LIVE | Blockchain and NFT in games with Adrian Krion

[Music] what's up everybody welcome to another episode of game dev unchained the number one game development podcast about game development and the lifestyle thereof i am your host brandon pham and with a special guest adrian creon how you doing adrian how you doing adrian how you doing i'm good uh so this part yeah this is

part of the podcast where uh we have a guest such as yourself introduce yourself to our listeners viewers out there who you are where you've been and where you're heading um hey yeah so my name is adrian i'm the founder and ceo ceo of fieldworks um we're the makers behind products like uh wombat the gaming wallet and one play the game rewards platform and yeah i'm happy to be here and talk to you about i hope i guess the role of blockchain and nfts in gaming and how we're contributing to this yes so uh obviously there's uh there's a lot about this i think the past two years kind of um sped things up with epidemic and everything and so kind of just to give us a little favor out there for listeners who don't understand this technology we all think at this point heard of it and kind of understand the uh significance of it sorta but like i think the the the details of it is kind of really foggy so

if you don't mind kind of just conceptually what is blockchain what is nft um yeah let's start with blockchain so um to me i think the best way of explaining what blockchain is is basically saying that when the internet was invented and brought into place right it's this decentralized infrastructure through which we can exchange all kinds of formats and data right but the only thing that we can't exchange or send or transfer through the internet um before blockchain is anything of value right so we can't transfer value um and this is what blockchain basically fixes because it allows us anyone um to to have things to own things to transfer things to manage things that are scars on the internet you know files aren't scars data is not scarce you can copy it

and then you you have multiple times right um but things on the blockchain you can't just copy they're they're only there once if you say they're only there once right um so that's that's conceptually kind of what's interesting about blockchain it makes data um immutable right so you can't can't change it so and with that actually nfts are objects which are stored on this blockchain and these objects have individual ids right so you can tell them apart you can tell apart one of the other and that is basically it right that's what an nft is it's it's a it's a database entry in this decentralized database that a blockchain is essentially and um it says this person this account this address owns this individualized nft and now what's interesting is what you can do with that and well i guess we'll get to that in a second but

um from a conceptual point of view that's it it's it's a very simple thing it's a very simple concept right it's the simplicity of it probably makes it so powerful yeah definitely i i think the idea of um owning something is very exciting because digital has always been a hot ground for for uh for piracy or or or at least like there is no there's like it's open for at least copies right there's no original digital content before this whole thing uh began um i think one of the main questions i do have is like all right so uh obviously there are a lot of individual content and uh and and areas where where it's just uh kind of in its own universe right so let's say it's a mobile game let's say it's triple a game whatever the case so how how does this information be shared throughout different

is it there yet or is it just restrained to to to the the gaming content that you're currently uh working in um so generally you can use nfts in blockchain for anything right rather than storing something on a on a centralized database on a server that somebody runs and you have to trust this person or this company to run that server and not to manipulate the data on it right you basically just store the same type of data meaning this could be game items and kind of track ownership of the game items and also track scarcity of these game items um now you can store them on the data on a database that's called the blockchain right and the good thing is that um at least for public blockchains anyone can see what's going on on the blockchain so anyone can see that there is only a limited number of item x y z maybe there's just one maybe there's supposed to be 200 of those right and then you can actually track them and you

can see okay there's actually 200 of those you can also track when ownership changes of these things right um and that's that basically you can do that with anything so that's there's also a reason why it became so popular in the digital arts scene right uh digital art always had this problem that um like what is digital art right uh it's an animation a picture so essentially it's a mostly a file right and obviously you can copy the file and then who owns the the real thing like the the original right um so what you had typically with digital art is kind of a paper certificate that would certify that you're the owner the buyer and the owner of this original thing of the of the right of the of the right thing of security owner right and um that means that if your gallery you can actually expose it right you can show it to people you can can take money for for showing this to people um and um so that's how this this became

popular this and a concept of nfts became popular with digital art specifically last year when people auctioned his um everyday's um yeah let's say collection uh through christie's and made a lot of money and that was cool and ever since people started thinking okay what is this um why is this so so cool and now we have a ton of things we have board apes and and crypto punks right and we have a ton of games where um right now it's mostly more valuable items it's not like typically all the items that are nfts but um we're getting there there are there are ecosystems where basically any item in in a game is an nft and anybody can track ownership of these nfts anybody can trade them if they have them um and anybody can manipulate them if like if they own these nfts and with manipulate i mean like kind of legal

