Animoca Brands and the Motorverse

[Music] welcome to the novic gaming podcast where it is our mission to explore the business and future of video games we bring together the industry's brightest Builders investors and thinkers to keep a pulse on current events dissect emerging Trends and games share Lessons Learned and have a great time this podcast is also part of novic growing ecosystem which ranges from free and premium research to Consulting and AD advisory services for more information visit [Music] www.nic.edu means either building complex infrastructure yourself or choosing among Legacy providers who inexperienced in games or questionable reputations

pose real risk to your business luckily there's neon the dtoc platform built for games as a merchant of record with customizable web shops optimized for conversion and modern apis that let you use your existing liveops tools neon is trusted by some of the biggest names in gaming to help you sell direct without the typical overhead to start selling direct and finally take control over your full player experience simp L head to Neon pay.com or check out the link in the show notes and with that let's jump into the episode hello and welcome to the novic gaming podcast I'm your host Nick oori today we have a great episode for you we are talking to one of the earliest and biggest Believers Builders and investors in web 3 and that is Anoka Brands Anoka has been an unwavering web 3 cheerleader since day one with a stated goal of leveraging blockchain Technologies to deliver digital property

rights to Consumers around the world and to help establish the open Bene the company develops and publishes a broad portfolio of both original and licensed IP and has its finger in about as many web 3 pies as anyone on the planet through its over 450 Investments and some big names like Yuga lab saxi Infinity consensus magic Eden openc yield Guild games and so many more and today we have a great guest will Griffiths he is a general manager at Anoka I'll let speak to his background as we're done with the intro but suffice to say he's also an extremely experienced veteran of the gaming space with over two decades of hard time served including an association with one of my favorite game developers Cod Masters the creators of arguably the greatest motor racing game of all time Micro Machines uh sadly he doesn't have any insights we just discussed that earlier on um but a wonderful wonderful title nonetheless he now runs the Rev ecosystem RV at animoca which is the hub

for web 3 Motorsports games that's right listeners today's episode is all about the merse well welcome to the Pod hey so good to be here and um I've been listening for a long time genuinely so it's really s of feels I'm slightly Star Struck uh yeah in person well I always I always say tell guests who who've actually ever been on the on the Pod that it all goes downhill from here this is this is the Pinnacle this is the Pinnacle uh no I'm kidding so uh let's get right into the episode well we always start with the background on our guests especially ones with such uh amazing careers such as yours tell us more about who you are um and your journey into web 3 and Anoka yeah sure so I H how I start so like I had a I I had a lot of interest in how things work so I so I did an engineering degree uh and then I moved from there into IT consulting which is pretty boring uh and then worked as an ethical

hacker which has been more interesting and then I started uh I noticed the App Store had turned into a thing and so I made some apps so an that where you throw your phone in the air and it captures the the way the phone moves and then spins an avatar around on your phone so got in the room with apple and started having conversations with them about that and realized that this was something that I can perhaps make a living from doing making games so then I went to work for for natural motion a video games company that ended up getting V bying and then I moved from the UK to Australia and worked for this sort of for family reasons and end up working for casinos online casinos so I got this sort of bland of casinos and um you know all of the insights from the user experience design of that and uh crypto and security technology and games and then uh we moved back from from Australia to the UK and I joined Co Masters and uh headed up their live service to it and show like

how do we monetize the code Master's titles after the point of launch which is super interesting so like you know rolling out analytics doing all that good stuff uh and then after been there for for a couple of years we ended up uh getting bought by Electronic Arts who I'm sure you're familiar with uh which was anting experience yeah for sure uh so you know we used to make the Formula One game and the rally game and a bunch of others um and then we transitions into EA and I joined the EA strategic growth team so I was working with them uh on things like the metaverse and how they think about the future of sport and nfts and you know all this kind of stuff because they think about that that kind of thing all the time um but it was kind of weird because I was in Oxford in the UK and everybody that I was working with was in uh California exclusively in Redwood Shores right next door to where I am actually really as probably could see out the window um it was it was there such a fascinating group of

people it's really really cool uh we came up with a lot of different concepts and ideas but after a while I kind of decided that I wasn't probably ready to move to California so I looked for something a bit more you know with at least a few more a more diverse collection of time zones uh that's how I came to meet Robbie young who's the CEO of investment at Anoka and he has he had this collection of I kind I often refer to as a Lego collection so he had the uh this rev token uh they bought three different racing Studios uh gree monkey games in Melbourne um Eden games in leyon and we play media based in Phoenix Arizona that they're all making racing games you know either their own IP or you know motor GP and all this kind of stuff and they were looking and they'd had some success with some web three games and they were looking to do something and they were like there's something here we need someone to make sense of it and that's what I've been doing for the last two years than fantastic um and we're going

to get right into what you do specifically around the merse but uh I want to talk a little bit more broadly about Anoka Brands um you just touched on it briefly there uh and even listeners who don't follow web 3 as closely as you and I do know the name animoca brands I've likely heard of it uh and know it's a big deal and yet there are you know there isn't that much known necessarily about exactly what animok is doing doing because it's doing so much I think that's really the the key here so why don't you tell us a little bit about mat Anoka the kind of overall strategy how it got into web 3 and what's been going on over the past few years yeah sure uh it's a pretty unusual place um and and it's pretty kind of weird and wonderful match it sort of mirrors the web 3 world but so yet uh sui our founder uh you may well have seen him do various talks he and a few TED Talks he out on the on the kind of confidence track a lot and he he was running uh

