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Web3 Global Talks 🎙️ Ep.349 - Powered by Hive
Recorded: April 2, 2025 Duration: 1:12:18Space Recording
Short Summary
The discussion highlights several developments in the Web3 gaming space, including the launch of new projects like Meme Fighter and Devomon, token launches by Meme Fighter and Octo Gaming, and significant growth in user engagement on platforms like Hive and Octo Gaming. Additionally, the hiring of experienced developers like Dave for Engines of Fury underscores the industry's focus on building quality games. The conversation also touches on the challenges and opportunities in integrating Web3 elements into traditional gaming models.
Full Transcription
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Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. All right. Oh Thank you. Oh Thank you.中文字幕志愿者 李宗盛 Thank you. so
all right guys welcome to web3 global talks episode 349 powered by hive uh i'm gonna run
this song back just for a second uh just to give everybody a chance to join here real quick
and uh then we'll get started guys so just one minute Thank you. Thank you. all right guys i think we can go ahead and get started we'll get to the rest as they come in
here but yeah welcome to web3 global talks episode 349 powered by our friends at Hive. And we'll go ahead and get started guys
with the round of intros. So we'll go top to bottom here just to make it a little bit easier.
And if you haven't been here, a minute apiece to tell the people who you are and who you're
representing will be what our intro is. So for me personally right now, the top to bottom, we'll start off with Meme Fighter.
Good morning, everyone.
Thanks for having us.
I'm a meme Jedi BD at Meme Fighter.
And with Meme Fighter, we started end of 2023 with the idea of creating kick-ass meme-themed casual games.
And one of these games is Meme Fighter Match.
It's the world's first pvp matcher
i think candy crush but then for dgens where you choose your favorite meme and play in real time
against someone else we recently pivoted so we're still having a big focus on the casual gaming
part but we're now building a meme comedy and entertainment network and basically we are creating a suite
of products that help creating launching and marketing tokens in short term we foresee
integration with the zeta chain and we're launching in a couple of weeks our airdrop
machine and we're also having an IDO with CoinTerminal shortly after RTGE.
That's it.
Nice. Thank you, man.
All right. And Robin with Octo Gaming.
Hey, guys. It's a pleasure to see all of you here.
I've been going there already some time,
so maybe some of you know about Octo, but I will introduce myself once again.
So my name is Robin. I'm the co-founder of Octo Gaming.
And basically, we have a mobile app that you can download on the App Store and on the Play Store.
We have a bit more than 4 million downloads worldwide right now, mostly players in the US and in Europe.
worldwide right now,
mostly players in the US and in Europe.
And basically, what do we do
is that we enable video games player
to monetize the time they spend
playing directly on their Octo app.
So directly on the app,
you have 17 games.
All the games we have are casual games,
1v1 games,
developed in collaboration
with huge Web 2 and Web 3 brands like bonk psg
d gods for instance and if you're good players you you will be able to earn some physical product
offered by nike adidas lenovo or even you can earn some cryptocurrency uh since we
launched since we launched our own token two years ago right now, or partner tokens that are working with us.
Thank you, Ben.
All right.
And Jacek with Solar.
Hello, hello, everybody.
It's a pleasure to be here.
My name is Jacek, and I am the CMO of Solar.
And I think for today's space,
the most important aspect of my work is what we do with Timd.
Timd is our most inclusive gaming environment, enabling developers to list and launch their games on any chain, Web2 or Web3 or Metaverse or Play2Earn.
And for the users, we enable them to play any game, Web2 or Web 3, without any additional hassle.
So we're trying to ultimately bridge the gap
between Web 2 and Web 3 gaming.
And yeah, let's take it away.
All right.
Thanks, man.
Hive, so Crimson.
Let's find out if we're having the morning rug today.
You're good.
I can hear you.
We'll take it. Absolutely.
Got halfway through the week before it worked first try. So hey, my name is Crimson Clad and I work with
the Hive blockchain ecosystem. It is a truly decentralized, fast and completely fee-less
blockchain and it powers Web3, Social, Gaming, DeFi and beyond, you will find such games as Splinterlands powered by Hive.
They are now well over 4 billion with a B games played on chain, zero fees paid by anyone.
So it's an awesome blockchain that allows for fast gameplay, integration of human readable
names.
You bring your friends, you bring your finances, and you can jump from game to game straight into social
or take it with you
across other ecosystems.
Nice.
Thank you, Crimson.
Okay.
Devomon.
Hello, everyone.
Thank you so much for having me here.
So my name is Enola,
and I'm the head of partnership
and also growth in Devomon.
So Devomon is basically anomond adalah game RPG. Jadi, kita ada banyak hal di dalamnya.
Kita ada dungeon, kita ada banyak item in-game, dan kita masih di development.
Jadi, kita mencari untuk membuat game ini tahun ini.
Semoga, kalau semua itu berjalan dengan baik if everything goes well is in Q4.
So yeah, really looking forward for this space.
Thank you so much for having us.
Yeah, thanks for being here, man.
All right, well, we're still waiting for a couple people,
but that's okay, it's probably some X things,
so I'll get to them when they get here.
Before we get started with the questions though,
do wanna remind you guys to please like, comment,
and retweet out the space. Definitely helps everybody who's in here out.
So we would appreciate it. But yeah, guys, without further ado, we'll go ahead and start with the questions.
And then if people join, we will allow them to do an intro and then answer.
So, of course, we're going to talk a little bit about gaming today.
Most of you are at least tangentially related to it or, you know, at least host gaming
projects. So the first question is going to be traditional games thrive with polished UX,
seamless onboarding, engaging gameplay loops, you know, all the traditional things that make
gaming great. The question is, why do most Web3 games kind of struggle with these fundamentals,
in your opinion? You know, not to say that every Web3 game is not that great, because there are
some great ones for sure, but there's definitely what I would consider a little more shovelware
than at least, you know, the traditional world. So we will go off of hand raise, which I already see some.
Meme Fighter, you can start us off.
I think the big difference is that these traditional games
often have decades of experience and massive budgets behind them.
