Midnight, the AA Web 3 Games Consolidator

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opportunities at the same time with double A games which we'll talk about later as well as building what they call a deconstructed MMO called Evergreen which is intended to house a whole variety of game activities and gameplay types across a portfolio of games within the MMO itself from fashion games Casino nights sports games that's obviously a lot to take on and so Steve is here and he's going to help unpack what his ambitious Vision means in real life Steve welcome to the Pod uh fantastic it's great to be here uh I've been B found navig for many years uh so this was when you reached out I was like oh this is a bit of a treat like these guys are experts and they're asking me this is I made it I've made it this is it all right well this is the Pinnacle this is the Pinnacle it can only go down from here I'm kidding Steve so uh yeah with all of that out of the way let's get right into it um and so the first question I always ask our guests uh especially ones who have an interesting background like yours is what brought you into web 3 so tell us a little bit about your background and what was your

Journey Down the Rabbit Hill yeah well I you you don't start small uh using web 3 in the first sentence right that's great for for all the game companies right that now it's shy away from web 3 um I think I think you have to be careful with web 3 now days right there is a bit of um noise in the industry and you know midnight or or Havoc there we have a platform right and so I think you know how do we bring calmness to web 3 and and cut through the noise uh so again thanks for for having me be here um my background web 3 I would say it started a long time ago uh I was an eorts player in 1997 uh Pacific Shard uh PVP winners uh numerous years in a row uh sees pareless and ultim online um what I did is I started turning my winnings into uh sales I would go to eBay I was like oh I won this Castle or I won this gold and I would sell on eBay and then I realized uh people are just buying gold like why

am I going you know taking the time to go to these tournaments lug my massive computer at the because they were very heavy back late 90 uh I can just set up all these Bots and so I was 15 I had uh seven AOL phone lines uh attached to my parents house in the basement you one of those kids huh you were one of those kids I I knew I knew kids like you uh we were very lucky to be very close to a uh I guess uh a hub so my my what 56k actually hit 56k and uh it was fantastic and you know um I was the first to to go to university in my family and it was all because of games and I've never you know I I've never got big onto you know blockchain and the Techno Babble behind it but the idea that web 3 is the next evolution of the Creator economy that's very exciting to me because you know I wouldn't be here today if I wasn't able to participate inside of these ecosystems and so if I think about you know where it came from the the late 990s uh you know we pivoted

um eBay shut us down in 2002 uh we're like oh well you know I'm you know just starting University what am I going to do that was my source of income I had to become a real company and so we reached out to a couple um groups to do community management and um we ended up doing community management for the World of Warcraft Alpha they were our first real client World of Warcraft and uh Guild Wars so like that kind of made us a real thing uh we were you know Trucking along working on these uh large titles and then Yahoo Japan in 2005 2006 they decided that they want to start publishing free-to-play games in the US um I had just been to a game conference in Austin Texas where uh the two probably two of the smartest women in the gaming i' ever met Sue bowl and Cy Armstrong were in this panel saying you know this is the death of Premium games this is the death of subscriptions uh you need to be doing free to play and I'm thinking like well my entire income comes from subscription based MMOs uh I better jump on this and so I ended up selling my company uh at the time uh to Yahoo Japan which became area games here

in the US which eventually sold to gigo and so we you know kind of brought free-to-play game publishing to the US uh sorry but uh you know it was fun at the time sorry not sorry that's right no it was it was a wonderful wonderful experience I remember just setting with a lot of the freet to-play game people in the beginning you know having uh these lunch dates and and Silicon Valley just talk like you know how do we get interviews on IG right how do we get people to talk about us because it was such a new model and uh you now look what it's become right uh digital items are just it's a billion dollar industry and and gray a lot of gray markets and so uh after I moved on from area games I started every Asian free-to-play game company that came to the US which came through one of my um consulting firms or my publishing practice and uh there was one company uh play span I don't know if you're familiar with it they were the first publisher sponsored Marketplace to start trading digital items right so it's before blockchain but it was still the idea that your items are valuable

um you should be able to have some kind of agency over them and so we started doing that and you know 2008 2009 Visa ended up acquiring it for 240 million so it wasn't a a bad exit uh for for the investors but what we saw is it was a little too early uh and it was also very difficult to get um the big guys like you know Activision didn't want their users to trade with EA's users at the time but uh all the midsize Publishers were on board right so we converted Dungeons and Dragons online and Lord of the Rings Online to freet to play me online so like I would like I would have my sword in one game and I would sell it for currency or I trade it for something another game I wanted to move to and we saw like it was very helpful for uh retention more so than anything else we didn't because like people play one main game and even back then like you know we would have someone in MMO they played for six or nine months and you know they might jump and play something else but the fact that they could take something with them um it just became quite more valuable and so I've always loved that idea and you know I jumped into

Investment Banking after I sold my third company what seven years ago which was another video game publisher and we started doing a lot of web three um Capital raises and I was introducing these guys um as veterans uh you know there's two guys in their garage right and we were raising these absurds amounts of money uh for them and I'm thinking well you know if if they're veterans in the game Space I'm I'm a dinosur or even more a fossil uh but I love you know real money transactions I love the fact that people can participate in the you know fact they have better opportunities like crypto web 3 is hope to so many people and I would be um doing a disservice if I didn't get back into it and and and try to give people the same opportunities I had so I thought you know I left gaming I left Investment Banking or sorry I left Investment Banking to get back into gaming um and it's been fun uh so I think you know we're leaning into two two heavy things um which I didn't like to hear and what I you know which I'm trying to push is I think participation is the key word right it's