Anoka as a I think it was called something else maybe it's called outplay Studios as a mobile game Studio back in 2011 they they were they had many different games I think had four or five maybe of the top 10 games on one of the App Store charts at that time so they were doing really well and then they had this experience where um I think Google or Apple uh banned some of their apps and he realized in that moment that he didn't really have this control over his business that he thought because he was relying on these third party Publishers and I think that was a very formative moment for him you know you know he was like wow these guys have got quite a lot of control over what we're doing and so then when when crypto kitties in 2017 came around and the you know game f uh kind of movement started to kick off that was something that just made perfect sense for him to get into and so that's when he he started investing him and his team started investing in things like axi Infinity in the sand blocks um

and that's like the beginning of the whole thing obviously you know that you know the story of the growth of crypto uh you know different uh bull runs and and all that so but this company is you know I really like the way that y thinks about it so it's it's not a um it's quite it's it's really very wholesome it's it's this understanding that this technology can actually Empower people and bring fairness back to the world and that's what we are trying to do in lots of different ways so his goal really is to accelerate that process the adoption of web 3 and they're achieving that by investing in those of different companies and projects and ideas and teams um um and they're they're really serious about it so we've got I think over 500 different uh things that were invested in either wholly owned or majority owned or partially owned or like you know there's a small investment or advisors um across the portfolio and

and it's just like a it's a very wide um you know attack like increasing the probability that we're going to find product Market bit so we have you know music Brands fashion brands uh there's a lot of games but there's also you know where you kind of picks and shovels and there's probably things that I haven't there's probably categories that I don't even know about um and and the way it manifest is you have we use a lot of different ways of communicate ating obviously Telegram and and and WhatsApp and email we have this giant uh slack instance in the middle and all of these different projects are able to share their learnings and their knowledge and collaborate in a way that um I I genuinely believe is you know massively accelerating the way the the the kind of pace that we can um find find how web 3 fits the mass market and that's that's what we're doing in M you know trying to hit the mass Market yeah no absolutely and we're going to get

into that in in just a second but I I did want to touch on kind of the broader approach because it is a really interesting really fascinating uh lots of shots on goal obviously you're fortunate to have the resources to be able to make all those Investments um and to have all of those uh you know attempts on goal but uh really fascinating approach with you know your own IP you know licensed IP your own Studios publishing relationships you know Etc and all of course all the Investments um okay before we get on to the merse which we're going to get on to next um just high level what are some of the biggest Anoka games that our listeners should check out if they're interested in just poking around a little bit to see what animok is up to U I'm totally going to sh my own games here uh but there are others so um we have uh talk drift 2 is a triaa uh drifting racing game in om legine 5 photo realistic Graphics it's in Early Access on Epic gam store it's already had over 400,000 downloads uh it's made

by the studio in Melbourne the guys who making it at actual real life Drifters so they at the weekend they they stop working on their computers and then they get in their cars and drive to the tracks and go drifting so that's really cool and S made with a lot of like uh you can see the passion of the development team in the game when you play it um and then Cosmic Royale is a a game that's currently in closed beer but you can get access to it via something called the mocke which is one of the projects manam so you can visit the mo XYZ uh and claim your mock ID which is sort of like the precursor to being a member of the community and then that means you can visit the cosmic Royale website and Cosmic Royale there like a blend of Mario Kart and four guys so uh instead of racing around the track three times it's a point-to-point race with a bunch of obstacles and there's 40 it's 40 people at the same time and there's three rounds with different tracks uh so you b basically not people get knocked

out and then there's a winner at the end and we're getting a lot of web 3 players playing out and loving it but we also will launch that on the Epic store as well uh in Q4 and that will have hopefully hundreds of thousands of web two players adjacent to these we we can talk a bit more about that maybe later on that's exciting and then there's life beyond which is H being built by studio in France which is not live yet but super excited about it this big kind of Space Opera game um but then we also have puzzle games uh so we recently did a collaboration um I'm going to forget the name of the the famous chess player for this for this game called aness car that's right reg yeah okay yeah yeah um and then we have a bomber man style game called Cosmic bomber that's also en Clos mut that's getting a lot of traction built by one of our studios in America called nway there's loads of things going on um for sure lot of stuff happening all right well we're going to have not links to everything in the show

notes but we'll have links to maybe two or three of the top ones um so we'll make sure we get get those figured out um okay so let's move obviously Anoka Brands as you've described is a very large operation with you know finger and lot of Pies like I mentioned in the intro so we can't talk about all of it and so we're going to move on to your baby which is the merse uh so what is the merse uh and what are your aspirations for it you've mentioned a couple of titles already but talk more broadly not so much about the individual titles but what's the vision for the merse what do you expect it to become hope for it to become over time so yeah so this is Lego set of bits um and for me it's we spent a couple of years because we had a bunch of um different things live already whether their web two games or web three games so bringing everything together thinking about what works long term and then me it's about having this tool set of games design uh mechanics and things you know oh now we've got cloud Computing we've got streaming and all these things now you

