Panel: Metaverse Everywhere: Distinguishing the Buzz From the Real Deal.

[Music] thank you [Music] so coming out next uh we have a star-studded panel uh which is going to be talking about uh the metaverse and distinguishing the buzz from the Real Deals so I'd like to invite Jason fazri David Linda and Andy to the stage and they can take it away thank you all right so we're running a little bit behind so uh we'll just kind of jump in and get started uh right away my name is Jason robar I've been in the video game business since uh joining Microsoft uh in 1994 to try to make Windows a actual

gaming platform instead of just a spreadsheet codec is which you can kind of say it might have started out as how do we put boxes on screens I got the chance to work at zone.com and work on MMOs and I've been running independent Studios for the past 20 years and mainly doing Virtual Worlds MMOs online games multiplayer games and and things that come close to maybe the topic of the metaverse or the concept of the metaverse but we've got a great panel here today and I'd like to just jump right in and have them introduce themselves and maybe you guys can give us a little bit of background of what brought you here to be on a panel about the topic of the metaverse when we talk about your introduction real quickly so I want we just start on the far side David and if you could talk about what brought you here today to be able to talk about the metaverse sure hi I'm David Mullen I'm I'm professor of game design at Art Center College of design but in my previous life I was I've been a game developer and producer since 1979. and probably games most known for

is Disney's DuckTales I have no autonomous scream Heroes of my magic 3 and and vampire the Masquerade bloodlines but Brown me here today is probably my experience I was a executive producer at this uh at the Spin Master toy companies uh software development Studio where I worked on MMOs based upon their toys tech deck and Bakugan and then most recently a couple years ago I was working for a television network developing a virtual world for smartphones based upon film fashion music and art I'm Linda Jiang from Singapore power Labs so for me it's pretty straightforward we're actually building a mattress it's called bite City my Bible actually is from mobile I used to build like a game developer services like analytics and advertising platform I mean this I mean right now my this is

the first job actually working for a game Studio which is learning a lot The Experience very exciting to be here today hi well that's my voice sounds like that's crazy uh my name is Andy Howell I've been working in games not nearly as long as you but no I've been working on games and in the game industry since 2000 um worked on such games as Halo Reach Destiny report to the original Fable was on the original Xbox Live platform team so I picked up some of the work that he did uh more recently and probably why I'm on this panel is I worked for a little company called High Fidelity if any of you remember it I found it by Philip Rosendale as their head of QA for quite some time before that was developing experiences in VR but I have a long story working in metaverses and working on MMOs I worked on worked at Arena moved across the country to work for

Kurt Schilling because I was in sing [Laughter] fun stuff like that so that is probably why I'm here today hi there my name is fosri zubair CTO and co-founder of lucid site I've been in the gaming industry about 15 years been working on everything from mobile titles console titles VR titles blockchain titles kind of across the Gambit probably here today because Lucid site was really early into the nft and blockchain space we kind of saw the opportunity of in-game economies I think we started in 2016. we did a nft with the Major League Baseball the first licensed branded one we did the first Star Trek Enterprise in our MMO that we created and went for a whole digital economy so from there we eventually kind of pivoted into hosting a ton of multiplayer games from decentral land to decentral games Pixel online and it was really about the underlying structure of how do we support and host and scale

different games which are effectively metaverses so I think that brings up the right topic there saying you know these are effectively metaverses um I think if we sat down and talked to each and every one of you individually out in the audience and each and every one of us up on the stage we'd have a slightly different background as to what we think the metaverse term means and so I think before we can really have an effective communication with all of you uh it'd be good to probably hear from all of you what do we actually think this term metaverse actually practically means so maybe starting starting back on this side if you could help help us what do you think the word metaverse means as soon as I think of a metaverse I think of like the first MMOs ever played you know EverQuest and I spent a ton of time playing Eve online in college and that for me has always been synonymous with metaverse because that was a place where I took on a character I joined a guild there was an actual in-game economy there was a solid gray Market where in college I used to make beer money selling resources at mine off an

