# Collaborating On-Chain to Bring Gaming to the Masses | Erik Anderson, Frankie Colamarino, Carra Wu

- Channel: [Ethereum Denver](https://streameth.org/ethereum-denver)
- Date: 2024-10-09
- Duration: 50:36
- Topics: blockchain, web3, ethereum, Entertainment
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-MLazHXZBm-4
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLazHXZBm-4

## Description

Join JMR Luna (Wintermute), Erik Anderson (Faze Clan), Carra Wu (a16z), and Frankie Colamarino (Partie) as they discuss the current state of Web3 gaming and how to engage gamers interested in digital assets. With a decade of experience influencing digital communities, Frankie and Erik will share their creative expertise working with brands like Nike and Porsche, what gaming strategies and programs are attractive to games distributors like Steam and Epic Games Store.

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## Transcript

[Music] welcome everybody uh I'm jmr I'll be your host for the next hour we have here three amazing guests uh to discuss gaming and how to make it appeal to masses on my ride please would you like to introduce yourself uh hi I'm Frankie karino I'm the CEO of party I also own a creative agency called Problem media we've serviced everybody from Astro gaming uh to Amazon and twitch on the agency side and uh yeah building uh a cool little product uh that helps focus lfg and uh matchmaking uh through an application amazing on his right we have Cara hello hi um I'm Cara I'm an investing partner at a16z crypto um I have a background in math computer science and economics from Harvard spent a little bit of time as a software engineer building arvr apps for the hollow lens team at Microsoft and then I spent spent a little bit of time as a product manager at Apple um in the App Store where I worked mostly with game developers um like Candy Crush and roblocks and that sort of thing um I joined a16z crypto around three years ago now focusing mostly on the intersection between crypto and games investing but I also touch other kinds of media and IP as well as the infrastructure that supports those Investments amazing thank you for being here and on her ride Eric what's up buddy hey what's going on man uh Eric Anderson um with fazeclan uh Esports organization it's pretty big if you're familiar with Counter-Strike or Call of Duty you might know us um I had a amongst other things mainly the Competitive Gaming division of the company so that's all of our Esports titles um I've been around phase for going on eight years now uh pretty much built up all our verticals in gaming um outside of Call of Duty and then um came from the music industry before that where we'll probably sprinkle some of that throughout this conversation okay nice and about me very briefly I used to make films in Hollywood uh then I did gaming and I was the CEO of OG eorts one of the biggest Esports teams in the world and it's how I know him and we put this finel together because we want to have a colorful conversation with four people with four different backgrounds that works in different side of the industry so we can you know shed light into how we see the world and see which kind of agreements or conclusions we can come up through this hour of talk and I'm going to start the questions with you guys with saying okay let's identify what is going on right now on gaming okay what is the the current state of gaming so the first question that I have is what is what makes a good game Frankie a normal game not web 3 game just game well for me obviously like my obsession is Games like World of Warcraft you know uh large format games obviously beautiful ecosystems beautiful economies and you know I think my version of of what makes a good game is is a little dated um but today you know like I feel uh obviously you know if I can keep your attention or if I can help move a story along or build a brilliant IP like that comes in the form of a publisher and typically that comes at the form of of scale so I I think like holding attention is a good part of it good marketing good Community collaboration um really is how I see it today okay but for you K do we consider a good game when people love the game when a lot of people play the game where it makes a lot of money when it's very successful um I think it has to mean something okay uh typically if the game has cultural significance people will love it people will feel invested in it people will maybe you know spend a lot of money in that game I think it all comes from like the context having cultural significance and I think in order for that to happen I think these are our principles for all kinds of entertainment actually there have to be Stakes there has to be some amount of chaos and then people have to feel an affinity for it okay um and I didn't make this framework up this is something that a lot of the founders that I work with say over and over again it's like there's not enough chaos in this game I need to create more chaos people naturally tend toward order we need to create more entropy um and then Stakes you know it's like if I care enough about this environment um it it matters if I win or lose it matters to my friends to the people I care about in this game it matters to my reputation um so yeah I think it all it all stems from like did you create an IP that was important enough for people to care okay Eric for you what makes it a good game yeah I was I was uh watching the nouns guys over the other stage and they were uh Pat mentioned something about just a game needs to be fun and I think it's this very simple way of kind of addressing it but it's it's true but what's fun for everybody is very very different playing World of Warcraft for however many hours a day you played back it's it's not fun for right playing a fromsoft game is not fun for me right but at the same time like I like playing like spreadsheet games right so civilization spending hours in that or Europe visalis like that's fun for me it's probably awful for some other person so I think something that's fun is is the simplified way of doing it and then obviously in my business like a platform for competitive play for like iconic moments like that's you know a lot of people probably not having fun but it's really fun winning right and so again a wide range of what fun can be but as long as you have that experience you have or you can say at the end of it we had fun doing that okay so so I'm going to add a little bit for me fun or sorry what makes a good game is a level of escapism from my current life for me the way or how