can roll out that tool set a bit more and you've got your web through tool set so you've got tradability interoperability things like that and we think that the the best uh value ad that we can do in the space is to to do the central licensing uh Vehicles so working with Automotive Brands to publish cars a bit like when they make real cars in the real world and then people buy those cars and they can work in multiple games and a growing list of games gets added to that roster so as a user basically um you're buying a car but now there's a buy button now there's a sell button next to the buy button and there's a like when you're in a game if you want to go to another game there's a button says like take my car to another game so these are the things that we think um are better than what's out there right now

and you know we went through a lot of different ideas but this what this is the one that's easiest to get across and I think it leverages web three technology it just makes sense so you're able to have this relationship with a car that you would in the real world so like if you buy a car we we're talking before about commuting right um You have there's a relationship that you like with your car there's a story you tell you go places with it you experience different things in and around it um you got music and all this kind of stuff you know that is enhanced obviously if you're into racing you take your C on the track and you racing racing around this kind of thing we're looking to replicate that experience but online we want people to have you know this Affinity with uh cars so they're not in World Garden they don't have to buy a game to experience a particular car or grind through hours of gaml to get a car or to or and then for it to only work in those games we want to sell it centrally and we've got a mixture of different

tools that enable us the person already unique position to do that because we have three different game studios we can work on the data standard that's needed to define a car so we've worked with multiple um car brands and Motorsports and our own Studios that have experience obviously in making car games in different engines with different handling models to create this sort of Kernel of what def defines a car um so and now we can also prove out the model of uh you know all the incentives like why would a brand get involved why would a game ST and get involved on why would the use and get involved we can kind of do that in a land boox uh and then we can bring other people there once we've worked out all the incentive structures no no finish your thought please well so so we're finding that well one of the things we observed was that a lot of these car br have released collections of

nfcs and then they either they don't sell out or or maybe whatever maybe they make a bit of money but it it doesn't there's not enough demand in the market and there's no utility afterwards so everyone who buys one complaints and so by bringing all of this together in one place we can concentrate the demand for the assets and also have utility at the point of launch in our games and have growing utility so this sold the concerns of the vehicle Brands um and they love it because they get these whole you know it's a new way of owning one of their cars right so it's previously if you had to you might have to spend $100,000 to buy a car now you can spend much less and be part of the kind of Engagement strategy um and then the video game studios love it because the deals we're doing mean that if they build against our standard they get access to those licenses so there's a bit of quality control it of course but MH um this is one of the biggest

challenges that small Studios have setting out they what they they make these amazing driving games but they don't they can't make they can't use real life cars and those real life cars are like the stars of the show those are like the bo opes you know what I mean in the in the car world so we get the the game studios also get user acquisition because if we if we have 100,000 holders and cars and I release the game and then I all of those holders get a notification it says hey your car now works in a new game come come and try it out and we know these people like racing games and cars already so we expecting a high level of conversion yeah so you touched on a lot of what I was going to ask you uh as well but I I no no no that that was great because you're preempting some of stuff so you know our listeners will be very well primed as we get into these these next questions um but one of the questions I was going to ask you because uh one of the talking points that that we have here are the ter terms that that you and your team have used is digital

vehicle culture uh which which was fascinating to me uh I I think I know and I think I understand what where you're getting with that um but where my mind went immediately when I read that and saw that I was like oh that's like Nike and Adidas you know it's your sneaker heads who are very engaged in the real world they're collecting all their pairs of shoes um and Nike and Adidas I think those two in particular have done a really excellent job of converting real life ownership real life sneaker head I don't know if that's a word but I've just made it up um into a digital Affinity as well right and they've experimented a lot it's not just the nfts but it's also just kind of a digital connection it's a community digital community so I am very curious to hear what are your thoughts on what do you think digital vehicle culture means where does it actually take you long term obviously cars are way more expensive than uh shoes are um even though you can spend a lot of money on a you know golden pair of Donald Trump uh sneakers nft collection if you wanted to um but nonetheless if you're going to

own a car buy a car the price points are very different so I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how do you think that digital vehicle culture concept translates from where my mind immediately goes which is the sneaker uh head culture yeah so I mean there's quite a lot uh here so we have a lot of ideas obviously we're on a bit of a journey so our first interoperable car will be coming out in the next few months in fact we just announc the partnership we'll talk about that later but the um it's the right way to think about it so you you'll know that even in like 10 years ago if you're looking at a car game uh on a current gen console it's photorealistic right so you're kind of breaking down this barrier very easily like I can just be someone who loves cars maybe I'm not even a gamer and there is now a desirable item for me that I can own and have online right um

and the other thing we we've done is we've done a huge uh we this big bit of research into the market and we found that there's about a billion people um who self-identify either as racing Gamers or Motorsports fans around the world or pet or Petr heads okay but this is this is sort of army of people that freaking love cars and bikes and tinkering around with them and talking about them and you know um and we've also spent time at things like Goodwood if you know what that is like the spe in the UK yeah yeah yeah I'm a motor fan by the way I'm a I'm a petrol Hood I like my cars I just went electric though uh having owned a 4 lit V8 for the longest time naturally aspirated but uh yeah went electric recently but yeah I love cars and I do all the research and I know all the stats and all that so you're you're talking to your your kind here great well that makes this easy um so so with with uh yeah good with we love Goodwood and we kind of think about