asteroid belt and to me it was just the fact that it was this whole second life effectively kind of going through and uh playing a persona but making real friends friends I still have today um that's really a meta version the whole concept of like I think when we talk about metaverses in this context like there's the is there going to be one overall overall consuming metaverse kind of like ready player one or is it just gonna be a bunch of little ones that are all interconnected somehow and that's where I've oscillated over the years working this weather which one's the right answer or is there the right answer and then what the challenges are there Andy I would have to say if I were to define the metaverse to you or a metaverse to you because there's no d metaverse stop there's no V metaverse stop right now I would I would defined a metaverse as any time I have a transposable profile of identity now that can be anything that can be

anything that inspires and encourages interconnectivity with a sense of persona so I know big big brain words I didn't I had like three coffees can you tell [Laughter] but no seriously I I've been participating and working on metaverse's forever like the first time I played Ultima Online in the beta I was like this is this is something different the first time I logged on a prodigy net I didn't know it was called the metaverse but that's a metaverse to me and that always has been yeah I think this is a very difficult question to define a match verse I hope there is the metaverse then we don't need to say that we'll just say the name right like we don't say what is search we're Googling so I think one day will happen you know there's per there will be a product Define what the metaverse is and we're done in the market I think for me um I think a matter actually in Greek means Beyond and the verse could be universe so I think for me I think a metaverse is

kind of like a immersive environment and the Really connect a virtual world and the physical world so I don't think metaverse is purely virtual I think it's a connection so I can do everything what I do in the physically but I have a different experience I have a totally new experience I think that's for me is the metaverse and David all right I'm gonna go old school so there were the term metaverse came up in the 1982 cyberpunk novel snow crash and back then what it meant was a single gigantic immersive persistent 3D World that in which you can do anything go anywhere and you can take with your persistent identity Goods entitlements abilities all throughout it kind of that's that was kind of the dream for a long time nowadays I have to agree with everyone here the metaverse means

anything you want it to me so I was I was I mentioned before I was working for a television channel and I don't want to mention its name so I don't don't insult anyone but the product we were working on was called cinema world and in this game uh it was it was a a virtual world for smartphones but we had a limited amount of investment so so the owners of the company kept talking to investors and they kept saying oh well we're we're part of the metaverse that's who we are metaverse was anything to get an investors attention because that was a hot buzzword so really what it means now is anything you want it to mean okay so how about anybody in the audience does you've heard how our panel thinks about the metaverse is there someone in the audience that thinks there's something that really is defining to the metaverse that you think we all should have anybody or does that kind of cover it I've heard we've kind of touched on MMOs or kind of metaverses we talked on

um identity as a component yourself out there these things and say it's that transferability uh not just personas but transferability between digital and physical and between digital personas in different worlds but transferability at the at the very base level between physical and digital and digital and digital excellent yeah I like that word transferability is a nice one to add to the mix thank you so we heard you know a lot of us have had experiences with MMOs our Virtual Worlds is 3D required is virtual reality required what's is is it possible to be a metaverse that's text based um you know so is it a way to be able to connect transferability across physical and digital um what can include what can be included in a metaverse I think what's essential is easy connectivity to people and information

I I think it could be 2D I don't think necessarily has to be 3D it certainly doesn't necessarily have to be virtual reality or augmented reality it is anything that removes barriers online to getting where you want to go or doing what a minute I would still argue it should be 3D so I think you know people say my favorite could be also through the internet right so that's that's what I think I think still need to be 3D but I totally agree with you it doesn't have to be VR or ar truly have like a different you know different devices to experience the you know the work virtual world and I think like a like I said like you basically can do everything you couldn't do social you could do shopping you could do you know play games like what we we basically combine all metaverse we combine game community and the creativity all together so I think like everything you particularly for I think for matters generation they really spend

more time like to have a social activities in matter Works probably in the real world so I think the social going to be very very important part for the metaverse yeah I was what was coming into mind when both of you were talking was something that Fosters communication and collaboration is is a key part for YouTube it's not required for a metaverse in my mind of a definition like you can have a metaverse that is just transferable objects and you know personality like I could I can consider a metaverse you know just a leaderboard honestly but but in a modern term of what in my mind a successful meta versus is like you're both touching on is fostering communication and collaboration and in my utopian view of what I hope is creating experiences for people to do good for one another but also creating experiences for ownership creating experiences for identity creating experiences for

