The Colorado Lottery, Chainlink & ETHDenver GameJam Opening Ceremony

welcome to the colorado lottery game jam i'm john power i'm the co-founder and executive steward of east denver which is the world's largest ethereum based hackathon hosted in denver colorado for the past three years where we've hosted over 5 000 people from 75 countries and over 400 projects for this installment we've got a very unique opportunity to partner with the state of colorado with the state of colorado source creativity to build the next lottery game so we have an incredible lineup of speakers tonight the creativity and intelligence and just thought leadership on this call is going to be it's going to blow your mind so welcome from me from the ether space you can see where i am right now but i'm actually going to shift where i'm uh broadcasting from because i'm going to take myself down to colorado here and say hello from my friends the buffalo corns so with that we're going to jump right into this but before i do i'm just going to give you some expectations on what this is so first off this is a giant experiment so everyone's doing virtual everything that no one's done this before so forgive us if we're a little bit cumbersome and maybe not perfectly executing we're here to learn from each other if there's something we can do to improve please tell us what it is we have all sorts of communications channels that we'll go through we've got a discord server we've got office hours for mentors we've got our emails of course you can connect with us at please engage please be be present this is what it's designed to do and give us feedback because i do think that this virtual world that we're living in isn't going to go away anytime soon necessarily we're at least going to have to learn to deal with sort of a sitting on the fence version of this or you know partial person partial virtual who knows what's going to happen but bear with us so what else are you going to expect well there's an incredible amount of creativity that's been crowdsourced into this event we have people from the public sector including the state of colorado governor and department heads here we have ceos from top companies in colorado as well as top projects and thought leaders from the ethereum and web 3 space that's going to just absolutely melt your mind when it comes to what we've got to offer so with that i'm going to introduce tom seaver who's a senior director at the colorado state lottery and he's going to tell you a little bit more about this initiative how this came to be why the heck we're even doing this how we came to be a partnership and in a little bit more about what to expect so tom i'm going to go ahead and shift the time to you thanks everyone for being here thank you john and thank everybody for being here today you know the colorado lottery is the only lottery in the world whose proceeds are dedicated to parks recreation open space wildlife preservation and with some dedicated to school construction through our best program the lottery has uh pretty aggressive goals in fact by fy23 we want to be a one billion dollar per year business what that means when we achieve that is we'll be giving hundreds of millions of more dollars to our proceeds beneficiaries and that's where tonight comes in you know last year alone 67 000 new people moved to colorado and that's been pretty much an average year for us lately in addition to that u.s news and world report ranked us as the 10th base best place to live in the united states so we don't see the growth in our population and our in our number of new coloradans slowing down anytime soon and that's just fun but part of the reason that they come here is for parks it's for our mountains it's for the opportunities to get outdoors and have a great time that's never been more true than it is today when people are going outside to get away from their monitor and to get something interesting and physically challenging maybe to do so the lottery has to grow in order to continue to provide places for people to go outside we need to be able to provide money for all of our beneficiaries so that they can continue to buy land they continue to upgrade playgrounds they can continue to all those things the lottery's been here since 1983 and in that amount of time we've raised over three and a half billion dollars to go to our to our proceeds of recipients and that's a lot of money and it's all thanks to our players and to our retailers those great stores that have remained open for us selling our products we are so grateful to them and that also is going to tie into what we're going to be doing this week so i'm excited to to thank them and bring them into this mix but i don't want you to just take my word for it um justin has a video that he's going to queue up here in a second that just gives you a little taste of what the colorado lottery and our partners do in the state of colorado so justin roll it [Music] [Music] do thank you in that little video you shot you saw 15 different projects that were funded either fully or partially by the lottery there are literally hundreds more and in order to keep that going we need to find a way to keep up with the increasing demand for these types of projects how are we going to do that clearly we need to do more than just evolve you know we need to reinvent the lottery we need to find new ways to bring new products to new players in new places all over the state that's really important i think a lot of people don't understand that the lottery's demographics mirror the state of colorado's demographics our players have jobs they have good incomes they have good educations and they're looking for more opportunities to engage in a way that will help fund the way that they play when they go out on the weekend so it's important that we grow the base of our playership and that means growing new opportunities and new versions of products not just enhanced old products but new products and how we do that that's a lot about what we're here for technology is one of the most important ways that we can increase the interest level of our colorado player base and and attract new players to the lottery um that's why we're so excited about engaging with your world um it's it's a it's kind of like in ghostbusters where they cross the streams you know we haven't always done a very good job as an industry reaching out for fresh ideas and we're very excited about what we're going to do with this group before we get started i want to say thanks to a number of people not a not a really big number so don't don't worry about that but we want to especially thank our commissioners uh stella peterson who's the chair of our commission jim bensberg the honorable dennis mays stan padalski anna and bill clayton i think some of you are on the call tonight if you are thank you so much for joining us your support is really really really important but now i want to introduce somebody else whose support has been so incredibly important to us and that is lou cordovar our senior director of the department of revenue she is also my boss but i want you to know that everything i'm saying i'm very sincere about it's not just because she's my boss [Music] you know lou has done a great job of looking for ways for all the departments of revenue to reimagine ourselves you know this tonight this is the start of one big part of it especially for the lottery you know we're very excited about that but she's really the perfect person to transform the department of revenue because she has an impressive resume an international finance digital transformation and e-commerce she is also currently the chair and ceo of c-tech the global non-profit breaking down barriers for entrepreneurs and the ceo of cortland industries llc a diversified holding company specializing in operations management strategic planning business development and capital finance she's also a force to be reckoned with and i want you to welcome lou cordova hey thanks tom that's really nice um well as you can tell i come from the private sectors i also ran techstars foundations so i've been around entrepreneurship for a long time i've had six companies i've been a tech and the governor asked me to bring that entrepreneurial spirit maybe a little bit of that entrepreneurial craziness uh to the department of revenue and see what we could do to reimagine state governments and so when i first met tom and he says we're going to have a billion dollar you know lottery and we're going to reach the highest level of responsible gaming i just thought i love this guy right he's got he runs the lottery with this dot-com head and a dot org heart and everybody on his team is so outdoors oriented this is fisher peak behind me and i remember thinking we can do this we can do this oh wait sometime in the next four years we're going to have a recession remember this has been the strongest run-up in history and it's like tom what are you going to do about a recession when it comes because things are going great to get to be a billion dollar lottery you need to have double digit growth per year even during the recession so you got to think of the box you got to think out of the office you got to think globally you got to think mobily how about a hackathon and tom was like a heck of what and the team got on board they looked at it they investigated it they um now tom's doing trello the team's got jira going um it's really been a transformation and a mindset there there you go tom and and it really is about this crowd sourcing innovation and so the ideas that you bring to us this is going to inspire generations of people to engage in the lottery for what the lottery brings for the outdoors for schools for things like that and yes it's the first time it's been done in the lottery i'm super excited about it and it does go beyond the lottery the way we're thinking about the state um also under the department of revenue is the motor vehicles the dmv so picture a world with no dmv offices but kiosks everywhere nearby at a starbucks at uh you know your local grocery store inside the local grocery store where you can get anything you need from state government where there's maybe a concierge there video people who can come and say you know even to your aunt mabel do you need some help with that let me show you what button to push on this right and that you can get all your services online we have my colorado app that you can get your driver's license online so for all of you in colorado that are not in colorado move to colorado it's way cooler here so with that i want to introduce our governor you know he's challenged us all to be bold it's one of his biggest statements he's known for this it's fun to be bold you all get to live it every day now we get to i will tell you with six companies the cabinet that he has chosen is probably the most competent group of people i've ever worked with it's really a joy and a privilege to work with them governor it's i cannot tell you how much it's been a privilege to work with you and to be able to know that you got our back as we go explore what we really can do in technology and this represents that so governor take it away well thank you lou i was gonna wear my buffacorn onesie yes i have one but uh you know what when a governor wears something like that