not it's not really ownership in a lot of these these ecosystems it's you get to participate in an ecosystem that you get to spend your time and then a lot of the companies that were giving us pitch decks uh when I asked them about their business models like how they were going to make money how the the token holders would make money uh they kept on using the word fun and hey Fun's a great word everyone should be playing fun but like fun is such a handwavy word in web 3 that I I really try to to to push down on it I think the right word is fulfillment and you know you if you have a play there there's different categories and taxonomy users so like people could be there for fun people there could be earn money people could be there for Esports to be competitive and you have you know 15 different groups and as long as you can find fulfillment for combinations or various groups I think that's that's the key for for web 3 uh that's why I get back into it to bring participation and fulfillment fantastic I mean what a background this is why I always like to start with with with this um and you know a lot of the time you know web 3 is

about has been about opportunity you know so some of the folks Who coming in a little later to your point there's a little sensitivity around the word web three now but uh I always love the stories where it really truly comes from a place of you know personal experience in your case um you know selling on eBay for five years um before before uh uh you got shut down and and it's really surprising and maybe it shouldn't be surprising but so many of our guests there's some connection to World of Warcraft U which you know yeah perap shouldn't be shouldn't be that surprising so so I I do love how you've got this kind of through thread all the way through your career uh coming coming into web 3 and I I love the the word fulfillment um as well I hope it resonates throughout the rest of um of all your podcast to run web 3 because I think I think it's the right word a good I think about it uh you know think you talk about MMOs world Warcraft ultim online was my first so that's that'll be my first one right but you know we we' Investment Banking I would see a lot of pitch decks and like all the pitch decks were uh excuse searching for gold right like

everyone wanted to get rich and like has how we're doing it and I'm like well web three multiverses metaverses like it's it's it's so much more than just you know having a company and Forex in your token in three months and pumping and dumping it's like the people that play these games like there is history there's love there's friendship like there's quiet achievements of like Ordinary People in these games doing extraordinary things and like those stories are fantastic like I I could recant stories of like PVP experiences and games from 20 years ago and have fun and I think that's what matters right there people's stories yeah I completely agree okay well that's a perfect segue then into what you're actually doing great background I understand why you've got into web 3 um but midnight which is the company uh what is it and what are you doing with midnight yeah so there's I guess two lines of uh product there so midnight itself it's a game publisher a premium game publisher double games I think you could say we're the category leader and web 3 for premium uh doublea

games uh most people are heavily focused on freet to-play or mobile where we're PC console games um so that's what we're doing we're we're building from original IPS we're licensing IPS we're looking to uh find companies that want to join what we're doing and and publish those games uh and through that we're building a product called The Evergreen which is our uh companion app so you know we mentioned World of Warcraft that's probably got the granddaddy of all companion apps that's still alive uh it's a Social Hub so when people think of MMOs they think of you know persistent world and social features uh in our world we're kind of getting rid of the persistent Hub or yeah the persistent World we're keeping the Social Hub and so we're quite quite excited for that so publishing Premier games and linking all together through a mobile companion app that's the the two things we're doing all right well it sounds so simple but obviously there's a lot to back under the under the hurt there so so why don't we start with uh just kind of where you guys are at operationally how many you already have multiple Studios is my understanding working on on some of these things how

many studios do you have operating currently where are they and how big are the teams that that you work yeah so we have our um own internal uh platform Studio although I hate the word platform because we're building an MMO it's we're very narrative driven um actually there's a red flag for me when I was doing Investment Banking whenever I game Studio had said like Hey we're becoming a platform company now I'm like oh trouble yeah uh but we do have a platform team uh we do that in the US and in uh Indonesia we actually acquired a business um we acquired a company called Square 2 uh and that's the basis for our mobile companions Square 2 was fantastic company they raised you know six million in VC funding uh 40 million in Topline Revenue um they had what we would refer to three is 4.7 million registered wallets and they were doing play to earn before play to earn was cool uh the thing is they were doing in hyper casual mobile games and Hyper casual mobile games took a big hit and that's why we were able to you know you know swoop in and and acquire them but

it was it was it was really cool because like how do you people always say like how do you onboard people to web 3 and they were already doing it because you know if you're playing solitire you're playing bubbleshooter and it was these mom groups lots of moms you know they were playing solitire playing bubbl Shooters and getting diapers and formula uh they did 1.3 million transactions on eBay like this is just a great comp like it's a real a real thing and so we acquired them as the basis of as our core right so it's like 250,000 daily active users it's it's it's it's tried in True Tech so you know that team is the first one that's our platform team but of course we need Ro games and we want to make PC console games and so we have a studio La uh they're doing two games uh we have a studio in the UK they're doing one game currently and we have a studio in Thailand sing one game um happy to chat about the games in general the studios but uh we want to do more right so the idea is eventually we're doing one game a month um there's some great doubleway Studios who've done you know I think Team 17 did 26 games last year I think uh curve digital probably did 60 so it's uh it's

sustainable but it's it's going to take a while to ramp up to to that so I think what we'll probably end up doing is maybe four to five games uh every six months and and look at it Seasons until we can get to that ramp where it's one a month yeah yeah and obviously you'll need more Studios I alluded in my intro that the fact that you're you are swooping in and you're taking opportunity of the fact that there has been a little you know consolidation and and uh running out of money to put it mildy in the web free space so what is your criteria for acquiring teams acquiring games uh what kind of size transaction are you looking to do is it opportunistic or do you have a strategy for here's how we're going to look for these companies actively or are they they're going to come to you yeah lot a lot of questions in there but really it's about what is that what is your criteria for acquiring teams and games how are you going about it yeah so I think if you think of 2023 as the gaming year of layoffs and you know I think we're already at 50% of uh the layoffs from last year just in in the first part of 2024 I do think this is

