The Metacast by Naavik: Roundtable - What We Learned at GDC 2022

[Music] and i thought okay i'm gonna try this and i walked up to them and i said hello i meant to be speaking with people i don't know can i join your conversation and they looked at me really awkwardly and they said oh we're having a meeting i'm so excited [Music] hi everyone welcome to the metacast dynamic round table oh my god it's happening if you watch the youtube video we're waving from the same room we're all at gdc so this is going to be a little bit of a gdc special episode um we were talking about being in nico's room what's your room number three or four three or four so if you're opening a bar tab

hotel name undisclosed oh yes so tell them undisclosed yes and i'm joined by david aymour um i think you already know him from past episodes at ceo at payment um nico rick sits down yes um investor at bitcraft and co-hosts at the metacast from the crypto corner and also joined by fosie tani oh that was it was a good try yeah i i tried i forgot in the meantime um investor at four runner ventures so i don't have my notes today so i'm i can make mistakes yes i am totally winging it and content lead uh uh master the meta also from navic we got two hosts yeah 50 hosts i have to stop myself from like trying to host this oh do you want to do you want to do like a second round of intro no no no no you're done great maybe no no actually david and i are hosting today though

that would be funny let's keep it on focus you know people are not here too yeah so we're going to be talking about what we've experienced at gdc so far and talking from our different perspectives i'm here as a product manager attending diligently all of the conferences and reporting back to my teammates at hutch and what are you doing here david uh sort of taking the temperature of the games industry that's a good thing to do at gdc just talk to people randomly i've been coming here enough for long enough to know enough people to sometimes i just do a circuit around the moscone and run into for the purpose of running into people and having random conversations and that helps me sort of inform my view on the games industry so it's not very scientific don't actually sad to say you don't go to the conference anymore itself so i'm glad that maria you are and you can represent you know the the content at the show i shall try yeah how about you nico what are you doing here i try not to get

stabbed walking around san francisco honestly like are we can we touch up on that for a bit it's it's been crazy so yesterday i went from from our hotel to a a bar where bitcraft was organizing drinks and i would like i'm not scared easily but i felt like unsafe did you walk through the tenderloin no it would no all right i don't know i know what direction it was but it was um it got pretty sketchy i was there it was sketchy it was sketchy so um i heard things like people saying that gdc next year wasn't going to be in san francisco is that is that true i wouldn't think so it's an institution here for many years it's san jose at one point or a couple of points but pretty much moscone for the last 25 years i think fake news yeah anyway and apart from that i'm i'm very much meeting you know new like companies like new and old friends um but got a bunch of new inbounds like new projects uh bitching and i've loved that i mean i've been

doing zoom pitches for the last you know a half year and this is really fun you know just talking to people connecting you know having a drink it's just different um yeah been loving it it's been great how about you fosey what are you doing here my my uh experience is a little bit different i think than everybody else i actually live in san francisco so where you don't hate um it's actually beautiful here in some areas but aside from that you know just representing novik at various events that make sense to you and also meeting friends i've been sort of on the peripheries of the game industry for so long now that i only know people over phone and zoom that it's just really great to see everybody especially everyone here in the room it's just fun getting together i'm really excited you know everyone talks about that the fact that uh you know if it feels like a long time since we've been able to do this kind of thing in person i've been to a game events since covid but this is the first one where everybody's here and i don't you

know does anyone know what the attendance looks like at the event itself certainly in the bars and hotels around it seems as busy as it ever was but maybe that's just a biz dev thing uh anyone know what numbers are no idea i heard someone say 80 000. but i have no idea whether that's no i don't know i might have been just hearing [Laughter] yeah i think my experiences are the trend right now is to work from home and hybrid working but i actually feel like i want to live on a compound with my co-workers because we're all in the same hotel in this whatsapp group and every morning i wake up to people saying oh i'm going to the gym oh i've just ran 5k so i'm just going to the gym every morning out of peer pressure and it's great i think we should all live together in the company cisco ethos silicon valley you know trying to get you on the google compound

awesome yeah i i personally hope that gdc will be in a city that's not san francisco it's been lovely to see the the city and it's it's beautiful it has amazing food but i agree with nico that i also have just personally felt a little bit unsafe especially when walking back from events um in the evening back to the hotel on my own and it's quite distressing i find to see also homeless um like people who are clearly going through some mental illness without support i don't know it's just it's just quite difficult to absorb the happiness by seeing that no not i hear you loud and clear i think it's general sentiment here in san francisco and if tournament organizers are of tournament conference organizers if you're listening just know that that feedback is you know echoed by a lot of people i think at this point and so i think it's just important to recognize that like yeah that's how people feel about coming here for a conference now yeah