stuff like not not like unknown stuff right but um there's the thing of um upgrading or merging or blending nfts and and all kinds of things so we can we can get to the weeds of that but um yeah for for now i hope that answers your questions basically um the items that are that are being represented as game items these are stored or part of like their id is being stored on a blockchain yeah i mean we go back to the early days of gaming um you know we go to world of warcraft even there were people with multiple accounts and they're selling those individual accounts because they were all nerfed up and i mean not nerfed nerf is the opposite but like super powerful avatars with all these weaponry or costume or whatever combination of things that was deemed valuable and people were just selling basically those accounts so like gaming and nft to me it have always seems like the probably very natural kind of uh

partnership right um i think people i mean we've kind of done this with downloadable content at first mobile have always kind of led this path and um with downloadable content it always been like trying to get as much you know uh upgrades and stuff that you can with the loot boxes and things like that right so i mean when people hear loot boxes they have like this horrified look because there are correct ways of doing it and wrong ways of doing and i think um with the world at nft and blockchain they're they're not completely independent from that right there's going to be bad uses and good uses but overall i think it is like an extension for for a lot of game developers in uh gamers who who want to have the original um i think people who are the most confused or at least who still don't get it or resistant to

it is uh are are people who are um kind of somewhat resistant to the idea of what art value is right so if someone wants to pay for millions of dollars for an original piece of art versus a printed version right i mean that really just boils down to that do you value the original version or does it matter if it just looks the same and you can put it on your wall right so obviously there's certain types of people that do see value and i think we're at a point where that at least as a general audience appreciate that you know original piece of art is valuable uh and now we're just transferring that kind of thinking into the digital world which totally does make sense right um like he said there hasn't really been a stamp or an ability to say a digital art is original and having this type of technology that can track you know its movement uh in the digital world is is incredibly useful

and um i think let's dive a little deeper if you don't mind like um when it talks when talking about integration and games like um can you kind of highlight some scenarios here where you can see uh in different spaces i know you're you're primarily in the mobile market but like you're you are a game developer right at least being able to kind of foresee how this technology can be applied uh for for the mobile market um i guess in this case aaa market right and of course a lot of these free to play right if you can can kind of highlight these applications and and use cases i think it will help paint a picture of what this technology can do for for the industry yeah i mean maybe i'll start out with an anecdote because when um i mean when i studied that was like some almost 20 years ago but i obviously was playing a lot of games i i always play like all the time right um

and back then i think that was around when uh diablo 2 was a thing all right i love this game and me and my friend like if i used to share share my flat with a friend and we're like playing these games and we're like how cool would it be if you could take gold from diablo and like somehow convert that into well credits in kind of this racing game or whatever and just buy a better engine for your car from this gold that you have that you found that that you grinded for in diablo 2 right simply because it's more effective for you to grind diablo 2 then grinding whatever i think it was a nice two back then um and then grind that right so you you i mean in a way people might might say that this is like pay to win right but it's literally like um i mean in the in the free-to-play space that's like very common nowadays right you have to buy a ton of packs to in order to have your all of your cards completed and then you then only you you

can start playing for real right like in i don't know clash royale whatever right so so that that thing that that we had in mind like that must have been 2003 or 2004 or something um that is slowly becoming a reality right um so that's what that is one thing that i find really fascinating about blockchain that you can actually transition from like transition things that our value in one game into another game and you can reuse them in one way or another there right um and there's maybe another anecdote um which might be a good intro to that uh when free to play became a thing right uh and and everybody was playing i was playing oh game back then and then later i was playing travian like these browser free to play games right um that was very stressful right you always had to save your fleet like set your alarm for 3 am and get up and save it and send it centered away right so that it was safe for the night

um but after a few years you kind of get fed up with that there was no like um protection uh kind of thing right so you had to like manually do it and then after a few years this gets very tiring and you want to stop playing and then what you do um as you said you would probably try to sell your account right because there's no other way of well cashing in some of the effort that you put in right and so i was trying after like three years of playing ogame i tried to to sell my account on ebay and obviously i got banned right for for even trying um it was so frustrating that i said i will never ever touch ogame again right and then a similar thing happened to me in traevian when that was a few years later when i was traveling with my brother and we were playing from the same mobile hotspot right and then they banned both of us because apparently we're multi-accounting which was obviously not

the case right it was just two accounts that used to play from different ips and suddenly they started playing from the same ip which is kind of crazy to believe that this is multi-accounting but yeah that's what they did and there was no appeal right and both of us had spent like 50 euros in there each right or something like that and it was ridiculous that you can you get banned and then you lose everything right and that was so frustrating and ever since i never played travian again right um so you wouldn't ever touch any any of these games again because that something like that happened to you and um this is something that i think like these these kinds of anecdotes and i think that anyone who has been playing games mobile games fully priced titles free-to-play games whatever anyone who has done that for a few years has come across one of these or multiple of these super frustrating moments where you think like oh i've spent so much time in this game and now i'm losing it all right and i