the year that either companies will be shut down or acquired and I think there's going to be a lot of small scale acquisition especially in the web 3 space and gaming um we have looked at seven companies so far and it's you know uh only halfway through February yeah uh we we say you know we're like a typical VC fund where we say no a lot more than we say yes uh there was only one company that I wanted to say yes on um we put a bid in we did not win the bid cuz you know I'm still kind of cheap uh but uh it was it was the awesome knots Creator you know I don't know if you remember the game awesome knots they went through a process and they were um they were sold uh I don't know who too but uh I think we we lost the bit by just sco um but there's there's a lot of opportunities whether it's a a really cool brand and I think there's a lot of brands in web 3 that you know they they Peak they got a lot of audience but then they couldn't you know they couldn't monetize that audience right they they didn't know how to make a game or they didn't know how to you know create a technology around it so I think there's three things like we're interested I we're interested in teams we're interested in technology um I just had a

call yesterday with some folks at Disney like there's an entire team that has been laid off and I'm like you know why doesn't someone just put money and make them into a studio right there is so many benefits of having people that's already worked together this is starting from scratch and so we're we're looking at various different ways to to work on things um the scale of our games are you know double A what I say and um I think there's probably some education for for even people in the game industry what dou games are uh doublea is somewhere between Indy and Triple A and it really comes down to budgets I think a triaa game starts at about 60 million nowadays with inflation and so our games are far far less than 60 million we're probably in the let's say five and a half or sorry yeah say 500,000 to three and a half million right now um and then for sequels in DLC maybe we'll put more money up to 5 million because we'll Chase success if a game does well um but most of our games are meant to die uh the game will you know traditional sense subway games they have like a three to

six month window where they you know they pop and then sales kind of flounder we think with web 3 and our companion app we can extend that 8 to 12 months and so we're we're pretty excited about our model um but yeah we're just we're Trucking along so if anyone has a a game out there and you know a budget under five million uh we're interested having a look I mean look at the success right of um of pal worlds right $75 million 300 million sales so like tuway games one in a 100 you could get a blockbuster Maybe 30 you get a hit but for the most part you get one two or three X Games right so uh we're at dice right now here in Vegas um I was chat with a couple doubleweight Publishers and they're all throwing off cash um I mean it's not huge amounts of money but you know five million they're throwing off a million uh that's not bad that's not bad I mean it's real money for sure that's exactly right yeah um so I you know I love how this is what I wanted to have you on the Pod is I love how clearheaded you are uh in your thesis uh and how different your thesis is to so many others um in the

space now we have seen some kind of web 3 rollup publisher type pitches um none of them have panned out uh why why do you think yours is going to pan out um yeah uh that's a good question I've seen a lot of um I'm not going to call anyone out but like passports are a big thing right everyone is like hey this is my passport right and so midnight has a uh Baja Blast p protocol unit right we can connect to 40,000 games uh but like essentially what people are saying is like hey I have this old web2 you know Facebook login and that's going to be you know how we roll up all these different games and it's a lot of like really tiny web games that people don't really want to play like there's no fulfillment in that right people are saying oh we've got a bunch of games as a I call them hippo metrics I think most people refer to them as vanity metrics and you can have a bunch of V metrics games in your uh portfolio but if no one's actually playing those games it's

not that interesting uh we don't need a lot of users for our model but we need you know concurrently every game that we publish should be able to do 200 to 800 concurrent users and you know that doesn't sound like a terrible lot but once you get to 26 games that can support that that's great um because that's people actually playing a meaningful amount of time uh another thing that I think is different or unique to midnight is you know when we were raising capital for our SE around you know in the Heyday people would always ask you know where's the value flow does it flow to the equity does it flow to the token and I'm you know kind of the Warren Buffet I was like you know don't get caught up in the equity don't get caught up in the the it's a business you're investing into a business if the games do well both will rise our business model is like the premium side covers our you know the lights stay on because we're selling games we know that business the web 3 side is you know icing on the cake to us because we're not taking a lot of money from the web3 side that's all given to the users and that's something unique to us where we

don't rely on web 3 being our business model and I think any company that is relying on web 3 being their business model they're going to find out fairly quickly like we found out in place ban 2009 that it's very hard to sustain right if you're looking at you know a million wallets you need 16 million players uh by free-to-play metrics that's a lot of players for oftentimes little crappy games and you know we have a model where you know if we do a doublea game we need 50,000 175,000 people to buy it that game is profitable and we're profitable uh you know I'll take a hit if someone buys one or two million units that's fantastic right I'm not going to turn that down but like we are we are made to be a predator where we can go out acquire businesses we know the numbers we get a game we have Niche users we Target and yeah it's it's an exciting time uh so I think we just have a fundamental understanding of how the games business Works versus a lot of web three people getting into it there's a project that came out in December um it's the closest thing that I've seen so

you know to our companion app 300,000 users they raised 9 million their their token free sale and then I'm I'm like reading their white paper and there's no there's no understanding of how the Gaye business works and yeah Chase my uh Brites a little bit but uh they're fantastic marketers like the there there's genius level Marketing in some of this web 3 and that's one of the things like you know there's so much noise how do you cut through it and how do you like bring real games real opportunities to people and that's what we're focused on midnight yeah I know I love it I mean games as a business yeah Who would thought what a what a what a crazy idea they have to make money really that's right so no I I love the fact that you're focusing on the games as a business and it's it's a numbers game I'm a former CPA uh in a previous life and X Zinga PM as my longtime listeners will know I love talking about my Zinga days um but yeah numbers like the numbers don't lie and when the numbers work out you know the numbers work out it doesn't matter what the game is or what the studio is or where they're based you know that's right if they can ship a game and they