fun because let's not forget we make games [Laughter] uh you know you know one thing we were touching on here with metaverse is I think it's kind of key to me as I've kind of evolved through this industry and seeing where the space goes I think a user generated content and having the ability for users to create meaningful content in the game is going to be key even going back to Eve online which didn't really have a ugc system we would like Drop containers to spell out things or Mark out our territory or Define areas and we just use the tools that had in the game I think as this evolves when we start seeing true metaverses there needs to be a lot of creative freedom kind of like roadblocks for example or Minecraft like you could see those as being really close to what probably the future metaverse looks like every individual can create whatever they want and then with you know Ai and the whole new generative technology that's coming out it's Tech space today but

it's only going to be a few short years or months of this rate before you get full 3D objects and creativity all of a sudden gets unlocked right now you have my nephew who's six years old started a Blog on media and writing these amazing articles about just random topics all through chat GPT you just figured out how to use it and I think it's crazy to see watch him generate this type of information you take that and apply to the world of students artists or even individuals professionals that want to creating content it's almost like the metaverse was missing something it was a little too difficult to create content for a while now with this emergence of generative AI I think we could see a subtle change and eventually it growth into it so I think user generated content is probably going to be key to a true metaverse okay so I think we've kind of touched a little bit on the definitions of what we mean when we're up here trying to talk about this so let's then talk about why is it important um what is it that you see that this audience should understand about why the

metaverse is still something we should care about because didn't an article come out just a few days ago that said the metaverse is dead uh you know Facebook renamed meta has laid off you know lots of people that were working in the space so is the concept dead are we are we all just needing to work on AI and move on for metaverse or is there still something we need to care about I seem to remember an article a few years ago saying PC gaming was dead so I think it's happened about five times yeah the PC is completely dead yeah so I mean I take that with a grain of salt I think meta's concept of metaverse might be dead for them uh but you know it's about fostering Community we do this in reality already if I'm a car guy I'll get within a bunch of other car guys we'll talk about cars we'll work on it together I'm a tech nerd I love space games I will sit in Eve online for hours just talking about configurations and how we could tackle this raid better it's something I like to do I think that's kind of what

metaverses need to Foster I'm still back and forth on whether they'll just be one unified or what the actual end looks like um but yeah it's TBD for me I really have to see how technology changes and evolves and how we get there so there's one thing that comes to mind when you ask me why it's important say anybody remember something called the pandemic um my daughter's 11. story time she took to Roblox recently reluctantly she she likes to play on Zoom with her friends she plays Barbie She's 11 and she loves Barbie she wants to make toys I 3D print toys for her so her friends talked her into Roblox and not because they go to a bunch of different worlds or anything they have one world they all go to it's their world they go to and you know what they do there they play Virtual Barbies they play Virtual Family Games they're playing the same exact games they were

playing with Barbies but virtually in Roblox she's 11 and she still has play dates she still goes and sees friends and whatnot but her social life has this integrated digital component that I didn't have until I was a teenager and it was this like weird outlier at that point the metaverse is how our kids are going to interact with one another when they can't see each other in person and that is key for Social Development right now they need it they they have to have it they were star forever years so in the present the metaverse I see is that is why we need it but also I worked on High Fidelity and we had conventions in the metaverse I got to meet people that I never would have met I got to meet voice actors cool things my my daughter got to meet an egyptologist from the University of

Cairo giving a tour about nefertari's tomb and it electrified her wanting to know more about pharaohs and this female pharaoh she had never even heard about their school is never going to teach her about these experiences are why we need metaverses these interconnected things that expose us to new enriching experiences that's why I'm for me personally that's what matters in it yeah totally agree with you actually by the way I like Roblox as well I think they're actually quite a lot very very cool game you know casual game um and I think like a you know I think staff from Fair years ago people said Facebook is bad right nobody going to use Facebook anymore but now Tick Tock is still live so I think product will will be die because like a different generation will use a different product but the whole idea nobody will say social networking would die or social app is going to die it's not going to right you want to visit my message page like you know I got cool bands on it