mean free to play is kind of designed like that right you are not supposed to quit and this is why they make you kind of build up a lot a lot of a huge pile of things in the game that you would lose if you stop playing and that's why everyone wants to sell their account i don't think that most people who are selling their accounts are doing that in order to make money um they're doing that in because they want to they don't want to have wasted all this time right and so now that brings us to that whole thing brings us to kind of the blockchain world and i mean obviously block like blockchain in gaming or blockchain gaming in general is not 10 times better than traditional gaming apparently it's not like that because everybody would be playing blockchain games over traditional games right so um it's apparently only a little bit better and i would actually claim it's better even if some people don't view it like that and there's there's also good reason why there's a bit of a backlash

when when like these uh huge publishers launch their nft project sometimes um but i think it's actually beneficial for for gamers and now if we get to to kind of applications um it's actually very simple right it could be it could it could be very very simple so imagine you have any any game that you like playing i don't know let's imagine you have um fut cards right you you play fifa and you play fut and you buy all these cards and many people i've i've never spent a lot of money in fifa but i i know that a lot of people spend a lot of money on a few t-cards right and that's not a free to play right you have spent like i don't know 50 60 70 euros or dollars on the game itself and then now you're supposed to spend tens hundreds thousands of euros or dollars to buy fut cards right and um well what do you what do you have if you

have fut cards you have something on your account that you can play with right that's it um but there you don't own them you don't you can't do anything with them you can't cash out on them right you can't get super lucky open a pack and get something that's super valuable and then sell that for real money that you've spent to get it right all you can do is basically sell it for i don't know coins credits whatever it's called infut actually um and and buy more stuff right buy more of the same stuff and but but you're probably done investing into this particular game specifically into this particular season of the game with f with fifa right because you've bought fifa 22 and um now you're you're you've you're done spending on this you don't want to buy more packs you have your team whatever um and now you you would like if you if you get a new pack you would like to cash in on that right but you can't um

so all you all you can get is your credits and then you can't spend them in the next year of the game you can only spend them in fifa 22 or whatever right and that's that's very frustrating again so imagine those fut packs and those fut cards were nfts so you could actually choose what you do with them right you could sell an unopened pack just like you can sell an unopened pack of baseball cards or physical baseball cards right um and some of these packs actually become super valuable over time just like i don't know old pokemon cards are like if you have an unopened pack from the first edition of pokemon right that's like i don't know how much that is but it's a few thousands for sure right um and so you can choose not to open it yeah right and you can keep it forever until maybe someone wants to open it and see what's inside right um or you can open it up and you can get the cards right and it's it's you you who can choose it's just like in the physical

world i used to play a lot of magic the gathering right and it's like you wouldn't think that that it can be any different in the in the virtual world but it actually is so um that's that's what nfts enable it feels it they they kind of resemble what you have in the physical world um with all these things that you can have in games and it doesn't really matter what it is right so actually the the most lightweight way of possibly integrating blockchain or nfts in a game would actually be that you just have the game right and then you have a particular item like maybe a an fut pack and then there's a button on this pack that says get snft or redeem as nft right and then you would link your blockchain account and you would get this as an nft and so long as your as this nft remains on your blockchain account you can use

this thing in the game and as soon as you transfer it away from this from your blockchain account um for instance because you've sold it on the market it's not visible in your game anymore right so that would be the most lightweight way of integrating something like nfts into kind of a traditional game the game itself remains entirely unchained unchanged it's the same game obviously the economics of the game and of these cards or packs or whatever it is in the game that would have to be slightly different when once they are fully tradable right um but the game itself the gameplay itself that could remain entirely untouched so that is like like i said i think that um this could or i hope this might inspire some people to actually try try something like this out it's not it's not very kind of super super involved in terms of um technical integration or whatever

yeah i mean there's a lot to unpack here i think at the very beginning there's the game history is kind of has always been kind of weird and iffy uh with when it comes to a gamer or consumer being able to make money off things right because uh you know you mentioned the multi-account thing you know it felt like an unofficial rule maybe they have it legally marked somewhere where you can't do that but it feels kind of odd it's like if you're making a multiple account you worked your your you know um to a certain extent to to to put time into it and and make something of value to for someone else who wants to buy it isn't that just a consumer between a consumer transaction right um it's also kind of harks back to a lot what i mean i mean that's the that's gamestop right there right selling used games right there was always controversy with the original publisher saying that why they shouldn't be able to buy the game and be able to buy used games and sell it