can make more money than it cost to make well that's a good business so uh fun fun fact thereit matters when were you at Zinga were you at the Heyday when they were sharing uh on Facebook before yeah Mafia Wars on Myspace Mafia wars yeah I still remember those days and then the launch of FarmVille on on Facebook canvas and then the rocket ship that followed so yeah that was those were fun times exciting times very formative Years everybody has their fortive years in the games industry somewhere um okay well then I'm GNA ask the obvious question is which is you haven't raised a ton money I don't think and and I couldn't find a lot about what you you know how you're funding this thing so I'm going to ask you just directly like how are you financing these Acquisitions I understand the the business model but to get to the the volume of games as you alluded to yourself you know you need to ramp up right and that takes money and that takes time and uh yeah my question is how are you financing these these Acquisitions and these activities you're you're exactly right so the biggest risk to midnight and the Evergreen project is the initial portfolio uh cuz that's the most most Capital intensive right before we have a fly will of games that are and

essentially we're saying it's 8 to nine games uh before we can just self Finance so in order to get to those 8 to n games it does require some Capital um we had raised a six million seed round um took us three weeks to do it during the high hey days right of doing it uh we got a grant we had another almost $6 million Grant from uh forte. um and then we're currently raising more we I don't know for better for worse we turned away a lot of money um in 2022 mostly from l1's and l2s looking for exclusivity I just I couldn't buy into the exclusivity like I don't mind making a game on this chain or this chain or this chain but uh none of them had you know you know SE like hey this is The Shining Light this is going to be the winner for for games this is where you need to be and you know we we'll see where that goes but we are you know we're we're getting ready to raise another round now we'll probably do that uh middle of summer uh we're looking at uh everything from debt financing to our

project debt for the games which is always fun um I did a lot of that in traditional or my previous Life as a banker um we'll do equity and then the fun thing which is fun for me because you know we spent a bunch of money with deoe and like four different law firms is is setting up offshore fance to do a token um so our token will be launched on April 1 April Fool's Day I can't think of a better day to do a gaming what a day what a day for a web 3 token launch yeah it's just like you could could ask for a better day called by the way uh Echo token Echo okay I thought there might be some tie in to April 1st but Noe think can't think of it for Echo yeah we want Echo because the way we look at the the token is it's again it's it's player stories matter I think you know we want to be a narrative driven company and essentially when you play it's your Echo it's it's it's your digital Echo and that's where withing came from um and so we're yeah we're excited to to see where that goes fantastic and there's a bit of a bull right now so everyone's quite excited um yeah you're timing it pretty well

uh who knows what April 1 is gonna bring like we could have five roller coasters in between then and now but um but no you're timing it pretty well uh so I had a a a plan question actually on this so I'm just going to bring It Forward a little bit which is uh you know you're doing a token sale and obviously tokens still do work but obviously they work a lot less effectively than they did back in the the Heyday you know 2021 late Q Q4 2021 if you launch a token then you could raise $100 million without you know batting an eye so so I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on um you know have have you evaluated the token raise Market uh recently and what are your expectations for a token sale yeah so I I think if you look um in the last 24 hours uh crypto VC funding has climbed um higher for the first time in two years where it's past the previous quarter uh so there is a bit of a wall where people are getting excited right right you know the price of Bitcoin is up so everything Rises everyone's you

know happy all the alts are up uh so VCS are starting to uh put cash back into it I think you know the idea or the days of like you know here's two guys in the garage of PowerPoint presentation you really need a product uh you really need those Hipp or I keep call hippo vanity metrics like your your socials has to be hot uh you you know people have to be able to touch and feel things now um because there were just you know what 90 something with 91% of uh nft game projects are dead one in four VC funded um web 3 game companies in trouble uh which you know reach out to me we're always looking to help uh it's it's rough out there and I I don't want to pay and raise your picture that you know midnight is uh you know a Bastion for Hope um although you know I like to think that we are uh it's tough right it is it is tough out there um crypto sales in particular like I you know we've been planning for a while um there's not a lot of uh I would say pedigreed um web 3 companies like us that have backgrounds in gaming who understand you know how to make them not even make money for the

company but make sure the users uh see benefit um which you know maybe that's something different than most companies do where you know we're not here for a short time we're for a long time uh and that's you know that's fun so like we we've said uh uh how do I how do I explain it so last year it was difficult uh this year people are competing for business again and so it's it's definitely refreshing um I've you know kind of pushed a few projects I was like if you can get a token out this year I think you should uh I don't know if it's going to be $100 million raise but you know for us we're probably looking at around 20 million um somewhere 10 to 20 and that's enough for us you know we're double A games we have small budgets um the biggest one that I saw recently which I obviously massive fan of uh I'm an investor so I probably should say that is shrapnel they launched their token in November to great success they're you know they've set the bar for web 3 games in my opinion um I you know it's just uh it's fantastic I

think there there is opportunities out there if you are a pedigreed team that's building something versus you know here's a a rug Pole right I think the rug pools are probably done but I think the real teams that are really leaning into crypto and you know allowing users to participate I think there's opportunities out there um either from investors from doing token sales uh you know getting all your K's aboard to to sell to users working with the righted exchanges there's you know you I could list the well I'm not going to list them but uh you know there's obviously tier one exchanges tier two tier three uh launchpads you just want to make sure like there's there you know if you've not done it before work with an adviser um or uh follow someone else's Playbook right look at some other companies that's already done it and just do what they did um because I think there is a path to success in this that is going to make sense for the next year um maybe the next six months like you say who knows what's going to happen in April yeah but I think I think it is a viable path now um but it's not the end ODS in in my