like you know yeah yeah yeah yeah oh that's just some just I don't have that much time actually I think it's just during my time every time I'm ticked out anyway so I think um I totally agree I think that's kind of you know I mean your daughter like you know but think about all the Genesis all this whole younger generation that's the way they experience the world they experience their social life they experience their you know their um entertainment oh that's everything they kind of like the living that moment so I think that's very important that's also I think in particularly matters the fashion company are very actively to try it if you say the big partnership they're always like you know Florida or all this kind of big fashion because they realize by partnering with all the metabolous platform they can reach to the audience which they will never be able to reach to in the past or through any other channels all these younger

generation whatever they don't have money to buy the product right now maybe but they got a really clear brand image they probably buy something with their Avatar so but this is like a really good way to engage with their potential customer or engage with the market so I think that's from that perspective I think um you know it's still is this very very important and particularly I think they're already showing a lot of successful use case the brand getting involved in the matters yeah I think the metaverse is only dead as the go-to buzzword for getting investment right now it's AI That's the buzzword this is the AI edition of Pocket Gamer connect AI is essential for the metaverse it is essential for generating procedurally uh for for procedurally generated world it is important for curating content there is so much content out there reason why I met averse is important as as the rest

of panel has been saying it's for social connection it is for the democratization of content creation also another important thing is that right now we are a culture that celebrates ignorance and distress and expertise and I think the metaverse is an important tool for breaking that apart to give us access to the information and knowledge about others to expand our world and see things from other people's perspective so in the same vein of everything new is old um you know I might say with my first 300 Baht modem in the 80s logging into compuserver Genie um that might have been the very first steps into metaverses because you had an identity that identity transferred you could go into multiple games on some of those Services I worked at the zone.com where we had everything from Age of Empires to chess and everything in between and your identity would transfer across those those things so are we are

we trying to invent something new that in fact we could actually learn a lot of lessons from the past about safety identity transferability personas immersiveness community and social moderation are there are there lessons to already be learned from the things that we've already accomplished rather than thinking that we have to reinvent something new called the metaverse when Virtual Worlds and MMOs and online communities have existed for decades now and and developers like yourself David can learn or and leverage and share things that already went wrong things that already that we should we should avoid what are the what are the uh what are the things that we can learn from the past of what we've already accomplished in this space rather than thinking that this is a brand new field with with no knowledge to uh to reinvent well I mean there are new technologies being uh created all the time and expanding the the metaverse requires creating new technologies and getting over technological hurdles and

logistical hurdles and and all sorts of information sharing hurdles uh but one thing we must never lose sight of going back to the days of the earliest games it's all about the user experience whatever it isn't the tool that's important I mean the tool is useful but the tool is not the end result the technology is not the end result it is the experience if you're creating something call part of the metaverse or you call a part of something else the thing to remember is what human needs are you satisfying with it are you satisfied in E4 or meaningful experiences or novelty for creativity empowerment accomplishment uh social connectivity that's what you need to be focused on you need to be focused on whatever new tools come up whatever whatever buzzword we're calling them by it's something we've known all along sincerely days of the game it's all about the player and what engagement and

benefit are we providing to the player anyone else want to jump in on the topic what can we learn from the past instead of thinking we have to yeah I want to reiterate ask yourself why ask yourself what you're making can AI buzzword trigger word nfts blockchain whatever how does it make your product better do you actually need it because at the end of the day are you gonna be able to make this thing are you going to be able to ship this thing and everything that you add to it every feature that you add to it is going to complicate it it's going to make it harder it's going to add Tech debt do you need it do you need to create an overarching metaverse to achieve the goal that you're trying to to achieve I would love for you to but do you actually need it that's the avoid the hype like roll credits no yeah I went to Sarah

want to Jumping I totally agree right to think about why but I think as a we just talk about the user experience right this is key but a lot of time we don't know what is about the user experience now we don't know the why right just like Tick Tock example they become the best experience so I think that's from that perspective sometimes it will have to try something and then wrong try an arrow to figure that out why we need it or why don't we need it but of course we need to have like a data to back all the magic to say what we want to test but I think um you know without this new technology because my background actually my previously last five years I actually work in the AI space so I found the rather technology is amazing then sometimes maybe have just to get hand dirty and then craft something and then say maybe we don't need that I will say learning from history though I I've been in the meetings that are