I think Rockstar, Ubisoft, and so on,
it's not your uh your uh in the web tree company so they have
entire armies that uh that are there to create those polished and and visually stunning stunning
games and uh yeah with web3 like i already said they have very small indie teams um and next next to that they also need to deal with
the technicity of of blockchain and somehow also try to shield players from from this complexity um
and create smooth experiences for for this uh yeah for their end users and another reason in my opinion is it's often web3 companies start with have the
wrong goal in mind i say my opinion because everyone has this reason to create a game or
uh to to enjoy a game but they often from the start put let's say the emphasis sort of focus on on those player economies um nfts tokenomics and
so on um while unfortunately we also know that this is not what attracts let's say the the big
web 2 masses um who prefer to have let's say enjoyable um stunning games and uh we at meme fighter for example we we believe that
a blockchain should be a technology that should enhance let's say all the existing technologies
uh it should and it should only be used where it provides value um so so yeah we we we don't
So, yeah, we don't think that something should be fully unchained, for example.
And the question we always ask ourselves when creating a game is,
would you play this game without, for example, all those Web3 elements?
And if the answer is no, then we will most likely not implement it and i think
that also most web 2 gamers will not go for these games but these are in my opinion let's say three
three reasons why uh why web 3 companies struggle and to to get let's say, that needed user base to survive.
I think that last point is an especially great point. The question essentially being,
you know, if this wasn't Web3, if it didn't have any of those aspects, would people want to play
this game? And I think a lot of more gaming companies need to ask themselves that question
um and you know i i do totally agree that like obviously rockstar and triple-a studios have
insane budgets insane teams uh but you know there's even awesome indie games out there uh
that are even like you know two-dimensional sometimes that people play are top down but
because they're fun right um and i think somehow that got a little lost in translation
in the early years of Web3 Gaming.
But I think it's making a resurgence.
But yeah, let's go with Robin and then Crimson.
Yeah, I think this is a very interesting question.
I think there is really two main topics that we need to that stand
out of it. First, I agree about like the budget, that's for sure. About the polishing of the game
about the quality. Obviously, the budget is something which we cannot forget. That's true.
But it cannot be like all talking about the budget. I think many Web3 games are doing a really good job.
We can adapt.
We can do many, many stuff.
For instance, if we take the case of Octo,
we knew that we wouldn't be able to compete with AAA gaming studios.
So that's why we decided to focus on casual gaming,
casual gaming on mobile.
And I think we found a way with less budget to ship something really, really cool, really, really great.
And we've been working with the football club PSG.
So I think we are going over like the frontiers of Web3.
So I think we can do it even if we don't have the same budget
as like AAA studios.
So I think this is really important.
And the second point is,
which is very important for me,
considering your question,
is the onboarding.
I think some years ago,
the onboarding was really awful
and painful on many Web3 games.
Sometimes you needed to buy NFTs, buy tokens, your players didn't really understand how to log in, etc. I think
now most of like many, I think all of the Web3 games today have a really smooth onboarding,
really seamless. On many of these games, players don't really know that they are on the blockchain
so we can attract many many web to players and I think this side of like the onboarding
side is really really now impressive into the space so I think that that's a really
good amelioration so in the end I think with these two points of polishing the UX having
a great game and having a great onboarding,
I think we're in a good way.
And I'm really talking about all the Web3 games,
to be honest, right now.
We are in a good way to compete with this obviously
existing team, existing studios since many years,
because we have more.
We have the ownership of the asset. We have the possibility to have an economy
within the game. And I think all the mistakes that could have been done with the first play
to own games, which were giving tons of money and people were quitting their job just to
play. I think this was a mistake and we saw that all of these games didn't have like sustainable tokenomics. But to be honest, I think now Web3 Gaming is really, really in a good way
in terms of tokenomics, in terms of onboarding and the UX and the quality of the games will follow.
I'm sure about it. Yeah, I have to say that, you know, I think in 2025 that we have made great strides in kind of overcoming, I guess, the sins of the past, you could say, right?
Which is that over monetization aspect that a lot of games had.
And, you know, I think we're headed in a good direction.
Another thing you said, man, I think it's a good idea to kind of target the casual sector, especially mobile gaming.
I mean, it's a huge market.
There's all kinds of people who really enjoy playing just mobile games all the time.
There's a huge market probably for more casual games
than I would say trying to just strictly go for traditional hardcore gamers at this moment.
But we're going to talk a little bit for the second
question about, you know, bringing those kind of people in. But, you know, just hold out for that
one. Crimson, you're up. Yeah. So working inside the Hive ecosystem, obviously my position is often
in dev relations and app sort of liaison. So I have sort of the great joy of
working with a number of games that are built and powered by the Hive blockchain. And so, you know,
since we're talking about, you know, how these games struggle, whether on this blockchain or
across any Web3 platform, definitely the points that have been touched on are there, right? I mean,
budget is number one, because whether we like it or not, the vast majority of people in the world
consume their knowledge of what games are out there, essentially based on AAA games.
Most people start there, and then if they're a gamer, they love to dive back in. But for Web3, yeah, there's a challenge because you get people who are passionate about the space or who learn about the economics or the tech possibilities first and then decide, OK, I'm going to gamify this or I'm going to bring my own interests in.
And so it's maybe not too surprising that there is some struggle with UX UI and that's been gone over.
not too surprising that there is some struggle with UX UI and that's been gone over. I think one
of the biggest things that you mentioned in your question, you're talking about engaging gameplay
loops and that can be tricky because often in our space, I will say you will get somebody who is
blockchain first, who is trying to create a fun game and it's totally possible. And like you,
like I say, you look at Splinterlands
or CryptoShots or some of the upcoming games on the Hive blockchain, like Hollowzing, and people
are excited for them. But one of the traps that we've seen, especially with games that have fallen
off in the past, there's certainly some that have risen and fallen spectacularly out there,
is that their gameplay loops are based around an intrinsic
knowledge of blockchain. A lot of the things that they're creating comes from being a blockchain
dev or a blockchain nerd. And we're getting a lot better at abstracting away from that.
We're getting better at hiding that under the hood. Games are way more seamless. You don't
necessarily know they're Web3. But I think there is still a big challenge in that we don't necessarily have people who are coming from long-term games backgrounds who are then here and creating a game.