maria how has your experience been i know you are attending these events as the three others who aren't attending the events how have they been what have you been watching the weight the weight i'm carrying um i'll also represent a little bit the feedback i've been getting from my friend who was also attending the conferences and he's a he's a programmer so he has a bit of a different experience that i have i think in general he's enjoying the conferences like he's learning about problems solved technically and just seeing new ways and sharing learnings about the experiences from from other companies but honestly from a product perspective i find that the level of the conferences in terms of the content and trying to i had the expectation coming from gdc that i was going to leave here knowing new secrets um understanding from people's failures and experiments and just being able to bring those tools back to my job when i i go back to london and immediately being able to put them into practice and i'm just not finding that right now and

nothing against the speakers because i i think they're doing a great job and the content is engaging i think just at the end of the day i don't know if gdc has hasn't been trying to line up very innovative content um yeah i mean i i think it's also you can sometimes get lucky and sometimes get unlucky in a day because what do you tend to go to if you go to the sessions it's like maybe two four or six over the course of the day and not all of them are going to be great like i've been well i've done it it feels like maybe a 40 50 hit rate often you'll go into one hour session and within five minutes you go ah it's not i shouldn't be here the trick is to be at the back i think so you can swerve out but not either but but then you hit one and i still remember you know certain talks but just i still remember now that's been really important and helped me build games and give me new ideas and you know you only need one or two of those over the course of the week to make it a good week

and i would say that given the quantity of people that uh submit talks i mean it's really hard to talk here so uh the quality of everybody's trying to submit talks would be interesting so if it's if there's a failure maybe it's around the curation but certainly people are giving it their a game if you're speaking here and everybody wants to speak at gdc so it ought to be the best is there is there a certain sense of prestige coming sure speaking at gdc yeah what is that i mean i've spoken a couple of times at gdc and uh yeah it is a big deal to get uh picked because you know that i don't know the numbers would inspire me if it was one in five one in ten they get picked and uh and also you're addressing a large international crowd that are there for for the reasons you say maria to hear the best people speak so of course there's some prestige if it's difficult to speak here if the barrier entry is high then you know it feels good to to be doing that

what are um some of the major topics that are being discussed here this like over the like during gtc you have the indie game track the ai summit track uh free to play trucks and ai track and a few more that i'm i'm forgetting i think there's a lot about our direction as well and i think for me the main the main takeaways and i think you're really right david i think it probably comes from the curation about the submissions that are being selected because all of the speakers is very high quality in terms of how they're presenting their their content it's more the content itself of the pitch that they're trying to to share and but i think um i went to uh free to play in the free-to-play summit understanding nfts a sea change for free to play games and that was really interesting i think you had a big audience it was nearly packed that was from free-to-play game development and

it was i think it was really well positioned to that audience in trying to explain what the opportunities could be and what that could mean for the free-to-play games industry um and there were lots of interesting questions i think the the speaker did did really well and the other one that i found really interesting is not even from my area um it was it was by um a narrative designer from king and she was explaining the narrative design process and it was really product focused it was it was almost as if i had been taken out the user research from a product management book and it was really impressive to see the the effort that goes behind finding the best narrative for candy crush soda and how that keeps players engaged and how they do user research it was just overall very interesting and unexpected why was it unexpected that they were really being transparent about the process

i i thought it was going to be about more tech technically doing the narrative design and so i think i was surprised i was just dropping in because there was um nothing else i was particularly interested in i wasn't expecting to get much out of it as a professional yeah from the talk yeah and yeah seeing that whole process and understanding more of the inside of of king i've always wondered how they have such big teams for mobile free-to-play games and i think that i finally understood oh okay yeah this is why they need this amount of people per game because it just goes so in-depth with their user research and perfecting individual elements of the game i love that so it does seem like there have been a few talks that have been impactful um and i guess on the flip side is to you and nico and david is being at gdc for business and david you talked a little bit about the qualitative aspects that you get from the industry we'd love for you to