at a higher mark but that's their whole game business um yeah and so i think there's always been this odd relationship um with with the game developers um and publishers i guess and then the the gamer consumer because even now streaming is such a huge business and a lot of these times is it's commentary over you know game developers work right um and it's not such a big deal right now because it's it it i think if anything it it it it transcended beyond conversation it's like it's too big of a business to outlaw streaming for games and i i think there's just too much of a demand for it obviously um so we're passing so you want acquisition channel right for gamers exactly but like it's always been ever every every step of the way i've always felt like if there's ever uh a chance for us to to to monetize um it becomes like a question of ethics and it becomes unlawful right

unofficially right there obviously aren't rules so i i think um this is where blockchain nft is is kind of hitting that first level of resistance it's like you know even in the comments here right now where we're live there's a lot of people kind of talking about you know it's a game you're not supposed to make money off it and even as a game developer i understand it to a degree uh but we're just in a world where if there's a demand and see people see things it's a free market right um and even though we don't know where this can lead to i don't think it's bad but it allows people to possibly make a living past the point of purchasing the product right uh side money but a lot of people you know become celebrities online or uh or you have that nft that is so valuable that the whole world wants it right and you can sell it excel i mean to me that sounds

kind of cool right and if anything you know yeah maybe none of that goes back to the developer the original developer publisher but it i think helps in other ways that we cannot completely map out yet maybe through marketing people are still talking about it right if we just fast forward 10 years from now just think of ready player one there's a product in the game that's something hunting easter egg hunting you know i think these are gameplay and game design possibilities that suddenly it feels important to have a single item or or a collection of items right yeah i mean i hope i hope we're not 10 years away from surprise um but um i mean there there have been attempts right to do that and i remember very vividly um when blizzard launched the in-game marketplace for diablo 3 when it launched right and um that was cool i really like that i really like the possibility of being able to grind for

something to grind for gold and be able to flip that for real money that was awesome right um they obviously didn't get the balancing of that right um so that's hard right to be very honest that's hard um so this is also why this is taking so long right um so and then instead of just like fixing the the actual problems they just shut it down entirely which was which was yeah which was sad right but um that was one of the very few tenses you said to to where someone tried to allow folks to officially make money out of it right obviously you know officially there's been there's always been this huge gray market but um i really don't don't get it right why would you not want to make money i'm not saying making money in terms of make a living necessarily right i'm just saying that um why wouldn't you try to get something back of the of the huge investment that you've made both time and money-wise into a game right um and you can view it like okay it should be fun but you know

if i grow let's say tomatoes on my balcony or in my garden right um and so i put a lot of work into that and i put i probably put some money into that for buying seeds and growing them right and then i plant my tomatoes you can imagine anything else but tomatoes um and then i suddenly have it's summer time and i suddenly have like hundreds of kilos of potato tomatoes right what do i do with them i can like give them away for free but i could also try and sell them on the market right i could just go to a market and then sell them and maybe i make a little bit of money i won't i probably won't be a net positive or i won't have a good day hourly rate on on the time and money that i invested in right um but i will make some extra and this is like i think that this is like a super um satisfying thing if you are able to sell the the few tomatoes that you grew because it's like somebody else wants this right that's a great feeling and some maybe people will say hey dude

these are the best tomatoes that i've ever had whatever right and that's like super satisfying and you put all this time and and sweat and money into it and now you've got somebody you get this kind of positive reinforcement right and how about you can do that with games i mean it's your it's probably your hobby you're probably doing that because it's fun right but why not be able to get some of your investments but uh some of your investment banks like very likely it's gonna be a very bad hourly rate very likely you're not going to be in that negative but hey right now you're not negative on any game that you play right so you will be spending more money than you're getting back most likely in the long run right um but um yeah so you will get some money back but what what are you gonna do with that money as a gamer right um it's very unlikely that you're gonna buy dinner right maybe you will but it's very much more likely that you're gonna just buy new stuff in another game because that's what gamers do right we do that all the time we exchange money for fun for fun things right we do

that all the time and so i'm not surprised if gamers just go oh yeah cool i've got 50 bucks out of out of this game and now i spent that on that game right and it just makes the whole experience less frustrating because you you get to keep certain things and um it's it's kind of like it feels fairer to me at least yeah i think a lot of people were really in the early stages of this and um uh it's kind of you know making an effort to centralize where you are able to share content between games uh i mean we're slowly kind of talking about the midiverse and it's the theme of the decade right i mean facebook believes it is so much they can rename their company the meta before really kind of getting uh a consensus from consumers but the idea eventually is that we do have a shared universe maybe microsoft has their own camp mobile games you know band together have their own camp and then you know facebook having their