We don't have any of those that have been running for the long term yet.
We are now seeing that happening because they're starting to realize that this space is so ripe and there's so much here that can be done. But it's just a really interesting
intersection where somebody who's really crypto brained or really blockchain brained or really
ideologically centered around cryptocurrency wants to change the games world to suit them
and vice versa. You've got somebody coming in who is used to a very standard, safe and kind of generic AAA game that is coming in and, you know, is getting blockchained at.
So I think, honestly, we're over that hump, but it's certainly been something up to this point.
The biggest thing now is you've got games that are fun.
you've got games that are fun, you've got games that have the UI. The thing that I think people
You've got games that have the UI.
are sticking around for, and we see in our ecosystem so much, is the fact that blockchain
both allows them to feel way more in control of their assets. And that's a huge thing in today's
world where a lot of game companies use really, really disruptive forms of anti-cheat that are like kernel level on your computer,
or that assets can be taken back from companies that maybe feel like you've been farming too much
or, you know, there's becoming a balancing that's happening. And I'm really excited for that
personally. So between that and the fact that Web3 really is hugely defined by community,
and when you have decentralized identities and wallets
that can attach to games seamlessly
that you can take with you,
you start getting the community aspect
that really drives momentum in gaming.
So I know the question is about struggle,
but much like everybody else,
we've definitely started to climb that hill
and we're starting to see the parts of Web3
that really work.
We're starting to see them bloom inside the framework of Web3 gaming.
Yeah, really great answer, Crimson.
You know, I think you hit the nail on the head of what I would call like the again, like when I was talking about like the original sin of things,
which is like people who were all about blockchain, like you said, you know, that was the forefront of their mind, but they weren't necessarily gamers, which I think is incredibly important if you're going to be building don't even know if i want to take it this far but
maybe a bastardized version of what it could be the best things right owning assets uh you know
different things i went a little hard there but uh i think it's fair to say uh you know it started
off a little rocky but um you know and one of the things as well uh is the same kind of problem that
the entire industry has which is just a kind of problem that the entire industry has
which is just a lack of developers in general over here so obviously you're going to have a lack of
uh traditional gaming devs as well looking at the space but again that's changing and i think it's
changing pretty rapidly so but yeah great answer um let's go with solar
Let's go with Solar.
I thought that Devamon was before me.
Okay.
Not that I saw.
It's difficult for me to speak from a game developer's perspective
because here we did discuss it and I don't want to talk anyone down,
but I think it's typical that some game developers went into the hype cycle.
So there was a time when we said,
oh, there's a game, let's slap on Web3 on it.
Just like now we have games and we slap AI on it, right?
So from GPT models to more advanced game interactions.
And, but I don't want to talk
from the game developers perspective
because I'm not there and we did cover it extensively
and, you know,
making web three games more accessible.
But from our perspective, the challenge and struggle is
to build an environment for the users
to discover these games.
Because even as I was reviewing videos of upcoming games
or looking at our competitors we don't have competitors
but other game publishers it seems that even the users discovery of web3 based games is very much
limited and you have to be in the space and know whom to follow to even be able to come across an interesting web three game title and especially
if we're trying to to reach a wider um population of gamers um this is what we're trying to do with
tim to to create one point one environment one website if you like one marketplace where people can um discover all of the interesting
titles and for the game developers and game studios to be able to promote their game in a more
web 3 friendly environment but yeah that's all i could say about these struggles from
the timt perspective yeah and that obviously plays a huge role as well man um you know that's the
reason why steam and epic uh even exist and and why anybody hears about most games uh that come
out on pc so yeah i mean i i would say that that's a huge factor of the problem around here as well
um you know just as a completely i don't even say completely separate. I think it's pretty
intrinsically linked, uh, into what we were talking about, but yeah, man, uh, you know, a huge problem.
It's kind of a huge problem for, uh, the space in general as well. I mean, it's like, how do you hear
about a new protocol? Well, most of the time it's like your friend told you about, uh, you know, a
new protocol or, or you're on a space like this, right? right uh that's how most people find out about stuff so
i mean it makes a lot of sense but yeah good answer yatsuk uh devil
yeah sure thank you so much uh yeah i agree with all of the speaker's thoughts uh maybe i just
you know like edit a little bit maybe uh for the Web3 user, I think there are still new with this kind of stuff like blockchain technology,
NFT wallets. So I think we just need, you know,
like some time for them to learn about our technology.
And then because I'm still bullish in the Web3 game, like 500% bullish,
I think in the next five years, we are going to create a lot of things,
a new technology in this space, in this ecosystem.
So we just need to wait and keep teaching them how to onboard
in the Web3 ecosystem like that because we're still early.
So yeah. Yeah.. So, yeah.
Yeah, thank you, man.
All right.
Dave, I got you up here, man.
Do you want to go ahead and give us a little bit of an intro real quick
before I give you the question?
Yeah, sure.
Sorry for being late.
My daughter needed me.
So, you know, priorities.
But I'm here and I'm ready to talk
about games. I am chief of
design for Engines of Fury.
Engines of Fury, I'm a 26-year game developer,
game designer, and narrative
designer.
I worked on World of Warcraft, Warcraft 3.
I am the traditional
dev that you guys seem to be
referencing and saying that there's no one to read
that view, so go ahead and hit me with that question. i'll be happy to give the long-term game developers view
on it yeah man the question was essentially um you know as you know as a game developer for a long
time traditional games kind of thrive on polished ux seamless onboarding and engaging gameplay loops
which i think is a really important part.
And why do you feel like most web three games struggle with the fundamentals
is the question.
Oh God.
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's get that can open.
they struggle with the fundamentals because they are not generally game
developers.
They don't know what they're doing.
And,
sometimes they'll hire me to get advice and i'll give them advice
about like here's here's here's the proper gameplay loop for your game and things like that
and they'll ignore me because they're they think they have the ideas and uh they're just gonna
sweep the market and i can't tell you how many times i've been um hired as an advisor for a game
that was like oh we're gonna make an mmorpg MMORPG in, you know, nine months.
