Gaming in the Metaverse

[Music] everyone thank you for staying with us i hope you can stay for the last session of the day last but not least uh we have an amazing group of speakers that are doing a lot of stuff in the mirror verse and the gaming area and maria is gonna organize and moderate the session so welcome all to the last channel of the day thank you daniel uh hey everyone um yeah i'm very happy to welcome you to the last session of the day um it was another amazing day of the european blockchain convention and now we're actually gonna finish with a very very strong session i believe it's a topic that so many people are passionate about uh we have great panelists uh first maybe a couple of words about myself um my name is maria i'm based in germany and i used to be a gamer but when i was playing games uh it wasn't actually a very cool thing and i'm so happy that nowadays gaming is a cool thing and gamers are not nerds anymore but one of the guys here in the panel told me actually the gamers today the nerds today are uh the tech billionaires so yeah it's amazing how gaming has changed and changed the the its business models so it enables so many people to to actually make money to earn a living with it and this is a topic we're gonna discuss today uh i'm very very happy to give the world the work to our panelists to also introduce themselves and during your brief introduction i also want to ask you to to let us know when you when did you start gaming and what is your favorite game sebastian do you want to start from here all right so hey everyone uh brief introduction i'm the ceo and co-founder of sandbox which is a gaming virtual world that's using a blockchain technology to an nfts to empower players and creators to monitor to make 3d assets and experience and monetize them um i'm also the president of the blockchain game alliance which is an organization that now counts more than 300 members so it's been largely growing over the past two years and our role is to promote adoption of blockchain technologies within the broader video game industry um well i'm 36 years old i think i started playing games while uh in my 11 12 years old started with super nintendo and then went through every single generation of console games spent my summer on world of warcraft 3 on counter strike and this kind of games um i i do enjoy a competitive game but i was never like skilled player professional players um so yeah counter strike is probably the one i spend most of my time today okay thanks thanks a lot um alex hey you want to go next yep hi i'm um sarah toby at sasuke uh head of partnerships at ygg um i've been in the space for a few years since 2017 i've got a background in in tech and strategic partnerships um in terms of my kind of favorite game i've been well i've been playing games since i was probably around six or something like that maybe slightly younger i remember playing kind of very old-school ms-dos games on old uh pcs before before windows 95 existed and games were very odd back in those days um and then i've since then i'd played a lot of games on various console generations just like sebastian even though i was slightly more slanted towards being a sony playstation guy as well as um flirtations with the pc gaming world but primarily yet definitely like a sony playstation guy so i've played everything like fps rts games um story based rpg games in terms of a favorite game yet that's a very challenging thing to say recently i very much enjoyed games like um um oh gosh it uh the last of us part two was one of the games that was extremely uh engaging that i played recently but i'm currently playing god of war on playstation 5. great great okay so rudy you're next that leaves me hi everyone my name is rudy koch i am the co-founder of mythical um we got into the space in back in 2018 with the goal of uh bringing blockchain and nfts to the traditional mass market gaming industry you know we're we're passionate about all the amazing stuff that's going on in the space with play to earn we we're 100 believe that this is the future future of games um we built our own game with plato earned blanco's block party which is what you see behind me we've also built the mythical platform that we announced recently which allows any game to build play to earn economies um and uh we announced three games that are building on our on our platform along with that um and you know this 2021 has been wild it's been wild for everyone and it's been great a lot of discussion around nfts and you know we're convinced more than ever that this is this is the future for traditional games and so we see ourselves as the um the bridge between web 2 and web 3. um my background is in traditional mass market games myself i worked on club penguin a long time ago i worked on call of duty for six years i worked on world of warcraft for a bunch of years um i started playing games the minute i found them i'm gonna date myself here but it was a commodore vic-20 uh and i it's been they've been a part of my life my entire life um and it's so hard to answer the question of what's my favorite game because throughout all the stages of my life i've had you know games that really connected with me um and you know i have so many great memories of playing games with my friends and one of the reasons why i got i wanted a working game so i could create experiences like that for for the new generation of kids growing up but if i you know i if i had to sort of pick it's more games that are um pvp like sebastian i love them i'm terrible at them but i