own camp but the idea is that you can start using these original content that you own and be able to kind of share that across halo or cod or whatever the thing is right um i think that metaverse and nft and blockchain is kind of essential together to kind of make this uh work um but i completely agree with you like your your analogy with the seed and the farmer right uh a seed seed seller uh it it's it's silly to think that you can't sell your tomatoes uh with any content that you eventually own i mean we do it all the time you look around the house you know you want to give away or sell your furniture for and just get rid of it you know it's kind of saying that you can't do that yeah right you can right yeah why would it right right so i there but there's always been this weird relationship when

it comes to at least game related stuff that uh i don't know where it's coming from because it comes from both sides right the publishers sometimes feel kind of iffy about that and then uh gamers themselves right feel kind of iffy about uh selling content that you own within the game and uh i don't know maybe at some point i'll do some research and dive deeper into it but there's always been at every new technology gate there's always been is that right you know is it ethical or whatever the point is and but when it comes to physical things that we own uh no one really talks about that i mean facebook we're talking about meta i mean they have a marketplace in their little website that allows people to to barter essentially right um so we're just trying to take that kind of discovery into games officially and now we have a

way to do it digitally that um that is exciting um i would like to kind of talk about more of your thoughts about you know the big publishers you know um and this is coming from resistance you know we hear ubisoft uh a little bit of microsoft there's some pushback from the internal devs right especially the designers they're getting bad flashback about downloadable content and loot boxes and then their idea is like no you know we're just squeezing uh too much of the consumer i i think in the end it's still it's still a choice but what are your thoughts about that of what's transpiring is it just confusion about the technology or is it uh really their viewpoints are are somewhat valid but not completely proven yet i think there's a huge difference between um large publishers who have franchises um that have lasted for a really long time with like die hard fans

who have played every single game of the franchise for 10 15 years right and now they are being exposed to something it's like a new technology but it's it feels like it's safe it's the same old stuff it's just that it's a different shiny way of selling it right um so i totally understand that there's backlash and i'm i gotta say i'm not unhappy about this um because it shouldn't be that easy right they should be putting more thinking into this um and um so so i think that the large publishers they're they're kind of some of them are still relaxed or they think it's not going to be a thing it's kind of a fad and it's going to go away right um some others are actually really really bullish on it and we talk we talk to publishers a lot right to um small indie studios to mid-sized publishers but also to really large publishers and and we kind of also see their thoughts on these things right um there's a lot

of uncertainty obviously on a kind of legal regulatory side around this there is a lot of uncertainty about the technological um kind of question which blockchain to use will this blockchain still be around am i destroying the planet by by issuing nfts on ethereum and these kinds of questions right so i totally understand that um it's really really hard for any large publisher with kind of really valuable ip to make a huge bet on nfts or blockchain right um so and this is kind of their typical innovators dilemma kind of thing right um they have a lot to lose because effectively i mean obviously great big games great great game franchises there are many printing machines right um you can you can just do the next whatever assassin's creed uh i don't know card right um and you auto make money i mean it should be an okay game but it's not like

it has to be a lot of effort it doesn't have to be super well designed obviously if you if you really screw it up then you might not sell on the next one or on the next one or on the next one right but you look at look at ps and fifa right they've been selling every every single year whether it's a it's a big change a big um new thing or whatever or it's just it just feels like oh they could have actually patched the latest for the last version before right um and um so they have a lot to lose with specifically their their grand ips and um it's i can totally understand them being very cautious about this um i would actually welcome if they if they would at least try or at least like do a little test but that's apparently not in their focus right so yeah they're currently being disrupted and we gotta say some of these game projects from the blockchain gaming space like decentraland the sandbox axe infinity and some others they've been raising a lot of money

right so they can actually from at least a pure monetary cash flow perspective they're able to compete with the really big ones and maybe not the microsofts and sonys of this world but they are effectively billion dollar companies now right so they will be able to build a lot of things a lot of cool gameplay a lot of um great franchises a lot of great ip um great experiences and so on and and an awesome ecosystem because they simply got so much money they can buy studios right um and even other like non-gaming crypto projects have started buying up studios to build games right um for like for their ecosystem and that's i think that's very very interesting um because right now i think that most people think yeah okay as long as the large publishers so long as they don't jump on that train um nothing real is going to happen like not