And I'm like, no, you fucking aren't.
And, you know, they're like, what do you mean?
And eventually I get them to come around.
Usually it's around month six or seven when they realize that the task they put before themselves
is absolutely impossible.
So I think a lot of those types got run out of the Web3 game industry
in the, let's say, the disease era when there was the big economic downturn.
And, you know, what's interesting is that the game industry during that downturn, well, the game industry went up because people loved to play games during that period.
But Web3 didn't have any games. So, you know, the few games that were out there at the time did relatively okay the ones
that were complete with like a real gameplay cycle like gods unchained and things like that
and the ones that were obvious dumpster fire trash just trying to get out there to get money out of people, those are all gone. And we'll never
see them again, I hope. And right now we're seeing with everyone thought this would be a big, big
boom cycle. And, you know, it's a lot more chaotic than that. The people who have been building,
who built through that past era, where it was all a downturn, they're still building. Engines of
Fury is still building. And a lot of the people that we, they're still building. Engines of Fury is still building.
And a lot of the people that we collab with are still building.
So I'm pretty optimistic that we're going to see some really good games come out.
And it's going to be about a two or three year cycle because that's how long
it takes to make a really good game.
And once the people in Web3 who are investors in games get a little bit
smarter about that,
I think we'll see the investments going to these games that
have been building this whole time
and that's
how it should be. People are
scared to invest right now because they think every
game is a cash grab and run
and even in my own
Discord, I see comments
like that in the Engines of Fury Discord, people
saying things like, oh, I hope they don't run. It's like
MF-er, I've been here 26 years years i ain't going anywhere until this game is shipped so you know
shut that shit down so uh you know i understand because they've gotten burned so many times
and that's part of the uh like education that i try to do is like this is and this is how long
it really takes to make a game you want want a new feature? Guess what? That takes months of testing,
depending on what the future is, obviously.
And sort of getting them on board
with understanding game development
from the perspective of,
actually, we're trying to make a really good game.
And once that education's been done enough,
I think that we'll see the Web3 gaming market stabilize
and we'll see more people
making better games. And when we have the better games, that's when the gamers come,
because they don't give a shit about any of those Web3 stuff. In fact, they're scared of it. So
it's already you're starting from a negative point. So a lot of the education I do with the
normal gamers is about, hey, you know, Web3 can actually benefit you. And here's
how it can do it. You know, we have the Fury token, and we burn a part of it every time that
there's a transaction. And therefore, in the long term, it goes up in value. So if you buy a bunch
of it now, you know, in the long term, it's a better value later on. And when you explain these
things, and like how they can put their NFTs on on the market and it's just like magic the gathering cards back in the day they get it eventually but but it's still a scary proposition
for them because all that onboarding has to be done and in most cases you just want to make sure
that that's transparent that it's there but you don't need to interact with it so i advise every
game to be free to play to not require any nfts in order to play to not require any purchases in order to play
just let them come in and play the game and if the game is good they'll stick around and if they
really like the game they're gonna buy so then it's a problem that solves itself
yeah i was i was laughing dave uh during your old thing man you know, pretty much my, uh, almost my opinion as well, or pretty much my
opinion. You know, I think that, uh, we are working from a place of, we have like a hostile
customer base and that's because, uh, they were burned for so long, uh, in the space, obviously.
And I think it's funny that you said, uh, when you said MMO at nine months, uh, I, I rolled my
eyes as you were saying that because, yeah, literally impossible.
And I think a lot of people
who want to build games
who maybe come from just a traditional
dev background where you can build a protocol
in nine months, you know, absolutely.
You definitely can't build a game
in nine months of that scale, right?
You know, of course, if it was like a simpler game,
of course, it would be possible.
But yeah, absolutely, man. I think a lot of the times people just got a little too
in over their heads and, you know, expected it to be a little easier than it actually is,
because game development is probably the longest or one of the longest development cycles for any
kind of software, I would imagine. So yeah, great insights to you. I appreciate it, man.
All right.
Well, we're going to get to our second question, guys and gals,
which is many traditional gaming companies resist Web3 integration.
Is this due to skepticism about blockchain's value, fear of disruption,
or simply business model protectionism in your opinions.
And again, we kind of touched on this a little bit with some of you guys' answers.
So just kind of curious what you guys think about, you know, the potential for a lot more
traditional companies to come in.
And we'll go with the hand raise.
And yeah, Dave, I see you.
Yeah, so they've been trying.
They want to get in here.
They want the money.
They see it.
But the problem is that traditional gamers
didn't like the value proposition
that those companies proposed.
So Ubisoft did their, like,
here's some skins that are also NFTs.
And their consumer base flipped the fuck out
and was like, no, we do not want this.
And as a result, a lot of the AAA industry has been gun shy about it because they don't
understand that the whole point of Web3 is to build value for the player.
And so that's a lot of the onboarding that I do.
And a lot of the outreach that I do is about explaining how it benefits the player, how
it's like, you know, traditional magic, the gathering cards,
and like you're buying the cards and then later on you can sell them.
And like you can sell them on a marketplace over here,
or you can take it out and sell it to your friend directly.
Like it doesn't matter.
And you can't do that in traditional AAA.
There are a number of reasons for that.
One of them is that there are legal issues with that sort of thing and money laundering problems that come about from that. And that's one of the reasons that a lot of them shut it down. But the other one is just that they wanted to sell directly to the consumers and they don't want any competition for that.
They want to sell their sparkle ponies for $100, and they don't want anyone else to be able to sell sparkle ponies for $100 to their consumers.
So that's the main reason they're still resisting.
Yeah, very practical answer and reason.
Yeah, I would imagine that's a huge reason. uh rocket league pretty religiously and they took out uh uh player to player trading which had been
a huge part of the game for about i don't know like the first four or five years of the game
uh and you know it caused a lot of upheaval uh within the community and everything else and
there's still people who are screaming from the rafters to bring back player to player trading
which i mean in my opinion they absolutely should but yeah i guess it does come down to that at the end of the day uh you know extracting as much money as humanly possible at all times but yeah
good insight dave thank you man all right uh it's gonna be meme fighter crimson robin and then yahtze
yeah for us it's uh it's a mix of different things. I fully follow what the designer, sorry, I don't see your full name,
designer Dave said.