them a little bit as in real life version of what it is that we're trying to achieve so if any if anyone listening he's not in good with just celebration of Motorsport and bus cars and old cars and new cars and bikes and they drive all around and do drifting and RAC and there a really kind of cool Vibe at this old stately home in the UK and you can really you sort of Comes Alive there's that everyone's interested in everyone else's vehicle um and so we that for me is like a perfect place to start a web three Community because there's a lot of people who are like super like minded everyone's saying hi to each other you know um and so we we we think of ourselves as uh you know setting out to create this community around these assets but it's a little more than that because you have a lot of there's a lot of different conversations going on with different um games companies but also car brands so some of the car brands we talk to we talk about you know digital twins so if you buy a

car in real life maybe one of the optional extras is to have the same car mined for you for use in in games um and vice versa like maybe like we've had crazy conversation I mean this is not a deal that's been done yet like you know if you own a digital car like maybe you get like a mount of discount of dealership or there's some sort of in real life event you can you can attend at the racetrack for racing teams and stuff so it blurs the lines of um you know the real world and the gaming world and the Collectibles world uh but it I think it if done correctly it's very easy to understand you come and it's like this is a beautiful car I recognize it I love it how do I get my hands on it and have some fun with it and then go tell a a story with it yeah yeah yeah no I I I love the vision and I think this is one of the closest that web 3 gets to that kind of physical digital device because there is such a pre-existing fandom for this like I'm

about to ask you a question about interoperability and one of the biggest criticism I even though I'm a Believer in web 3 like one of the biggest criticisms I have about interoperability is the fact that like if I have a sword in World of Warcraft like it doesn't make any even if I could take that sword into another game it doesn't make any sense like it's just not that interesting you know uh it's a tool it's a means to an end it's not actually the end in of itself whereas with something like sneak and and cars as we're talking about those are a means to an end like that's the end itself like if I own a beautiful car and I want to go show it at Goodwood like I'm not taking my sword in World of Warcraft showing it off to people you know so I think that's what that's what's interesting about this and I think you're you with the merse and the and the car digital physical divide is is is a perfect use case but I bring it back to interoperability here because that's still to me you've mentioned it already the it still to me is can I really take my digital

Lamborghini and we're going to talk about Lamborghini in a second later on in this episode um can I really take my digital Lamborghini from you know one game to another to another to another and it will work the same I know you talked about building with standards but that to me is the biggest challenge I think with web 3 the the promise is interoperability but in practice it's so difficult because you have to you know you have to the art styles don't work work and the you know the game engines don't work with each other and the uh the stats aren't the same and all that stuff right so there's just a lot of challenge I think to this interoperability piece which in theory is great but in practice is very challenging so I want to hear how you guys are thinking about that H how does how do you solve that problem of yes I could use this in two games now or three games but I still can't take my digital Lamborghini on any track like I can't go to Goodwood and nberg ring and you know Singapore you know night track for the Formula 1 and take my car there because

it just doesn't work the same way long question but really getting at a core Point yeah it's good one um so the I don't have an answer for the world of warcraf thing I think that that when I when I think about that type of interoperability I think about that game and I think that there's all of the there's like a there's tons of different weapons and they're all carefully balanced and there's a big constellation that means that you can you can there's a choice and a playoff that in that world right and as soon as you take something out of that and then you walk over here with it and try and use it in another game and make maybe the most powerful weapon in the game where it's completely pointless and just every time you do it there's a balancing challenge um I'd love to see it Sol but I I don't have an answer in my head to it but I think cars are different and it's because they have real world stats right so you know you know they're not designed like that they're there like this is this car model and it's

just unfortunately it's faster than your car you know so it's going to win in this race or this is a this the handling of this one is particularly good on this type of surface with this kind of setup right so there is a provable state in the real world that is the reference point and that's what you know Brands care about that too they want their cars to perform relative to other brands in games it's not just users because they want I want to know they've got the best car right um and so if we're as long as we're faithful to the metadata from The Real World when we Rec create the cars in the games it seems me to me to be fine there obviously different types of games you know we have a carting game so if you to take a a high performance C put in a cting game you're not going to get a high performance cart you'll have a cosmetic cart that looks like that you know otherwise he kind of ruins the game right um so that's but that's what users expectations are too um if you're if you're playing talk

drift 2 and you have uh a Lamborghini then you would expect it to behave in a certain way um you know be fast on the Straits and handle differently around corners to the other cars and that to me is the kind of gold standard and then you just you apply that through the from the kind of sem side of racing through the kind of arcade side of racing through to you know the more casual start which would be a cosmetic change yeah so that's how I that's how I think about that yeah what's The Natural end state for that um is there kind of an idealized future where you see obviously you see Anoka and mo the merse uh at at the heart of it um but what's The Natural end State I mean obviously we're not going to car manufacturers are not going to Stop Licensing their their cars to other game developers right whether their we two or web three or whatever um so curious to