and you have to run for re-election i i know that it might show up in negative ads so i thought i'd wear something a little more traditional um tom seaver thank you i'm a huge fan your 1971 season 1.76 era 289 strikeouts and now we're gonna we're gonna win this lottery so i'm a i'm a huge fan some of you get that reference some of you don't but i grew up in the 80s and i'm a huge baseball guy so i'm sure tom got that all his life so i apologize tom but um it's a it's a it's a good a good person to be associated with um thank you lou for the great introduction uh vitalik buderin as well uh in good times we had fun um on the stage at a big denver event and a hackathon that they had we um we got to read a little children's book um b is for buffalo corn we have it for our kids actually it's a fun uh fun children's book but we want all the creativity of the ethereum community and everybody else to really help make our colorado lottery fun and a success it is at its heart a game that's what it is um people are just doing it uh you know for no reason they're doing a support on public lands uh they're doing it because it's fun and it's a game and of course they have in their mind that they may be a winner as well and that's part of the fun um you know i am just so excited about this event when lou approached me about i was like yes we're gonna make this happen and uh we're gonna get so many great ideas from people all over the world who are hopefully watching this you know in all seriousness not wearing my buffa corn onesie you know one of my big goals as governor has been to embrace technology as a way to make our state government more efficient more responsive more effective um that's also fitting with a state colorado that is one of the most important tech hubs in the world really up and coming and last year we launched colorado digital services uh which is a public private partnership it's a way that people who are successful and i in in tech in the private sector can come in for six months or a year to the public sector and really share that knowledge and for those of you don't know the goal of this virtual event is really to bring together a wide swath of creative developers from colorado and across the world to make fun new lottery games um to help that you know what was kind of a stodgy lottery until tom and lou got there uh be kind of an amazing fun thing that also allows us to do all this great conservation work in our state i mean really uh keep what makes colorado special is really a big part of that goal and by using technology to draw on more players we can fund outdoor recreation come conserve our public land it also supports our schools and we have such great partners ethereum denver chain link igt participants of game jam can create and pitch your proposed new games and you it's like a lottery for you you have a chance to win ten thousand dollars with the second prize of 5 000 or a third prize of 2500 i don't know if we pay it out in dollars or ethereum but you know whatever we're gonna pay it out we're good for it but we want all those ideas and that's part of the fun there's also a separate additional prize category sponsored by ethereum denver and chain link that's awarded for games that meet the guidelines and are completed using web3 as a platform so look game jam is bigger than just a hackathon creating new and interesting games for the colorado lottery it's also about our very beginning in deepening the sourcing of creativity from the tech community to benefit all coloradans um crowdsourcing is where it's at and ultimately a crowdsourcing community creativity at this scale like game jam can be a really big driver for public good and let's start with preserving some of our iconic colorado wild areas and doing trail improvements that allow us to have more fun mountain biking and hiking and really doing what makes colorado special so this is just to start let's have a good success here i certainly look forward to other opportunities for using tech in the tech community to increase participation in our democracy get creative ideas into government and do a better job for the people of colorado so thank you for being here let's jam i can't wait to see what you come up with and i'll turn it back over to lou and governor we'll make sure that you have uh more than just a onesie so that you've got some variety in your wardrobe that you can have the the spirit of the buffalo corn but still the good campaign sort of content so we'll make sure that you've got that later yeah it's kind of 101 of politics you can't be caught dead in any onesie it's kind of the end of them yeah we understand it's okay we'll make sure that you got some center of the fairway stuff for later but uh thank you so much for your for your time and and the great words he made us wear blue wigs i think you can make him wear a an eath onesie that's it i think you can do that oh yeah yeah we'll we'll work on that but uh for now thank you for your time governor uh okay so we're gonna jump into how this all works so for reference basically i'm going to be parroting the rules page on our gamejolt posting so if you're not if you haven't been to the gamejolt site if you haven't registered yet and you're just here watching this then go to the gamejolt site uh it's uh jams dot gamejold.io slash colorado or co lottery game jam so if you go to that site it's actually all over the emails you've been getting it's all over the communication so we can post that in the chat as well one of our team will post that for you uh but i'm going to be kind of reviewing the rules and kind of how it works so essentially it kind of goes like this first off in order to participate in order to qualify for a prize you have to be registered and you have to accept the terms and rules of the registration okay so that that that's number one so to do that just go to the gamejolt page and you can do it right from there now when submitting your game via gamejolt and you're going to be submitting your game via gamejolt so don't think we don't have a dev post we don't have a different submission system it's going to be through gamejolt and what you're going to do is you're going to hashtag your project with hashtag co lottery game jam in your description now what that does is the game show platform identifies your project as a submission for the game jam by that hashtag so that's really important to get that right and we'll be reminding everybody of this probably 10 times throughout the week just so that we make sure that you get your submissions in because we don't want to miss any really good projects now in addition you want to include a github code repository link so like include your github you know some of the rev the reviewers will be reviewing your game code uh we do need to make sure that like you know everything is is you know sort of reasonable there there's not a lot we're looking for specifically except that um you know because of the terms of the competition we do have to ensure that that you do actually have the code in your repository and then there's some representations that you've made in the agreement in the waiver you can use existing tools engines languages and programming libraries to develop your game okay so this isn't something that we expect you to kind of reinvent the wheel so to speak we do expect um even open source code being used i mean please notate that the areas where you own the code and where you don't that's really important for us to understand open source libraries are okay to use but if you're using anything that's licensed that you don't have permission to use that becomes problematic so just keep in mind that you've wanted you want to use programs that you have license to use and or that are open source libraries uh you can use pre-made music and sound assets so again assuming you have permission to use them um again copyrights can be interesting in this world so just make sure anywhere any music that you're using you either have license or permission to use it or if it's original of course then it's it's yours to use uh collaborations and group efforts are welcome now we do not have a cap or a limit on uh team size now we do suggest the best optimal team size is usually three to five uh usually when you get more than that it's a little too many cooks in the kitchen sometimes and then a lot of times we see people wanting to compete with one person in the east denver rules we do not allow that but for the colorado game jam the lottery game jam we do allow solo submissions we don't want to eliminate anybody and their creativity based on their inability to find a team partner there might be um something else we can help you with later on if you want to find a team partner or you know something like that but don't feel you know don't feel you have to go out and get a team partner for this particular exercise you are not allowed to have more than one submission so as much as you might want to submit three or four projects any one person can only be on one team any one project can only submit one team one one any one team can only submit one project so just bear in mind that you can only compete once you can only win once so you can't submit three or four projects hoping to win for second and third it's really one submission one person one submission um you've got to own the ip all right now again this goes back to the permission and code like you know you can't use somebody else's ip you can't copy or knock off something for example in the lottery world bingo is a trademarked thing so if you go and build a open source bingo game you might have some ip problems there because you don't own the name so we suggest that you really consider what you're building and whether or not there might be trademark issues because it is important to make sure that you've got permission to use everything that you're using now just as a telegraph if you win and the lottery is going to implement your game possibly into the world of their of their game offerings they can't be building something that's got an ip infringement or a problem or something like that so this is just really making it easier for you and for them now the the judges will be reviewing some of that i mean of course they're not going to have the time to look at everything but if there's something obvious they're going to review it and see if whether or not you've got the ip permission to do that so please just bear in mind that that's really important um you can add images and description to your gamejolt page anytime so you can start your submission and your project you know descriptions anytime you want it's when you hit that hashtag that actually submits it to the pro to the project queue so nobody will really know or see it until you do that but you can build it anytime you want now one best practice would be to do that like as you go i wouldn't suggest trying to cram this like sunday evening at nine o'clock into three hours you've got literally from now until next sunday at midnight to do this so like just do it in increments i mean a lot of us have full-time day jobs like so every night there's going to be the office hours from 4 to 5 p.m so that will be post happening in our we'll we'll be distributing zoom links for each discipline that's available as well as the discord