like we're gonna to keep this metaverse alive we're gonna have to charge our users ten thousand dollars a month like we can't do it yeah I've been in the meetings you know that are like we didn't ship matchmaking so half of us are laid off today yeah so that's a case where we didn't add the technology and we should have so you need to really spend time honing in from my point of view unemployment would agree with me from my point of view why you need it so as an audience how many of you are involved in something that you would you would term the metaverse raise just raise your hand okay so just a couple and for the rest of you have you ever ever been in a virtual world MMO type type thing that you think of kind of as an as a consumer raise your hand if you've been in a so most of you experienced that Virtual Worlds so uh what is it that we can do new so we look at the we talked about a

little bit about the past that we've got a lot you know whether it's have a hotel or whether it's Club Penguin or whether it's Roblox um virtual worlds are nothing new we've been around for for well over 30 years um but what is the what is the what is it that a metaverse offers uh that's completely different than a virtual world or an MMO um uh that we can do that's that's that's new that's going to bring and address player needs or the consumer's needs you know oh my what what can we do that's new um I'm always looking for ways to to make it easier to reduce barriers from going from one experience to another I would have I would eventually like away so that I like I like MMOs I like I like being in different uh different uh fantasy world uh I would like an easy way to be able to transfer the to them

without the constant having to login and remember what passwords I'm using kind of easy transference Between Worlds and not make it not make it so difficult to uh to really navigate the internet uh through all these different walled Gardens I was about to say um one of the most effortless experiences I've experienced it's not even a metaverse but logging into any Disney related product same login same platform I want to look at Disneyland tickets same login I want to watch Disney plus same log I don't hack me well I mean just saying yeah but removing these walled Gardens making it easier for interconnectivity and some platforms are trying to do it some places like you know blizzard is got there but then you've I've got six launchers on my computer it's insane the amount of different

walled Gardens I have to navigate so that really resonated with me thank you that yeah I mean when we're talking about something new for the metaverse um I mean I go back to again I'll use MMOs an example because there always comes to a point of a Content wall like you know play New World until I've done everything I'm just waiting for the next contact drop and I remember when we first considered going into blockchain gaming the first thing we were considering is like okay this is going to open up the economy you know take those great markets legit and that for me was new and exciting and that would you know help the metaverse be born didn't exactly work out that way unfortunately and it's I think blockchain's still going to play a key part in future economies especially in gaming just because of the decentralized nature but really the struggle I think any any persistent meta versus interfaces content you're going to hit a Content wall you're going to have nothing to do this is where again generative AI even though it's buzzword and hot right now I think it has a lot

of value it's going to bring to games depending on how they're executed and implemented you know imagine playing World of Warcraft where the quests never end and it continuously evolves and the story lines get deeper and it's affected by the entire you know Society of players in there I mean we're care away from that with current large language models and AI Tech that exists so that's what really gets me excited that's why I really think AI might be that pivot we needed to really push the metaverse forward because without that you know we had this problem with our MMO we were constantly turning for Content adding more technical debt creating more problems for herself just trying to get more licenses more information more characters in there and we should just never play ketchup players would blast through that in 10 hours you know six months worth of work a number of like AI tools help our production team I really save a lot of time on them and the efficiency and I think the idea on top of that for the AI

if we just talk about AI perspective I think I think I was in another previous panel and people talk about the you know you used to interact with the bot and the most time you're interactive was about and about actually you know very very basic and sometimes stupid but I think obviously right now that all the Technologies they are actually be able to build a really smart agent the agent actually can involve themselves um the Recently I think it's damper and Google actually released a paper and they build like a 26 agent like a building a small community like a community-based agent and the average agent that have different task activities like the diet that can actually get up at six o'clock cook dinner I'll cook breakfast and the 6 30 the case will wake up and then like a seven o'clock everyone will eat a breakfast Etc the agent could have have their own task based on model churches using the language model itself so I think from that perspective I think still I mean with all these tools and no just give out help us to improve the efficiency but also help our users to be