hear your thoughts on on what is if everything goes to plan with the mote let's put it that way if everything goes to plan with the merse and your vision of this interoperable future comes to pass um what does it look like what does that future look like the challenge that people I think often uh associate with idity is like you know how are you going to get from A to B so that I think long term it's the full court of the internet whether it's us or maybe there's another project that does it but that's what our vision is so if you're a car manufacturer and you're thinking hey we're going to launch this new model hey we better call the motorb because we're going to publish uh we've got to publish a card digitally as well okay that's where that's where I want to get to you um but then in the the process for getting there is about just aligning everyone's needs and and wants and incentive so for the car brands um they'll be launching small pack like small um sets and collections

of cars and experimenting with demand and as we grow we should get more and more people in the mote and generate more demand it's interesting for the car brands too because you might think that the conversion to the assets would be the overall sales might go down because they might be cannibalized so this is something that we're really interested in testing but we believe that the the conversion will be much higher because the asset is it's not a one-way purchase right so when you think about like buying something in a freet toplay game it's basically you just spend the money and it's gone and then you got to the next level of Candy Crush right uh and then but this is something where there's because there's a sell button next to the buy button that it's an easier decision um and perhaps more meaningful so we're hoping that uh more people purchase and then as new games join who motivated to join and increase this

ecosystem more and more players come in and become more aware about the concept of interoperability and like it starts to become like table Stakes or whatever you want like people like hey this is cool hey and then they start approaching some of the bigger car game uh companies and say hey why can't I use my X in your game and hopefully eventually then they end up adopting the standard as well um it's doesn't break the web 2 model because that continues so you can still sell uh web two cars it's just so the web 3 cars or the cars that the interoperable cars are more interesting for users so it's like a deeper level of Engagement you can take it between um different experiences and tell a bit of a story with it yeah I mean that's that's a very that is a very powerful Vision um and it is probably the best of what web 3 has to offer right now uh in terms sorry I phrased that wrong web 3 offers the the best path for this

particular category I think um compared to so many other games and genres that have talked about interoperability and digital ownership and it making sense across different games but not actually in in practice um so very interested to see this um I you talked about this earlier but just uh the the incentives for other developers it's user acquisition it's the access to a larger community of you know fellow petrol heads and digital ownership fans it's uh the licenses that they would otherwise have to negotiate themselves um are you already seeing that happening are you seeing developers outside of your own animoca Brand's ecosystem coming to you and saying hey this is really cool like I want to be a part of this genuinely yeah I mean we we haven't pulled got anyone over the line yet but we've got maybe 20 or 30 different conversations happening with different games because there's a lot of games that get somewhere where they have something

that's awesome and there's just this little bit that's missing and that's often something that they're looking for funding for so licensing or you know marketing and so this these are the things that we can offer in return the other thing the other benefit that's not included in that list for game studios is what we're experimenting with at the moment when we do our first few minutes is understanding the usage of the assets so like the the reasons that people purchase the assets like what game they bought it for in the first place or if that was you know someone bought an asset and they immediately go and play this game you know um and we we try we thought about coming up with a model for our internal Studios just assign revenue generated by the sale of the cars to the studios it's quite complex to do without understanding the behavior of users so instead this is one of the benefits that we have because we've got these in-house Studios we can do this test where we're covering the

integration of these models into the individual games centrally and then we can sell the assets and watch where everyone goes and what they do with them and then we're going to start basically creating a sort of affiliate model so we can we can so you from your web 2 game you can send people to a c to the central for court to buy uh assets which are interoperable um and then you know if you want you can create your own store you know in your game maybe you get more if you do a direct sale then we can so further incentivize people from the different game studios to try and sell down on the on the assets that we've published and I I like that model because it basically means more people we we're going to get really good at selling cars quickly because everyone involved is trying their own way of doing it yeah it really does open up a lot of opportunities but as you mentioned I it could get wildly complex and the very first thought that came

into my mind you know as a long time gave myself is arbitrage you know if you can buy a car for cheaper in one game or there's a sale on it some somewhere and you can transport it across like again I don't know the exact details of how you guys are planning on implementing all this stuff but but it gets really complicated really quickly and as a former you know games PM myself product manager I uh the I get cold sweat just thinking about how are you going to balance that make sure that you you you're not open to exploits um I I don't know if that's how you're thinking about it at all but that's that's what comes to my mind immediately as I think about this no no I definitely have that same thought process I a kind of security background but I think in my experience usually you know as you saying for you there's a you have these complex systems and there's usually a very simple uh rule that you can apply once you understand the behavior of the users you can be like okay everything is Central and price is set centrally if

you wish to Discount you pay the difference yourself so it's kind of then in user acquisition uh cost or lost to so you may choose to do that um at your own expense so it could be a way of people coming into the ecosystem late driving adoption of their game or you know the these kinds of uh things but the I think longer term it's in my mind it sort of turns out like sort of a Netflix for cars right so there's You cover in maybe you got your garage at the top and you can go in there and flick around visit friends garages and stuff and then you've got this four four Court area where you can go to different showrooms and see cars or maybe there's a live auction going on with people bidding on a car in the secondary market and then beneath that there's this all there's all these different types of experiences you can have you select a vehicle and then off you go yeah I mean a wonderful Vision uh I think uh lot of fun and as a car racing