love them and i like grinding games i like grinding like i played minecraft with my friends for hours and it was about creativity uh mostly but for me it was only about mining as long as i could hours and hours and hours of just mining i love that thank you thank you guys for introducing us to your favorite games so as i already said in the introduction um gaming is not only for fun nowadays uh it's also um a very popular uh it became a very large industry and it offers new revenue models uh and and new business cases so let's talk about that can you tell me and tell us what is the business case behind your game or your games so um really do you want to go first yeah sure so you know i'll take a step back you know i think games have always been about entertainment you know and there's always been about fun and um i don't think that's going to change you know i think games are always going to be about fun people want to engage uh with games that are entertaining that their friends play they create cool experiences with um what's happening now is that you know with blockchain nfts with this you know whole web 3 stuff is that this concept of play to earn which you know has you know we've seen some amazing innovations in that space over the last few years what it's showing is that we can allow uh players to be partners in our ecosystems that they can participate in the value chain as a gamer myself you know i've spent hundreds of hours grinding games spending a ton of time a ton of money in these games it's traditionally always been a one-way street meaning i buy from the developer and i show it off to my friends which is pretty cool but beyond that there's nothing right now that is changing now all the value that players bring to the ecosystem now they can participate in that and i think that's really powerful because what we've seen over the last 10 years independent of blockchain independent of nfts is that this is what players have wanted we've seen them in the form of twitch streaming and youtube content creation right players these are these are folks who don't make games we make the games but they want to be involved and they're generating enormous amounts of revenue by being part of the ecosystem we see that with esports as well same thing players becoming fans and pro players and and and and we've also over the last 30 years seen grey markets where players have put in a tremendous amount of value in the items um that they acquire in games and whether we let them or not they are going and trading them with each other out there that's what the grey markets are they've been hundreds of millions of dollars of these types of transactions all outside the ecosystem so you know i think for what i'm seeing is that games will always continue to be fun now we're providing an opportunity for players to be part of the value chain and you know make money playing the games they love absolutely yeah that's that's uh a great innovation so um alex hey do you want to go next yeah absolutely so with um ygg or yield guild games um basically we aim to be the workforce of the metaverse we're out there participating in the various um games and environments that will exist um which i think gives us a really interesting kind of value proposition and that we aren't reliant on any one game experience but can kind of help bring value to numerous game experiences um we hope to kind of implement some kind of like framework layers for kind of like player identity and questing systems within the metaverse within various blockchain games and help beca create more seamless onboarding of of of players to um the metaverse because obviously many of the games are currently out do have like a fairly high barrier to entry we seek to kind of lower that barrier to entry especially to those people that kind of uh you know could benefit the most from being able to access um these virtual economies um so basically this this kind of adds huge amount of value to the metaverse concept itself and also to the game platforms um which are built into the metaverse so um for example this both games here are perfect examples obviously in sandbox ygg aims to be like a major participant um creating items and helping to you know liven up experiences within sandbox um i know that many of the ygg community themselves are already playing like blanco's block party themselves obviously we'd love to see that kind of evolve even more deeply but um yeah we just basically are a community of passionate gamers that really want to jump into as many uh metaverse based games as possible and seek out yield and um do that in a way that democratizes the access to these yield generating nfts um both are kind of our player base and also add value then back to the kind of community as a whole um which kind of again is great in that we you know don't have a single point of failure in the way that maybe a a single game experience might do perfect perfect and um sebastian you're actually building a metaverse you know the the sandbox is a metaverse um how do you see the future of the gaming in the i'm very excited by the possibilities that the metaverse is offering in terms of gaming like enabling users to truly under digital assets and using this as the base to create a whole new digital economy on top of it where there will be new jobs born in the meters such as like all touching around creating the content creating all those experiments that will be populating the metaverse from digital architect from level designers from artists fashion designers halls interior decorators if