channels so please do this stuff incrementally it's probably the best way to to have the best submissions all right so the game type we do on the rules page have an example of what a monitor game is but essentially you've got to think about this like well let me back up one one thing about this some people have said well why are you guys just limiting it to the monitor games why don't we just do any kind of game and it's like a little foreshadowing here we're gonna do that but we want to make sure that the lottery really gets its core objectives hit this time so think about when you're in a restaurant or you know like a buffalo wild wings or something and you're playing those little monitor games that come there you're kind of sitting at your table waiting for your food and that's kind of the game experience you're kind of thinking of this is sort of a casual experience it's something that's sort of rapid fire you know you want to make sure that you think about that engagement when it comes to the game players and there's the sky's the limit now colorado has paved the way for kino to be available in this setting next year so what this is really about is finding a game that pairs well with that experience to really you know drive engagement make it more fun and exciting make it more like where people want to play it whether that's creating you know visibility and transparency into the gaming system or it's just a really cool game that pairs with it we're not trying to stifle creativity at all so the the canvas is pretty much blank aside from those considerations okay um now it's got to be a game of chance though so if if you're if you're games are cool there's a ton of type of games but in the lottery system we're talking about a game of chance where the player has a known risk of losing and you know an investment of sorts or some level of economics but they also have that big upside in return so just think about that as you're doing that um the target payout is 65 so again these are all these these targets are all in the game jam rules so if you want to take a look at these as you're going um the duration is about two to four minutes of engagement but we cannot have any anything that's violent uh nothing that describes sexuality uh nothing with minors things like that so you pretty much can build whatever you want but there are some guardrails that we have to put on this because again this is a publicly sponsored and supported game effort uh players that have to be 18 years or older and let's see the game jolt deadline is midnight on sunday august 9th so you've got to have your hashtag submitted by then uh the the choreography for this after that will be the the lottery representatives the denver representatives and the other web 3 participants the judges will be reviewing these basically all day on monday and then we will have a closing ceremonies announced here shortly um if we haven't already done it which i think we have for monday evening uh where the the we will host demos and announce the winners and possibly what's next for the game jam series excuse me i've got my sister's cat meowing in my in my back pocket right here um [Music] we will be re the top three winners of the game jam will have their projects um move into the next stage now let's be clear about what what actually happens here so we had a lot of questions about this we cannot unfortunately guarantee that your project will be a part of the game the colorado gaming and the lottery system but it will they will move into a consumer like testing phase like a player testing phase and research phase to evaluate like the real sort of you know chops that these games might have now it's entirely plausible and the goal is to do that so don't think that this is just a fishing expedition there is absolutely intention of doing it but there are some processes that have to happen in order for that to go down over a long period or over a little bit longer period of time than just immediately all right um all right one thing about this that you know eat under everybody knows that we are an inclusive organization so be cool hey you too so racism sexism misogynistic you know talking points just be respectful of those around you in the virtual world it's a little bit easier because we're not just rubbing elbows all the time but we you know any any sort of prejudice of any kind any sort of like just unnecessary banter will not be tolerated if we do have any issues with that it is part of your agreement and it is part of the tools or the the rules and waiver if you do violate them then you will be cordially asked to leave the event and you will not qualify any longer for prizes or anything like that so we really want to make sure that this event is accessible to everyone and that everyone has the ability to to share openly and creatively and build and be very productive about their contribution and we expect that as just a basic set of decorum from everybody that participates in the game jam all right so um i think i've covered about everything about how it works um we are on you know we are paying attention to the discords we are here and around if you have any additional questions uh feel free to ask them um i'm gonna ask my uh co-founder justin moskowitz if i've missed anything or if he has anything he wants to contribute justin yeah hey how's it going guys um so one of the big things that i wanted to mention is we do have a contest that we're kicking off so this is a twitter contest and it was just an idea we had to get people a little more involved just because we are all in different locations sometimes it doesn't feel like we're together but we thought if you could post a daily update on twitter we better make it worth your while to do so so three people every day are gonna win a 50 gift card just uh randomly selected if you post with the hashtag co lotterygamejam and then if you post every day of the jam we'll give you one one that you can miss but uh if you post just about every day of the jam um we are also happy to announce that we're gonna we're gonna have some flight tickets from frontier airlines that are going to help you come experience denver so make sure that you post every day details are on just that main landing page in the get involved section and otherwise we look forward to having you guys submit some awesome projects and you know let it let us know how we can help these are all one-way tickets right they're they're moving here is what we're doing exactly yeah so the our our friends at frontier airlines have been very gracious about offering uh round-trip tickets to come and experience colorado so for those of you that that are that are willing to get on an airplane right now and i think you'll be able to use them into the future so even when things calm down um colorado is opening its arms to you know um the best and brightest so if you've got interest in the outdoors if you've got interest in sort of getting away from a little bit of the the kind of east coast west coast sort of craziness at times no disrespect to any of those locations but colorado is a great place to come hunker down and experience the outdoors so like we're we're very grateful to the support from uh frontier airlines for for sponsoring this competition so really what this is about is just you know share what you share what you're doing share your experience with the game jam uh you know we're going to be giving away incentives to do it but like this is a really good opportunity to kind of show how our virtual community is really engaging with each other and experiencing each other so um again the hashtag is ceo lottery game jam and if you put that in your twitter we'll be tracking that and then randomly selecting winners based on the criteria so um thanks for thanks for that justin appreciate it um justin anything else and yes the question from daniel is does the twitter thing start today yes the twitter contest starts today so start your tweets now um you know share your experience and your insights on the opening ceremonies and kind of your thoughts on the game jam and the colorado state collaboration with this sort of you know futuristic view of innovation and crowdsourcing of creativity it's a really big initiative this is a really big deal for those of you that haven't picked up on that yet but to have a state government that's this open and willing to really be experiment with new ways of thinking about things and as lou said earlier reimagining uh the way that we engage in these types of things just go at it go have some fun justin anything else before i introduce uh our friend uh from uh sorry i just saw a question pop up do we tag our team name for the twitter contest so actually you each member of your team is eligible to win so literally your whole team could post and if it happens to be that uh you're the only people who posted that day then then you win but uh i i think we'll see hopefully we'll see a lot more posts than uh just single team posting but uh yeah look forward to it so yaprak is the um co-founder of gamejolt so the platform that we're using for our our game jam game jolt is actually got some colorado roots and she's going to talk a little bit about um gamejolt itself uh why she's partnering and supporting the game jam for the colorado lottery and then a little bit about colorado and how she feels about that so you proc with that i'm going to turn the time to you thank you so much for having me and putting this awesome event together i used to live in colorado actually the goal was to just move there for about six months to enjoy the mountains and i ended up staying for years so um pretty sad when i had to leave but uh my name is yap rapta carmine i'm the co-founder and ceo of gamejolt gamejolt is a platform for people to build and join meaningful communities around video games we have built angel to help independent creators grow audiences around their games while developing their games so that when they're ready to launch or you know announce their kickstarter campaigns they actually have people to announce to so as of today we've had over 140 million people find their way onto our platform to play follow and talk about games we have over 130 000 playable games made by individual people like you and as well as studios with you know millions of dollars in revenue so i'm happy to help out with the game jam this year uh thank you for letting us be a part of the opening ceremony as well this is super exciting um but yeah i'm here to talk about game jam so let's get started uh through gamejolt we've hosted hundreds if not thousands of jams to date i've run some of the biggest jams in the world with the biggest influencers in the world um so if you're new to the world of game jams i'd like to welcome you and give you a brief explanation of what they are so a game jam is an event where participants gather online or pre-covet physically to make games in a limited period of time sometimes this can be 48 hours a few days a week and i've even seen jams lasting a whole month a lot of jams are built around a particular theme that is revealed at the start of the event so in our case the theme is monitor games you can join a game jam by yourself or you can find artists programmers audio people as teammates and communities like angel and discord so