I didn't know the take about money laundering and legal issues,
but it's fully true that for me, Web2 people are today not ready yet.
Everyone outside the crypto bubble where we live in
still believe it's a scam or some kind of speculation
or something very complex.
It's very difficult to get, let's say,
Web2 gamers on board and to play your Web3 games.
I have no view on the exact numbers,
but I think if you compare the player base of Web2
with the player base of Web3,
then Web3 player base will most likely be inexistent
compared to the Web2 one.
And I think that's maybe a no-brainer as well for those
traditional companies to let's say stay with what they do today as very simply maybe the market they
could gain with with with adding those web 3 elements isn't just too big enough.
And next to that, maybe also the empowerment
that you give to players,
the idea of gaming economies where players in a way
earn based on the success of your game
instead of the makers itself,
or let them trade or transfer digital essence.
This is something that disrupts their business model
because they earn their money on players putting money in their game.
So these are, I believe, some of the reasons.
I don't think they are, let's say,
scared to be disrupted and become irrelevant
because those guys have very, very deep pockets.
And if ever they want,
and if ever they believe that Web3 is the way to go,
they just buy the right studios
and jump on that Web3 train.
You know, I wonder if it is a sticking point, I mean, for both you and Dave said, right, about, you know, obviously gaming companies have to make money. Usually you would make
the money off the sale of the game unless it was free to play. And then of course you
would make money off of cosmetics and things like that. But, you know, I guess what I'm kind of wondering as well is like, you know, do they really need that sustained revenue for that long as far as not being not allowing like the trading of assets between players for for monetary value?
You know, they are multi-million and billion dollar companies.
Is it just greed or is it like oh
you know some of us need this extra revenue to survive and continue to improve on the game uh
you know the pessimist in me would kind of tend to realize that it's mostly just because they
want to extract as much money as possible you know maybe you can even like time gate things like
you know oh you could only buy this uh for now from the store for so long and then you know then start to play your trading
economy i don't know just uh kind of riffing a little bit wondering uh thinking about that kind
of thing but yeah thank you i believe they just want to continuously make money if you see the
direction that those companies go uh in the past, you just needed to play a game on your
PlayStation and you could keep on playing. Now you need to have a monthly subscription
where they keep on subtracting money from you. And this is just a business model that
works for them. If for a Web3 company, basically, they get their money often from an IDO that they did.
But besides that, and besides their own token reserves,
if they don't introduce Web2 elements,
it's very hard for them to get money.
So, yeah, I think that's an unfortunate way to go.
Yeah, that's pretty true.
I mean, I'm more of an indie gamer
nowadays over anything else,
to be honest.
As I've grown older, I usually find
more enjoyment in indie games
versus games that are
constantly shoving cosmetics
in my face, personally.
But yeah, man.
Crimson.
Yeah. Um, I mean, it's hard to, it's hard for me to kind of step into this arena and have a comparable opinion to people who are straight up building games, but you know, I do work with a
ton of the equivalent of, you know, my colleagues here on the panel is I work with people who come to
blockchain to build games, I help them understand why and often I help help them understand their
product market fit. But I also happen to run with like a really nerdy cohort in the real world.
And I'm a gamer myself, and actually quite a few of the people in my life work in AAA.
And so this is a really fascinating topic. And we've touched on all the
big ones. But there's a couple here that I think contribute to this problem a lot. And number one
is you guys have all touched on sort of yeah, monetization, like they want money, they need
money, of course they do. Games, especially when we were growing up, was printing money, you know,
Bethesda puts out the same game 14 times in 10 years and
every single person buys it. You know, the game of the year, the game of the last year, the game
of forward year, the game of 17 years ago edition. You keep buying Skyrim, you keep giving them all
your money. But what we're seeing is the way that games are monetized is changing. And this is
something that a lot of people are struggling with.
This is not even a Web3 problem. Web3 just kind of gets lumped in. And that is the fact that
subscription models have become necessary. It's not just predatory. You know, when EA first
introduced loot boxes, and when we started seeing microtransactions, that was not just, hey, here's a brand new way to grift the crap out of people.
It was also we're struggling with physical sales or people are expecting downloads on day one or it's really expensive to make physical media or piracy is a real issue.
So, you know, a lot of this stuff we kind of we we're so used to being blamed in Web3 often because we deserve it, but often not. We're so used to being blamed in Web3, often because we deserve it, but often not. We're
so used to being blamed for these problems, but some of these things are happening beyond us,
and, you know, the general public, for every person that accepts that they have to pay $27.99
for a Cheeto-skinned Nicki Minaj for their Call of Duty, whatever the hell they're buying,
most people are really disgusted by that. And it's one
of the reasons that you are seeing more people reaching to indie, you are seeing people kind of
pushing back against it. And that is scary for AAA companies, because, you know, they've got to
suck more money harder out of the people who are accepting those things. And they're kind of
avoiding looking at different monetization models. Games cost a lot
of money no matter what and certainly in AAA. So you're seeing people in a space who are already
struggling a little bit with the changing idea of what monetization looks like who then are coming
into an industry where either monetization is perceived as a problem because of crypto, problem because of tokenomics, problem because
the general world only thinks cryptocurrency is for scams. It's this big sort of amalgam of
problems that some of it is beyond our reach. And so it means that we have to pivot and we have to
do a lot of what's been discussed here, which is a lot of education often to the developer or to the investor first
before we even get to the end user. Because if you build a good game, they will be able to bring
in the players. So a lot of the work actually lays between protocols and game companies and
developers is how do we make that part work for everybody and then encourage them to move and bring their products to market.
But the second one, and it's related, and I don't know if other people will agree with me on this,
but it's something that I have observed from being in this space and sort of the traditional
space side by side for a decade. And that is that in Web3, it is super common to build in public.
And some of this is because of budget. Some of this is because of ideologies.
Some of this is because of tech.
You will start in staged launches.
You will often be right out there in the trenches with your community.