you want but also everything that relates to commerce with virtual real estate agents people who are curating content discovering content and helping to promote and sell nfts within the virtual world brands entering and running their own virtual show their virtual concerts engaging and hiring community managers etc to be 3d avatar that will be welcoming you and providing more fun into those experiences and of course all the player side the outside that ydg already described those are some of the new opportunity that we're seeing into the metaverse and that's already been transforming like many people's life around the world we have like a growing ecosystem of builder studios who are leveraging lands and counting now more than 17 000 landowners into sandbox and preparing all sort of experiences uh beyond it's a place that's multicultural so unlike what we've seen in the video game industry before like virtual world have been existing for almost 20 25 years to take second life to take world of warcraft etc great those are single virtual worlds centralized closed economies where actually the developer was controlling everything from uh like what users can do and typically they were limited they could not uh create more value by modding the game and earning the revenue from them they couldn't transfer their asset to other players that was actually restricted and even some usual gun ban for doing that and they were like controlling the economy with an infinite inflation of the supply of items changing the scarcity teaching gives the attributes at any time i believe like blockchain has provided like the public ledger that brought trust that brought like the proof of digital authorship who made those content and the proof of digital ownership of who owned those and that's uh really begin to empower overall like players at the center where all the content they make is and and the content they earn through playing is now theirs so the value they contribute they bring by being present the value they contribute by creating content is coming back first and foremost to other users those open economies in the metaverse combined with gaming combined with brands and ips that are brought into it is is really exciting like it's like a great melting pot of culture or fun of engagement and that's typically what we expect now from the mail something more immersive more fun with gaming mechanics so you can stay engaged and come back into it and full of people as well that's so very bullish and sebastian thank you so much for also mentioning second life i actually have drinks with someone yesterday who wrote his thesis about second life like i don't know 15 years ago and he was telling me oh the metaverse is nothing new it's nothing new it already exists but it's so brilliant that you actually explained the difference so thank you very much i'm sure a lot of people are wondering so how is the metaverse different so this is how it's different thank you for explaining this and rudy how do you see the future of gaming in the metaverse yeah you know what i what's fascinating to me is that you know with the new generation of gamers is spending an incredible amount of time in the digital space right you know we've seen that with uh the advent of the last 10 years of open world games where you know players have an enormous amount of control over customizing their experiences and so what happens is when these players are spending so much time in the digital space they put a ton of value in the digital experiences that they have um they they their identities are in the digital space their social networks are in the digital space you know i i remember when i was young and i got a new pair of sneakers i would go to school and i would show my friends at recess right today that happens online in your favorite game look at the cool skin that i have right and so you know the new generation of players they're not just a a physical entity they have a digital component to them that's as important right as important and this has been evolving over the last 10 years and so i think that's been an important precursor to you know what we're seeing now is that these players they value their identity they want ownership over it they want control over it they want to be able to benefit from the value of what they create and bring to the digital space and again you know with in games this isn't something that is necessarily new we've you know whether we want them or not they've been you know transacting in this way in grey markets and so what we what nfts and blockchain and the metaverse is doing is it's it's sort of the solution it's the answer to the this trend that's been organically happening you know and you mentioned brands and and ip you know they've all been trying to figure out how to get into games we've seen that again organically happen not in a deliberate way um but organically these worlds have been colliding and now suddenly the metaverse and nft has given nfts have given a venue for this to happen properly now we can make this the norm now we can give players control over their their digital you know presence and i and i think this is sort of causing this sort of explosion and hype and excitement because it's it's it's almost like we're finally here which is awesome yeah absolutely and yeah alexa do you want to add something to that how do you see the future yeah i think it's hard it's hard to kind of add much on top of those two very good um answers from sebastian and rudy i kind of think i would echo a lot of what's being said here