I started playing games I had a rough childhood and I needed a place to escape from my life so these communities and these games were a place where I will find refuge and where I will find my friends and where I will find that so for me if you're allowing me escapism and I fully involved myself and immers in your in your new world that works for me I'm gonna piggyback on that for a second so if if you're unfamiliar with FaZe Clan um FaZe was started like that M it was a excuse me it was a Call of Duty Collective that basically was focused uh they were like the skateboarders of gaming right they put together all these clips of them sniping clips and trickshotting clips and they found each other online in fact many of the members didn't meet until year six or seven in in person right um and that's kind of when they started scaling and a lot of them it was escapism it was something that just kind of get down there play Call of Duty play the game everybody was playing um meet friends online meet friends in some other places um you know the two of the founders from Boston like some of the others are from Toronto and Southern California right and they just connected based on that and like I said didn't meet for years in person so yes escapism is a huge thing for sure and Community you mentioned that commun please please and on that point yeah Community for us too right like I met some of my best friends through gaming right whether it be on World of Warcraft and you know like the ethos of party really is connectivity bringing people together in a safe environment and you know for us like a lot of that stems even from a competitive level having a hard time finding people that are worth bringing into to those groups to keep it healthy right a guild in World of Warcraft is a business at the end of the day and I think growing into that like FaZe did is a perfect example of kind of where I see the future of gaming heading but we we'll wait for that okay well that's a great segue so now Cara where are we in web 3 gaming which part of evolution you know are we still on the monkey side are we already walking I think people are running a lot of interesting experiments okay the outcomes of those experiments remain to be seen um there are a lot of really interesting properties that are unique to web 3 and I think people are aware of what they are so there's there's some ownership there's permissionless composability there's some level of like programmability and trustless these are all Primitives that people understand and people are running lots of really interesting experiments some of them are going to fail some things are just going to not be fun some things are going to work some business models are going to work and some aren't and I I think like you know this has been true of every previous generation of games um when the mobile phone first came out people tried to apply the same principle of like we're going to charge for the game itself all in one go and it didn't work well because the whole premise of like mobile social gaming is you have a whole community of friends the game gets better as more people play so why would you create an adverse selection issue where people have to pay to play right it should be free to play and then you should be able to get add-ons premiums subscriptions skins right things that make the experience better for you as an individual but don't impede your ability to join and so that was sort of the evolution of free-to-play games was like the understanding was okay this network gets better this game gets more fun as as people as more people join so don't gate that action right make it as easy as possible for people to join and I think like people are still experimenting with business models for web 3 games I don't know that you know a perfect business model has been found um but typically these business models are very native to the form um and applying old business models to new kinds of gaming Styles doesn't really work so I think we're in the primordial soup phase I think people are still running experiments but you sound optimistic so you think that these experiments will hopefully cathartic moment where oh like this actually works and crypto gaming starts being appealing to masses yeah I certainly think some things are working they're early signs there's a lot of really interesting play tests um I don't want to hog the stage but I'm happy to go through examples of like stuff that's even been really interesting here at e Denver well we're going to get there later but if you want to mention I don't know some people here might have played crypto the game which we're not investor in has never raised money it was like they actually have a Meetup yeah they've got a meet up here at e Denver um and it was just really fascinating it was like this Survivor Style game where in order to play you have to buy into the pot you're sorted into a tribe randomly and people vote you off your Island every day and so it's some amount of like diplomacy style sort of civilization style betrayal and you can make your own smart contracts to say okay like I will escrow this money if I don't betray you um but of course betrayal is the whole point of the game right so there's there was a lot of interesting stuff happening and like when I tell you that I don't tell my boss this I like did not work for 3 days like the fact that I got eliminated was like a great thing for my job because I just like I was on that game 24/7 okay and this time something is working there okay so for you both what is your let's say temperature check of what's happening right now in web 3 gaming I I I mean I think that's a really good point about the evolution of like how some of these games make money right I mean you go back in time and you basically just had to go to a store to buy something right and eventually kind of stuff went more digital so you could the friction was removed from having to go to a store and then these kind of freeto playay games and even some of these free-to-play games having this depth of like you know if you play Counter-Strike a l Loot Crate mechanic which is they're literally hours of if you know who Oni is you can watch him just opening loot crates and it's That's Entertainment for somebody too so it's like and it's creating other layers of people making money on valve making gobs of money so I think there's probably going to be more experimental things and actually I haven't played that but it's there's so many amazing board games out there that you could just probably take into the web 3 ecosystem now that you're kind