BBW24 – Day 2 – Leveling Up: Blockchain's Impact in the Gaming Industry

all right uh thanks for coming out to our little chat here guys uh I figured we start from the top just like a little introduction a little bit of our background so Noah you want to go first and we'll work this way of course yeah uh I've been doing gaming for the past 10 years uh I'm Noah Jones I'm 22 been doing it since 10 years old I started off uh doing Roblox development and I I've continued you know from there and I made a career out of it nice awesome Alex yeah so I'm in crypto Since U like Ico boom from 2017 and I was mostly a marketing guy I was involved in a lot of U Ico sales and uh you know previous buun nft sales so um I I um would be happy to share my experience like uh what we are doing right now so um as um as been mentioned uh I am a CEO of upage we are developing the games uh mini games in Telegram and uh the our the last case during this run is uh the last during this last two weeks we achieved 4 million users uh in telegram mini games uh so mini game so I would be happy to tell you more a comparation between previous bull run where we had like a zero restrictions in Apple Store for the games compared to this bull run where we limited in our instruments to promotee games and to work with audience um to sell uh digital digital assets awesome awesome and uh I'm Carl I uh lifelong gamer nerd probably the old guy on the stage up here but I've been gaming since the 80s on Nintendo uh but yeah uh I now own an agency where we do marketing and advertising assets mostly focused in gaming entertainment and Tech so I'll be coming at it from that perspective more than a technologist perspective but very cool all right cool so um from the top uh how how blockchain technology is transforming in-game economies so you know a lot of these games back when you know back in the day you're like even World of Warcraft or like EverQuest there there's robust in-game economies and now we have this idea of tokenization of these things where the value can now transcend outside of these economies so how are you guys seeing that affect the gamepl yeah so I mean I'm kind of coming at this from a different angle right I don't really do anything in the actual crypto space or the web 3 space with gaming um but I've actually seen a lot of that trans form in the space right like as I stated I've made tons of games on Roblox um currently I have one of the top ranked games um and what I've seen is a lot of you know a lot of developers are trying to figure out how we can bring that into the Roblox bace right because if we look at the Roblox market share and gaming it's going up every year and we're getting close to that 10% of gaming threshold right uh a lot of games at this point are being published on that platform for the younger audiences so what we've been trying to figure out is and this has been tested and early on we kind of saw it uh was where one of the developers brought in nfts right and basically with the nfts you would get something in game which we're seeing a lot in the web 3 space now but this was kind of early on in the nft space didn't really go so well with the Roblox kind of audience but we're trying to figure out how to kind of do that so that's kind of the the first part that I've seen and from there you know it's we we've experienced a lot from the and we've seen a lot from the web 3 space I'm sure you're going to talk a lot about it telegram has definitely been something to look at what with what they've been doing so it's trying to find out how to bridge that Gap okay did you want to chime in on that Alex yeah I I totally agree that uh like um maybe I would love to add that nft and in general this digital assets uh when it was like when the when the world first seen it it was a good example of ownership that you don't need to prove anything with lawyers or like you know with um with some middleman and it's enough to have asset in blockchain uh to uh to prove that uh that you owner that it's your ownership and that's the beauty in decentralization and blockchain in general when you send money by crypto to somebody you don't need uh I don't know like uh Visa or Mastercard or payment any payment provider to confirm this transaction in centralized way it's enough to see it in blockchain and um uh when when I remember when it was the crypto kitties and the uh crypto punks in 2017 everybody reacted like what what the hell is that it's it's a joke or something you know nobody expected something serious from it uh and the technology what was behind that it was huge because um as any great things it's like like a boom of Dos it started from a boom and it was really over evaluated and a lot of people came there for gamble you know to buy the domain and sell it more expensive and uh and and as you remember everybody expected that this industry will go to nothing will go to zero the same thing is going on with the blockchain and uh gaming like later earn games so we see the boom of Technology the rise of technology and we see you know on a very very young stage industry where a lot of people don't understand uh how uh how important this technology and what's what's the main uh product Market feed what uh this technology can solve uh and as as you said it starting with nft a lot of people came for this P pfp nfts to make some certain amount of X for hustle because they just see that some people do you know some Revenue in the short term uh and then when uh they was not able to receive this extra margin from selling they get rich quick sorry so they didn't get rich quick yeah yeah that's one of uh one of mistake as I Remember by myself so if you come in for crypto you know like we said you come for money and stay for technology yeah so you know we're seeing a lot of things evolve in the space right like I just saw something the other day that Pokemon right is now taking their trading card game and making nfts of their so now you can trade and interact with digital trading cards which is how a lot of us talk about it in the space to people that don't get it yet like this is a digital trading card right like it's very