although much more on the Casual side not the hyperrealistic side uh myself I I I can see see where this can go I know that uh torque drift is something you guys are very excited by uh have not played it but I had a look at it looks beautiful uh I mean fantastic Unreal Engine 5 the graphics are amazing obviously you've already got a lot of uh you know car manufacturers and Brands integrated there you just announced the Lamborghini partnership today in fact today's August 8th um at least in California I think it's probably August 9th already in Perth um but uh you know big news there so talk to us more about torque drift you mentioned it earlier on in at the the start of the the episode but I want to hear more about torque drift and and you know why you guys are just big big Believers in this in this game well first of all they've got an amazing development teams I've kind of talked about that before so I like uh you know I've seen lots of different types of teams and these guys this is what they loved they're really good at it they're working super hard and they you get this extra like level up of creativity you know when you when when

you are really passionate about it and you see that like reflected when they when they talk about it and when they uh release the updates they've just I mean they're they're really ambitious in terms of their scope so they just recreated in their latest update still they not access they recreated this part of Tokyo called da coku which is this area under this Spaghetti Junction of uh roads where which is famous for where they do like car meets people meet meet up in um you know these fancy cars and do um do drifting and stuff and they showed it to me uh like before it was going alive and I was just like playing and I'm like oh this is cool and and then I realized that um it's absolutely massive it's like it's kind of almost it's sort of got kind of GTA Vibes like the size of the environment so they they're incredibly Faithfully recreating these these places um there's tons of new modes coming out but the cool the

cool kind of web 3 part of it which we're still like working through is that you any asset in the game all of the car assets and many of the part assets are available both as Web Two assets and web 3 assets um and we're trying to understand because we know that we've got this Mass audience of players who will come in and play the game because it's beautiful and free to play and really fun um but we want to take them and try and introduce them to the benefits of web 3 but it's not we don't want to be like hey come and buy lft because it's not really that's not really what it's about it's more like um kind of what I was saying before like next to the next to the buy button there's a sell button and then there's another button that says like hey want to take your car to another game this kind of these kind of experiments we've got a lot of opportunity to try this stuff out see what works and what resonates with with players um in terms of functionality the way we talking about it price obviously

those gas fees and extra cost of making at um and integrating them into other games so um but that's we've got some like different approaches in different games um as to achieve that goal really of taking this large audience of people that introducing them to to web to web 3 and so that's what we're doing in tort 2 and then in Cosmic Royale it's slightly different so we are creating themed collections of carts so call this game that's like a mixture of Mario Kart and four guys um and we're creating collections based on pfp Collections and web 3 IP inside the game so there's currently like if you own a mocka which is one of the pfp version from mocka B when you come into the game you see your character that in rended in 3D so what is you know currently a two-dimensional uh pfp image pops into 3D and they're driving a

Carter and and we want to replicate that with lots of different collections so we're talking to loads I mean I I don't think I can list them out but lots and lots of different um coins and collections to create exclusive content so that drives their Community into this game and they'll be baffled between different communities maybe we theme tracks around collections but then it goes out onto the Epic store so then you have few ,000 hopefully uh free-to-play users come into the game and they're driving their carts and they like look over and they see this web 3 IP and there what the heck is that and so then you sort of go down that rabbit hole and and find this web 3 World um via this game so yeah lots to those are the game those are the two big games that we we have currently in Early Access on beter and we're um thinking about how we reach that market cross so cross-pollination really or or or testing ideas in both

directions you know Web Two to web 3 web 3 to web two um just to you know throw you the thing that I'm sure you've heard many times before and certainly in you know in recent uh times is you know the idea of bringing a big audience in web two into web 3 and and in and I know you said you're not going to do it as bluntly as like here's an nft go and buy it right that's not what we're talking about here at all and I know that however there has been a lot of backlash just like there was with freet to-play gaming you know freet to-play mobile back in the day like yes there's a strong analogy there but it seems to me that the backlash from web 2 players when they're introduced to web 3 elements especially if not done elegantly let's put it that way has been much more potent than the backlash from kind of traditional Gamers when freeo playay was first introduced and the mobile app store was first launched so I'm curious to hear because you have so many games in this space you probably have a better view of this than almost

anybody else any other web 3 developer on the planet uh I'd love to hear your thoughts not just to torque drift and and uh your other more recent titles but the overall ecosystem is is it a viable approach to take Web Two Gamers introduce them to web 3 elements and hope I suppose uh even that they will that will they will adopt um I think okay so I'm not going to pretend there's no backlash because there is right is even on do d 2 there's been there been people coming in and you know saying hey you know what's going what's with the nfts kind of thing um I mean I've done I've worked in a few different Industries you know making Tech products I also did a in the middle I worked on a fintech app um in crypto which didn't mention but there's a like I'm a big believer in product Market fit so you need to offer something something to somebody that's better than what's there now or that helps them solve a problem