of saying that I'm like man I actually want to play a bunch of these board games now in this ecosystem so I think we're going to see some experiments and I hope to see more experiments and changeing that up wa you you I triggered something so yeah so maybe I have to play Devil's hav to just move the conversation forward and it's going to be for you cuz I feel that right now the more web three games that I experience are not gami are F gaming the whole premise started as the financial incentives tokenization and all that and then they were like okay well now how do we make this game fun so they're not very fun many of them because the economy part is the one that they are more expertise on cuz making a fun game is really really hard you work with the biggest titles in the world and the biggest developers and we mentioned you may have stat that one of the problems is that these people spend millions and hundreds of millions of dollars and they still fail games can you tell me a little bit more how you see that well I mean there's a few versions of that right like we're we're seeing it now with like things like the Call of Duty League where there is certain things that can happen and there are certain things that the players are at the mercy of right like you can gate an event you can gate a tournament you can say we need a license but ultimately like I think I think the future of what web 3 really offers up is collaboration you know I I I love to see a world where open source gaming becomes a version of that and creators can be built out of the the development phase right you look at Technologies like blender which is a open source 3D software and you really see how a community that has the interest to get to the Finish Line can really kind of rally and get that done we know what it cost to make a video game today and that's why I'm so excited to be at e Denver and seeing what's happening behind us us I think this is the future of gaming and you know for me like on the on the brand and agency side like how do we inject design and consideration and marketing back into this ecosystem like Community Builders uh and add that layer on top of the development I think the beauty of of everything happening in web 3 on blockchain is the collaborative piece and like any good industry the technology needs to get figured out first so then we can build on top of it you can't spin a silk shirt unless you figured out a machine that can Farm silk okay right so we're experiencing that uh at hackathons with e Denver with projects like nouns right where you know we're here because we want to be here and that's what I see the future of web 3 gaming turning into I think what makes games fun is amazing but the work has to get done before the fun can come right so it is primordial soup it is very much a hot pot as Pat would say so you guys mentioned something very interesting because Cara mentioned that in a way the IP has a huge value because the IP is in a way the transformative part the people align themselves and that will be the thing that penetrates Society but now you're mentioning that okay well all the technology all the ecosystem and everything that has to work it also has to be on the back end of that and then to you which you have one of the biggest communities in gaming how does the community part starts appealing to web3 gaming cuz right now I feel that web3 gaming is appealing to web3 people and is trying to Captivate this audience before it goes out to try to get it mainstream yeah I mean I think you just kind of want to Comic about the communities and how to engage with oh can you hear me better now much better so I I think right now there hasn't been a game at least to our community there hasn't been a game that's penetrated into the the faas clan or Phase Clan adjacent ecosystem and I think when a game pops up that people are really into I think you'll see um the community kind of bite on to it quickly I would say the last big moment that happened around our community was fortnite dropping and that was like a for our guys that was a Modern Warfare 2 which to them was like the greatest game of all time um that was like a moment like that and the question is is a moment like that going to come and there's other games in between right that have captured their attention Rainbow 6 is having a Siege is having a moment right now jinxy is like driving it forward and really raising attention to a really great balanced incredible esport title right um and by the way this is from the perspective of an esport specific title right um so I think if if there's a game that's made that can tap into that Community the community will jump on it rapidly immediately right like you you can't force it onto them you can't say hey this game's amazing no the community will tell you whether they think it's amazing I mean look at Hell divers 2 is having a moment right now where the whole Gaming Community in general is just loving it um and so it's like and I don't know if they expected that game to do that or not but uh it's definitely there so I think for our community specifically you can try to force things into it but they're going to immediately they'll shoot up and spit it back out if they don't like it okay so now question for you cara let's just think about it what is the main challenge that you think that web3 gaming has to overcome to appeal to the general mes I still think it's in infrastructure thing um infrastructure advancements have always led to changes in Computing paradigms so like you couldn't have MMOs without well you couldn't have Global MMOs Without Really sophisticated distributed systems architecture right you couldn't have this sort of super casual social gaming freeo playay in app purchase game without mobile phones and so you know when when infrastructure starts to mature it makes it possible for not only new kinds of consumers experiences but a lot of different kind of developer experiences and I think like what's happening right now is like blockchain scalability and compute is just starting to get to the point where like even for a developer there weren't very many layers of abstraction before there weren't a lot of libraries of like game engines simply because you had to program everything in a hyper optimized almost like bare metal assembly you know bit packing way in order for like really interesting creatives new categories of developers to like get interested in in building games on blockchains you have to have libraries that are accessible to them you have to have engines you have to have you know easy to use Frameworks