like the same thought
with regard to like ownership.
That's why we are kind of introducing like
play and own kind of concept in our game.
So basically we're emphasizing that,
when you play the game and get these NFTs,
then you get a sense of ownership
whereas with playing web two games,
then those items that you get, it's not really yours.
But to also talk about the point of play to air drop
that you were asking earlier,
how you think or how long do you think
the trend will last, you were asking us about that.
Well, I agree with you that play to earn
is not really sustainable.
I think play to air drop is a little bit more acceptable
in the sense that it's not a permanent thing.
When you do play to air drop,
you can stop at a certain point.
So basically you are rewarding these people.
You know how air drops before you just,
you said click one or two things and they get something.
That's not how to play to air drop works anymore.
Most of the time you get to,
you need to kind of play the game,
you need to kind of grind the game
to actually get something.
is for people to be introduced to your game
and to see if they like it.
If that's something that connects with them
and that's something that you want to
kind of get into long-term.
Cause we do not have the same machinery
or reach as in web two or appeal as in web two.
In web three, people come in web three
for the potential profit.
I mean, let's be honest about that.
So play to air drop is what's going to get people
into your project at least get their interest initially
and then see for themselves how much they like the game
and if they want to stay there long-term.
And yeah, I think that with how long it's going to last
I really don't know because it might just be a trend.
I think that's a more sustainable way to do it
rather than play touring.
Yeah, there's been a ton of sideways points here.
And it's like, I kind of don't know where to begin.
I mean, if you look, okay,
essentially air drops are marketing tools.
If an air drop is a focus of getting people to play a game
then initially to attract attention, yeah, okay, it's fine.
Your air drops are air drops and whatever
but long-term sustainability, nah, they ain't going to work.
And I think what it all boils down to is,
and this is an important sort of thing to sort of realize
is that there's no such thing as a web two game
There's a game and if your game is captive enough
and then people will obviously then go and explore
So obviously it wears web three game builders.
There are other features and the people,
because they like the game,
then they can look into that.
And I think that's one of the things
where we're looking at it,
but people really need to realize that
if your game's shite nobody's going to play
regardless of whether you can make money out of it or not.
And as Madjo said, you're not going to,
you're not, you're not going to,
if you base your game entirely on web three rules
or I can't think of the word,
but you know what I mean, on web three dynamics,
then ultimately not everybody's going to win.
People are going to get bored.
People are going to be priced out.
People are going to do it.
But you have to focus on the game actually being fun.
It's like you think of all the games
that you've played over the last five, 10, 20 years.
It's like, these web three would be great for that.
I'd love to be able to introduce a sort of web three dynamic
into a game that has basically,
you've put thousands and thousands of hours into it.
And that's kind of where we need to be, you know?
Yeah, that's what I got there.
That just to jump right back in,
because traditionally web three people right now,
it's not just a small percentage of people
And majority of them really are profit oriented,
but slowly we are onboarding more and more people
who are just enthusiasts in general.
Gamers are coming in that are more interested in the game.
people are looking to kind of profit.
Of course, that's not what we want
to attract long-term for a game,
but we want to be able to kind of at least
draw some kind of attention to it
and play two airdrops kind of do that.
Not saying that we should do that long-term,
but initially that kind of helps us
instead of introducing a model like,
you know, play two, sorry, play two or in,
because that's really not something
Now, after you do like play two airdrops
and you figure out your community,
those who really, really like your game,
then that's when you kind of improve your game,
you kind of give them something new.
Matt was right about ownership being the core here
for promoting web three games
or kind of like leveraging the advantages
And at Chibi Clash, that's one of the things
that's one of the things that we're trying to do.
It's, we kind of coined our own term,
which is actually called play to keep,
which emphasizes NFT ownership or asset ownership in game.
And as much as it's kind of the same system
wherein you kind of mint your weapons into NFTs,
we emphasize more that it's the ownership of this assets
is more important than the monetary value.
If you give it monetary value,
it's really up to you as gamers
because even in games, in traditional web two games,
they've been trading online, not even in marketplaces,
they've been trading peer-to-peer,
these weapons and stuff without even needing marketplaces.
So if there's a demand, people are gonna pay for it.
But the most important part with doing it in web three
is you actually have asset ownership.
You can prove this is yours, I can sell you mine
and have this ownership of my assets
will be transferred to you
and it's gonna be transparent on the blockchain.
And that's one of the beauty of the things that we can do
here in web three gaming.
And that's what we are going to try to revolutionize
with play to keep system.
Oh, sorry, no, go ahead, go ahead.
I've already done enough talking to be fair.
There's a lot to talk about.
I'll try not to go on too much of a rant.
I think if we're in the web three space,
it might be a little bit counterproductive
to say that some, to nobody specifically here,
but there's a negative connotation towards earning
within these ecosystems or a focus on finances
or a focus on value capture.
I think it's quite paradoxical considering
the entire web three space came about
as a financial innovation to economics
and specifically to disrupt the financial economics model.
So by nature, it is financial
and it is about economic capture within these networks.
So I actually think we should try
and embrace a little more of that.
And to the points earlier,
the problem here is I think we're still looking
at references from the previous cycle of where it didn't work
and using them as examples of why play to earn is bad
or why play to earn itself doesn't work.
And I can summarize this very easily.