just kind of with maybe just adding in some of the kind of interoperability and these kind of meta games that might occur so how like they'll be the kind of games themselves but then obviously with many of these games where you have like true ownership and this kind of financial impact of of the games that are happening you know i i've spoken to some games where there's kind of the potential for like loss or you know for like in some kind of like uh player versus player style um games where you're like one faction may be able to like reduce down the earnings of another faction i can imagine that this could eventually become like quite kind of bloodthirsty and have like meta games in the background a kind of social level i was having a conversation with someone quite recently about how um there's they've got these discord communities of these different um uh clans within this one particular game and that um someone was actually operating as like a spy inside of the other discord to kind of try and find information regarding their kind of battle plans and and this is happening like outside of the game right and i mean if you look at like ygg for example as well you know we operate within a large discord server and we're kind of gamifying that experience and i think what's interesting there is like it's a gamified layer on top of the you know these are gamers participating in games and then there's a kind of separate meta gamified layer built on top of that so i think like just multiple layers of gamification and then we see like other technologies like augmented reality i think it's going to really kind of become hugely meaningful in terms of like how the kind of digital assets that we own can manifest um more tangibly in the kind of uh world that we inhabit in the physical realm and obviously then you know the the um vr as well would be another really interesting tech to see kind of become more and more prevalent uh in addition to that though i just think yeah just to echo sebastian's um comments on kind of digital ownership becoming so meaningful um and people owning that kind of value creation in the metaverse is a really kind of key theme and one which white she is obviously a big big supporter of and um yeah i think that's going to become so such a kind of focal point for for so much kind of innovation and um focus from lots of different areas and kind of financial a big a good opportunity for those people that's kind of jobs get automated out of existence and if i could add to that you know what's what's been fascinating about you know thinking about a world where you know players are part of the value chain they can earn money playing the games they love is that suddenly it it the addressable market is massive in comparison to what we've traditionally seen in games right and this is this is where you know what i think ygg has done is remarkable you know they really challenging us to rethink how growth and ua works in games around the globe and you know i i without without question you know they are they are they have quickly become an essential part of driving this ecosystem um that we've never had before and it's it's i love i love seeing this kind of innovation this is just really a game changer and then i just want to add like having seen game with player on economy it's it's really exciting and still we're only at the early days of that like we haven't seen yet like the whole governance take place at scale and uh all the users who own those world decide how the logo world are going to continue evolving the fact that the digital assets are being owned by users and they can create other layers of gameplay like alexa was just describing launched their own uh meta game on top of it monetize it attract new communities around it create thousands of dollars now i think we're starting to talk it's it's wonderful how like an overall ecosystem is being built through only a simple medium and this is finally embracing that an open economic system is actually going to be better than closed economy which used to be the main rule for 25 years and still has a lot of resistance within uh the overall like game developer industry but it's progressing it's been progressing this year and that's why the bga exists to keep showcasing some of those great use cases what members are building guys let's now talk about the traditional gaming industry because for example when i first started reading up all the metaverse and gaming in the metaverse i was kind of overwhelmed with all the innovation with all the new way of thinking that is required in this new metaverse let's talk about how the traditional gaming companies can embrace the blockchain technology and the play to earn model what do you think about that maybe rudy you can start yeah you're actually helping actually build this bridge yeah that's our that is our main focus our main focus you know as as traditional game developers who got into the space we wanted to look at blockchain through that lens how would we get these concepts in front of um the mainstream audience right how would we take concepts like private keys and wallets and gas fees and how would we put these you know in a way that doesn't become a barrier right people again they play games because they want to have fun not because they want to get confused and so um you know this this has been a major focus for us at the same time you know we've been because that our our background is traditional games we've been deep in conversations with a lot of of of key folks in the traditional gaming industry and