You know, things will break.
You will have to constantly be doing upgrades.
Your community, especially if you have a DAO mechanism or a voting or a governance
mechanism that's a part of your game. All of that comes in and often the process of building a game
looks a lot messier. And of course, in the real world, in meat sack world, this happens too. But
games live or die on this. And there have been some spectacular examples over the last few years.
I mean, everything Bethesda releases is buggy as hell, but they're still riding on this. And there have been some spectacular examples over the last few years. I mean,
everything Bethesda reaches releases is buggy as hell, but they're still riding on credibility.
But if you remember No Man's Sky, or you remember even Helldivers just had an insane issue where,
you know, they put out a game that everybody loved and then, you know, nerfed some things
and the player base went apeshit over it
so there's a lot of a lot of things that happen that aren't as acceptable in the real world i
guess if you want to call it and building in public is one of them unless you have incredible
comms and a lot of game companies in web 2 struggle with the idea of having to have all of their
business out and the community involved. And it's
scary for them. And I think that's something that I've heard quite a few times, actually,
from companies looking to build in this space is they're quite surprised by how many people are,
can't the devs do something? And it's now tied to money as well directly and immediately. And
that's a different thing.
Obviously, game devs and devs in general are used to being harassed and harangued.
But there is sort of this idea in Web3 and a lot of the parts of marketing a game and
building a community are, you know, all your business is out on the table.
And part of that is to gain your credibility in the Web3 space.
That's pretty scary for a company who's used to kind of keeping things under wrap, doing really tightly controlled launches, having a lot of PR help.
You know, it's just it's an interesting hump to get over. I happen to believe that it's one that could actually really change the way that people view some of these studios that they're so harsh on. So I do kind of hope that when these businesses come in, however they choose to
monetize, however they choose to integrate Web3, they kind of focus a little bit on how good it
can be when your community does see how the product is made, when your community does have
feedback that is taken into consideration. And that's something that does
happen a little bit in Web 2, but in Web 3 is the soul of a lot of how these things come about.
And I actually think it could be a positive, but I do think right now from both sides of the aisle,
it's a bit of a scary thing. And it's something that Hive, one of the reasons that I love working
in this space so much is that all of these games work together.
All of these communities build heavily and we see people coming in and out of our blockchain.
These people who join the journey of one game on our chain end up exploring every game and then also getting into gaming on other chains.
And that's something that you touched on with the idea that there is a problem with reach outside of our own space. So I know this is a, it's kind of one of those questions.
It's meant to be like, Hey, we have challenges. How do we approach them? But I see it as a slightly
hopeful thing as well. Um, because you know, challenges are things that if you tackle them
and you do it well, you're going to rise. So I still see it as a bit of a positive anyhow.
you're going to rise so i still see it as a bit of a positive anyhow
yeah i mean you know it's interesting i think that there is a shift towards even more community
orientation in traditional gaming but it comes from the indie world right i mean it's like uh
for instance like i play a couple of different indie games pretty religiously, right? No Man's Sky is a good example.
Obviously started off as a dumpster fire,
and they've spent the last eight years
really essentially doing a complete 180 on their PR and everything else
by being so community-oriented.
Sean, who is the head of Hello Games, who makes No Man's Sky,
always gives regular updates to the community there's always a new video every time uh anything's coming up for
updates and things like that uh even down to uh for even even more indie games right like you can
go to the community tab on steam and see them speaking to people pretty much every day about what's going on with the game.
So, you know, I think they're taking a little bit of, you can even call it Web3 ethos if you want,
of building out in the open and taking it to the forefront.
I find it funny you mentioned Bethesda.
In my personal opinion, Bethesda has pretty much eaten through any kind of positivity from the community that they absolutely could at this point.
Because for A, releasing Skyrim like 15 times.
And the other thing, Starfield sucks pretty much straight up.
You know, that's my opinion, but it kind of sucks.
I mean, No Man's Sky's redemption arc is fantastic and kind of mirrors the journey that people have to take in Web3.
I mean, they really did.
They just had to face these problems head on and talk their way out of them.
Not just talk, but with action.
And you know what?
Web3 games have to do that all the time.
They have to do that to exist.
So it is possible.
So, yeah. But, I mean, I say this
as like a Bethesda basic bitch. I will still buy anything they put out. And at the same time,
I hate them so, so, so much. So yeah, it's one of those things where it is going to take
communication. And in our space, we think we're really good at it, but we're not. We're not good at going out and talking to normies. And games that are built in Web2 are not good at coming in and talking to crypto people. But there's more of them than there are of us. So that's the direction that things have to go.
have to go. Yeah, absolutely. And as a bit of an unrelated side note, if Elder Scrolls 6
craps the bed, I think Bethesda is absolutely done. But they shouldn't, because I love Elder
Scrolls. Give it to somebody else, please, Todd, stop. Anyways. It just works. It does not just work, Todd. It does not.
Well, that's neither here nor there.
Thank you, Crimson.
Robin, you're up, man.
Yeah, I think I won't repeat what has been said by my colleagues about the community pushback from the Web2 Gamers.
I will just take an example to illustrate it.
I think it will more show what is really happening I will just take an example to illustrate it.
I think it will be more, it will, it will more show what is really happening.
So I think gamers, web2 gamers, they don't like, they just don't dislike web3.
They actively rejected it.
Today, when you talk about NFTs, wallet, play to earns, they just don't want to hear those words.
They just don't like it.
And the experience we had at Okto, as you know, is at first we only had like Web2 gamers.
And when we implemented a new layer of Web3 gaming on top of the Web2, like we had a community split, which was so huge backlash between two communities and it's really really hard to see it uh so i think today it's maybe a bit early um
to to come into the web 3 to come yeah to come into the web 3 for this like uh big games uh
but in the end they will find a way but i think they don't need to rush it they don't need to
pressurize it.
It must be a demand from the web to gamers.
For now, I think it's not really the case, but let's see what's going to happen.
Yeah, that's very true.
I don't think the demand is quite there yet as well on a large scale. And also, they could even be waiting for regulatory clarity on, you know, tokenomics and different things like that.