and we're just starting to get to the point where really interesting open source Frameworks are becoming available in the same way that re react changed the game for JavaScript so I I really think it's like a Time game okay that's a great answer frankly for you now this what would these games have to do to be able to compete with the other ones because I understand where car these games are going to get gradually better but the other ones are also getting gradually better so when I am just sitting at home and I'm choosing a form of entertainment why or can the other ones compete with them my answer is going to be a little bit more simple I think honestly like I I think foundationally we're getting there like it's it's technology before the Cosmetic right like I think what we're seeing now is is more like prom where you have Boys on one side you have girls on the other and like brands also need to start to trust web 3 a little bit more right like I think there is a world where phas Clan doesn't need to wait for a web 3 game to come out they can create one right and and the kind of strategy around that for me would be well let's focus on the Cosmetics on my side and obviously will help with development but I got to believe in you enough to want to meet you in the middle right and I think that a lot of the games that are doing well in web 3 are are doing really well there there are some really good games out there that would make absolute sense for Face Clan but I think they haven't they haven't figured out the prom kind of conundrum right so for me like it is about opening up the kind of design and brand Market a little bit more like allowing for even Brands like a Nike to want to own a game in a category with a team like FaZe you know I I I'm a firm believer in even like AI essentially progressing past web 3 and and and all that in the sense of like figuring out the mechanisms where f Clan can spin up an AI game and just cast it let's watch a bunch of marbles race down a a pipe and you know we're we're moving toward a casting culture right that is what the Creator economy is looking to do I can tell you from talking to ninja personally ninja does not want to play video games for 14 hours a day right so the casting and kind of content and react content and podcast content that's coming like is is allowing for a very good grace period for gaming to say if we don't get our together like gaming might just phase itself out and we just might move past gaming to content maybe it's more interesting to watch Marble's race and talk about it than it is to actually build these these systems I personally am on the side of incubating gaming I think gaming has done a lot for me socially and as we move into a world where we're leaving the house more gaming really does offer that social tool there are people who shouldn't be in a room together behind us who met because of the internet and that's the direction we're heading in that's like GRE segue because for you Eric the question is at the end of the day for me as I mentioned at the beginning is escapism and Community I need to meet people that I enjoy playing the game and that's why I end up playing the game so the reason why I might play a specific game is because my friends played that game so we all kind of mve together to new games so how would game web three gaming approach the community building aspect that you guys so successful have done so I mean I'll speak it specifically to Esports um and I'd say like I think one of the most amazing things if you can build a platform for people to have fun together um again where hell divers is do two is doing right now I think is super uh super important but I think from a competitive standpoint if you're going to pick a lane I guess or like let's say you want to try to tackle Esports via fighting game or via first-person shooter just understand too that like it's not easy to make a balanced competitive game like uh using I'll use tennis as a perfect example as a sport I think it's a beautifully balanced game you play on one side then you flip side and you play the exact same way um you know uh football uh soccer uh basketball simple simple simple Counter Strike honestly really simple game with a lot of depth of you know what's that famous expression uh easy to learn hard to master actually kind of a hard game to learn hard to master but you know if you're going to be jumping into those kind of things really understanding balance and tweaking that um and it's and it's kind of complicated so I don't necessarily know if I jump into orts first but it is a way is right after this that's cool so but it is a way to get an immediate uh organic growth of a community right um and I think that's something that we that speaks to our core Community they want to get out their competitive nature right and that's that core audience and then there's somebody else and it wasn't wasn't really me but like loved playing The Sims I mean that game that IP made so much money and so making something like that to benefit those people to share them with the rest of the community whatever they made um I think you can go and go after that as well so picking a lane so we used to we're going to have a segment about Esports but I'm actually going to bring it right now because we're talking about it a lot of the times when people start thinking about gamings and they think oh we need to make it sticky we need to get the the community to like it they always think about orts and I think it's actually one of the biggest challenges or I'm not want to call it mistakes but it's an unique Direction because it's extremely hard to make a game become an orts there is fantastic titles and very few of them become successful Esports well it's one of the issues we talked about before you basically need to make a free-to-play game because you want as many people in there as possible so your costs are going to Skyrocket just to keep it and if you don't bring the community in and scale it and figure out a way to monetize it you're going to have a bad time so I think it is I think I don't recommend going after Esports first and I also don't know the limitations of the technology specifically but why would people want Esports because Esports obviously Drive stickiness it drives Community it drives retention the more people that play the game you actually want to know who the best guy is yeah so that's why you kind of have to create the Gladiator Arena of like yo go there and and fight it out totally I so I think Esports for anybody that's unfamiliar it's that layer right on top of multiplayer