you know it's been interesting it's been fun you know like three and a half years you know it wasn't three and a half years ago it was not cool to talk about blockchain and nfts in these venues right at all there was a small group of us that were believers but you know we we we we we weren't met with the same enthusiasm when we were talking to the web two world right and you know this year i think has been amazing right it's we you know we we hoped we would be here and we're excited to be here where the whole world is looking at nfts now the discussion is there and that's forcing this um traditional gaming industry to really take a look at at web 3 at blockchain or ft's and to really think about it develop a point of view and um you know we we've seen them becoming much more open at the same time it's an industry that traditionally is is quite risk-averse you know and they're not going to you know especially when you look at the big big companies i know there are a couple who are really sort of going out there and leading the charge but generally they're not going to sort of risk billion dollar franchise to test out some nfts that's the biggest challenge how do they do this in a way that's meaningful to their bottom line and meaningful to their business and does not risk what they've already built because making games is hard when you've got something that works you want to you want to make sure you optimize around that and you know but so what we are seeing is we've got this sort of traditional industry that's entrenched in web 2 technology culture way of thinking and now they're looking at web three and it's not a transition this is the thing that's important to to know it's not just a straight transition what we are seeing is this clashing this clashing of of paradigms right and i think sebastian you touched upon this right like the these you got this centralized companies that built centralized games and worlds where they control everything so you've got this sort of true ownership of web 3 clashing with the walled gardens of web 2 and they're trying to wrap their heads around these these concepts so i think it's you know what we're seeing is that they're taking cautious steps and you know this is why we call ourselves the bridge from web 2 to web 3 is because you know we've gone out ahead and started to sort of innovate we've gone through the changes we've gathered data we've learned what works what doesn't work so we can help them cut you know reduce risk in coming into the space and they're you know they're this year again because of all the conversation they are starting to take steps in okay let's start with you know small let's start with nfts you know let's see how that works you know i think we're still a little bit away from you know going full tokenomics you know social tokens and governance you know it's a matter of time um but i think we're gonna you know they're gonna take you know careful steps into this space at the same time not to say that there won't be innovators who will go ahead you know go in head first you know we're starting to see more traditional you know smaller indie teams that are just excited about the space they've got a point of view and they're jumping in at first so i think we're going to see sort of just the maturation um happen over the next couple of years that's that's critical and it's and it's really exciting it's really um perfect and i think you're doing a great job to building this bridge i'm super excited what's going to happen next year i think it's going to be a big explosion so yeah very excited about that um guys what do you think sebastian how do you see that uh i definitely see 2022 and forward as like we reach a tipping point at this moment of time there is not a single gaming company in the world that's considering how do we integrate nft how do we launch that ubisoft one of the largest top 10 gaming company has made the splash they launched to quartz square niklas announced it ea has announced it zinga's announced it so if you look at top 10 definitely it's happening and it's happening at all the levels like large company indie game studios starting with which means that by next year there will be a whole different landscape into gaming like a lot of competition from competition more innovation i expect so that will be great we're going through some cycles here but overall like new design concept around ownership will be introduced we'll probably will stop seeing only sandbox clones or blancos um clones or axe infinity clones people will need to innovate to not be just a me too kind of game try to bring on new agencies that will actually enlarge the market and as more and more users enter and get progressively or abruptly depending uh your take on the topic like introduced to nfts and web3 decentralization of like owning your identity or tokens and your digital asset we're we we're growing an educated user base that in my opinion will less will be much less likely to come back to anything we've seen before in free to play or even premium games like once you get the idea like oh i own this and sell it or i can use it somewhere else if someone takes out that right from you you you will feel like why it's becoming abnormal so we're redefining the norm through ownership and it's happening to users that are more like crypto savvy right now leading that trend and after that the whole new generation of gamer that's bored like this imagine a whole new generation of fortnite players who now like just get ownership digital ownership like they got like the