straight one to one I think huge Brands like that adopting this is going to really shift the needle much quicker than you know we'd seen in the past so because you're right the first boom is all about cash grabs and people were excited but it was the technology Enthusiast who understood what that crypto Kitty represented that really drove all that sort of stuff and I think one thing that he touched on that I mean I'm not fully in that space But what I honestly have looked at and I think is amazing is the legal aspect like you touched on right with with crypto that you don't really need to go to lawyers like you said you have that kind of guaranteed and it just solves a lot of issues in that that space especially with gaming where in a lot of these you know Trends you need to get right on it or you need to get right to action with the development I think that solves it yep absolutely so this sort of gets into the next subject on on play to earn models right so you know it's kind of we I think everyone at this point even like your old grandma with her smartphone is like playing Candy Crush so like everybody is on some level if they have a smartphone they're a gamer now whereas like when I was growing up like if you were a gamer you were a nerd right like and like that was kind of sending now it's like a badge of honor like now actually no right like so I think this rise with this pay to earn model as more and more of us are spending more and more of our time even on phone games if you're not a console gamer but everybody's interacting as a gamer on some level for the most part I feel like I feel like that's a safe statement to make um we're having models of games come up where people earn assets whether it's a token or an nft uh so a crypto or or an nft um H how have you guys seen some of that how's that affecting you know people's ideas for developing things and and communities and that sort of stuff definitely yes so I mean I've definitely I've seen parts of that right um and I think the big thing for me I think it's so early on in that aspect I think the concept of it is amazing but you know I think it it also has to do with different cultures right like I think we see here in the US for example they don't they're not really onto that sort of gamepl yet just because they're more into the fun aspect of it or they're more into I think I think there are different different demographics go over different types of games but I think more so in the US we're still so focused on like the the NBA 2ks the madens and all the mainstream games whereas in other countries and I've seen it firsthand that they don't care about the mainstream titles and you know for some of them it is their job where they go into these games I mean I don't know if either exactly I don't know if either of you were familiar with RuneScape but you would have the people in RuneScape like farming for money right so I think that's where that comes in um I've even seen it in some of my games I mean it's not really allowed but well some of this that's a great point this stuff happens anyways right when anybody invests a tremendous amount of time in a thing as we always say in business time is money right so I'm investing myself in this it's like well I can buy some gold from this gold farmer and save myself you know 20 hours of farming like that makes sense so these economies are already there now to your point they're legitimizing them now if they have an exchange they can these are actual assets that can be traded without the need of ethics and lawyers and all the things that would go into people stealing your money because it's on a blockchain technology so I I think this there's this is going to be a huge space for adoption because as long as people don't know that it's crypto they don't they don't care they want to play Candy Crush or they want to play whatever what's the what's the one with the crazy nfts that like blew up um the little Derpy characters it's like a turn-based fighter anybody know the name of this axi Infinity there it is okay so axi Infinity right like that the game was objectively pretty good right and that's where we see a lot of this stuff fail where like they're coming into it with a economics tokenomics mindset but they're not game developers so the game sucks no one wants to play it right the game's got to be amazing and it's got to be seamless that it's crypto involved so to kind of go off of that as well right so I'm going to go back probably five years and I mean I was 10 years old right so that's when I started um but I remember when Roblox right I'm sure everyone knows at ROBLOX it was the Laughing St of the gaming industry I had multiple talks with developers at the time you know that would make independent indie games and they wouldn't call it real development right right and you're kind of seeing something similar with you know web 3 based games in my opinion where people are looking at them and saying oh that's not the right you you know that's not a real game but honestly look where Roblox is now and I think in the next 5 years we're going to see a pivot with that as well and I think more people are going to be going to that type of game I mean wasn't I think 2021 or 2022 Gucci did a collab with Roblox dropped a $5,000 Gucci bag that was an nft I talked about this my talk yesterday they just dropped Lamborghinis on there it's crazy but it's incredible so people people are are having more of a flex on their digital identity and these cozy games are going to be huge because that's where people are this that's where you start converting more into this ready player one I I would love to interrupt you most of this play to earn games uh they you know if you buy some digital asset in play to your games you can earn some certain amount of money and you have some API from it I remember previous bull Ram it was huge very popular game it's called steepen I don't know who remember if you you was was able to buy nft and with this like digital sneaker and you run or walk with this nft and earn points and Depends of quality of this nft you earn different amount of cryptocurrency so for example you can