mind it is just a tool it's another tool right debt VC tokens maybe we do a spack right maybe spacks come back when there's a lot of money yeah I know I I I mean I think you said rug PS are probably done I I think quite the opposite the next six months I think you know with with the uh the rise in in the prices you know especially Bitcoin and all the alts following suit um you're going to see all the ruggers come back maybe let me rephrase that try make their quick fck you know like whenever there's money to be made there's going to be ruggers and scammers uh so I 100% agree with that what I meant was I don't think VCS will be investing in R pools anymore I see I see yeah but I think there will be projects that pop up uh like said I think the one in December um is a bit of a rug poool because they have no understanding of games but users are excited right people want to be excited there's so much hope in to believe yeah that's right just you get that uh I want to believe I want to believe molder and Scully yeah that's right um okay so I had a question about audience for the these games you know you're doing double A games and I totally understand the logic of of why

it's the business of games it's you know costs are less than the the revenues hence profit fun you know fun fun little model there um but who's the audience with these games do do you have a particular genre in mind are you genre agnostic and uh is it more for the average person who knows nothing about crypto and web 3 or is it for crypto enthusiasts or is it both yeah no that's a great question um so the Evergreen companion app I think that's where most of the web 3 users going to live because that is it's free you don't have to put five to 40 bucks up front to play the game but you can Farm other games and you can the web 3 users will be able to sell items they create to web2 users in the games and the games themselves we are we're game agnostic uh because that's the fun right so if we're doing 12 games a year it should be a hardship if you don't play all 12 games maybe you play Four games right like maybe like the fighting game maybe like the fishing game maybe like the Barbie dress up game but you hate FPS games but there's an

item inside of that FPS game uh that you really want for your Barbie Dressup game well now because of that hardship there's a a built-in Marketplace like now people who don't play the FPS game now they can sell you whatever that black t-shirt is or something and so that's that's what I love about MMOs that you know it's these Virtual Worlds where you have people intermingling with people that uh really wouldn't mingle in the first place but now there's they kind of have to so like we encourage interaction through having different genres of games uh the games themselves are Niche right these are double Way games our first game a 2D pixel brawler uh you know that scales mostly male average age 27 it's got a tam of 119 million right so it's not a massive game but it's one game uh you know our next game is kind of a uh in that kind like overcook chore simulators right so it's skews uh mostly female younger probably at 24 uh less 10 maybe 90 million um so we're not looking at Major games

major game categories but if we keep on adding a bunch right so like we had 10 games now we're at a billion dollars and it's a you know it's different type of people they they're forced to mingle and that's how you create a real circular uh ecosystem in my opinion uh circular economy rather interesting interesting and uh these and and they do need to know about crypto though I just want to understand the Evergreen no no no no sorry so the games themselves the the web the games I understand are are just web to they're just games and then there's the the transfer value trading Marketplace aspect that goes between the games but does that not imply that the the players even though they're playing their individual games don't need to know anything about crypto for that if they want to do the trading the marketplace piece then they do need to understand what the components are component yeah no I I get what you're saying um we we expect a large amount of trading to happen in platform and so they they may have to go to the Evergreen app to do decent amount of the

trading or the crafting or how they move items behind but they're not going to have to worry about their own wallets right all that stuff is hidden we've got our own kind of system that you know cross wallet uh across games uh what is I think most unique is they log into their game uh and you think of it as Plum I don't know if you played you know Diablo 4 but you know you plop down 70 bucks for that game uh and then there's like the item store it's like hey do you want to spend $50 more dollars to get this horse skin uh and midnight games the the plus version that horse skin that's sold by other players midnight has taken a stance that we are not we're going to have an item shop in every game it's a a very familiar item shop and we actually plan the item shop for the first three months of life service and then beyond that it's ucg but uh we give that to the web3 users hands to sell to web two users um that's how we're looking to to to launch on Steam that's how we're looking to launch in South Korea because the web 3 doesn't happen inside of the the the web two games themselves um any of the digital items sold there is purely um you know it

looks as a web 2 game now now I think there could be uh game specific crafting materials that they get and and maybe if they're on the Apple like hey you know you have these materials they're Valu in other games or you know you have these seven items you don't play this game it's worth $700 you should go sell it um you know it's it's knowing when the message the use you're at the right time but like they're not going to come into these games and like hey you're going to make a bunch of money no it's like hey play this game have fun with it stay in this game right that's one of the the things that I think a lot of people get wrong with interoperability when they were which you don't hear about the last six months no one talks about interop anymore but the idea was like hey this is going to jump from this game to this game I was like no that's the wrong idea we just did the study with deoe where if someone's in a game you want to keep them in a game for as long as possible because that's where you know they're going to have the most fun that's where they're going to spend the most money um now if they come they play the game popped on five bucks they play it for you know 10 hours they're done with it you want to be able to move them to the next game you want to keep them inside your ecosystem but the idea of uh moving users around it you don't really want to do that you want you want them to stay where they're happiest and then that's

where they you know they'll bring their friends and stay and stay a little longer yeah bring their friends actually that's a great Point um do you have any kind of social hooks uh built into the into the games themselves or are they mostly firsters you know single player games uh or do you have you know like Ma you know massive Brawlers where you've got you know hundreds of players at the same time um no hundreds of player Brawlers but uh most of our games are multiplayer one to four players maybe one to six uh some ideas for some single player games but even the single player games you want you know gaming could be lonely um and I I like the idea that you know you you beat a chapter uh Telltale did a really good job of this when you if you remember Telltale Games oh I love Telltale love them they just did a Star Trek well not Telltale but the guys from Telltale they did Star Trek Resurgence um if you're a Star Trek fan or Telltale fan I highly recommend that game it's it was a lot of fun um but something that tto did which Star Trek research didn't do uh was like after you completed the chapter some is like hey 56% of the people did a you did B what a weirdo