the ipod or digital music instead of cd-rom or blu-rays for movies they would not even think of that thing of the past they will be beyond and that i think where the industry is moving towards over the next five to ten years there's no return yeah and alex say how do you see that how does the traditional uh gaming uh industry is gonna embrace the blockchain technology and the members i definitely think there's some you know kind of regulatory challenges there and some concerns from like you know existing business models but i think you know we can already see with games like axi you know where there's been this huge kind of revenue generation and like popularity and growth hacking mechanic where when a game has a viable digital economy and that you can kind of participate in a way that you know you can extract value from and maybe kind of contribute value into in a much more interesting way i think that you know you look at the revenue that sky mavis was making um over the kind of summer recently i think it has turned a lot of heads and like sebastian mentioned you know i think i highly doubt there isn't a gaming studio that hasn't sat down and had a conversation relating to um nft strategy and i think yeah just to echo your thoughts again i think 2022 is going to be a huge year i'm pretty very i'm very much confident that we're going to see like major studios adopting nft strategies and games um i think it's a huge opportunity i think there's going to be some pushback i think there's this kind of very strange and unusual kind of uh unfounded pushback against nfts from a kind of certain subset of the gaming and art community um i'm not completely unders i'm not completely sure why there's these people doing this but they um i i think it's only a matter of time before they get kind of drowned out by the people that um are really enjoying and embracing these technologies i think there's a lot of misinformation surrounding um that but definitely i think that the um mainstream uh and traditional gaming sector is just going to have to it's a case of like embrace or or be overrun so it's just one of these things where they i'm pretty confident like you can already see with ubisoft for example launching um quartz for example um i think this is just the first of of many i'm sure that like the opportunity for this kind of secondary market sales monetization mechanic it's just it's just it's too big a too big a uh prize to ignore you mentioned regulatory issues i think that's a huge topic in any industry let's talk about this now so do you see any regulatory challenges in the gaming uh in the metaverse yeah i mean obviously it's one of these things again this kind of relates back to the kind of traditional side like legally in in the us like it you know is an asset to security is an nft a security are like in-game token securities you know i know that a lot of games that i've spoken to have have kind of had challenges about how they're going to do this i mean right now obviously many kind of leverage kind of offshore entities to to kind of launch tokens separately to their kind of their development house so they kind of utilize these kind of um legal uh kind of i'm not sure if that i suppose like loophole is probably the appropriate word to use to some degree where they kind of launch tokens from a you know a non-us-based entity and then maybe their development house is based in the us and they're doing this because obviously like it's very easy for a token to be kind of deemed a security so yeah i think that if we look at securities law in the u.s i think it's like it's very easy for pretty much anything to be classified as a security um so i i think that either you know u.s securities law needs to have a huge overhaul or you know to be honest with you it's going to be hard for them to stop because there is still this mechanism by which you know offshore entities can be used to issue tokens and these kind of separation of your corporate structures to to kind of try and bypass this stuff but you just wonder like is the kind of sec and kind of other regulatory bodies going to how they're going to look at this and then there's obviously the concerns over like you know are people should people be paying taxes on you know income that they make in virtual worlds i'm sure like you know governments will probably you know as you know rudy mentioned there about people spending more and more time in digital worlds i mean as we as the kind of human race transitions from like spending so much time in the kind of physical world and spending so much time in the digital world and and different virtual worlds i'm sure that they're going to want to kind of get a piece of that enormous pie at some point absolutely yeah that's that's a big question how do you regulate the income from the metaverse imagine the account you're gonna it could breed a whole new class of of tax accountants you know how do you how do you tax like game items you know in like game gaming in-game accountants yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you could you could have in-game account in the metaverse actually maybe they can open like an office in the sense in sandbox yeah and yes that might be the most efficient and where like more people go for consultation like interesting you will need an energy ticket to enter and get your consultation yeah yeah sebastian how do you view the regulatory aspect i think it's going like regulations are here to protect citizens in various countries from abuse where as builders we have a responsibility here