they didn't know they had or and I think just telling somebody that they can buy an nft is not solving a problem for anyone and so that's been done quite a few times and they' have also been you know very very expensive nfts or nfts that you know someone sold and then they never got anything and all this stuff so then that's associated this technology with um like bad vibes um but I genuinely think that if done correctly um it's better than it can be better than what people have now I tested this well because we we recently moved from the UK to Australia so when I was in UK we got kids and I would go to the pub uh with the other dads um every you know every day no every day I was G to say the kids every day every day every month I say and I would talk to them about it and they you know none of them are video games developers so I

just I would test out sort of you know one lineer picture oh what' you do and I would be oh you know this and so you know basically we're doing we're making this thing where you can buy a car once and it works in loads of different video games and oh yeah that's pretty cool yeah so this is the that's the way to web two users I think uh you need to offer them something it's better than what they have now you know we do have there is a branding problem with nfts but I don't really the underlying technology is pretty irrelevant to most people I mean I think there's like two categories of um Str categories of strategy uh where categories you have great game yeah uh yeah the You' got this very financially literate group of people who are getting up to speed on web three and that you know you can try and create products for them but those products will never go in my opinion will never go like really mainstream not going to

hit like the this 1 billion motur audience with that because they're what what they're interested in is having a good time going watching Sport and playing racing games right they're not interested in like taking sort of making investment choices and and all this stuff and understanding how wallets work and they don't have any reason to do that um so I just want to make their experience better um yeah yeah I you know I I've thought about this quite a bit myself and uh at the risk of editorializing a little bit here uh when I play a game that has an a kind of economic component Web Two game that like so I pay pay money for it I pay my $49.99 or whatever I buy the game and I put a lot of time into it and I see the value of whe whether it's a player in basketball league or a car that I'm leveling up or you know a a level hundred you know sorceress or whatever um I actually I want that asset

in that game to be static like when I if I drop the game for a week and I come back I don't want the like the value of that digital asset to have drastically changed um it's a little discombobulating because I'm going there to actually enjoy myself so one of my thesis that I've been noodling on and love to hear your thoughts on it and we can cut this entire segment out if it doesn't make any sense um but but uh one of the things I've been noodling about is is that value fluctuation that web 3 offers especially with with the nft ownership and um kind of a tokenized economy is that actually the opposite of what gamers are looking for not not all Gamers but is that not the opposite of what the majority of gamers are actually looking for when they're seeking out a game and choosing to spend their time in that for entertainment value uh not for financial speculation um it's not super well formulated that that question but I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on that because that that is a big

component of what web 3 is trying to do uh they they are offering essentially this and and even what you're talking about with the merse I own this car I have a sell button next to it but the value of it's going to fluctuate depending on what's going on with the ecosystem and and maybe that's just a step too far for gamers that are looking for entertainment anyway your thoughts on that yeah um no I think I think the last thing thing that I want to do is to expose people to the market you know what I mean that's not the goal I think that you know that volatility some people love that right you know there's plenty of people getting stuck into that but that is not what you go to video game for exactly you know um but I also I think you're in the in our case I we think about your car right in the real world like your car the value of your car does change over time some it does go down slowly

you know because you're you're you know wear and tear whatever um but some cars the value goes up and then I I think that the there's some really interesting stories that you can tell with cars and like you know this idea of um artificial scarcity that is created in video games used loads of games right anyway like before web through but like also now I'm more of a one of the things we talk about a lot is artificial scarcity versus genuine Rarity right so like you have well we're going to make 100 cars and then then we'll pay loads of money for them or we'll just have an open Mint of Cs and then people can go and tell a story with their cars and customize them and then they become unique from the very moment that you purchase it your name is or your wallet idea whatever is now attached to it so there's like this story um associated with it and I want that to be um you know to create a this sort of

deeper market so you need to find the right person to buy your car you know what I mean so it's it's not like buy for 10 cents now or sell for N9 cents now it's like you want to say car cool that's like let's go show it to some people I see what they think is worth you know you know what I mean so it's like it's like a step it's like it's not like a real time I'm looking at the sell you know it's a it's a considered decision and maybe meet the talk to the person who's buying it yeah no I buy that and and I've you know I've heard versions of that uh and I've espoused versions of that myself too um over the years uh yeah I think the jury's still out I think that's the the bottom line really is is uh I think the jury is still out and I think there's just a lot of experimentation that needs to happen um across the board you know Web Two developers going to web 3 web developers going into web 2 and seeing what works um I think the I think

you and I both will agree on this um which is shoving an nft and like saying buy me buy me to a web three a web two gamer is not the right approach and I know that that is 100% not what you're talking about I know you're you're you're taking a very measured and uh deliberate approach but uh that is generally what has been tried and I think that's what what the backlash has has uh or some versions of that have been tried and I think that's where the backlash come from so c yeah very curious to see where that Innovation comes from where does that little spark come from um you know it's 7 years since crypto kites 2017 you know 2018 when it kind of reached uh kind of more mass Consciousness obviously super early still then maybe 20121 is a more fair starting point for the web 3 cze with Axia 2020 2021 but you know we're a few years in now and we haven't yet seen um that big kind of spill over into the into the mainstream so well I you know what I think it's so like for me these this is you're right it is a series of