actually engaged with something they will never be able to engage in the physical world I think that's the ability of mentors so I think we've heard a couple of good common common elements here of you know social looking at the at the actual uh end user and focusing on their needs um thinking about the identity can you truly have a social space if my identity has to change every time I go from one one game to another or one experience to another so identity portability seems to be really key because if social is key then I have to be able to find my friends my friend groups that I form my Clans or my guilds those need to to be able to be transferable as well so what are the other kind of really key things that anybody in this audience could take away from thinking about building experiences or being part of of those uh going forward that are just the really key takeaways from this that we that we've discovered besides focusing

on the end user David in your experience anybody in this room should know what going forward as a good key takeaway from thinking about the metaverse hey I'm going to tell Linda said and that was that we what I was saying before to find the user experience we don't know what the experience is going to be like so it's it's real important when you get excited about something to actually test it out on people there's a wide variety of users there are people at different levels of skill different levels of knowledge there are cultural differences between us we know words mean different things we have different capabilities and abilities I think that whatever we're developing before we get hooked into it test it out test test early test often whatever it is you're developing to make sure that you are indeed creating the type of experience you want

to create especially when dealing with new technologies uh and unfortunately that means when you're dealing with new technologies new technologies are evolving all the time I've worked on games using game engines while the game engine was still in development and uh and uh because uh because the game engine kept changing it invalidated a lot of the code that we're doing so when you're working with new technologies and you don't know what its effects are be prepared to spend a lot of time and a lot of money on testing and iteration hello yeah I think uh I think the most important thing if we talk about a metaverse is still about the engagement engagement so it's it is an experience right immersive experience but the players need to have something to do or the user need to do something no matter whereas if just explore the world doing you know experience some kind of bright experience or whatever

experience that's just knowing knowing it's going to be enough so I think the metaphors need engagement people need to feel as fun in the metaverse thousand percent agree um yeah I mean my real key takeaway besides purpose which they've touched on and iterate iterate iterate iterate iterate I can't say it enough iterate sharpen but also find the fun give a crap about what you're working on love it it's your world you're making a world if you're making a metaverse people are going to live in this world you're going to get fans of this world you're going to get people that this is their life I I every metaverse I've ever worked on I meet people where this is where they live I'm building them a house I'm building them a city I'm building them somewhere where they're gonna find

purpose that's a responsibility don't take advantage of them don't be good be good to them best advice I can give yeah to touch on David's point there with the ever-changing technology we currently have and just principle in my companies have always lived by is trying to fail fast you know try not to get into the weeds you know you have a concept like how quickly can we get to a proof of concept how quickly can we put this in front of people and see if it works and I've seen especially when we were running our SAS hosting solution hosting like 2500 games so there's a lot of insight a lot of developers building metaverses and you could go years before they're getting in front of their end user and just burning money burning a Runway where he could have probably done that in three months and proved your concept or iterated your idea so fail fast because that's going to lead you to the end solution like is this fun I already go in the right direction now we've got a great panel here so

we've just got a few more minutes I'd like to make sure if there's any questions from the audience that you get a chance to ask these folks or contribute to uh I see a hand back there hey guys great talk um I'm curious to what's you you think about like specifically blockchain metaverses and where they might be doing things right or failing the audiences that they're trying to tailor towards at the moment um you guys touched a lot about you know existing metaverses that have been around for like 30 years now and everything and I you know Avid MMO gamer and everything but with the new advent of like blockchain technology and everything I noticed you haven't hit too much on those um wondering what your thoughts are on them so the promise of blockchain for for the metaverse yeah uh blockchain versus that's exactly what we started with in 2016-2017 um and what we did was we got the our MMO up and running within I think a year and a half of development we got a live economy up and running tied to the blockchain working and we thought like

even though we were close to First there would be a lot more that came out what we've seen what we continue to see today most blockchain metaverses are incomplete so either it's a metaversary of transactions and no fun or they have a vertical slice of fun they're still in development it's really hard to judge any blockchain meters that exists today because they're not done yet so my thought comes back to a lot of them have great Concepts I'm worried that you know they're in development hell and they'll never get them like most games um that's the scary part the base concept if you could really open up that economy and have free trans free ownership and easy transferability of items between users and there's purpose and missions and things you could do amazing it's awesome that's exactly what I'd love uh in World of Warcraft or Eve online without having to go you know gray Market but I just I haven't seen a good one yet or one that's done check out game yeah but we don't we don't say about three metaverse we think about wipe 2.5 is actually in the middle so