not a lot of games are going to appear and the games aren't going to be great but i think they actually might get like disrupted just as um 10 years ago 12 years ago i don't know when when free to play came up some of these old school publishers actually got disrupted by that and they didn't think it might be it would be that much of a thing as it is right now yeah i i think we're we're definitely seeing that disruption happening right now with with this and um i think any resistance mostly yes there's a game developer side but if there's a consumer side i think people generally are kind of waiting to see and and it's more of like a uh uh they're not quite understanding it yet right but for me the easy way easiest way for me to kind of approach this subject has always been know this is the decade of the metal bear so whatever happens from this uh i do feel like you know i had a discussion with my kind of like my unofficial co-host uh a few

weeks back and we were talking about like all the crazy acquisition that's been happening the past month with um microsoft buying activision you know sony buying bungie right um they're fattening their portfolio up right and i i do see uh at least this trend towards these big mega franchises like you said assassin's creed all these game that every year they just release something um uh compton right they'll make bang bucks right for for no effort at all and uh i'm definitely a huge supporter for these franchises to just kind of go in the uh the steps of what warzone is doing right where it's just patches that you install and the way they make money with most the highest earning games nowadays earn money through just in in-game content now right it's not selling the original uh anymore it's like it's about free to play essentially

right so i i kind of want to do away sequels from this point on uh i just i think people generally just want to download the new thing once they own it they own it and they get the updates and then be a little you know the publishers and developers have to be a little smarter about how to kind of continue that because it not only that i think it's good for the consumers but for the developers we've been in the industry for a long time you know to kind of hold our breath before a game release right is a very scary thing i'd much rather have this gravy train going and then be creative with the in-game content we have these audience because every time you come up with a sequel you're wiping the slate clean again all right and you're hoping a percentage of the last game is coming back right it's a very risky business proposition uh i mean movies do it really well obviously but there's a reason why marvel is is kind of looked at as this kind of like new age way of doing movies i mean they

string 25 films and um and they are able to carry over that audience because you don't want to miss a piece of the the puzzle right because you might walk into spider-man not know you'd be left out so with that that continuation of once you build a base you're just building that base and having something like this technology that allows the consumers to be empowered with original content uh i think this adds on to the fun right um and i do agree with you that we're we're it's a good thing that people are fighting against it because we do need to kind of fire proof this a bit before the masses right because it's it's it's a good way to make side money but it's also a good way to lose some side money too right if you're not if you're being if people are being swindling uh and snaky about it but like i think overall it's a good approach to what is next and

um i think especially with this generation where more and more people are at least the last two years are getting into stocks more right because the pandemic and especially remote working now people are looking at ways to maximize their flexibility uh to work right so if there's a way to earn while you play which is kind of like what we're doing right now to me it's an extension of this streaming thing where people are watching people stream it's like all right you know maybe you can't build an audience but at least you can be really good at building uh value of this particular product in the game and and then you can take that to to to somewhere where someone can buy it right so i i think it's actually more approachable for for regular consumers and not have to be some kind of online uh influencer to make money off it yeah i mean there's there's two thoughts

that i've that i have on my mind about what you said one is uh going going backwards basically is um twitch and streaming is such a weird thing that in the old world in the old kind of commercial business world twitch couldn't happen right so what you you watch this guy and you you just sent him money although you don't have to right you don't have to pay those guys um you can watch them for free but you still want to pay them are you stupid like i mean what's going on right and and to me that was super fascinating to see how big that is and why and how um people actually want to support creators right if they like them if they if they if they think they're cool if they think they add value right it's this voluntary kind of thing obviously that then other things got added so that now now you have to do that for for status reasons and stuff um but the the core is still the same you don't have to support

your creators but you still do right and i think that's great and um similar or related thoughts actually and the other thing um is kind of the emergence of new business models in gaming right as you said um maybe you want to just get the new thing right i i like when i remember the old times when you were buying a game and unboxing it right that was a really cool feeling but then again this game had to be finished right it had to be like really good because you couldn't patch it like every other day right patching it was a pain in the ass if ever if even possible you could have like like roms on on super nintendo or whatever right like the game is there if it doesn't work if it's glitchy or buggy then it will be buggy forever um you have a good poster [Laughter] yeah um and um now uh you you you do get these games that may be unfinished right but you don't have this

this unboxing effect anyway anymore right so it doesn't feel like you don't get nostalgic about oh yeah i still remember when i downloaded xyz game right you don't remember these moments right you just let it download overnight and then the next day you can actually play it um which i actually find amazingly inconvenient for for like new tech anyway um but what's cool about nfts is that um nfcs have this concept of royalties right so whenever you can you can set a royalty um fee for for any future uh transfer for every future uh marketplace trade of um of an item of your nfts right and that's lifetime right that's really cool because this to me aligns incentives between creators and consumers the best right it means that so long as you produce interesting use cases for these