and specifically as builders are now starting to gather to millions of users we have responsibility to set the right example and what we believe is the right way we hope that regulators will work with us to establish what is a good framework that both protective to other users and while compliant with their own goals for the greater benefit of the society in general and well we just have to be prepared because i think it's in every one mouth and it's many more politicians and lawmakers are more aware now than ever of other nfts they see value spotlight here up there but we might not understand the full picture overall uh and we we don't want to bring it would be i mean innovation like laws and regulations always will be a bit behind innovation but that doesn't mean like innovation shouldn't be protective to what consumer or generate greater good so that's i think what we're hoping for and we're hoping to work like we've seen in korea where regulators have been hearing out uh developers building platform and nfc games and they tried to frame it in in accordance with their own gambling and non-gambling kind of limitation and overall it seems like it's been helpful for companies and users and that's an example to follow okay and uh because we mentioned regulation in the u.

s and rudy you are in the u.s can you tell us your view um on the current regulation or maybe threats in the future uh from regulation yeah you know i i you know i i honestly i don't i don't think we talk enough about the regular regulatory side you know there's obviously a lot of discussion around the technology um and all the cool stuff you can do there but the the the regulation piece you know as a company based in the us is is just as complex um or has been just as complex and i joke that you know rationally sometimes i i know that i still work in video games but the types of things that we are having to solve are so foreign from what i've ever had to deal with before you know we i've been involved in presenting you know the mythical use case to 50 state regulators in the us and and you know in in in eu and we're worrying about money transmission licensings and e-money licenses and and all the regulations and compliances around that and you know it's already been mentioned you know these are there to protect consumers uh but also to you know it's critical to protect the companies that are coming into this space as well um you know this is again an example of where sort of web 2 and web 3 are are clashing um and we've got to find the happy medium right you know you you want to lean into true ownership and say yeah you buy an item you can do whatever you want with it it's yours we no longer have control but then you have to also you can't just ignore fraud right you can't ex ignore money laundering you cannot ignore just basic customer service you know if someone gets ripped off and you say well too bad uh is web 3 uh you know you're going to have a lot of very unhappy customers and so again this is where we're you know the regulations are evolving it's a moving target you know things are just you know they're still figuring things out um with regards to you know the security questions around assets um but also um you know there's this pulling of like okay but these are the things that are important in web three um and so as as a company that's that's focused on sort of disrupting the traditional mass market game uh industry we can't we can't just throw certain things out the window just because of web 3 and regulations are a massive massive part of that um you know we've been through it we've been through the trenches on that for for the last two and a half years and you know again i feel like it's a topic that needs to be talked about more uh so so teams that are coming to space come in with their eyes wide open yeah thank you rudy for for your view on the regulatory matter uh i think it's time to take some questions from the audience uh we have a great question i think uh because i'm also interested in this answer will there be a free entrance public spaces in the sandbox to experience the metaverse yes well it's already the case like the standby what we launched since november 29th uh is the alpha season the alpha season anyone can download the game client and access four public ads that give them like a first overview of like all kind of experience games activities social dance etc that can be done the and by engaging into those activities you get a chance to win one of the alpha and ft paths which were limited to 5000 and we didn't sell like we distributed thousands as a reward to our existing landowner community one of the first supporters to building that metaverse and then the four other thousand are distributed to users who engage into the four public hub over four weeks which is for me is the proof of engagement and uh it's going to close by december 20th yeah and we overall the feedback has been positive we've had great amount of uh active users every day uh social media sharing of those moments and memories and a lot of good feedback so we'll keep improving next year the first next season and so on so definitely uh when people ask like when can we access the metaverse how it is we tried our best to show one possibility i believe everyone in this panel does and i will continue to improve over the coming years great yeah thank you um another question from the audience how do you see the future of esports maybe rudy you can say something about that because i know you have to leave soon yes uh the the the yeah i mean sports