buy uh one sneaker for thousand of $1,000 and you will have API something like I don't know uh 3,000% 4,000% or you can buy I don't know nft for $5,000 and earn like $200 per day so and a lot of people they don't expect that this uh project will go down I don't know in the months or so they calculate their earning by years by years and the price of nft growing up because they have a different revenue and that's maybe the reason that uh these games it's something like like a merge between Financial instrument like a kind of like a stocks or something yeah and and a game like a like a fun you can do a fun like I did did Sport and earn some tokens um so that's that's how how we see different rates and different prices for this nft of course it was a crazy with you know this cryptops or uh board ape Yak Club where they didn't really have any utility and or like revenue from it and and the price was crazy that's a great thing you can add utility at any point right which is what board Apes did they just launched some cool apes and now they've got licensing deals and they're writing comics and stories and sharing royalties so that sort of stuff's pretty fascinating and I think there's a space where that can happen in the gaming space too you unlock some avatars or some sort of you know nfts within the game and now you have some sort of intellectual property rights to utilize those and there's still lots of gray area in the legal aspects of that um just for the record so yeah and if I can butt in one more time on that I think the I think the way for you know that kind of game play to take over is what's already been happening right where you're seeing these companies jump into these games and they're creating tokens on these games and I think that's how you can get to the pay to- earn sort of games where you know people are getting a little taste of it where maybe they're getting some sort of token with their favorite game I mean if we look at fortnite right now if we look at you know a game like that and they start rewarding players with tokens based on their favorite skins or avatars I think that's exactly what you know like the game world needs yeah I mean in axi Infinity there were people in the boom that were living off of their nfts and tokenization through axi Infinity you know in in less developed Nations obviously where money went a little further but that's really wild so when you start to think about as we get into a space with AI and all this technology boom and people possibly losing lots of jobs like this almost comes like hey if we're going to be spending our time on these games and eyeballs are worth dollars right and you can Implement some sort of Economics there and I'm not an an economics person on the details of that but it almost becomes like this could be some sort of base level income that people could generate all you know and crazy as that sounds but like I don't know you know of course like that's you you mentioned like the for the crypto game it's important to be a good game but in reality what we see the why I decided and why I'm doing what I'm doing like this in telegram mini apps the current bull round when we have this a lot of restriction in Apple Store in Google Play what happened with all this x infinity and other nft games so Apple Store provided that it's not possible to do anything with crypto in in the store and in Google plays you have to pay 30% Commission on any purchase or you know on any deal inside in the store and uh a lot of crypto games they lost a huge Market they decided to close their apps and the current I would say meta of the of the of the of the current Bull Run it's mini apps like NCoin I don't know if you heard about that uh and hamster combat they they today they received approval from an unknowned listing on binance they have 240 million users 240 it's not a game at all def you just stop you just stop on a hamster that's all gamy and that's the problem why great like a gaming company they can't build a go a cool Play Turn game because they don't understand the psychology of this people they think the people in crypto that do crypto games they think that they don't waste their time they like doing like you said doing some kind of job of some like they spend their time to earn money you know doesn't matter that like sometimes they don't earn anything and the token will be not launched but they have a chance to not waste their time and I think you know hamster combat that's a prime example um if I'm not wrong they said they were going to drop their their nft or tokens on like September 25th or something like that so I think seeing that that's going to be a prime example of like what the market looks like at that time because I mean that's going to be who everyone looks at right when they do that yeah so so what what we have now so with this uh tone Network and telegram launch uh and uh telegram mini apps you don't like like I mean publisher of the games they don't have to pay this huge 30% commission you don't need to pay commission at all okay you reing huge easy advertisement without any restriction like you're doing in Google or Facebook or meta you know uh or any other platform so you can freely so telegram's launching apps yes that's what I'm doing yeah oh okay I didn't know that that's amazing okay so apps inside in Telegram and it's not you don't need to be like iPhone or iOS it's like a inside in telegram app you have like a like a browser web app wow that's beautiful and uh if you if you write it in a JavaScript or some easy language you can put it inside in a bot and everyone can open easily on any device that's pretty amazing especially because all of the communities a good chunk of them are already in telegram right so like that's really um great marketing uh all right so let's keep it moving to the next question um implementing Dows into game government so so if you're not familiar decentralized autonomous autonomous organizations there it is so uh L I know Alex you said you had some thoughts on that uh let's throw that to you guys yeah so I mean I think the way to go about that is if you go for more of you know I like the