items meaning interesting content people will be trading those things because there's going to be an ongoing demand for them right and so long as people are interested in those and and there's demand for them people will buy them and you will have a stream of income right as soon as you stop producing anything that's of interest or you screw up your your economy because you've basically just created too many of these things price will go down nobody will buy them anymore and you will not be making money off of that right and i think that's such a great concept that we haven't seen um like yeah unveil yet in in in a in a way that um is really great and that we could use as a great example of yeah this is how it's supposed to work um but i think that this has a lot of potential of just running things the right way so uh we're seeing like this um as part of this rise you know uh

and kind of uh the spread of it uh to the general public you know a lot of celebrities of sports athletes especially are selling their nfts cards attire whatever uh what is the connection there um possibly right if they have their digital asset do you see some kind of brand sponsorship with these kind of one one-of-a-kind collection through through gaming or is it gonna be always these different avenues of how nft is used right how how practical it is to cross-pollinate these different things um i think that's going to happen a lot but it's not a necessity right so you can tell that many of these large nft projects like board apes um they're looking to make games now right and that's might be a cool thing but they obviously

don't know anything about making games at least not on paper right so they okay they have a lot of money so they they can buy studios does that guarantee that they will be making good games of course not right so it's not that easy right um will people play that um just for the fun of it i don't know right because it depends on whether it's going to be a good game or not um but like for sure people owning a board 8 will at least try that but that's just 10 000 people maybe can't count all the other apes in right that's a few few tens of thousands of people um but that's not a huge user base for a game obviously right um so i don't know how that's going to work out and it's not it's not really necessary i think that we have so much development ahead of us for the next few years that this is not to me that's not a priority that you have kind of xyz arbitrary nfts that may be represented by i don't know whom right um or created

by i don't know whom um and that these are usable in the games uh whatever um really there's more exciting stuff uh lying right ahead of us where uh we could we could have better applications and all like all the while better content better games rather than um thinking about these kinds of things that's not like really not a priority for me yeah i just keep going back to ready player one when whenever tv and items get so valuable that corporations send send their employees to these virtual worlds to collect them uh because then it becomes a commodity right it's it's a thing of value anything of thing of value there's going to be a consumer level of competition and then there's going to be a corporate level of competition and um to me it's all to me as a game developer it's just another option right you don't have to

use it if you don't like it but it's there and if you want to be in kind of like the trend uh there's a lot of advantages to kind of learn it and figure that out and find some some fun use scenario to to play with it uh within your ecosystem uh i don't think that's a bad thing like it's just i a lot of people i feel who get scared of it feel suddenly that it's gonna be overnight change which is not or a hundred percent of games is gonna slowly do this which probably won't happen but uh you know it's just a new introduction of here's a type of game right well maybe it will happen at some point right that that there's like a tie-in for the things that you can find make earn whatever in the game but that's in a way blockchain based or an nft or whatever um but you know that's

exactly the discussion that i've had with people from unity that i think that unity is a toolbox right yeah and what they typically do is that they put in the toolbox whatever is necessary to build great games right um so if it's 2d games then there's an option for that if it's 3d games it's that if it's mobile if it's web if it's blah blah blah then there's always a possibility right um you can you can make all kinds of games with unity um why can't you make blockchain games right they don't need to be like very opinionated about this right they just offer this tool why why wouldn't they um because they offer all kinds of tools right and this is something that um they like they're being very very cautious about blockchain right um um this is a stance that i really don't understand from their point of view um because why not right and right now that's that's an option and in the end consumers will will make choices consumers always do right um and if consumers don't think

that this is this will offer uh the blockchain offers um benefits then they won't do that at scale they won't be playing these games these games need to be better they need to be at least as good plus a little bit better um for for them for for the mass market for for the majority of the people to actually adopt them to actually want to play them right and right now many of these games are basically constructed around actually being able to make a ton of money right um and if it all goes right and if you're super early then you can actually do make a lot of money um but that's obviously not sustainable because um you can't have everyone be making money right so essentially um at some point it it's gotta be about the fun and people who want to put in money into the game simply for the like exchanging money for fun just like people exchange money for fun all the time yeah exchanging money for fun and there's gonna you know it's just like anything there's competition so there's