remember remember yeah and so like I think you can reward things and you can drop some you know exclusive loot in single player games and make people want to go and farm that single player game but it's all about the experience of the story so like it's for us it's more RNG than like hey if I play this game 20 times I know I'm going to be able to farm X materials like oh if I play this 20 times and I do different things well there's a chance I'll get X material or X item or you know B achievement um [Music] so yeah we're we're looking for fulfillment in all of our games there are a bunch of social hooks if I think about the the companion app uh the thing I compare it most to um is uh Pinterest I think uh Pinterest is a great way to collect uh your hobbies and you know we've got mini games inside of the the app there people will be able to farm airdrops there's a crafting system which I think is the way how we do interoperability and make it successful but at the same time like you know here's your friends this is your friends items this is what the the nfts they've destroyed uh or this is what they've crafted this is the game they've done this is their achievement um I think

it's going to be fun yeah yeah nice sounds like a lot going on in there so when are you planning on launching definitely publishing by wait yes um when is uh Evergreen the Evergreen app uh launching I would say the games will launch whenever they're ready right like they just you'll just be rolling them out on a a regular cadence once you hit your stride you want to do how many do you say you want to do a month one a month ideally it's 13 games a year it's one a month and then uh an extra one in the holidays for we call our Holiday Fest maybe Bakers doesn't have games never heard of that before Okay cool so that's the goal okay so that's goal first party games we can do more third party yeah and when do you think you're gonna hit that stride um yeah so we're actually launching our uh open beta for Evergreen next month oh cool and so it's got two mini gamess uh it's got decent amount of social features and uh we plan to build it over the summer uh to when our games are our first two games are ready in in October and so people can pre-farm those games for crafting materials and it's going to be a lot of

fun prearm that's right we Embrace Bots we we Embrace Bots by actually giving people Bots and like hey this your Bot named Nico right and ni can go to different games there you go I like that I like I like they having my own bot um the uh yeah yeah I was gonna say where where can uh if listeners are curious or interested where can they uh sign up for the the beta is there anywhere we can go and uh to our Discord follow us on Twitter um and whatever social network that uh the marketing team turns on the next week but uh it should be first week of March uh Android iOS um Evergreen app uh so I think our Twitter is play Evergreen just I'll throw them in here so you can yeah yeah we and we'll we'll put them in the show notes as well we always put these in the show notes so we'll make sure we have something there to uh if people are interested in checking this out um we'll have some links there I was actually quite surprised so we when we had raised our uh our initial fund uh you know our investors like hey Steve you know no one

knows about you do something and I was like all right well we do a a PR piece and uh Dean Venture was kind enough to pick us up and 3,000 people joined our Discord and for two years didn't say hello wow that's crazy Dean Dean's listening Dean you have a lot more PLL than you should be you should be out there like asking people to follow you on Twitter and uh you know get get an nft for free or something Dean you do Dean nfts Mo moving numbers new uh well here's the crazy thing so we didn't talk to them for two years uh we said hello and we turned our Twitter on uh more than 10,000 people joined in less than 48 hours wow okay and so now we're like it's just uh there's there's definitely buil-in audiences for web 3 that are craving for pedigree projects and then you know our our Niche dou games I think they have built an audiences already so definitely excited to see how we mingle them right that's because that's that's been the thing like how do web 3 users and and web two users chat and you know

do I have to create two different discords like ah we do know yet we're going to find out yeah yeah and do they even speak the same language the web 3 language and the web two language in gaming you know you would think it's the same because it's games but actually it's not there's a lot of uh cross talking and and using terminology that uh that certainly web 2 folks don't really understand necessarily I mean I don't know a lot of the web free language everyone so like my you know my hip hop is up 40% on the Network and you got a bang bang I don't know what's going on yes um okay so you you touched on something which um is near and dear to my heart which is distribution discoverability getting your product into the hands of the consumers the the players that you want to get it into the hands of and no matter how good your games are no matter how amazing your product is applies to any product it it it's GNA hinge it success is going to hinge on finding the Right audience or the Right audience finding you so either push or pull and I ask all of our web three guests this because this is such a critical piece of the puzzle how are you

intending on reaching your target audience you know you said you're going to be crossplatform so let's talk about the platforms you're going to be on and then how you're going to actually find the audience or how they're going to find you yeah um discoverability I think Web Two web 3 it's it's it's a big issue for games right there's so many games being pushed out now um I wish that some of the platforms would limit uh you know some kind of their own um you know filter system but uh it's it's a lot out there I think we're in a great spot uh if you look at our top of funnel uh even more so than an MMO right if if you were if we were doing the persistent World MMO I think that would limit our funnel versus having all these different game types different you know uh demographic different uh age ranges uh gives us a much broader top of fun and I think our Niche games our Niche games for Niche users they have built-in audiences like we able to find those audiences I say you know fairly easy um most of the

games we're making now with the game developers we're making with they've already made these games and for so a lot of times it's I don't want to say a reskin because we're doing more than just a reskin but like they've already spent $6 million building this game this engine they have fine base they've done millions of installs we're taking that we're taking that to this this audience like hey here's a new spin or here's a new IP and so I think the web 2 gamer side we know where those gamers are we've them for two decades right and so I think bringing them on is going to be easy uh it's the web three users that I actually find challenging um when I was raising our you know our six million SE around I had an investor said look it's easier to raise $6 million than to get six uh 100 Twitter followers and I was like oh wow and so I think there is certain right yeah and this goes back to you know the first time we talk about like there's a lot of noise in the space how do you cut through the noise how do you present yourself as the as the right person right and like you know I found that you know we have marketing groups

we have PR groups we have Community groups we have uh in web 3 all these different KS and K managers and this is all you know I you know I guess a couple years ago they were called influencers now they're K K's which I BP my tongue over time me see it uh but like that's that's the Mainer that I think is is is the most challenging because our games themselves we can find users that want to play Barbie Dressup games right we can find users who want to play uh black bass fishing we can find users that want to play I don't want to we're working on an FPS game kind of a boomer shooter with a a major fast food restaurant so like there's some build in marketing there right and I think it's traditionally how a lot of game companies will do like original ipers are great but using someone else's IP to boost you up a little bit isn't bad and so there's a lot of you know traditional like Hey we're going to do Paya we're going to do you know press releases we're going you know make sure that this game gets x amount of wish list because you know premium games x- wish list translate to X sales like that's that's all foundational business stuff that I think we've got uh but I think

