Web3 Games: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Miko Matsumura

I'm actually part of the blockchain fund you know we funded at the very earliest stages at the seed stage Open Sea we funded yield Guild games we're working currently with a16 Sienna title called Roboto games super awesome founders of PopCap Plants versus Zombies so we definitely love super OG Gamers so the concept behind my talk today is I really want to help people understand the evolution of what three gaming right because I think people are misunderstanding it and I my I'm here to say that the revolution will not be televised the revolution will be gamified and my point of this is is that there's definitely a lot of hate in the industry I think for nfts and in fact Gamers hate nfts like in my Uber ride over I was talking to my friend Chris formerly from consensus and he was saying that he's in a Discord and the moment he mentions nft there's Gamers that just leave they're like I don't it's a scam I don't want to hear nft I hate nfts right so if we're gonna have a revolution how are we going to have a revolution when people say there's a revolution they think of the French Revolution right the French Revolution the people in the streets the people in the streets basically went after Marie Antoinette off with her head right like get rid of the overlords the rent-seeking intermediaries like let's get rid of the people who have all the power right so this will not be a street Revolution this is not a street Revolution this is a revolution that is powered by a different kind of hate the kind of hate that it's powered by is developers hate publishers they hate the Publishers the Publishers are the centralized rent-seeking intermediaries my son who's 17 years old told me a joke he said why is EA the worst company in North America so the punch line is because Ubisoft is in France right so like everybody hates the Publishers right so to me the thing that will cause the revolution is first of all venture capital has invested 7.6 billion with a B dollars into web 3 gaming in 2022 last year 7.6 billion dollars right now this is what I have to say about it right that's data from uh dap radar right and also from Venture beat Dean Takahashi so what's gonna happen right what I'm telling you is is that the floor level of entertainment the floor level is imagine all the VCS go into Black Rock Desert and instead of Burning Man they do burning cash so they take the 7.6 billion in cash and they just burn it in front of everybody's face that's what I call the entertainment floor right which is that investment had better be more entertaining than a bunch of people in the desert burning a pile of cash that's 7.6 billion dollars right it better be more entertaining if you don't get more game entertainment from this investment into what three games all of those VCS including myself should be fired they should lose their jobs right because burning 7.

6 billion dollars in cash is pretty entertaining right A lot of people would watch that so what I'm what I'm expressing to you is is fun games are coming they are coming this summer we're going to see the launch of a bunch of fun games right now one of our portfolio companies Bob Studios is launching momoguro that'll be fun game bunch of fun games coming right so my point my point is is who's the best person to sell nfts to normal people who's gonna do it who can sell an nft to a normal person I'll tell you who it is free to play game studios free to play free to play because the free to play people can sell you something that you didn't even know existed that you didn't know you wanted that has no real existence in the world and you will buy it you're gonna buy skins you're going to buy swords you're gonna buy Shields you're gonna buy all this stuff digital assets right so the players aren't going to buy nfts they're gonna buy swords and shields and skins that happen to be nfts right to me the idea that we're going to sell nfts is just stupid because the nft is a technology right people don't go on the store and say I want to sell you uh TCP right tcpip is a technology right nobody wants to buy TCP and if you say my game is based on TCP who cares right it doesn't matter so the the users aren't going to buy nfts they're gonna buy swords they're going to buy land they're gonna buy whatever they want and the reason I'm so confident that they will buy these is because they're already buying them right like in-game items are a multi-billion dollar industry right so they're already buying digital in-game items and these are just gonna happen to be nfts right so someone asked me what is the difference between web 2 games and win three games what's the difference so this is the difference in what three games the players own the game and we have two games the game owns the players right players don't want to be owned right but the problem is is that players don't know what it feels like to own the game they don't know what it feels like so we have to basically convince them that they're gonna enjoy owning parts of the IP right they own some of the IP in the game right they own characters in the game right they own legendary items in the game right and they own potentially governance over the game I'm a little cautious about governance over games decentralized governance of games the the reason why I'm careful is if you read the riot forums after patch day of League of Legends the number of like crazy complaints about your champ getting nerfed it's just bananas right so like if you can imagine decentralized governance over nerfing and buffing Champs in League of Legends like it's never going to happen right so you got to be gradual about decentralized governance of the games themselves but what I do want to say is one place where I'm super excited is IP ownership and the thing that's so cool about IP ownership in a game is basically that derivative Works become user generated content or ugc and the thing that's exciting about this user generated content is it's going to be buffed by AI generative AI right so the idea becomes that if you own a character in a game you can actually now as an end user start to generate IP derivative IP right of this character right so if you have a character who's like uh Berserker right then you can make like the guy wearing a fur coat or you can make the guy wearing a red cape or you can make all the variations you want right and obviously something like mid-journey or stable diffusion like these things are just gonna pump out derivative works right and so the user is going to enjoy their ownership of the IP right so I think that the idea of community owned user generated IP is super exciting but I think people don't understand it the the players don't understand the power of ownership because they never had ownership before right so we just have to kind of trick them right we trick them by saying oh you're just buying a sword right but then maybe later on the sword gives you a battle pass into a different game right or the sword gives you access to a live concert or the sword gives you something else right and then all of a sudden the user is like oh this is more powerful than a traditional in-game item this is actually something I mean maybe what happens is you have a mechanism where you put the Sword in the Stone and then maybe in-game gold comes out right which is staking right so then people are like wow this is more powerful than any other in-game item I've ever had and eventually what happens is that what they learn what they learn is when they're done playing they learn that they can sell this sword to another player and actually get cash and get cash out for the sword right once they figure that out they're never gonna buy an in-game item that's not an nft because they're like can I can I sell this like when I'm done playing can I sell the sword and get cash right and then it doesn't matter if it's called nft or not right most games will say no you can't sell that you know it doesn't belong to you and you're like but in this other game I bought a sword and it actually belonged to me and I could sell it so what I'm saying is is that once the users feel the power of ownership there's no going back there's no going back right so to me the revolution will not be televised the revolution will be gamified right and I think that it is not an end user Revolution it is a game developer Revolution against the publishing houses so that's pretty much my thought for the day fun games are coming super excited you guys are all building them super excited to meet you guys obviously professionally I'm a venture capital person so I'm with Gumi cryptos Capital right if you want to reach out to me obviously you can do so after this talk but also miko.com that's my website you can get all my socials there DMS are open so feel free to reach out but you know to me really excited about this space I think this is going to be the channel for crypto Mass adoption right is that it's going to be there's 3.7 billion gamers and the people that are going to reach those gamers are the free to play game designers the experienced game designers because they can create such engaging experiences that those people are going to join and become part of the not just the web3 gaming Revolution but the ethereum and blockchain Revolution so anyhow thanks very much