The future of utility backed NFTs and Gaming with Flip Benjamin

oh y'all feeling that's what I'm talking about all right all right let's get this cracking then um I can see some of y'all know me I see some familiar faces in the audience for y'all that don't know me my name is flip real name is Jeremiah Benjamin came here all the way from South Central to talk to y'all about the future of web 3 gaming and utility-based nfts um yeah so I'm flip I'm a metaverse architect I'm a game designer uh I founded two companies uh 88 ideas which is probably in a way there we go all right so 88 ideas is uh independent gaming and metaverse Studio we focus on photorealistic web 3 games and metaverse experiences pod Labs is our our gaming platform and Marketplace so basically 88 ideas creates the games pod Labs uh deploys and distributes the game through nfts so I mean one of the biggest reasons that I'm here and it is my opinion that in order for nfts to reach what we are calling Mass adoption there has to be there has to be more incentives or an incentive placed in front of at the top of the the list in front of financial incentives we will never reach can y'all hear me all right there we go it is my opinion that we will not reach Mass adoption for nfts or our technology without inherent utilities so there's a quote here there has to be other reasons to buy nfts besides Financial incentives or every bear Market will lose a significant portion of people that we gained through financial incentives and then they lost their money or they they don't have the ability to have Diamond hands they don't know how to to hold so as a game designer I do believe that gaming is one of the verticals we have a couple different verticals for how we plan to reach more than four percent of the U.S adult population owning nfts one of them is gaming some people say music is that fashion uh entertainment and I'm not here to say one will beat out the other all I'm saying is all of us have a responsibility to provide utility for you uh to provide utility for nfts outside of financial incentives so me being a gamer I mean me being a game designer this is why I believe gaming utilities are important to the future of of to the future of nfts so 64 billion dollars was spent on in-game assets in 2020. 64 billion dollars was spent on avatars weapons all of these different in-game assets and then and these assets were were bought these assets were paid for without necessarily there being an inherent top of the line Financial incentive for owning them people own them because they love the games that they were playing people owned them because it shaped some form of identity within that game that they were playing and most of these games did not have Financial ecosystems outside of it so for Mass adoption one of the biggest things I believe is retention of people that you on board so how do you make people come in but then how do you make them stay gaming has very inherent and clear ways that it can make people come in and can make people stay games that provide a sense of achievement and rewards for completing challenges these are these are statistics these are yeah these are researched um statistics that these these type of things are more likely to retain users games that offered a rivalry awry range or variety of ways that you could customize your characters weapons all of these things um my biggest problem with my biggest issues with financial incentives are the fact that if they are not financially beneficial people do not look for the utility once the fact that they have not been financially beneficial to them they don't really care about all of the other stuff that that thing is offering there's a statistic here only 14 percent of U.S adults have heard of nfts only four percent of those actually own them and based on that they they perceive that they're still this what are they calling it this small group of early adopters or enthusiasts that kind of make that that make that or shape that that World um we're all in Alpha groups and stuff like that there are literally I sit in Alpha groups and like the same people know about the same projects and know which ones are going to pump which one yeah we have information on that so all I'm saying is as a game designer I choose to be a utility for a utility builder for nfts basically um why gaming I believe that that gaming already has inherently the things that the audience is already trained to sort of do the desired action our desired action is for people to basically if I'm talking about building a game my desired action is for people to buy or purchase nfts that they can use inside of their games I want people to sort of have when they buy an nft I want them to ask the question how do I use this thing what do I get out of this thing how can I find Value without necessarily associating it with the money that I invested in it I don't think any kid actually feels cheated from buying something with their Roblox or their V bucks or whatever and when they buy an asset they never feel cheated that they cannot go back and sell that asset and get the same amount of money for so I believe that gaming inherently already has trained people for the desired action and we we do have the ability to offer Gamers something in ownership right now if you buy in-game assets you're basically leasing that asset from the from sort of like the the game creator you do not own the asset that is being used inside of these experiences these games nft nfts the technology gives the user the ability to own the the asset that is within their games and opens up