it's I think it's going to be fun because our games are actual games it's not like we're trying to you know put lipstick on a pig and say you know come pet my dog it's like here's a a 2D pixel brawler you like 2D pixel Brawlers come play ours I mean makes sense so if I were to summarize and just want to make sure I get my understanding right you feel good and confident about the games themselves um the ability to find those audiences many of them have built- in audiences already doing the tried andrue Playbook on you know the wish listing and and making sure that youve do the right things on these platforms that you clearly know very well but the wild card is whether you can get folks into the Evergreen companion app and you know mingling with each other doing the web 3 things doing the trading that's really where that's where the magic happens arguably that's your deconstructed MMO of course um but that's the wild card that's the question mark that is that

you couldn't sell it better I I should bring you to to our team and you start pitching for me uh that's exactly right I I can be your translator um okay but it makes so much sense and I I totally understand like the value really is is going to come from that web three piece where where folks are trading and and you know mingling and having fun together spending time being really sticky uh that's right yeah so I think if you looked at as a chart it's like there's a very linear path to growth to Zer to million in Revenue just on premium doua game sales the the extra bit like you know extra 50 extra 100 million is on the the secondary markets what those people are trading uh and then I think there's a third you know once you have enough users like you become a social network the companion you have is a social network and right and so then you get into ad sales and you know do all the fun stuff that over Wolf's doing um they're an investor so I have to throw them throw them they they've been on they haven't been here on my pod but they've been with I think Alex te's segment they're fantastic they had overall fund so um yeah what a great great business that is um so uh let's

talk about road map so you're thinking about the token raise that's coming you've got your beta coming out soon you've got the summer to build um doing a lot of things what's the road map look like for the next 12 to 18 months to give her take so I would say at the end of 18 months we should have a more polished companion app um we should have between four and six games live and a lot of games hopefully in the pipeline uh and an active token one of the cool things I think it's cool uh for our token the next 18 months is you know you have a lot of uh single token projects that have done well but they're highly dependent upon one game success I think that's uh risky uh and you know what we saw in real money transactions whenever like the price of the wild token or you know whatever youro Choice was like those would always pop on DLC days patch days or new expansions and at midnight

you have a new game coming every month right and so yeah you should see decent pops for that um and I think you know the fun thing is like what I went back to is like Gamers might not like every game every month uh and so you you know you save your resources well I don't like don't play This fishing game so I'm going to skip August but come September when that uh you know Turtle race car game comes out I'm going to you know drop all my stuff on that and then prices go up so I think it's going to be it's going to be fun uh launching you know content uh I get to work in genres of games that I wouldn't normally work on we're working on a tea time solitary game that uh okay I'm excited for it is that a category I didn't even know that H well I made it a category it's like a it's like a a murder mystery but I call it tea time soliter because like it reminds me like an agic or chrsty murder mystery I don't miss marel love exactly oh man yeah she has great so miss marel has the best piece of advice from any fictional character uh I've used it in

banking I've used it in gaming and she says uh good advice should always be given but it's rarely taken oh that's a good line I I did not know that came from Miss marel I've heard it but I did not know the source of it so that's Miss marel okay well there you go listeners you probably learned Miss Mar in 10 years that's awesome go of course I loved AG the chrisy I loved uh Sherlock Holmes like I loved all the classic uh oh yeah oh my goodness me those were all so good um we should try after we could geek out on uh on I the Christie and Sherlock Holmes and what have you hound of the Baskerville oh what a classic that is um my English literature uh undergraduate degree coming into coming into Focus here yeah getting serious um yeah getting a little bit too serious for for gaming podcast let's uh let's go back to the Token for for a second I I did want to ask I forgot to ask it earlier so I'm going to ask it now it just came up um you know utility we use this word utility in web

3 and it's it's been kind of overused I think perhaps to to a certain degree but uh for lack of a better word um what is the utility of the echo token what do you anticipate the echo other than obviously raising funds for you what are the the the owners the holders of the token uh getting in return so uh I like what is it used for let's put it that way what is it used for I think maybe that's the better question what is the utility yeah uh I I like the word utility I think you know all of our law firms like the word utility um it helps right uh I'm excited again you know midnight is a game publisher uh Evergreen is the MMO it's going to take a while for us to get to 26 games and I think that is when the game is has enough uh core Loops uh enough users to be fully fleshed out and that's when the utility of the token is at its fullest so there is a ramp up in our token where like the first two games

maybe there's not as much utility and we we kind of outlined in the white paper like these are the first like four or five things that can be done but like as the MMO grows the value goes up the use cases go up um and we're also fairly opportunistic to look we're looking at different models to see what people are doing now because like some things work some things don't work uh but in the beginning for us like we are very heavy on cannibalizing our own Revenue with that premium plus model and users putting time effort bringing their you know their networks in bringing their friends in and letting them monetize our games right so web3 users will be able to come in monetize Web Two users that we have that build-in player base uh and they get to cash out with our tokens so like that's the first thing that they get to do um beyond that they'll be able to you know start staking for games you know when we do have our seasonal games we have like five games come out at a time or eventually you know the baker's dozen as you called it uh for the year people pick them and not every game is going to survive uh we are very um