right that really is kind of like a uh you know a battle arena showcase for the best of the best of the best right and I think that there's something that we love as Humanity to see the best of somebody do something everything from NBA championships or the you know Olympics to I guess the bed best spreadsheet developers in the world right because the Excel Championship gets bigger and bigger every year so is that is that a real thing it is a real thing okay face spreadsheets coming spreadsheet what's that spreadsheets coming face spread EX I have a lot to say about spreadsheets but continue that's awesome well we can we can we can separate into that next week for the spreadsheet gaming episode yeah and like even like you know the the rock climbing documentary which I cannot watch because my I'm like getting clammy thinking about that documentary but like it's the best of the best doing it I think that's the key I think Esports drives emotions in a different way so I grew up so we both run Esports thems and for me the Esports events and the esport Community is more like a town hall of people that Wen there with one share Lov one point of passion and we're now all creating a community with people that we cannot play the game at that level but we enjoy watching it so I don't watch football at home I don't watch HB NBA at home I'm watching 16-year-old play video games around the world yeah so it amazing a very unique component and if you if you never seen it uh in person it's it's something else um but also if you just get a chance go online and watch some of the Great Moments I think the international has some of those moments where you just see this Roars of the crowd it's it's like watching they won twice um it's like watching uh traditional Sports when you get those moments right like uh honestly I think football in Europe or Latin America have like a really powerful audience I think actually we're some of the worst fans in North America relatively speaking it's just like another level um go watch katav for Counter Strike you know um it's it's amazing so I I think it's that live entertainment aspect and if you can build a platform that then brings people and piles them on I will also tell you too that you will have the most uh game testers ever giving you immediate feedback most of which you probably won't like um on Twitter X you know so just keep that in mind as well okay so we're going to micro again so we we we're GNA just build this little little breaks during these conversations so we talk about the technology having to catch up in order to be able to make those amazing games the Esports parts that we were talking about they are going to make some of the most memorable connections to the game it's going to happen on those moment of cathartics just like the game seven of the NBA for me is one of those moments in video games we've talked about Brands and how Brands need to start interacting with this we talk about Studios and about developers okay this is really good and it's very important but now the question for you cara is when we start thinking about what games should we support what games should we Finance what gr should we just think that they have the best chance to succeed how do we go about it yeah so um as a venture investor and this is not you know transferable to every kind of investing we think about new markets getting created so for us the best opportunities are markets not where you're stealing market share from other existing markets but totally new markets right like bringing in a whole new fold of game Gamers so when mobile gaming came out hardcore console Gamers were like those aren't real Gamers they're playing Candy Crush but now mobile gaming is like the second biggest category right so it's it's one of these things where as a venture investor and maybe this isn't true for all investors I just look at like is there something really novel about this game mechanic or this way of organizing people or this way of bringing people into the fold that will create an entirely New Market and with crypto my hope is that you know you get a lot more modding and a lot more composability there's a lot more Builders able to get invested in like building whole worlds whole businesses in these games that are really rich that they couldn't build because they were worried in other game platforms of platform risk there's a reason now why you know people don't build businesses on top of closed uh social networks anymore people tried to do this in the early days of like building businesses on Twitter apis and on the Facebook apis and then one by one they got cannibalized by the platform themselves and now developers know better than to build their lives on quicksand um and so once you have these sort of like free market components these ownership components and like some sort of credible guarantee of like neutrality of the platform My Hope Is that you start to see like new kinds of participation new kinds of players right players that are building some spreadsheet minmaxers like I think whole new categories of Gamers will hopefully emerge in the same way that we got just like new casual gamers in the mobile era so I think like one as an investor are they doing something super native are they doing something that feels new um that isn't just what we call skoric porting an old principle or an old game loop on top of a new technology so I think that's number one the other one is for especially because games are a hit driven business um I think this is probably similar to how uh Publishers evaluate you know film franchises and evaluate music deals is like is there a proven ability to execute on behalf of the team so like in the early stages the only thing that remains consistent across the investment that you're making is is the people who are leading that team right companies will pivot the you know the the core thesis of the game will change you're going to go through lots of different play tests and vertical slices and really what you're betting on is like the operator's ability to execute and the number one way to drisk that is is to choose people who have successfully Run games in the past um so that's sort of how I think about the earliest stages of investing and then sort of as you get to later stages um like sort of series B series C and Beyond you start to look for traction some sort of okay sign that something is working because if you only go for teams and if you only go for things that are on thesis you might miss something that like nobody expected like stardew Valley was made by like one guy for like