we do have a community set up on being built for this jam so be sure to check in to find teammates there or um you know you can also use the discord as well so it sounds like that's also set up um but yeah game jams are a lot of fun because they allow people to experiment with different engines game mechanics and artistic styles many games actually start out as concepts and jams and then continue development for a full release years later and you know sometimes developers just need a break from the massive game they're working on and instead work on something new right so they might want to try a new language or engine so creating a short game is the perfect outlet for experimenting and learning something new as for participation tips in a jam um i would advise you to just come up with a small enough idea or concept for a game that you can actually finish within the window of time that you're given right so jams are not the place to make that dream game you've always wanted to make that game will that game will take you years to develop so instead you know come up with something fun that fits well within the theme of the jam another tip is to keep your team sizes reasonable and spend enough time planning out your game and assigning roles so find a great medium for real-time communication like discord or slack that everyone on your team has access to you can share your progress on your gamejolt page as well as twitter our users love images and videos um you can run polls and get feedback from real gamers as you're actually you know working on the game which is kind of fun um and then when you're ready you know to upload the game make sure you give yourself enough time right give yourself enough time to upload the game but also to play test it as well and um i guess my last piece of advice is you know remember that game jams are a social event so be sure to connect with the organizers but also other participants so look at this as like a great way to you know network and find people that you can actually work with and maybe you'll work with them um you know down the road on a commercial game as well so um as a founder i'm very grateful for the meaningful relationships and connections i've made in the games communities in colorado so there's some really great people there i know zee serenity forge is here he heads up like some of the um you know best community slacks and um igda groups so definitely get involved in those they've led me to partnerships for game jolts speaking gigs at events and you know some of my best friends so i can't think of um a better state honestly to be the next big thing in gaming and tech and colorado and i can't wait to move back thank you for your practice fabulous insight and and great wisdom i mean if anybody knows about game jams it's you so thank you for your contributions and your support and all of your insights we really do appreciate it and uh maybe we can get you an airline ticket to come back please i would love to come back all right well with that we're going to move on to igt so tyson from igt uh he's an account director so they're a global leader in gaming and works with the lottery to develop the games and build responsible gaming experience for our colorado game lottery game players so with that i'm gonna let uh tyson talk a little bit about what they're looking for in a winner he'll be part of the um judging crew of course they they work very closely with the lottery in the game development so tyson do you want to go ahead and take that away yeah thank you john uh first of all i just want to thank everybody for uh for putting us on for uh for organizing this tonight and especially the the game jam in general um i think tom covered a lot of important points with what we're trying to do here the the lottery industry can be a little bit foreign to some people who haven't played before but but the bottom line is it's a very fun industry uh and even more important that it goes to some great beneficiaries across the whole country specifically here in colorado uh for all the great outdoor stuff that i think so many of us enjoy so um again thank you i want to thank tom and and his staff i want to thank lou the state and also the governor for including us um i won't go on too much about what igt does we're a little bit the magic behind the curtain we provide lottery and casino technology across the world we've been a partner with with colorado lottery in one capacity or another for uh going on 25 30 years and um what we do is supply all the technology um that various lotteries need so in colorado here we have a data center um but there's a vastness to what we provide there's the technology but then it also comes more to what we're talking about tonight with regard to game development innovation uh things like that and speaking for the industry as a whole uh tom's exactly right the innovation has never been more important um in the industry and tom's done a great job of leading this lottery to say we have to think really think outside the box because lottery products it's a very mature market um you know powerball specifically is one of the strongest brands in the country but it's also been around a long time so tom is really again trying to think outside of the box and get his staff to do so and and we want to be partners in that that said when he first presented this idea to me is something we want to do uh in combination with some some potential monitor plans i think i looked at him like he had three heads um hadn't heard what a hackathon is or or a game jam for for that matter but it's great uh i think it's going to be awesome um i want to kind of go at it from the angle of again speaking from the lottery industry i think make a few recommendations for our for our developers and have some ideas but the main thing is really you know anything with it as long as it's within the rules really really uh try and test the boundaries a little bit on ideas as far as creativity um some of the other things i'll say is is you have to play a little bit of both sides from the standpoint of saying it also has to be a little bit easy to understand one of the challenges we often face with launching new games in any lottery is is explain to players what it means as simple as drawing six balls example for powerball or mechanized others seems simple it really can be confusing so i'd encourage people to try and make it as as simple as possible obviously very exciting but it's something our retailers both current future gonna have to explain to players and and we want to make sure it's simple understand um but this again this is a whole new realm i think we're trying to reach a new market here um both demographically uh age-wise but also just with the new types of retailers we're looking uh to add in with regards to monitor games it's more of a a game that lends itself to bars restaurants where people tend to lean excuse me linger longer versus you know in and out of a convenience store or grocery store where they're just getting their items and leaving so um those are some of the things i'll say um as far as just thinking outside of the box uh that i think this is going to be great just uh i would encourage people to go research the current games in colorado if if you haven't played some of the games i have in colorado of course are the same elsewhere uh powerball is offered in a lot of states so it's mega millions but really go look and see uh wherever you might be in whatever your state is go into a store and say okay what are the games uh how many numbers are drawn when is it drawn things like that a lot of the games currently are drawn only on certain days of the week we're looking at something a little more frequently you know under 10 minutes it kind of keeps people engaged so keep that in mind as well but my point is that's a good starting point say let's do something different than we're seeing uh in the states with the the current projects and let's expand on that so i encourage people to do that so other things is i think everything's been covered i'm excited to see what happens with this again igt is a huge company there's a lot of people even with our company seeing how this is going to go this is a brand new approach to something like this but i think it's going to be great and i'm very excited to see what happens so i appreciate it again and with that john i'll i guess i'll hand it back over to you yeah thanks for that appreciate it thank you tyson uh we're stoked to have you as a partnership and it's gonna be really cool and interesting to see just uh what everybody comes up with i think that's that's the the curiosity that we all have and what's so great about this sort of open source of creativity is that i mean we we have no idea what we're going to see at this point and it's going to be really cool to see so thank you for that now you mentioned like uh sort of the the innovation so with that i'm gonna sort of move to this next you like you know the approaches the innovation um everything that we've done here is really about sort of advancing that narrative and our next speaker sergey nazarov from chain link is uh the co-founder of chain link and his our efforts at eat denver are about sort of bringing this new sort of emerging technology to the real world right so this this game jam is a great example of the willingness of the the state governments and just the lottery and just technologists to really be kind of paying attention to not just game and development ideas but also methods of delivering these systems and really being open to like how these things kind of come down so um with that um i'm going to introduce sergey nazarov he's going to speak to us a little bit about chain link's involvement in the game jam as well as sort of what they're kind of looking for when it comes to uh game submissions and then just some insights about the partnership here so sergey take it away great thank you very much john uh hi everyone good to see you again thank you once again for including us in your event i think it's very exciting to see people that control uh so much value wanting to innovate and and make the systems they rely on work in the best possible way for for their constituents and users so i think that's a that's a great thing and it makes me think very great things about colorado as well which have been a few times and i'm a huge fan of i'm just going to kind of share my my screen a little bit because i have one or two quick points to cover on certain certain concepts that might be might be useful here um so i think the first concept that we need to look at when we're thinking about innovation in digital gaming and lotteries and all kinds of gaming is to maybe consider uh initially what what is a digital game and a lottery uh that's provided in a digital format really it's kind of an agreement so it's a it's a digital form digitally formalized agreement um about outcomes right people put in money they take certain risk they expect to take a measure of risk and get a measure of return in in in some manner that uh that is guaranteed basically and and the assumptions around those guarantees are very important because the degree to which people participate is driven by the degree to which they think they can win so if they think the game is unwinnable or they think