transparent that games and midnight system might don't even last three or six months before they die and how cool would it be if like you picked one of the games that last for two three 10 years right and then you have a participation in that so I I think there's going to be a lot of opportunities to actually use the token um we have our uh interoperability crafting system which I think is fairly unique to midnight the way we're doing it people like we said you know in the last 6 or nine months who's talked about interoperability not a lot of people uh so we we built the system I I spent heads I was heads down for like six months just like writing this like this is this is how you do interoperability uh we didn't put the full document into the white paper because everyone said Steve you're writing an academic paper for people that you know Apes don't read is is kind of the saying they're like just just truncated put it in there ouch and ouch oh it was it was painful uh because I wrote 60 pages over Martin Luther King uh Jor weekend and then like the team cut it down to half of that at 30 and then we put it online and then the first 357 people to to see it in an hour just

went straight to the Token page and so like that's our first audience right they're they're just there to to make sure that we're not um we're not going to rub pull them right there's there's lock up in the tokens there's a longtime treasury fund uh and then every once in a while I get surprised like the we were here at dice I mentioned and some people like have read it they're asking me about the story like oh well what are the bloth where did the bloth come from like oh well let me tell you so uh it's it's fun I'm I'm excited to be here yeah yeah a lot going on for sure that that is that is a fact um yeah so and I'm kind of coming to the end of the uh of the the podcast here but um we've covered a lot of ground obviously today and yeah thanks for the questions this has been great yeah no this has been really interesting and I definitely like I said I wanted to have you on the Pod I saw Dean's piece in uh in games speed and uh and I read it and I was like wow this is really interesting and this is some pretty unique compared to to what I've uh what I typically see in the web 3 I like yeah yeah no no intrigued me so uh we cut a lot of ground but any kind of parting thoughts on on midnight uh

what are the some of the what are the things you're most excited by about what you're doing uh what are the the biggest opportunities you think for midnight and Evergreen that are untapped at the moment by anybody else yeah so I think a couple different things uh so the uniqueness of midnight right we're I like I like the term category leader for premium doua games in web 3 we're we're hitting that pretty hard our interoperability crafting systems is fairly unique in the way that users can come in and actually get payouts right it's not it's not hope it's like midnight knows how to make money we're cannibalizing that money we're giving it to the users so I think that's uh pretty cool um the way that we came in and started this podcast and we just talked about you know there's a lot of noise and how do we bring calmness to that and I think there's something magical about the you know 11:59 p.m. right before midnight there is a bit of calmness between those those hours and I'm hopefully we can bring I don't know I I think web 3 needs

something between a Mr Rogers and a Batman I'm not saying that's us but I think it's needed and so that's what I'm hoping to see in the next year is is voice calm voices will prevail in the space and real businesses will emerge interesting interesting okay um I like that answer I like that answer it's the it's a Goldilocks answer you know it's the the parge is just right so uh no I appreciate that okay well I think that's a great place I also hope we make a bunch of money I'm not above the money please don't think of me as some Saint the answer business business of games business of games absolutely and obviously with your your track record of you know selling gaming companies I obviously that kind of goes without saying that there is a monetary component to it and obviously investors and and token holders um you know should be excited by by those prospects um okay and the final question that I ask all of our guests uh this is new for 2024 but uh what three games are you playing or are most excited by at the moment H that's a good one uh well uh I I play fortnite weekly with my brother sister

and their kids um and my wife so we we play a lot of fortnite just amazing what they they you know what a fun familyfriendly game uh so maybe it's unfair because my nephews are like six and seven so they're playing on the switch and I've got my gaming computer and I'm just like in parties with them just you know knocking off six-year-olds uh I should get I should get my son to play you so my my is 10 and he is I'm proud Dad here but like he is objectively a very very good uh uh video game player in general but but fortnite in particular that's the one that's he straight up he straight up wins games like every four games or so he he wins like number one yeah I'm shocked told I've told him I'm sorry to take over your your question here but I I've told him I said I would like to retire on your Esports earnings please uh I'm I'm done you it's your turn now it's your turn he's 10 yeah he's 10 so anyways sorry keep going yeah I love fortnite I

suck at it but my my son is so good um are you I mean have you got him into the Red Bull training camp for fre eorts I think there's not yet and here's the crazy thing he only just started playing uh like two months ago so he play and he plays on his switch so he's he's uh's he's underpowered compared to what he could be doing so maybe I need to get him that big rig and the the the the the G it's like um Rocky right you know dryo had all that really cool equipment but Rocky was chasing chickens right so your son is chasing chickens right now you there it is it's gonna serve him well in life okay anyway sorry to take over your question but so fortnite great two more uh fortnite uh I beat balers Gate 3 as many people did 100% of our listeners have mentioned balers Gate 3 it was it was good yeah like I really enjoyed it uh and so my son was was being bornn the next month after release so I had to play the entire game uh before he was born cuz I

knew I would have no time and so we we got that in he's five months old now he doesn't play fortnite yet but uh I'm looking forward to what he does you're never too young to start that's right uh Star Trek Resurgence what I mentioned that's a great game I enjoyed that one um but there was an indie game called nobody Saves the World out of a small studio in Toronto Canada uh I really enjoyed it I mean it was it was this is more of the type of games that we want to um I have no affiliation with those guys although they're looking for a publisher um it it was a good game nobody Saves the World it was fun it was a fun little Co-op game fantastic I think you gave us a bonus one there I think that was four so thank you very much for that that's the baker dozen the baker dozen Baker Trio of uh of games for the for the N gaming podcast okay well this is a fantastic place to end uh on a on a on a fun note here Steve thank you so much for coming on the Pod today it was an absolute pleasure absolute pleasure thank you by guys cheers and a big thank 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 until next time friends stay crypto curious and feel free to send me questions guest recommendations and comments my email is Niko 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 a note at podcast novic . Co or find us on Twitter and Linkedin plus if you want to learn more about what navic has to offer make sure to check out our website www.nic.edu and advisory Services again that is www.nic.edu [Music]