six years he made the entire soundtrack by himself like that kind of you know sort of moonshot one a million thing like you don't want to miss as an investor but if you use just like the principles of like you know drisk team execution you're not going to find that person and so in the later stages we try to think about correcting our mistakes by looking at stuff that's actually working and the number one way to do that is to look at traction okay that's a fantastic answer I think that when we start thinking about how we were going to frame this panel the idea was to be able to convey a many useable actionable information for anybody that is listening and this is really great Frankie for you you come more from you build this company called party yes right party I I think you probably explain it better than me but it's a community that you're building that creates a matchmaking engine and a social component to gaming outside of the confinement of the titles and the game itself that connects across all of them yeah we just want to broker the interaction if you're not good at valerant say hey I'm not that good I'm looking to learn right like like any good product I think you really have to start Community First solve a problem right and I think that the way I look at even my time spent building party like I I I service party like a client which I think was the smartest thing for me to do and I think other companies that do that really well are companies like epic games and fortnite fortnite is not hiring people to figure out their strategy they built one of the greatest engines in the world to do that for them they can go from save the world and then a weekend later say we need a battle royale and spin that up and have it become one of the most successful like moves that you can make I I personally believe a lot of this comes down to how nice everyone's willing to play right this is this is a global problem outside of gaming like if I want to see see you succeed I will help you to succeed in areas but you got to meet me here right like I think a lot of good games that have died in web 3 have died because nobody met them in the middle and I I feel the same way about a lot of good games out there now no man's sky was one of those examples if you're familiar with no man's Sky horrible launch great kind of nose dive pull out of the the trees for them right um but like the community and when we talk about having human feedback like gaming is still under a lot of hostility when it comes to Indie devs they want it today they want it perfect that is an entitlement that has been kind of commercialized in gaming right that has give it to me now nobody knows how hard it is to build a game nobody knows how hard it is to BU build a product me having the background of serviceing clients and I think epic is way grander scale but they were a service before they were fortnite people don't realize that as an engine so like how do we support the engines of web 3 how do we bring in brand how do we bring in marketing where does Nike say you know I'm Team New Balance New Balance gaming coming soon by the way you heard your first um so yeah but like a lot of that comes down to how nice everybody's willing to play and the prom analogy comes back here right where Nike doesn't know how to vet a game that's coming up right and and I think we do that well even with the Amazon partnership that party has if you know party is the only technology on Prime gaming and everything else is publisher it's game it's in in game currency it's Cosmetics so for us like we focused on on the the hardest part which was the making experience I play valerant once I never want to play that game again because of the interactions I had that's why 40,000 people are watching 40,000 you know people play it instead of playing it themselves and that's kind of where I want to you know run parallel to a platform like twitch how do we say you want to play with Ninja or you want to play with banks we're going to broker the deal right matchmaking is is the important piece for us so I think that one of again when we started conceptualizing how will this final go what I thought thought it was very interesting about you Frankie about your company is that most people think web 3 gaming let's build a game well I think there is an immense opportunity of build adjacent businesses to the main game that allows blockchain technology to be integrated in a very stimulous and great way can I respond to that yes of course it's for you so the one thing I've learned about blockchain having worked with like clients like openc specifically like at your best even with the backing of the greatest Partners on planet Earth some people just shouldn't run a business it's just that easy and I'm seeing that here you know and and again like that's where I want to offer my time my energy my service I know what I'm good at and a lot of people are scared of that and I I embrace it I love chaos I'm somebody who literally needs to be in the gauntlet on fire every day and you know what I'm talking about so you know for us like that stress like really isn't for everybody and I think a lot of people just like to build right so how do we how do we lift that up as people who can become operators maybe in a sense or just don't want to be I've seen a lot of games abandoned both in web 2 and this is my problem with like the web 3 term when we talk about web 3 gaming I think that word has scared a lot of people over the years especially with a lot of the we have to Rebrand we 3 gaming and crypto really right technology is always scary when it comes out you know designers thought Photoshop was going to kill them d thought cdjs was going to kill them and all it did was make it better right so and you know that as a filmmaker right so that's kind of where I think things are moving Gaming's got to get collaborative again okay so then I have a great segue so Cara and I had a conversation over stage before and it was like you open a whole window to a whole different dimension of gaming that I didn't understand which is user generated content and you believe that this is one of the most exciting parts of what web 3 could allow can you tell me a little bit more about it yeah so sort of the way I I sort of started talking about this um when I was talking about you know the guarantees that a platform offers you and the credible neutrality um of that platform I think like I'm going to draw kind of a stretch of analogy and just like bear with me here um like the best most Innovative the most stable economies in the world are based off