a whole Myriad of like potential use cases for nfts outside of financial gain the biggest question is can we have our cake and eat it too I am not saying I am not saying that we cannot make money from nfts that is not my that is not my thesis that that nft should not be able to to sort of um to grow in value I do believe they should be able to grow in value I just want I just want the focus of when you purchase an nft as an nft designer or a game designer utility the designer I want people to ask themselves the question before they ask about financial gain I was standing over there these guys now we have beautiful photorealistic games inside of web 3 now which is what I'm a very big proponent of it started off very 8-bit 16-bit but now we're we're coming up with beautiful games the first question somebody asked the guy was is this game play to earn and inherently I'm not saying that that's a bad question I just wish that question was the third or fourth question that was being asked I wish that question was when you asked about how can you financially gain from a game I wish that was fourth on the list for why you actually purchased an nft um especially that is backed by a metaverse or a web 3 game or anything like that I want people to be able to use their nfts and find Value and just the use not feel cheated when the floor price drops I as a game designer I can say selfishly that I don't want to sit around and be responsible for the floor price going up or down I would prefer to just continue to build qualities or things inside of my game that give people the feeling um of an experience and that they can feel like they're not cheated as long as I've delivered them an excellent gaming experience or an excellent metaverse experience so know what the next slide is okay this these are some of this is a game that I built called rehydrate so for instance this is just an example if you buy the passport to rehydrate you get to going to rehydrate now rehydrate is a single player metaverse completely focused on mindfulness meditation so I built this photo realistic beautiful world it's on near blockchain I built this world so people can go into it there is no play to earn no participate to earn there's no tokenomics inside of it you go in this place for a five minute break five to seven minute break you find different places inside of it to meditate find places where you can do affirmations stuff like that or you can just choose to explore your Paradise but the purpose is that when someone buys the nft as long as it has improved their life as long as it is done something for quality of life that if they come back and they purchase the passport for a hundred dollars they have found a hundred dollars worth of value in the meditation in the time spent in the experience and stuff like that shout out to my co-founder beware if you're going to rehydrate you'll hear the voice um and then here's just these are assets on the side of different characters cars lost so my thing is as a game designer as a as a founder of a gaming studio I simply want to create games I want people to find Value in the games and playing the games and not find Value in sort of like the financial ramifications of buying the nft and these nfts go and these nfts go up in value yes that is a possibility but I'm not here to sell Securities that is not my intent when coming into the space so as long as I can build beautiful games and not just me that's all of these game designers that you have lined up here and everything like that I feel like as long as we can place a focus on delivering utility excellent gaming experiences excellent metaverse experiences that should be worth the money that was that should be worth the money that was invested by the person to buy the nft um there are 450 000. 450 000 um retail Traders in in U.

S America right now there are 169 million gamers in my opinion that is what Mass adoption looks like it looks like the 169 million and not the 450 000 people um so as long as the first thing people think about are finances when they think about nfts will always stay four to ten percent the minute they start associating it with great experiences and utilities I think then we have the ability to advance to Bringing In 169 million people in the U.S billions of people worldwide so that is the end of my talk I real I got 30 seconds one question can I answer one question if anybody has questions no questions all right oh you were saying that you um like somebody can buy the nft and it could be like on I know you're building on near uh with these nfts being transferable to uh different blockchains or you know just how would that work as far as the maintaining that ownership of the nft so I believe as a if you guys heard this question I believe as a utility provider the future is chain agnostic I will not continue to be able to build on one chain one experience may be subject to one blockchain but even that blockchain even if I choose that blockchain in my opinion there has to be a way that people can they have metamask whatever however they want to keep their collection that they do have the ability near has Aurora Richie is a bridge to ethereum here also is working on a thing called boss so I do believe that the future is chain agnostic and I will not be able to or any provider here but not be able to solely provide for one chain but yes future exchange agnostic in my opinion and how I build games all right my time is up but thank you guys for listening in the talk I really appreciate it yeah if you need to find me I'll be on the side of the stage or something