The best provable way, example of a proof of, sorry,
of a play to earn model that worked is Bitcoin.
You're playing and competing against other miners
on the network using electricity and resource
and innovation and hardware and skill
to be the first one to mine that block
to get rewarded in a token is play to earn.
Now who's giving you that money?
Nobody, it's value accrual.
Nobody's actually paying you in dollars.
And we can value that however we want.
And it's this second half of the equation
that I think a lot of games in the previous cycles
didn't pay enough attention to.
It's token inflation, it's deflation.
It's unleashing Pandora's boxes within their micro economies
that run havoc within their gaming ecosystems.
And I think it's more akin to perhaps paying
a little more attention to the economic model
of your game as opposed to it's play to earn,
therefore it's going to fail.
So we've learned those lessons.
And I think now I haven't actually seen
a single founder game or ecosystem in the last four years
that's not taken those lessons on board.
We all understand them now.
So perhaps we might actually be on that point
where we can see some of these transition
into the gaming space and work really well.
We have ecosystems in which these specific tokens
become increasingly difficult to attain.
There's difficulty mechanisms built in.
There's not exactly a halving cycle,
There's all of this wonderful stuff that's going on.
So I think we're actually on a better side
of the play to earn narrative now.
Also back to the point of NFTs,
sometimes games and their economies
actually want a specific item or a specific in-game token
to inflate considerably as players grow.
It's one of the things game designers require.
What they don't want is a specific potion item,
weapon, resource to become unimaginably expensive
that players now cannot attain it to play the game.
So it's not always a bad thing
that one specific token or NFT isn't going up in price.
It might actually be by design.
There is this side of things too.
But yeah, there's a lot of things to consider,
but I still strongly believe
that we might be looking at this industry
still in an unfavorable way
because of the failures of some plays in the past.
And I think we might actually be shunning
some of the real speculative drivers
that made this industry what it is.
I think if we close that door on that completely,
it might not be a good thing.
We're getting close to an end,
actually we're two minutes past the end,
but I would just like to give maybe a chance
for it's rate from third wave.
We haven't heard as much from you.
So if you want to give some closing thoughts
on the trends or anything that we have discussed today.
Yeah, I appreciate it, Pazina.
I didn't want to interrupt the flow
of their panelists conversation,
learning a lot over here, which is great.
I recognize the first question was a bit broad.
I think there were a couple of questions
kind of all combined in there.
So I'll keep it a little high level since we're at the end,
but in regards to a project
that we're really excited about that we've got our eyes on,
Justin had touched on it off the bat.
We've got him on the panel here,
but Shrapnel, just their STX competitions
We're seeing a lot of positive feedback there.
I think also on top of the team
that they've already put together,
they just brought on Peyton from Champions Ascension,
founder of Wolfstau to focus on web three strategy
Just really excited to see what new strategies
he introduces to the team,
but also what tactics they accelerate,
considering they've already done,
already found rather a number of things that work.
Also bullish on immutable passport.
End of Feb, they crossed 200,000 unique wallets.
I think that's a testament to their ability
to lower barriers to entry
and really create as much accessibility
to these games as possible.
And ultimately, Pixels is obviously the,
seems to be the game that is creating,
not necessarily new metas, but making them popular.
And I think a lot of builders in the ecosystem
are looking to learn to see what works
and potentially take inspiration from them.
The play to airdrop campaigns have already been touched on,
but I think something that I'm interested in diving
a bit deeper into is the stake to earn component
or the stake to airdrop component
that they recently ran with Ronin.
It resulted in an uptick in both Ron's token
And obviously Pixels has seen 995,000 plus wallets
just over the past month.
So we know that they're doing something right there.
I think there's a lot of interesting new structures
Something that I've been spending the past couple of weeks on
is really understanding these new sort of refer a friend
or refer to earn structures.
We've seen BitBrawl who got funded this last month
put together this sort of referral reward system
Essentially you enter into the raffle
and the more folks that you refer to
the higher the tier that you get,
the higher the multiplier.
I think that is something that I'd like to get
a better understanding of and just get a sense of
how effective is that gonna be long-term.
But also we've got games like Undead's Viral
that recently kind of created this new structure
for their gold and platinum Undead's ID holders
where these holders can randomly receive commissions
from new players who join the game
and this is without having to use referral link.
And so this means that these gold and platinum
Undead's ID holders can really share in rewards
from hundreds and thousands of players.
And then I think another interesting model there
is Buddy.link who worked with Star Atlas last year
but they've got this sort of referral structure
that really focuses its attention
around sort of on-chain rev sharing.
And so I think if they're able to move beyond
just supporting Solana games,
that could be a new interesting meta
that I think a lot of companies might want to consider.
But yeah, a lot of things learned in this chat.
Appreciate you having this, Posina.
Great chat with the other panelists.
It's been a great space with you.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts.
If you still want to come in and share this space
with others, I very much appreciate it.
Otherwise, if you joined later, the space is recorded.
At least I hope I clicked record.
So you can come back to the beginning.
We have been discussing a review of February,
what's been hard, the trends, different opinions
on jump on the trends, embrace it or think long-term.
So I really do recommend listening to the conversation.
I have a full paper of notes
and I will be looking forward to see you again in one month
and we will do a review of March.
So whatever's happening now,
we will take a look at whether or not the trend wave
survived and what's coming for next.