What's the security, what's not, that kind of thing to move forward as well.
So, I mean, very real world issues at play here that need to be solved first.
Yatsu.
It's weird to be speaking as the last because I might be poking the ant's nest
a little bit here
because I can see two reasons why Web 2 games
are reluctant to enter the Web 3 space,
if I understand the question correctly.
One is because, one is financial,
because Web 2 and Web 3 are essentially
two different separate financial systems right and
even if we analyze it a bit closer the current financial system simply works
it's easy to connect your card to any of the of you know to to steam for example
and pay and buy a new game with one click if we just think of buying the
game and play right trading between players just
i mean the second second point before that the in-game micro transaction economy if i remember
correctly is responsible for majority of the growth of the gaming ecosystem but that's what
i wanted to cover that in point in point. But if you think that people are reluctant
for paying for in-game goods, well, they do.
And, you know, if I, from what I remember,
$65 billion annually is spent by people on in-game items.
Three, if you want to, I don't know, rent a server
to play private sessions on Minecraft.
You just connect your payment card and it's easy as that.
So I would say that this is the main problem
that the current system simply works for them.
And I mean, for them being Web2 games.
And here I come with a, here comes point number two
is becomes the gamers are fine with it.
Even if you say that people are changing the approach
to governing and influencing a game title,
you know, in the old world, if you play a game,
you pay 35 bucks for it, you play, there are some bugs,
you can bitch about it on on the youtube
channel under streams you know under a stream and this is how community um influences the game and
sometimes they wait for i don't know 10 years for a new release of their of their favorite game um
and and and yet we're we're talking about web 3 as a different demographic of people who are interested in co-creating, in taking part in a game, not just as a pastime, as a fun, but is an actual governing activity, which is kind of alien for most people.
And here I wouldn't expect a huge conversion
or a massive, you know, craze about it.
And the last point is that Web3 games
need to figure out the way.
If we think about the creator economy,
it just dawned on me when I listened to you guys
that majority of money in Web2 gaming
is based on content-based gaming.
People play a game with a funny narrative, with an interesting narrative,
and they stream it and then they become professional streamers
and then they become celebrities or influencers or however you call it.
And this might be the thing to cover for Web3 Games,
to become more streamer and influencer friendly in order to grow
a larger first streamer following and then wider adoption but this is this is all from my perspective
well yeah i'll take you and carmton i'll let you go as well i see you unmuting um but uh
one of the things i wanted to say to what you said and i don't want this uh to come off as me
making light of uh because it's going to sound weird when i say this uh i'm not making light of
like you know domestic situations but it's the best way that i can put it uh psychologically
right it's like gamers have been abused for so long and they stay they stick around right just
like you know an abused partner would in a situation they get so used to being like
exploited and extracted and every bit of value uh basically drained from them. And you're right, they're fine with it for the most part, right?
I mean, most of these games still sell insane amounts.
You still see whales, like for instance,
in whatever Diablo Immortal, I think is the mobile version of Diablo.
They've got whales on there that spend five figures a year on cosmetics,
which is literally insane to me, right?
As a normal person, I suppose.
But, you know, why would you ever stop extracting that value if people seemingly have no issue with it?
I absolutely have an issue with it.
I don't really play games like that because I feel like they are predatory in nature.
And they definitely prey on people's psychology and addiction tendencies.
I mean, for instance, I mean, if you look at, let's look at one of the best, I guess you could say,
AAA games that came out but still kind of indie would be like Baldur's Gate 3, right?
Perfect game.
You pay for it.
It's a fully-fledged game.
There's no micro transactions
there's nothing else in fact they're doing uh free updates fairly often uh and look at the goodwill
that they've got just from that right i mean it's insane uh cd project red kind of got a little bit
messed up with cyberpunk when it first came out you know a lot of over promises but they've since
fixed that and now people are excited for The Witcher
You know Witcher 4 and they would expect it to be
You know kind of like The Witcher 3 a full-fledged game where you could just play it and go from there
So yeah, man, you know, it's kind of hard to overcome
That if people are willing to put up with that kind of thing
But yeah, yeah. Yeah, but I wonder if it's just not a bit deeper
because if you think about a more basic human motivation
to, because gaming is a lot like tuning your car.
There is no limit to how much money you are.
People are willing to spend on their hobby,
on tuning their gear on buying new stuff
even down to stickers. and I think this is the
basic thing for people to change because you know people would put any
money into tuning their Honda Civic right with web 3 gaming is a bit like
starting a tuning garage where you actually know you instead of just
putting money into it you think about taking money out of it. And maybe this is this.
There's a more fundamental psychological thing at play here that people just, you know, the idea itself of playing a game to make money, not from selling your your account or making some maybe micro transactions on the side.
This might be more fundamental.
But yeah, we're over time.
Sorry.
I was going to say the same thing.
I know we're coming up to time,
but obviously I have mad respect for Jacek.
We get along like a house on fire.
And the reason I kind of want to pop in
just before the end is because he's really,
he's touched on something that I think
for a lot of people,
and certainly inside of Hive is 100% the reason
people play these games. And obviously, we're a huge protocol. We've been around for lots of time,
but most people don't know we're here. Most people don't know games are built on our blockchain.
So how is it that games survive inside our ecosystem? And it really is because people
want to make content about them. They want to make friends playing them. And yeah, you know, we don't see the draw of I'm making enough money playing these types of play to earn games. That has gone. It's a nice bonus. with Rising Star, with Holosing, with games that haven't even come out yet, the biggest draw is
people wanting to stream the games, wanting to make fan art. And when you connect that to what
Web3 does best, which is create, you know, value transactions between people, and certainly for
Hive, these social value transactions, all of a sudden, you kind of hit the magic sauce.
And so it's one of
those things that when I come to these spaces, I get really excited when we work with other
protocols and games built on other blockchains, because I'm hoping that we can kind of offer some
of these open source tools and what we have, bring them in and say, hey, add this to what you're
doing. Because there are so many incredible games across X amount of blockchains where
the blockchain either has a lot of fees or isn't set up for the social side of things.
And we're heading towards this cross-trained future.
So I know the questions today have been like, let's tackle these hard topics.