experiments so we'll be pushing these things out and then we we it's going to come from the players right yeah we're going to hear the community talking about it be like hey guys you did this like I loved it that doesn't work but you know actually it's this is how we want to sell cars or no one wants to sell cars or everyone is all about interoperability or the price is wrong or like you know what I mean like why is this price fluctuating stop that from happening please um and these are things that we can we can have some measure of control over it's just get it's about getting it out saying here you go here's a car that you can buy here and it works here and here and if you if you get bored with it you can sell it yeah um what do you think you know come let us know how how you react to that yeah yeah no and I and to be fair to be clear and to be fair um I think your thesis around cars car ownership I think is probably one of the strongest if not the strongest these around the physical versus digital fandom essentially fandom of cars um that does not extend to

characters in video games or swords or you know digital swords or things like that so um so I I do think that this is probably one of the best shots on this goal um that that there is so I wish you all the best because I'm a big believer in experiments and experimentation and moving the game industry in general forward and uh you know making the same games over and over again call of I mean as much as I love Call of Duty but Call of Duty you know 79 is just going to be better than Call of Duty 78 probably not not that much drastically uh you know revolutionary or or introducing New Concepts um and and rightly so by the way don't mess with a good thing when you've got it um okay so we're coming up to time here uh in fact we're over time and I appreciate you you taking a few extra minutes but is there anything else that we've um not covered today that uh you you think we should should mention uh I mean there's we there's a lot of things happening but uh uh make sure you've got all of the links and stuff the show notes so people can go to

mod.com and check out what's going on we we regularly update that you should follow us on Twitter at the merse uh also we we just we literally as you mentioned we just announced our relationship with Lamborghini which is really Mega exciting for us it's been really fun working with those uh guys so this watch watch that uh space um no I think you know we've covered a lot we've definitely covered a lot it's been really interesting for me it's well I think I Le a couple of things off you so that's that's good well I'm glad to hear that definitely learned a lot from you and I I'm always I love guests that are pushing the boundaries whether I believe it's going to work or not I think yours absolutely has a very big shot sometimes we have guesss where I'm not so sure it's going to work um but I always appreciate the audacity to try new things and try to move the space forward so um yeah thanks so much we do always end with a question um what three games are you playing at the moment or are you most excited by and here you cannot use your own one you can un plug your own ones um any any any Medium mobile

console PC steam whatever board games even but so I am well I'm I'm playing a lot of uh princess match cards with my daughters at the moment you probably yeah Disney but that's probably not the one that I'm loving the most and so uh I'm playing cocoon on PlayStation 5 I really like that um I like I like the kind of that it's I don't you know the game the witness um not familiar with that one actually the witness I'm actually note of that I was I I make notes of all the games that I guess bring to the ship so the guy who and I'm gonna forget his name the guy who made braid then and smashed it then he made the witness and the witness is really cool because uh there's no localization so the whole game is beautiful uh and it's it's full of puzzles and you get look halfway through it and you realize that you could be from anywhere in the world and still having the same experience because there's no writing in the game and Cocoon is um made by the GU he made

limbo you probably have heard of cocoon but that is s has a similar Vibe so it doesn't have a a word written in it it's just very intuitive and it's actually quite fascinating because the kids will sit with me I play and they can solve the puzzles too it's just this really interesting World in a world logic um I like that and I'm also play Alam wake too oh my finish my finished compatriots yes uh that's on my list actually I played wake one I played the out of that one actually I'll be honest with you I haven't played Alan Wake 2 I haven't had a chance yet but uh is it scary is it scary then is scary people saying yeah it is it is it is kind of scary yeah it is scary I mean it's a different kind of scary so the so the other game I was going to and um the the other game it sounds like I play a huge amount I I probably play like three hours a week or something um that there's there's uh Al alien isolation I tried to play that when it came out um and I love the alien franchise like completely I'm excited

about the new movie the alien rul something's coming out soon and so I I played alien isolation when it came out which I think it was in like 2017 or say maybe earlier and I was too scared to play it so I stopped playing it and then I've recently gone back to it and I'm like I'm trying it and I'm like stuck somewhere on this space station it's really quiet and like you know my wife's gone to bed and I'm actually this is pretty scary so turn this off a turn off but they just do such it was such a well-made game it's just really cool so those are the things I'm into in the moment game wise fantastic fantastic all right well listen uh thank you so much well it's been a real pleasure and honor to have you on the show um I've learned a lot I know our listeners will have learned a lot as well and uh best of luck with with everything you guys are are doing which is a lot obviously thanks it's been great to be here I already enjoyed it um hope you talk again soon yep welcome back anytime by the way uh and of course a big thank you to all of our listeners we'll be

back next week with more interviews more insights and more analysis from the weird and wonderful world of web 3 and gaming so until next time friends stay crypto curious and feel free to send questions guest recommendations and comments to me my email is niiko nov. if you enjoyed today's episode whether on YouTube or your favorite podcast app make sure to like subscribe comment or give a fstar review and if you want to reach out or provide feedback shoot us note at podcast nov. or find us on Twitter and Linkedin plus if you want to learn more about what novic has to offer make sure to check out our website www.nic.edu and advisory Services again that is www.nic.edu [Music]