the game can't be won their participation is much less likely and and this is maybe the place where blockchains and the work we do at chainlink can help innovate and provide greater assurances to users so that their participation can be greater and that's really kind of the dynamic that we um you know want to help bring to this event and and and put in the minds of people that are building these types of games so i think one way to look at this is if you if you consider how digital contracts work today right now they work in a technology company some kind of centralized platform that runs a contract and that contract can be a lottery contract and a gaming contract where i'm guaranteeing i promise that the contract code will operate properly right and i am saying that the contract code will operate a certain way and in many cases that can work but in certain cases that creates conflicts of interest it creates risk in every incremental addition of risk that basically says that a certain um a certain outcome that the user expects to achieve won't happen uh maybe limits their participation limits the success of that gaming product right so this is how traditionally digital agreements about gaming have happened is there's a centralized software company that generates that digital agreement and seeks to see it through to completion by running the code the the world that i think we're moving to with um all kinds of financial contracts including gaming contracts is a world where blockchains and decentralized blockchain based infrastructure effectively eliminates these um risks so the risk that the creator of the game or somebody running the infrastructure to operate the game is somehow able to manipulate that game and this is this is the the risk that i maybe some users don't think about but i know there are certain users that consider this risk in in in how they assess using uh uh a gaming product from from our own experience working with various gaming products and and how they want to approach their users now blockchain based gaming is often touted as being fraud-proof and tamper-proof just like blockchains are being touted as being tamper-proof and highly reliable and i think this is really the the dynamic from which we can provide certain uh innovation and improvements to how the gaming infrastructure works and we can also rely on together with us other systems like ethereum and and many other great um well great protocols and products that allow people to run smart contracts so i think we're going to be looking at examples where somebody could take a smart contract put it on ethereum and how does that smart contract non-ethereum create a properly functioning lottery product gaming product right how do those things happen so the the good news is that initially you do have a guarantee from the smart contract that as long as it receives the relevant inputs as long as it is triggered the right way that it will do a state change and actually pay out the appropriate winner so you're guaranteed by systems like ethereum that if you write a contract in a certain way its outcome will be enforced it will be mathematically enforced by physics it won't depend on a company it'll it'll depend on infrastructure that's highly reliable and efficient and uh can provide this guarantee to to the underlying players of the game the issue starts to appear in that the games we're talking about here even in this hackathon are not um limited to just a state change they also need randomness right so you you actually have a dynamic where you need a random number generator you need to provide randomness into the smart contract running on a system like ethereum at least today right at least today that's kind of the dynamic of what blockchains can do and what they need to do to have a gaming dynamic work at a hackathon like this the the worry here is once again the same right you basically have a decentralized computational platform where the contracts can operate but now you have a an equally important part of the system in this in in the case of a random number generation service now the question becomes who runs the random number generation service who runs the random number generator that's going to essentially control the outcome of the contract right so you you've decentralized and made highly reliable a portion of the contract but also you still have a portion that isn't decentralized and highly reliable yet at least until you have randomness appearing on blockchains which may be coming but at least at the moment you you still need a random number generator so the fundamental issue you're trying to avoid is just like you were worried about a centralized operator of the gaming product or the software that runs the game you're now seeking to get that same guarantee about the random number generator that's triggering and affecting what ends up happening with the gaming product right and this is the innovation and the thing that chain link basically works on and provides is an additional layer of decentralized computation an additional system like a blockchain but not a blockchain in the sense that it isn't focused on generating blocks or transactions it's focused on in this case providing randomness so the the exciting thing that we can provide to to this hackathon and the developers here is that if they're making a gaming product lottery product they can generate it in a way that it's truly decentralized and provably tamper proof so that players can have a maximum degree of guarantees that the gaming the lottery product they're interacting with will indeed give them the payout according to the fair terms that were advertised to them which should economically speaking increase the usage of the gaming product increase the usage of the lottery and and make it more attractive to more users because it's it's uh it's something where they can't get tricked they can't get games they're going to participate in a gaming contract under predictable and clear terms we are very glad to support the hackathon through prizes so we have chain link web 3 prizes where you kind of make this more advanced gaming lottery product those prizes are first second and third place five thousand two thousand five hundred and thousand um one of the key conditions to to meet getting these prizes is you have to meet the conditions of the game jam hackathon itself so you first have to meet the conditions of the game jam hackathon and then if you use chain link brf if you build a smart contract on on ethereum that that essentially represents a gaming product the lottery that uses the chain link vrf system in a creative attractive way or operates um in a unique way and how it interacts with chain link brf so there's actually interesting dynamic where you can submit a seed and the seed improves the security of the chain link brf system so perhaps coming up with an interesting way to provide highly secure seeds uh at the end of the day we're thrilled to support uh institutions and places that want to make the best games we believe in tamper-proof and fraud-proof gaming that's fair and and uh attractive to all the players in the same fair way and we we're we're thrilled to support this hackathon provide this resource to the participants we will have office hours available on all the days of the hackathon we will have a channel open for people to ask questions how can i build a fraud proof smart contract based gaming product uh how can i integrate proper randomness into that gaming product in order to have it operate the way it should and obviously there's also a lot of documentation that we provide so once again we're thrilled to be part of this and really appreciate uh being included and think that uh that this direction of how do we make the most innovative gaming products that protect users and and make the best possible gaming products uh available to them in a tamper-proof way is is a worthwhile uh very exciting endeavor so i i just wanna once again say we're thrilled to be part of it thank you thank you sergey thanks again for all of your team support and the support of colorado the support for you denver it's been a great partnership and we look forward to to doing even more with you in the future so thank you for coming and thank you for your time my pleasure thank you you got it so with that we're going to move on um to the founder of the ethereum protocol his name is vitalik buterin he's been a friend of the the east denver effort for some time and obviously is very interested in lots of different developments that might be happening so when we originally invited vitalik to come and read the b is for buffalo corn book with the governor at denver 2020 um one of the things that we were talking about is sort of the curiosity around wow this is you know an actual state government interested in in doing something innovative and yeah so as we've sort of talked about it over the over the time even since eat denver um there's you know some intrigue here and there's a lot of there's a lot of really great partnership opportunity vectors and we're so grateful to have vitalik come and spend a little time with us and give us his insights on why this is such an interesting and an important formation of opportunity for uh just the future of all of these efforts technologically that we've got going on so with that um i'd like to introduce vitalik buterin the founder of the ethereum and the inventor of the ethereum protocol vitalik go ahead and take it away man thank you and so it's good to be here good to see you again john um we're good to uh likewise it's good to see uh colorado friends again virtually um so i think uh kind of what brings us together here is uh a couple of things right so i think kind of the blockchain community and in which city of your am community is obviously part of and uh a lot of many people in the state of colorado are basically both trying to kind of see if we can come up with ways to kind of upgrade our community infrastructure to satisfy the needs of the internet age right and the internet has obviously brought a lot of changes to society a lot of changes to the world a lot of uh and if new things become possible with the internet there's um and there's a lot of new challenges and no i know that colorado the state of colorado for example has been very interested in you know looking at kind of more radical new approaches at things like governance and things like community organization so for example i know that um the democratic party has used their quadratic voting um as a mechanism for decision making um we have a local community that's been trying to do quadratic funding that's in for some businesses in downtown in boulder and and so there's a lot of these interesting experiments right and ultimately you know these kinds of experiments are in many ways what the ethereum community is all about right the ethereum community is all about trying to see you know can we use blockchains plus other things and whatever makes sense in in each use case to try to see if we can come up with better ways to basically help groups of people cooperate and and now that's something that you know people have done kind of through the blockchain itself through smart contracts through kind of daos in some cases um even even um through with things um like some of these