um yeah so the game actually still option but the assay is action so the asset could be transferable but we gave the power to the user so when user purchase all this outside they could choose they want to Mint as an IP or not so because we think it's user's choice we don't have to force everyone has this kind of you know the rpk you know to block people I think it should be open to everyone if Vibes three users they want to own the asset they can and will also support the cross chain because we think people want to actually they had their you know they they they they they their own preference or choice and another thing we're doing is really we open we open up so for people who have their existing iot collection we work with lost partners and then they can actually uh just using that NRP connection we're actually in our own avatar we have a place to show their Nifty so then they can bring up that status right so all their friends in our

matters will know you know their Apes how their their um you know so that's kind of thing I think we will also you know work with all the other MRT projects you know how to build the whole ecosystem yeah I was gonna add a Hi-Fi at least our time as a blockchain to introduce obscurity and scarcity into items so it was up to the user to create the item if they wanted to have one minted or ten thousand minted um and it really enabled people to have ownership of their items and the problem that we ran into was adoption of coin for buying items and the because we were early right we were very early nft wasn't even a term really yet we just were storing our items on blockchain that was cool that was something that enabled us to give users ownership of their items but the problem that we ran to was the like like David said the friction of

people being able to convert into Hi-Fi coin and by their items with it we ended up having a Giving Tree that would just Sprout Hi-Fi coin every once in a while so people like populate coin into the world we were just giving money away so if you're going again if you're going to use the technology make sure it adds something to your product and it's a solution so yeah question over there so general question about uh the future of game developers in the metaverse um I don't want to embarrass David with old work but I'm actually replaying Bloodlines one and I'm thinking about like what is Bloodlines three look like you know and I'm a I'm a 3D artist I'm a creative person let's say that AI really and procedural generation really like allows uh game developers to to create those things without having artists

custom crafting each asset what does a creative job look like for um either a Storyteller or an artist is that are they curating are they dungeon mastering um you know are they producers essentially on like a reality TV show where what is what are the jobs of the metaverse 10 years from now I think the jobs are still very much like it is today um you are going to have uh I mean the AI tools for for generating of code and art and story are getting better and better and better so maybe that we still have coders and we still have artists and we still have writers but they're using AI as tools to maybe helping them get past some of the hurdles get some of the the drudgery done or or some of the bulk have been done but they're still I still think they're going to be able to

go in and refine it and make it better uh AI I think AI is going to get better and better and better but uh still has a long long way to go before it develops human level of creativity human level of Common Sense human level of what is appropriate and inappropriate uh this one's actually a pretty interesting question because we've been prototyping this new app and it's a robot chatbot type of thing and it has spatial animations and we came up with three weights for how it moves its eyebrows depending on the context of what it's saying and responding to instead of just going through the normal way of getting an artist to do morph targets uh and determining okay this happy sad surprise we actually went through and we trained the large language model when it gave a response to give three values for each of those morph targets and we would basically say well this was a happy response angry response had we did about a thousand different scenarios the cool thing about that is in a conversation now with this it's not just doing that same motion

it's actually interpolating between this and you're getting a much more natural face motion but to that point we still had an artist create the robot create the initial sets we still let the engineer kind of develop the framework for this we just took out that one step of having to create you know a thousand different animation sets and they're just like okay just give us the weight on what you think they should be trained you on what we think it should be and then let it kind of evolve and emerge this new type of setup so it's a small example it's a prototype app but that's kind of how I see the workflow changing like those little steps that you could maybe replace with an AI okay uh with that we are over time so we're going to wrap up right here but uh thank you so much if you guys would join me in thanking the panel uh for their time and uh before you rush off to lunch if you guys want to you know go up and introduce yourself to these folks and thank you uh for the panel and thank you guys for the audience a wonderful topic and enjoy the rest of your day and uh your lunch thank you for thank you for

moderating oh thank you [Music] [Applause] thank you