aspect of it where it's more voting power not really implementation of features I think using that as kind of a basis for getting Concepts around stuff I think that there's definitely a future in that but overall I think it's still you know I mean to see how the future goes with something like that um it's for me personally it's you know I I like to control every piece of my games to make sure it's like my complete Vision but I mean on the upside you know with with other base games I think that you know definitely makes sense I think it really depends on the type of game as well though yeah I mean so it's really the decentral decentralized kind of nature of blockchain and that's the the the kind of backbone of it what it does is build community right so like it's your game and you build it but I think there's a space where you can set up things and have DS that are just like all right well we're thinking about doing this this or this what does the community want right you know I mean so you can have limitations and guide rails on it versus someone taking your taking it all over the map and something crazy right you know and to go off with that I think that's smart because I think what I've noticed in a lot of the games that I've published is we have three or three different directions we want to go with the game community may like one one more may be more feasible and one honestly is probably more monetized right so to try and figure out which one they want most which in most cases we know it's going to be the free one that they want sure sure well hey look you know you build a good community and that's something that lasts right so when you go for the cash grab you're taking short-term Gaines that almost always bite you in the ass so that's my you got any anything to weigh in yeah I mean in general like we see the cryptocurrencies and this D organization you know if you will open coin market cap and uh like show me is the real de Central Iz cryptocurrency or decentralized blockchain uh not by definition by stakeholders that control some 51% or really decisions so you will see that it's not so many or maybe none of them you know really decentralized and um uh I would say this though it's a it's a great uh initiative it's uh it's it's absolutely uh right things on a high level but in in reality this Dow it's illusion for the community that they have a they have a choice how it will go with the game that they can uh you know receive U that they can involve on the development side but um in the reality what I see like you mentioned axi Infinity it's alamaa Capital it's absolutely centralizing I used to work with the chromaway company uh and they launch the most successful player game on binance uh in 2021 it's called my neighbor Alis it's absolutely centralized you know but they of course call that this is a dow it's trade cryptocurrency trade on the Dex they have you know some digital assets but of course they they control Supply and they control all decisions inside in that and they give to the public some opportunity to vote on some small things uh and it's not bad and it's not good this is a tough reality if you crowd every time wrong if you want to build something great you have to make decision by your own yeah I I can see a world where a Dal setup and like a really extensive MMO RPG and you know world events happen and the Dal voting decides all right does this guy win or this thing happens and then these things transform and then using you know AI models you can develop these things much quicker you know know potentially if you trained models on certain you know um lauras and things of that nature but I I think that there's something there that's going to be pretty exciting uh and I'm excited to see who does that right the first time and what that looks like so and that kind of leads me into this next piece here uh virtual real estate especially you know moving forward in some of these like cozy games you have like decentral land like it's not really like a game but it's like a it's an experiential thing uh you know sandbox which is kind of like Roblox in some regards and um but you know we saw a huge boom in in in the real estate the digital real estate market uh and seeing that like hey the ones that were like closer to 000000 in decentral land for instance those nfts that represented plots of land in that space were worth way more than as you the further you get out from there uh and just like so what are some of you guys thoughts about virtual real estate and and gaming moving forward so you see one game that comes to mind that I think could really take advantage of that is GTA right so if you think about a game like that where it's funny no but if you think about a game like GTA right where it's more centralized around different cars or stuff but if you if you played like GTA 5 you have the different apartments and stuff like that I think there's a lot of room for them to capitalize on something like that and I think implementing stuff like that into games where it's not really based around actual real estate that's how you're going to get players in that game as well right I think the whole idea is I think there's one centralized sandbox game if I'm not correct that I've seen everywhere um and I think that's amazing where it's you know it's just a map of then people kind of buy different countries or different kind of I don't know parts of different countries different areas and I think that's really cool but I don't see a game like that lasting long term right so I think if someone's able to implement a feature like that or virtual real estate into a game that's already established then I think it's you know the opportunities are definitely endless yeah I I can see a lots of marketing opportunities in that space too right like we have a 100 million users or whatever something crazy like well most of those people physically travel through this spot in the game now I have an nft that represents this billboard in that thing that I can lease out on like it can get crazy right yeah and I mean in mypace I've already seen that a lot I mean i' I've seen a lot of the top games