kind of technologies to allow for more kind of trust minimized interaction so and even just secure randomness is one really good a really good example of this in one very particular field and now these are things that are very important right and i think people are you know realizing that kind of the way that our economy works right now is ultimately an event you know as kind of the the usual quote go as a kind of paleo paleolithic humans with medieval institutions with uh modern super technology right and so if we can kind of see if we can take some of their new super technology we've invented in the last couple of decades and actually helped people kind of work together in the deeper ways at scale and then that's the sort of the the sort of thing that's completely in the ethereum community's vision right and things like supporting public goods development is something that's very close to the ethereum community's heart just because in the ethereum community as in many other free software in all free software communities just about everything is a public good you know you write a piece of code it and you publish it it's not really owned by anyone that's just something that you've kind of released and put out there and anyone can go and download it if i write a blog post everyone in the world can go read it and so we are and if interacting with each other and and cooperating and benefiting each other at these kind of very large and unprecedented scales um and we just need to have enough better infrastructure to or organize and encouraged those kinds of things and so very happy to see you know we're excited to see what kinds of things that people come up with in this hackathon and hope that these are things that people will not stop here and just continue working on for a long time thank you vitalik for taking the time uh we look forward to getting you back out here to colorado and unpacking even more opportunities as they come up so we appreciate your support and uh we look forward to seeing how these things go yeah i'm looking forward to seeing visiting colorado too uh thank you for your time vitalik we're going to move on in the program to z yang who is the founder and ceo of serenity forge also a big fixture in the um game development scene here in colorado and really he's going to talk a little bit about how developing games in colorado has been a dream and like how you know we're really trying to create more and more inertia around that so zee why don't you take it away yeah absolutely thank you so much john hey how's it going everyone my name is z i am the founder and executive producer at serenity forge i also happen to be the chair for the international game developers association here in bold or colorado i suppose the the chapter here uh so yeah i mean it's been i've been kind of pretty much a boulder native for the past uh however long and uh you know like what 20 years at this point uh and it's just been an absolute journey to get here uh you know honestly uh you know kind of long story short uh when i was 18 years old i was diagnosed with a severe and fatal illness that caused me to be hospitalized for two years and it was a really really difficult time where you know as a young you know 18 year old kid uh being trapped in a hospital you didn't really have a lot of choices uh into you know choosing what you want to do later on in life especially um but instead of you know kind of jumping into that despair i decided to pick up a lot of video games started playing all sorts of games single-player games where it made me feel like i was a hero saving the world or multiplayer games where i got to meet people from all around the world and you know games like league of legends or minecraft and eventually miraculously i just started getting better and by the time i was 21 years old i managed to kind of uh transfer back to cu boulder at the time and kind of continue my education in finance but i can't help but think back to the fact that you know like these games that i played while i was in hospital they're not really designed to help me but in the end they essentially saved my life why not start making video games with intention to help other people what kind of power can we unlock when we do that so i started serenity forge while i was in college as a freshman i made my first game which was a non-fictional visual novel based my my on my own illness and i ended up getting played by tons of people around the world one particular fan wrote me a letter saying that they were struggling with depression and was planning to take his own life but he came across the game and it motivated him so much that he he actually decided to put a stop to his plans uh and as a freshman in college i looked at that situation going like wow you know like maybe i did not become a millionaire overnight by making this game but i might have just saved someone's life like why don't we keep doing this um i was super lucky to have met a lot of great mentors along the way working at cu boulder and just interacting with the community here by the time i was a senior in college i you know i already had six full-time employees just kind of working out of a basement working on educational games doing all sorts of stuff and nowadays where uh you know a handful of dozen of folks here in boulder are just creating meaningful artistic games that really challenge the way that people think uh you know on on devices on consoles and pc and of course mobile as well so really looking back at it uh you know like running igda here as well uh colorado has a very uh just a very welcoming culture when it comes to game developers we have we welcome you know new folks with open arms and we run amazing game jams such as this one and it's just so unique compared to the rest of the world if you travel around and look at the the other parts of the game industry where it's very much a single swim type of scenario uh whereas you know looking at the past decade folks like justin and yaprak and and josh you know like we have created these environments uh in colorado that that really facilitate creativity and just fosters that type of friendship and and i think that's what really colorado um kind of stands out on compared to the the rest of the the rest of the world essentially especially in this you know really difficult difficult climate right now uh like covid you know a company like serenity forge if it wasn't for the support that we have from the community and also just the support that we have for each other here in the in the company uh there's no way that we would have been able to kind of like survive all this turbulence over so many years so yeah i mean i know i know that like you know things are running short so i'm talking as quickly as possible here but with that said you know uh thank you so much for having me i i think you know it is absolute dream to to kind of build the game industry here at colorado uh and uh you know we're working hard to to to make it happen and uh you know hopefully all the people here uh you know dedicated to colorado and this game jam really proves that this is absolutely our goal so yeah thank you so much and uh yeah i'm really glad to be here hope you guys enjoy the jam and you're hiring too right z yeah that's right if you are a game developer that is looking for a job we're actually massively hiring right now we just lock down some major projects so we're having some serious uh periods of growth coming up in the next couple of years so definitely go to our website serenityforge.

com jobs to apply and check out some of our open positions thanks for coming z we really appreciate you and and thanks for sharing your story and it's such a great testament to like the the just the vivaciousness and just the the creativity that's already happening here and that's really what we're trying to build on so like thank you for sharing that we really appreciate it yeah thank you for having me you got it so we're gonna move on to um josh chapman who is a managing partner with the managing or a managing partner at the managing partner at convoy ventures so there's only about 20 firms internationally that specialize in esports and gaming and one of them happens to be in colorado so josh is a leader in the space and and is always looking for interesting opportunities and wants to support the development of not only the colorado ecosystem but just really the next wave of creativity and gaming and in virtual engagement in esports so with that josh you want to go ahead and take it away absolutely uh thank you all for having me really this has been a great kind of opening ceremony and uh learning a lot from all of you so first off thank you for having me um as a little background on myself i grew up primarily in africa latin america and asia uh the son of a u.s diplomat and moved every two years i grew up playing a lot of video games it was a key part of like my social experience alongside sports then had a career in new york prior to moving to colorado and was working at black rock and morgan stanley and then decided i wanted to do my own thing and in the process of trying to do my own thing i wanted to merge my passion for video gaming with my professional training and finance and investing and so that kind of married really well with launching a venture capital firm uh focused on investing exclusively into the video gaming and esports industry that was about four years ago and now we're here based in colorado when i was starting my own thing with all the risk of being an entrepreneur i decided i wanted to do it in a place that i wanted to live long term and that was colorado i love this state i am definitely new to this state i'm not from this state whatsoever but i plan to make it my home for the long run and so you know a big reason why like we kind of look at why i picked you know colorado is colorado is not only one of the most accelerating economies and places for technology and investing but it's also kind of a center for lots of innovation which video gaming is oftentimes a leader in so lots of video gaming technology is leveraged not only in video gaming for entertainment but also outside of that for lots of other industries and so that applies to enterprise and humanitarian efforts social and of course certainly uh things like the lottery and fostering community globally so as a firm convoy ventures is a venture capital firm headquartered here in denver and we also have a partner in new york city and we invest across seed and series a companies primarily across platforms infrastructure technologies and so a lot of the topics on this brought up today are actually very interesting because it's about building infrastructure that leverages the talent in video gaming for fostering community and pushing the economy forward here in colorado and that is something i feel personally incredibly passionate about and i'm excited to play one small part in a couple comments around what's happening in the industry you know kobit has been uh quite interesting for this industry it's kind of worked as like a almost an adrenaline shot to the video gaming industry uh video gaming on pc is up 25 twitch viewership is up 61 in-app purchases on mobile are up over 30 uh this industry is really moving forward and not only doing well financially but