has been an integral part of of of the games industry i mean what's what's amazing is that this is an example of sort of the trajectory that we've had like i mentioned you know we had twitch and youtube um where players were getting involved in the ecosystem and esports is another great example of that where player defense you know players and fans wanted to get involved in the ecosystem and create this whole interesting dynamic new new new uh sector in games and revenue stream and so you know we're going to see esports be an essential part of this next evolution web 3 as well and what i love about it is that this idea of ownership expands so nicely into esports right the idea that fans can get closer to the uh esports teams that they love is so great you can own an nft you know you can that that of of you know merch for your for your favorite team you can um maybe even own you know for example the weapon that they used in the tournament that they played where they won the world championship you know and i think there's going to be even more creative ways um that that esports teams are gonna figure out how to engage and shift their relationship with fans um and i'm really excited for that i think it you know it's it's there's some amazing stuff happening and i'm already seeing you know esports teams that are they're looking very closely at the space trying to figure out you know how to how how to make this work so yeah yeah very very cool um alexei do you want to say a couple of words about that yeah absolutely so um so so so sorry that question again sorry yeah so um basically we're talking about uh esports um how do you see the future of esports oh absolutely i mean with esports and play to and i think there's such a you know because there's so much on the line obviously for gamers there so that like in in the kind of most exciting games that we see you see a lot of games targeting esports esports is growing kind of rapidly in traditional gaming and i think like play to earn a blockchain gaming just kind of increases that intensity i think you know you've seen with axi for example that you know it's got like a quite a you know active esports community and i i think you know for a game that like axi traditionally wouldn't maybe have had a kind of esports um as in in much the same way that it does i think that as we can imagine like these kind of high-stakes fps games where like there's like a lot more kind of financial value at stake i think we can imagine that um you know um you know the esports and play to earn and blockchain gaming kind of go very well hand in hand and uh there is another question from the audience um we basically touched upon it a little bit during our conversation how do you see asset portability going for web 3 gaming um sebastian do you want to answer that we've i think we're one of the pioneers who really exploring the possibilities around interoperability uh where you want users to be able to create an ftm sandbox and use them anywhere else any other dapp using the rc721 standard or even 55 we also enable users to import and display any nft into sandbox and that's one of the first thing you see when you enter any of sandbox social hub and we're building we're turning 2d profile picture collection nfts into like 3d playable characters into our virtual world that enable anyone to have just from a 2d collectible image into like characters you can use to chat dance jump run do all sort of cool action and meet with other community holders which add more value more utility to the original nfts and bring the community even closer into those space so we believe it's one of the great showcases not the only one but definitely an interesting one yeah definitely um rudy do you want to say a couple of words about that yeah i mean interoperability is definitely one of the pi pioneering paradigms in in in web 3 that's that's fascinating you know we're seeing it mature we're seeing you know teams like sebastian's teams really like innovating and pioneering that space i think one one of the things that's interesting to me is the idea of value interoperability is is also uh you know just as as as interesting and and important in that you know you're not just sort of you could potentially take your identity and the value that you've accrued in one game and then you could go to another game and you know have it uh have your identity there as well and i think that's that's fascinating this goes back to the whole like players are spending a lot of time their identities are just as digital as they are physical and so i want to make sure i me when i show up in all of these games and i think with interoperability that's something that's possible yeah great so um guys i guess we we should come to an end um daniel do you want to take over hello of course thanks a lot for for your time we have learned a lot of stuff we can imagine that transcendent choose it's going to be a big year also for gaming blockchain midiverse and all that kind of stuff so thank you very much again to the audience a quick message remember that you can connect to other attendees using the brela platform and that tomorrow you can do it and also on friday so you have still two days to connect between each other and i think it's uh one of the best ways to connect with people in the industry so thank you very much for staying with us the first the third day of europe unboxing convention and i hope you can join us tomorrow as well thank you all thank you very much good to see you everyone so much guys cheers thank you guys bye [Music]