which are more kind of like RP based where you're going to see these companies kind of come in it's not really exactly them buying well it is them buying virtual real estate but not in that same way where they're seeing all the traction that these specific parts of these maps are getting and I mean some of these games are getting like a billion plays a year like it's it's incredible and what these companies are doing is they're seeing these you know imagine like sort of like a Town Square they're seeing a shop kind of an unbranded pizza shop well you're seeing like Papa John's Pizza Hut all of those companies see at that they're seeing the amount of you know players that walk by that location and they're saying we can that's a lot better than a billboard eyeballs are dollars right you know and people are investing their time there and they want they other people want their brands to be seen in the spaces so um we're we're moving into a more and more digital world right like my son's 12 and he plays VR every day with his friends all over the world and they build their own little VR worlds and they hang out and like they're just in spaces just hanging out out like and I go I I wanted to check this out the other day so I was like see what my kids up to trying to be a good dad put my VR on I go in this thing and they're like hanging out in this room like watching movies that are like live in the theater like we had lime wire this kid can like flip through every anime and press a button and play a thing it's like they don't have the licensing rights to any of that these kids don't care they're just making this stuff it's crazy like the community building that's happening in these spaces is UN unreal like my friends my my kids's best friends are all over the planet like that that that's that's a now thing it's really wild so and that that's the last point we can talk on over here just for a minute just community building is there anything I know we've touched all around that but so yeah yeah I mean just to go off of that as well I mean I had the opportunity there are a lot of developers that have talked for for you know like literally my whole career right and I went to my first convention and the Roblox and I finally met them all face to face and it's so weird it's like are you it's so weird normally when you meet someone you introduce yourself and all of that but it was such a different atmosphere where like you would hear someone voice you were like is that them and you would walk over there and be like a little awkward thing like are you this person yeah it's it's just incredible right with stuff like that I mean even back when I was a kid like we had like the lime wire to download the music and stuff but now you're seeing it for stuff like that when you literally have a TV right there it's it's incredible to see mhm I love it anything else you want to add in yeah I mean if we are talking about games I mean especially in crypto Community is the the most important thing and the most powerful thing that could boost uh boost your boost your token and boost your game in general if you will see on huge Brands they have the core Community why why people use that like I don't know some uh crazy drivers around B BMW you know that like drift and they they they don't care what will be the design of new BMW they care how this car will be Drive how how they will drive this car you know and the same with the game if you know your community and you know your core value uh you will have a sustainable game and uh you you can uh do I don't know any pivots and CH changing but you know that these people staying with you because you are closing the value and providing the Valu that nobody can provide and U most of like blockchain games they they forgetting about that they they are trying to focus on so many things you know they're trying to provide uh like just uh trendy stuff to to have more people they don't care to build sustainable Community around one product Market feed and um uh yeah I think this is what we should keep in mind when we build products and I just have one quick question for you because you know you're kind of the like expert in that space when do you think we're going to see the first mainstream game of that type which kind of I mean or just I mean just pay to pay to experience kind of you know game like when are we going to start seeing something a mainstream game of that type where you see everyone across the world you know playing a game like that like you know how fortnite took over kind of the world for its amount of time when are we going to see a game like that be the next 5 years 10 years I the the problem is I mean that uh the game we see these games right now I mean maybe not in us like hamster combat is 240 million users yeah it's like come on it's like several countries it's like I don't know half of Europe it's not it's not small amount of people but the problem that they don't like provide any I don't see the value that they provide it's motivational traffic they just pay people for for clicking and um if you're asking about some games like GTA as you mentioned uh when they will integrate some some uh nft stuff hopefully I believe so after this bull run with this m regulation and all new regulations that we see maybe huge developers big companies they will not be so many afraid about legal issues and they will start integrating these things because previously it was truly like uh you know Western west west wild west you know uh and uh a lot of big companies with a huge Revenue with you know to be they listed on you know on Stock Exchange they it's it was so early for them to integrate something like digital assets and and crypto but now after I mean when the industry became more development more strong you know more uh less young I would say then we will have a chance uh hopefully in two three years we will see this yeah it's like every crypto project now is just we're waiting on good regulation so but uh we're out of time guys and uh you know we'll see these things blow up when we get some actual guidelines in our from our government so thank you thank you man yeah cool