of free market economies and it seems like you know you can build a sort of closed market economy or like a state-owned or like State managed economy in the short term but ultimately the most interesting things the most interesting businesses the most interesting art um all come out of economies that are open and I think like you know in in games like RuneScape and in World of Warcraft and in just like MMOs broadly you start to see inklings of like interesting user generated content you start to see people making their own servers you start to see people using sort of RuneScape gold coins as like you know replacements for National currencies during hyperinflationary regimes like the Boulevard in Argentina in like 2008 um but ultimately you know that that is constrained by the platform risk like RuneScape can take away your gold at any moment in time Minecraft can shut down your server there's no incentive for you to start that server because there's no value being exchanged you're just doing it for the for the clout you're just doing it because you love it but imagine if there were incentives attached to it imagine if you knew that you owned your server imagine if you could you know if you could know that building a business on top of RuneScape gold was something that nobody could rug you on and so I think that in order for us to like achieve the most fascinating the richest the most interesting virtual world like in order for like a metaverse that is like exciting and that you know people can feel is new and not dystopian to emerge I think it has to be built on crypto rails I think it has to be built on like guarantees and so that's what I mean when I say I think this will lead to like the most fascinating explosion in user generated content on the internet um just because you have like you know 3D space you've got interesting Fidelity you've got stories you have you know you have all the components for like a context that matters and that is already Rich um and then you add in sort of ownership principles and I think you can get the most interesting stuff stuff that like we can't even imagine today every I see you ready well I mean look my whole ecosystem or 80% of it is built on the back of effectively user generated content right oh sorry user generated content so like Counter Strike is a mod it's a half-life mod right defense of the Ancients DOTA original yeah Warcraft 3 mod so like two of the biggest games in the world and then that split off into legal Legends and to pretty much every other mobo that's out there um and so I think 100% And there have been the Esports world has been kind of sitting on the backs of this relationship with Publishers but also a situation where the Publishers can pull those rights back at any point and they have and it's created the opportunity to generate businesses but also businesses shutting effectively overnight that the community loved and it was a huge bummer um and I think there's an opportunity to come out the gates and say hey look these are open for people to build businesses and upfront we're going to tell you hey we're the game developer we're going to just make the game honestly Val's probably the most open with it and I think they've done the best with regards to putting certain restrictions I speak to that from the Counter-Strike side I can't speak to that from the DOTA side um and I and I think that opportunity is here to just kind of like hit the ground running and then people feel somewhat safe as they build those businesses yeah and I will say when you're not constrained by like apis and when you're not constrained by like like what the the publisher the developer or the World Builder gives you when it's turn complete and you can write your own smart contracts you can create your own clients you get like way more expressivity you can get way more High complexity stuff um and I think that just like increases the the dimensionality of like what gaming can be or what a virtual world can be this is amazing we have 8 minutes and 45 seconds not don't look at the clock look at me but I think it's starting to to to sum up and to wrap some of with big topics I have to say I had a very different feeling and understanding of web 3 gaming that changed a week ago and the way that I'm starting to think about some of the things that you guys are thinking now I'm really buying into this because I was running guilds and raids for worldall of Warcraft but I had no stake on the game I had no ownership of the game I contribute Direct directly to the benefit of the ecosystem me and many other people that were doing guides videos tutorials and nobody of us had any stake on the game in Dota we were one of the biggest contributors of the success of the game as well and we don't own anything of the game so now what you're saying is that we get to partake in many different inversions creating a pools for contributors and sort of like a layer two on a game where we get to build the layers to we get to monetize it other people get to build the ecosystem okay there is something here I can tell you there is something here because I believe that the hardcore Gamers that I know are willing to play a game that is maybe 20% inferior at the beginning with the chance that now that I will help you build it then I can take ownership of that there's something really special here no I yeah and like that's that's kind of how I think when I talk about even skipping over the publisher right like this will be easy enough in the next two years mark my words for fa Clin to spin up a game and to skin an economy and to take open source technology Eric doesn't know this yet but we're already talking to Yoni about doing this with FaZe uh and bringing AI in to build those systems so like for us you know allow the casters allow the commentators allow the the creators to do what they're good at but also build a game that is fitting for their Community right like there will be a firstperson shooter engine available for phas clan that is Premier in the next two years it's going to happen so like my advice for for anybody building in the web 3 space is don't worry about the publisher Mafia right there is there that that is going to exist in any space that's going to exist in fashion we've seen it in music and people break off and they go to SoundCloud and people break off and they screen print their own t-shirts and that's kind of what party is is trying for with technology we're trying to skip over the launchers that gatekeep we're trying to skip over the platforms that gatekeep and there's a lot of there's a lot of money