it's also helping helping foster social connections in a socially distant world and that is something we are loved seen in our portfolio with the founders we back but also the founders we're meeting and so things that kind of bring you guys building games uh building things that foster community and acceleration and even economic prosperity like that's incredible fantastic and something that you know we're here at convoy very excited to continue to invest in and help build um we're here for the long term would be my final comment kind of here but you know planning to build this firm out of denver you know i love the strategic position it is in north america the international access it has globally uh it's really incredible place to to build a firm and we're excited to be here so uh thank you guys for having me uh we're thrilled to be here and um excited to keep doing these year in year out great thank you so much for the contribution and your willingness to invest in the state and you know the entrepreneurial journey in vc is not that easy either so like if anybody has any doubts about how hard it is to do what you guys have built it you know they need to they need to come and talk to you a little bit about that because well done and we look forward to seeing your your firm and your investments grow and the the vibrancy of the entire gaming and esports community in colorado grow due to your efforts um so thank you for that thanks john you got it um all right so um that wraps up the content portion of our event here so now due to time constraints we're going to restrict the q a to 15 minutes and then i'm going to wrap up with just a couple of quick words there is a q a function in the webinar series here if you go to the q a function you can answer ask a question and we will direct the question uh to the right individual or we will answer it here on uh live stream right now so the first question that's popped in is from daniel target payout of 65 of each game around betting pool or is that 65 chance of getting a payout at any given play so tom or tyson do you one of you wanna uh take that you bet um that's a good question the 65 percent is around the payout it's not the chances on any one given play those are more characterized as odds so the odds we like to think about the odds as if you play it you know how many times would you play it on average before you would have a winning experience that's that's more about the odds the payout is based on if we take in a hundred dollars how many dollars are we gonna pay back to the to the players so odds and payout that's how i would think about those two things thank you hopefully that answers your question daniel we'll move to the next one which is from drew anderson will the winners be given the opportunity to work on the continued development of the project they worked on so tyson and tom i think that's also a good question for you it's tvd we uh this is and something i wanted to cover before on on what i was talking about really where igt comes in is where the rubber meets the road and saying uh okay we've got a great concept here let's look at to see uh just that what is a concept what do you do with that and then also the back end on the technical side what does the coding look like um obviously being in a company of our studies we do have proprietary code things like that but we write languages such as c plus so um i'll say this we'll look at the ideas look at the code we typically just take it over that's that's literally what we do with a lot of our customers and uh the contracts that we have so it's a conversation that can be ongoing um we have internship programs things like that at a corporate level so it could be in that capacity um so that was a little hard to answer right now but i like the question i like where it's going to say you know this is obviously a new realm for a lot of people um that are on here but uh but yeah we typically do that uh to in-house and also some third party but we can we can chat with that and tom and i can have that conversation yeah i would just add that you know we really don't know what we're gonna get i think that's part of the fun of this is you know we can see a concept and when we start doing the evaluation of it it could look like a really really promising idea but we would need to maybe drill down a little bit with the creators to find out you know what they were thinking about with a with a play style or what they were thinking about with you know a winning action or whatever there's so many variables that until we see the actual concepts themselves it's going to be really hard to say how much more follow-up and how much more kind of explanation we're going to need from the creator so yeah i agree with tyson but i also would say that you know there's a pretty good chance that we'll have follow-up questions and dialogue that we'll have to you know have to follow through before we can go on to the next step so i had one thing in my conversations with you tom and with your team if i was to frame in this just you know a little bit slightly differently i would say um we've agreed that we all understand that this projects that we get are going to be you know not half-baked but they're going to be proofs of concept and and sort of early development in large part and i think that what i've noticed is the uh the willingness from your team to sort of keep it open like i think what you said about we don't know what we're going to get is true so i think that we what we had to do is create some base frame of engagement like here's here's the rules but there's a lot of flexibility in that depending on what comes up absolutely you know we didn't want to put too tight of a fence around this because we don't want to discourage people from being bringing their best ideas and um you know let's see what we get and then let's see how much more exploration or how much more elaboration we have to do with the creator okay okay cool let's move on to the next question so just remember there's a chat function and a q a function please put your questions in the q a function but i did see that there is a question that popped in first into the chat so what are the odds of submission can you make a game with any chance of winning could you kind of restate that question sure what are the odds of submission i'm not sure exactly what that means but can you make a game with any chance of winning so in other words um when you talked about odds versus payout can they make any any odds of winning yeah we're not going to dictate what the odds of winning are i think um what you start getting into with the math is that you can't make every play a winner um or you you know no one wins anything so you kind of have to balance the play the payout with the odds of winning and um but no we're not going to impose you know it has to be roughly one in four or roughly one in ten no we want to hear uh different approaches to winnability um it's a big challenge in our industry balancing off having a significant enough prize with with uh giving people enough winning experiences so that's part of what we're looking for is uh new perspectives on that and new ideas about how to fulfill people's expectations thanks tom um so we have a similar question i think we may have just answered now that you've clarified the difference between payout and odds is there a target percentage of odds that you're looking in the game submission with 5050 odds so i think we've just answered that so you know we're not going to dictate the odds that you need to do so use that in sort of in consideration with the payouts and and obviously creating a a game that's sort of multi-dimensional and beneficial for everyone so i think that's good there um so next question is is it okay if we choose not to use web3 code if we choose to focus on wem2 instead so lou cordova is going to answer this one so go ahead lou well i my understanding is that you can use web 2 but you wouldn't qualify for a second round from chain link of the second price the sort of bonus prizes yeah bonus prizes so the prize you know the top prize is ten thousand dollars there's a second set that the top prize is five thousand dollars but you have to use web three for that so if you did three you could if you were the total winner of everything you could win up to fifteen thousand but those are separable things to get the web three prizes i believe you just have to qualify so you have to submit it has to be qualified but if you also use web3 you can qualify for more prices do i have that right john you do you you do have that correct so yes so just one point of clarification here um this is the merging of two worlds we're not just looking for web three you know fully decentralized applications that's not at all what this is about the first and foremost priority is is really the idea generation and crowdsourcing of creativity around a new game now how you execute the game and what code you use to build the game is entirely up to you and we're not going to stifle your creativity however i will say the more you do and the more you can provide as far as a full comprehensive gaming experience and also venturing into some of these web 3 techniques and and sort of things that sergey talked about on his talk i mean it's going to win you some bonus points but focus on the game play first that's what what lou means when she says you have to qualify you do have to make a submission to the lottery game jam for a lottery proposed game not just probable fairness tech right like we're not just looking for that we're looking for a fully demo-able game okay so thank you lou for your contribution there john i would i would john i would even say that um the most important thing is the idea you know what that is what that you know it's the idea you can work on how to make it fraud proof later how to do different things how the mechanics of it works but yes a demo of your idea is first and foremost and worry about the deep mechanics you know after that fair enough all right next question can i make a game that's meant for a touch screen that allows constant swipes and multi-touch or is it supposed to be that you just pick one thing at the start and don't interact until it's over so um i'll just say this we're not looking for you to do anything particularly um we're trying to make sure that we oh we keep the fields of creativity open um but tom do you want to speak to that at all on on sort of any simple hints but i know that you guys are judging on a very open criteria so you're not looking for any sort of specific vector on this but go ahead right so um i would say don't restrict your your creativity on this um because as we mentioned earlier even though we're focused primarily on a monitor game platform for now um there are other ways that we can play the monitors that we're gonna start out with probably won't have that functionality and i'll look to tyson to jump in at this at this at any point but i wouldn't let that be something that you know completely shuts off your your flow um think about the game think about the game and and how to win and how to play let us worry about the technology and how to act and how to deliver it yeah but keep also keep in mind that to the point that you are swiping right left whatever you're doing things it