gonna be really good people that that is able to create value or find something of value and sell it and other people were just like you said just bartering and there might be people who are not even selling they're just collecting you know we we know a lot of friends it's just like uh old baseball cards right people trade and keep it for long periods of time and maybe later they they sell it but it's not a very uh not everyone's in there with the very business mindset of how like this is my day job for three hours a day you know it's just like anything this is a fun little thing um that that is possibly gonna change everything uh like you said like it's gonna start small i think it's a lot of games obviously these big and small players are there um publisher-wise uh looking at applications of this they're they're probably studying the crap out of this and seeing how it applies to their current but

future slate of games and um i will say too like why it's so big because it's not just the technology was created outside of games right and now we're applying that technology into games so there's a lot of other sectors that are using this and pushing it a lot further right i do see at some point that because game the game echo system like we've been so good about monetizing right that eventually game design is gonna be king in terms of how everyday lives everyday consumers are involved right i do think that game industry will end up being first out of all the tech companies and all these other people experimenting it because you know it it playing a game had the the the idea of what games are is is

just transcended what we used to be where we're just playing in our living by ourselves on our nintendo right everything is gamified in some way i was complaining the other day how facebook isn't fun anymore right and their website design is you know they completely forgot their game loop right it used to be a very addictive application uh very simply for people to come on and check people and it was i was one of those people that was refreshing every time for updates but it's gotten so cluttered right um and i joke about this but it's true it's like they just need a game designer to go back in there and take all the crap out and make it fun again um so like the you know what we do we're already seeing game developers in these different tech companies doing non-traditional game stuff but applying the knowledge so um i see a lot of future in nft and games and how we're pushing

that you know i wouldn't be surprised that uh streamers are going to be the first ones within the game sector that makes that that huge step of uh of really pushing nft right where it's to me it's kind of like they're the middle ground of a celebrity but also kind of you know pushing the game thing uh as a game developer right not really game developers but the marketing thing they're kind of like in the middle ground right there so um we can talk for days we can talk for eight more hours but we are at that one hour mark i want to thank you adrian for coming on uh it's been a subject that i've been wanting to talk to it's been brewing the last year and a half and i was one of those people's what is this crap right like it is definitely one of those things that even if you agree or disagree you should understand uh because it's here to stay it's past the point of just being you know uh something momentary right it is

very integrated in our future lives here so i want to thank you for coming on this is the part where i do shut up hand over you the mic so that you can give attention to promote uh anything that you want to talk about yeah first of all thanks thanks a lot for having me and for um offering me a little bit of a stage to talk about this whole nft topic and as you as you might have heard um like we have a very balanced or i have a very balanced kind of opinion on this right i obviously personally am very bullish on nfts and blockchain because i think uh it just it just really helps and to me it feels after playing so many blockchain games playing the first game that was like traditional again felt like okay why would i play that right i'm basically just putting all my time in here and not getting anything out in any case um thanks for thanks for having me and um thanks a lot for watching this um if you

want to check out how we have integrated blockchain into the gaming space check out oneplay.iowomplay.io it's kind of the approach where you can just do whatever you used to do you just play the games that you that you know or like um you just have to download them through our website but you're able to get your first crypto or your first nfts without actually having to buy them right so you can experience if nfts are for you and if you if that's something that you like or or not and that if that that produces any value for you right and i think that um one play is actually one of the or probably the lowest risk way of exploring the blockchain and nft space from from a gaming angle um without like steep learning curves without having to understand what a blockchain is how it works and without spending a ton of money on buying your stuff right

so i think that um yeah checking this out is a good thing and let us know what your feedback is let us know what we could improve to make it fair to make it more transparent or to make it better usable specifically for people who just like playing games without like wanting to make a lot of money but it's just a little nice add-on on top of just playing the games that you like we have really um great game titles on there um so also like double a triple a free-to-play games with hundreds of millions of downloads so we know that people are playing them even without um any blockchain game uh blockchain aspect right um but we we do add that to to many of our games we do add um nfts you can you can just collect them you can sell them on the marketplace you can make some more crypto um so check it out and i'd be i'd be really happy to hear from people like how they fare what it's like and um yeah

if you like it right all right well well thank you agent awesome stuff uh all links in the description as always for those listening and watching it's gonna be in you know in the description uh but uh i want to thank you for coming on the show i want to thank for for all those live chatters helping me kind of shape and answer uh already ask the next question so uh that's pretty much it see you guys uh every tuesday at 11 a.m pacific time but adrian uh especially you man you are not the last but one of the first people that i want to talk to on the subject i i think it really is a key factor of to any game developers out there to understand and possibly uh you know consider as part of their game design um it is the way i just watched the whole boba fett series so it's hard to shake

that off but i want to thank you adrian as always welcome back anytime