for everybody there's a lot of time for everybody there's a lot of creative inspiration for everybody but the fear of not being able and not wanting to do it yourself and that prom analogy kind of coming back full circle is find the people to collaborate with if party can help break a game please reach out to me directly same thing with FaZe I think we I don't want to speak for you but like see a lot of opportunity for face to start to incubate their own productss that way you know and and if you guys are familiar with the face Founders their foresight is brilliant say what you want right like they have predicted Trends they' have created Trends in ways that nobody else has but with that comes obviously the winfall right so that's that's what I'd like to will this be your final thoughts this is my final thought amazing so Eric what are your final thoughts about this topic my final thoughts um I mean look I we we debated this oh we debated this a bit and I I've got mixed things on the revenue ownership tied to the game we we talked about that a little bit um I think that you know I like open ecosystems and I get concerned when you go too far down a monetary path that it starts to close the ecosystem a bit um and and I'll go back to valve as an example it's like you know they debated with people about whether coaches should be allowed to stand behind because that's an advantage for a certain team that can afford a coach right and it's little things like that um and so I think you just have to be a little careful or it like it can run a muck a bit so that's that's the only thing and from at least from my perspective um I would say I'm excited to see what comes out of this from a personal standpoint because and I like narrative driven games personally um I don't mind going on and playing like mobile Legends Bang Bang on my phone something that's easier to hop into if I want to tilt you know and get really like worked up and compete but um overall like I want to see more of the things that you can do with the technology that maybe somebody hadn't thought of before and there's stuff that you know I'll use portals as an example the teched make portals the game technically was around a lot earlier just someone was like Hey I want to think a little differently which is what made that game amazing at the time and then there's Tech that didn't exist like some of the the the net code and things that we can do with games like you know all the BR games right like that didn't exist 20 or it was janky 20 years ago right and so like there's probably stuff that we can't do yet and it's cool and someone will unlock that you go 30 years ago and they were figuring out how to make multiplayer work over the internet right or maybe a little more than 30 years ago so it's that's the part I'm excited about right and I don't know what I don't know you know so so would you say that web 3 gaming on this ecosystem will help actually maybe monetize these Sports better or create markets I think it could yeah I mean uh they were talking about axi Infinity earlier and I think there is an interesting thing there with like hiring trainers and having people work on certain things like in game that game itself wasn't quite there fully but again it's it's early right I'm not going to go and judge a 80s pixel game against the Fidelity of a modern game right just just doesn't make any sense so yes I think there's a lot of monetization opportunity could like I said I'm a little I'm I'm I'm you're concerned cautiously interested cautiously interested but we could say that the monetization or the structure of possibilities that some of these technical blockchains apply to games that we already Love In An Invisible way it might secure transaction it might allows those things for games that the audience and the player might never know we just have a new tool that allows those things yeah just to work better yeah I mean and I think that goes back to the whole thing make a make a fun game you know obscure a lot of the tech I think behind it and because the game will sell itself then you don't have to sell it based on the tech like again I don't know what it was like 30 years ago when people were marketing but I doubt they were like hey this is an internet ready game maybe they did I don't know but it's likely it was hey this is fun the multiplayer you can play with your friends right so yeah I'm missing thank you cara bring it home you have the last one minute and a half yeah so this is actually somewhat related um as an investor I look for new markets and New Opportunities not just in gaming and I think one thing that is really special about games is that they're simulations of Life they're simulations of how people participate how they cooperate how they self-organize and that has taught us a lot about humans over time it's like this incredibly High complexity thing and that's one of the reasons why my partner says like the things that will be the most important Technologies often start out looking like toys so for example like because games were so expensive computationally to make people made gpus for them but now gpus are the back of all of scientific Computing including AI especially AI right so like all of AI rests on the back of like people who are playing Counter-Strike and I think that there's a lot of really interesting opportunities there too right so like what are some Primitives about blockchains that we can test in games that will tell us something about the real world or that will create real world opportunities and like some things that are somewhat obvious to me are simulation of governance right there's like when you own something you can vote on chain so there's some sort of like okay it's actually really hard to innovate on like governments because it requires civilizations to like fall but civilizations rise and fall in video games all the time can you innovate on political systems in a game in a way that like does not destroy entire nations maybe the same is true of like monetary policy you can't run double blind experiments in a real economy because you can't test counterfactuals in real economies but you can in games and so there's a lot of really interesting stuff with like you know simulation of monetary policy simulation of governance simulation of defense and warfare strategy human agent interaction so that's that's sort of like what I'm excited about with games is like it's not just games it's everything okay well thank you so much everybody thank you e for having us and yeah have a lovely day everybody thank you so much guys [Applause]