But it's very positive for me to hear that people are recognizing humans love what humans love.
Blockchain is inherently human
tech. And I'd really like to see us, you know, as thought leaders in this space and developers and,
you know, the people who are creating the products really kind of pulling together and recognizing
that, especially as we have more disruptive tech, more AI, more language models, more
instant gratification on producing items faster, the pieces that stick
them together are human connection. And that's going to be the number one part of Web3 as we
go forward is empowering people to play games with each other, to build communities together.
And that is where these marketplaces end up forming. So, you know, I he's nailed it on the
head. We don't, we don't always remember
that. And we really, really should. Yeah, absolutely. And I do want to throw out there,
I'm not immune to the human psychology either. I'm a magic, the gathering player. So I get abused
like every week from Wizards of the Coast. So, you know, I'm, I'm in that psychological draw.
uh so you know i i'm i'm in that psychological draw so you know it is what it is uh it's something
overcoming i do think that we are moving in a positive area i think more people will wake up
to the fact that like you know hey we've been extracted for a really really really long time
uh and i think people forgot what makes gaming fun in the first place and I think we have a chance to really kind of bring that back over here so yeah um Devamon did you add anything to add as well uh no I think I think I'm good
is because uh uh my answer is uh it's already being answered by the all of the speakers so yeah
but I'm still bullish you know in game three sorry in web three so yeah lpg yeah yeah absolutely man i you're right we did kind of we we definitely hit a lot of stuff man
all right um well i know we are over time guys uh i will give you the floor though uh here for
about a minute a piece uh to end off and let the people know what you got going on uh you know
anything cool anything you guys want to close with essentially so i'm just going to go top to bottom for this because it's easier for me to keep
the order so uh we'll go with mean fighter yeah i'm going to keep it uh very short to all of you
out there keep on building keep on pushing i'm sure those traditional gaming companies feel our breath in their necks.
And one day, they will see that Web3 is the way to go.
Absolutely. Well said, man.
All right. Octo, Robin.
Yeah, thank you very much for all guys.
for all guys.
I think the same vibe as everyone here,
I think the same vibe as everyone
here, thinking that
gaming will be flourishing
during the
years coming.
I think we're at the pivot right now
and the direction is the good one.
So just follow what
every project is doing, especially
Octo if you want. And it was
a pleasure. Thank you very much.
Thank you, man.
All right, Jacek, Soler.
Thank you so much for this opportunity, guys.
Thank you for this discussion.
If I can say about one thing,
I put up a tweet up in that tumble bumble,
whatever this thing is called, about Timd.
What we are trying to build is one a
single point of discovery of web 3 games and right now what we're doing as Tim
is onboarding as many web 3 games as possible so if you have an in-browser
game or native please reach out to us listing is absolutely for free because in the second stage
we will be building the audience so this is my only purpose of being here in this space to
encourage you guys with from the bottom of my heart to just use this opportunity to list for free
on the something that we want to become the most innovative game launching environment
We want to become the most innovative game launching environment in history.
And that's it.
Thank you very much for this space, guys.
Yeah, thank you for being here, man.
And we just called the thing up at the top, the Jumbotron.
I don't know what else to call it.
So, I mean, it makes sense to me.
But, yeah, thank you, man.
Hive, Cripson.
Yeah, thanks again.
We love coming to these spaces.
What are we at now?
300 something?
Wild.
Hive is a completely open source,
truly decentralized blockchain.
It's owned and built by community.
And that's all fancy ways of saying
that people shape it and people grow it
and people are the ones who play games.
So if you're looking for a place
to connect over your games,
if you're looking for a way to expand what your games, if you're looking for a way to expand
what your Web3 games are offering,
if you wanna go cross chain,
or you just wanna meet some really cool people
who can help drive your game
with either a brand ambassador, circular economies,
all sorts of cool stuff,
then please reach out to me,
reach out on the Hive main account,
come explore, come talk about what you're doing.
It does not matter what chain you are on.
Web3 is for everyone.
Nice.
Thank you, Crimson.
And yeah, we're at 3.
We're going to be 3.50 tomorrow.
I'm surprised people aren't sick of me yet.
But thanks for helping us out this week.
Appreciate you.
All right.
Let's go with DevilBond.
Thank you so much, guys, for being here. Thank you so much Terima kasih banyak, guys, untuk berada di sini. Terima kasih banyak untuk menemukan kami.
Dan seorang host yang bagus, btw.
Jadi, untuk Devobon, kami masih mengembalikan permainan kami.
Jangan berhati-hati di media sosial kita.
Kita akan mengetahui Anda tentang progres dan campaign berikutnya.
Terima kasih juga untuk semua penduduk. Sangat bagus untuk berkontak dengan Anda. Terima kasih banyak, guys. our next campaign. So yeah, thank you also for all of the speakers.
It's really nice to be connected with you.
So yeah, thank you so much, guys.
Thank you, man.
All right, and Dave, take us home, man.
Yeah, so Engines of Fury is going to have
the next playtest soon called The Infection.
Please sign up for that.
You can go to eof.gg to learn more.
We just had our million Fury
token burn.
I'll remind everyone that Burning
Fury is part of the tokenomics
for the game once the game starts up
and goes into early access, which
should be this year.
So yeah, check us out if you want
to play a cool top-down extraction
shooter. We've had several play tests and we've gotten really good feedback.
We had 1,000 players in the Cliffside playtest,
and people are really enjoying the game.
It's a PvP-Ve game.
And if you like Diablo and Escape from Tarkov,
it's kind of a mix of the two.
So yeah, come play.
And I'll see you guys on the battlefield real soon.
Heck yeah, thanks play, and I'll see you guys on the battlefield real soon. Heck yeah, thanks, man,
and thanks for coming to everybody.
I encourage you to follow each other.
You never know what kind of it. That's what these are all
about as well. But yeah, thanks
to Hive for helping me out
today and for the rest of the week.
This was episode 349.
We're going to have episode 350 tomorrow,
which is crazy, as Crimson was saying.
But until then, I hope you guys stay safe,
and I'll talk to you guys tomorrow.
Later.