still has to be a game of chance so if your ability to swipe faster or do something different changes the odds then it's no longer a game of chance so that's just a caution that a lot of times the interaction implies a skill level can be increasing and then it no longer becomes again a chance yeah if i can if i could say something lewis great point um i will say is if you're doing something that does not change the odds of the game or the outcome or anything like that i say go for it um you know we have certainly you know there's some self-service terminals that we use there's other you know typical games where you run a place up things like that but for the purposes of this effort i say again as long as it doesn't you know impact this um you know not being skill based go for it let's see what you got so hopefully that answers that yeah just one more one more point from me you know in the lottery world we've typically developed the technology first and then fit games into that technology one of the things i'm excited about with this is we could actually have a game that if it comes out to be so good we'll take the game and then fit the delivery mechanism to the game you know we're we're going to flip over the typical development mindset if we come out of this with some kind of game that just you know blows people's minds and and tests great and just delivers an experience that lottery players have been looking for we'll figure out a way to bring it to market that's that's what i really want to impress upon people yeah that's a great point and thank you tom i in talking with your team what i really love about this collaboration is is i'll say it again you know to have that willingness to kind of step out into experimentation and just really be honoring and rewarding to creativity is a huge boon for this this competition so um don't don't feel like you're constrained i mean as thomas and tyson have said like go for it you know don't let it constrain you like if you've got some um interesting things to do then do it but i think the point about the game of chance is really important so if you don't understand if you don't know the difference between game of chance and game of skill that's a really important distinction to make so game of chance have fixed odds game of skill the odds can vacillate depending on player input so just make sure it stays as game of chance that's the key here that takes away from this all right moving on to the next one and we've just got a couple more minutes i'm going to go ahead and clear out the queue and see if any remaining ones come in and then we're going to wrap up so uh next one is there any specific requirement to the license used for the code submitted copy left aloud um so dan i'm not sure exactly what you mean on this one um but we did cover this a little bit earlier um the license you have to have all the permissions and licenses to use the the code that you've submitted and any iep that's being submitted you either have to have again license or you have to own it yourself in order to qualify for a prize next question i think you may just answer this but i want to clarify my can my game submission only run on one specific platform like for example if i get no no exactly we just covered this uh i think ad nauseam so uh we just want to put an exclamation point behind that that like look don't don't feel limited if you've got you know some really creative awesomeness that you want to express and do it and and the state wants to see it we want to see it everybody wants to see it all right so if we do use web3 technology is there a specific token to use for purchasing tickets such as die or usdc so i'll answer this one no again you can use whatever you want um i would say um when we talked about the idea earlier when lou mentioned that like it's really the idea i'd actually i don't wanna i'd build on that i'm not gonna contest that but what i'm gonna say is yes it's the idea but most of the competition is probably gonna come down to the ux and the experience so the only thing that i would caution in the web 3 world is just making sure that your your your game is very usable because the last thing that you want to have do is to have the ux get in the way of the creativity right so we all know that in the web 3 world we're still advancing ourselves in the space of your user experience um so just keep that in mind as you're doing things you will certainly get points for a really great user experience in in using web3 technology so that's something i'm definitely looking for um but you know again you're not constrained on whether you know if you've got a funding mechanism whether it's usdc or die no nobody really cares at this point which you what you use all right with that i think we've cleared out the queue and oh we've got one more i'm gonna let it happen so bran venter is asking you mentioned wanting to expand into a broader target market for these games what is your current lottery market and who are the demographics you aim to bring into the lottery tom tom and lou the lottery's demographics are pretty similar to colorado's demographics um and explain that and say who that is because some people are going to be out of the state so yeah um there what i mean by that is that there isn't a specific age group income group or education group that is over underrepresented very significantly most coloradans have had some college we have a pretty good ratio of college graduates which is also true of colorado the population of colorado is is skews a little bit younger but our player base really falls into all of the different age categories except for obviously the youngest uh people because many are still in college or don't have you know incomes yet so and it also doesn't include a lot of older people at the highest end of the age spectrum because if they're retired or on fixed incomes they don't have as much money to spend on lottery so think about people with jobs you know think about people that are smart enough to figure out how to play a a game on a lottery terminal um think about people who can afford to play a continuous amount of lottery if they want to um i know that's not super helpful but it really is just every person's game um who are we trying to bring in well i think what what we're really focused on is trying to grow our retailer base to include more bars and restaurants social establishments where people hang out it's not about how old they are or what they you know what their education is it's about the social experience that we don't really have right now with any colorado lottery products but in many states i think there are 19 states in the u.s now that have monitor networks where people can go to a a bar or restaurant a sports bar hang around play play a lottery game while they're waiting for their food it's more experiential than it is really targeted to demographics it's more about getting people involved at a different place than where then they're going to a convenience store or a grocery store um we want to expand their experience and we think by expanding their experience we'll appeal to more people um it's it's not really how this what those people look like it's kind of what experience are they looking for and something new that we haven't been able to provide them uh historically yeah i i don't know if that's super helpful or not but that's kind of how i i would characterize it lose that and that's one thing to add yeah i would add to that so everybody who's on this ask yourself if you play lottery and i'm not talking about buying a christmas presents you know to give to everybody i'm talking about are you really a lottery player if the answer is no we want you to be a lottery player build it for you build it to be fun for you because we're trying to get people who don't normally play the lottery so those of you who don't play the lottery you're the perfect people to figure out a new game of what would get people playing the lottery and your friends as well what would make your friends play that's kind of what we're looking for great thanks lou thanks tom um all right so we're gonna go ahead and wrap up the q a we've closed that out so if you have more questions feel free to ask them via the discord server and uh you know we've got that open um from here on out um you know we will be officially kicking off the game jam so with that i i officially open the game jam so you are welcome to begin your projects and we look forward to seeing your insane creativity if you haven't registered yet here's one distinction that we're going to do differently than most hackathons or game jams we're leaving it open okay we've got it what nine days or something and we're gonna go ahead and leave registrations open so if you've got friends that want to join late it's okay they're going to have a little bit of a disadvantage possibly if they come in three or four days into this but we don't want to limit anybody's creativity and contributions so we're going to go ahead and leave that open on the gamejolt page if you want to do that just go to the gamejolt page and just have your friends register there don't forget hashtag your project when you're ready to submit it you've got to use the specific co lottery game jam in gamejolt to submit your project we will be reminding you throughout the week so don't miss that now i will say one last thing to announce on monday monday afternoon we will have the governor back and the governor will be doing an open q a session for all game jam participants to talk with him directly about his plans for the state why it's a great place to come move live play work whatever you want to do visit um and the innovation goals specifically directly from him so we we will be sitting around some communications about that you'll be able to join that and get direct insights from the man himself on the visions of colorado and all this innovation collaboration and modernizing public good infrastructure through technology so that's about it so one last parting comment from me so it's been an unbelievable honor to be a part of what i see is an absolute first in the country partnership of collaboration between very distinct worlds we found ways to align our incentives and to really create um open channels of sharing and creativity and in just ways that i didn't ever think would actually happen so we are very very honored to be a part of this effort with the state and um we look forward to continuing these efforts and maybe who knows possibly having a call at the colorado jam next something that's even bigger in scope and more even more uh you know aggressive when it comes to looking and searching for the next vectors of innovation when it comes to modernizing our public systems and just how we work together as as the public service sector as well as just community members so we look forward to that and we couldn't be more full-throatedly supportive of this effort tom your team i want to give a special shout out to gloria who has done an unbelievable job at coordinating and project managing this she deserves way more credit than she's getting so i'm doing that publicly in front of everyone and lou to you and your team as well thank you so much and all the participants and attendees go make it happen so jam on folks let's do it we'll talk to you soon