touch on that and nico it strikes me that you have learned a lot on the internet these past two years and i'm curious how that transition has been being in person and talking to people maybe david we can say yeah um i like the event because it's built you know the whole event is centered around people building stuff so e3 which is selling stuff and dice which is pure deal making really or nearly purely deal making here it's mostly two-thirds of it is about building games and then you have a business aspect on top so already it's a sort of more wholesome show with more people who are you know creative uh i think that anybody that's on the business side is going to be here so you can be if there's anybody that you need to speak to then at least somebody from each company is going to be represented and they're here to talk with people like me that are building things so uh that's that works well as everybody wants to speak to and and also to for me to hear i've got nothing to pitch here i'm not

looking to raise any investment so it's really just finding out the kind of things that they're interested in in getting behind commercially which is so you can i can just have an easy conversation without the field and need to without needing the feeling they need to pitch and uh get a sense of where where they think the market's going and that helps me understand whether or not it's going to be tough for me to get investment at some point in the future and what the partnership opportunities are and also i spend a lot of time at gdc talking to people that want to know what i think about things i think it's important that if somebody sends me a message i'd love to pick your brains about what you're doing in the loop verse david then i wouldn't be a good person i said no i'm just focused on just doing what i'm doing here and i'm not going to give you any time so about a third of my conversations around that i suppose i find it also that meeting in person gives you the possibility to diverge from the original

goal of the meeting that you set it's like you know when i'm on a zoom call i have like my agenda almost like when i talk it to a project um and they're pitching i'm like okay i want to know you know at these points in my head that i want to touch upon and then i want to like already form an idea about like next steps and stuff and now it's like you know when i don't know what to say i'm like so what game are you playing and why is it ellen ring and then uh [Laughter] so a shout out to manu and then this uh you know mpc aggression um that stuff made me laugh by the way anyway so um it's it's been great you know just just chatting with people and and you know getting to know the person and that stuff is so different you know on that note so i had a a casual meet with an investor like a little couple of hours ago and nice guy we're just sort of two in fact then people will come up and say oh you just moved to santa barbara oh that's nice how's your kids and like you you don't get that in a zoom call like people say oh you should meet that guy's from xbox he oh you did that oh i did this yeah and then now it's some sort of free form people coming and going i

think if you're trying to pitch something and lance that's a pain but if you're just having a casual conversation it's a much more three dimensional i'm smiling because in master the meta we so often write about you know xbox did this sony did this like x studio raised this much money to compete with this studio in this category and it strikes me that you're saying it's very collaborative here and that people are willing to share and be open with the knowledge that they've accrued over the years or if they're new to like explore and be sort of like enthusiastic about the games industry and part of what i'm really excited about for gdc is just like to reinvigorate that passion for games and just being around people who are equally passionate if not more passionate about the industry than you know everybody i've talked to previously i told this story to you maria the other night but i remember once playing uncharted the first uncharted which is on playstation three remember getting in the office we were making playstation three games at the time it's

the sequencing uncharted that was playing where the building that you're in big building starts to crumble away and fall down and uh that and the physics and everything collision work perfectly so it feels like you're in a building that's collapsing and that is technically so hard to do honest you know i i never worked out to do it you know you've got to everything's moving around you've got to figure out the collision anyway we like two months ago we've been trying to figure that in the office how did you get it done and then there was a talk from insomniac which probably wasn't the title but it might as well have been how we did that building collapsing in uncharted and like you know frame by frame this is exactly like brought up his computer you could see his editor that he was using like absolutely exactly how we did it not like abs in an abstract sense but let me show you the lines of code that i wrote in order to achieve that and that level of openness is you know i think that's part of the wholesomeness of it it's not people protecting stuff i also like to think that the reason why he could be open

about that is because by the time he's talking about it he's already doing something that i'm going to be worrying about had to do in a year's time because the industry moves at such a pace but nonetheless you know for it's like a magic trick that we're all trying to figure out who does it and then he's good enough to stand up and say exactly how he did it and insomniac is okay with him doing it because they he's a talent magnet at this point people want to go and work with him or do the same stuff that he's doing her yeah yeah so you know and and that's happened many times and it sounds like in a sense that's what happened with you and when the narrative designer king is saying let me pull back the curtain on how we get that done you go oh you know you only ever work at one company at one time and therefore you don't see these parallel worlds in parallel companies that are going on so gdc has a chance to say well here's how we do our thing and that maybe just is interesting to you or maybe it informs what how you go about doing your next thing or maybe gives you an idea to do something else but good opportunity to soak that up isn't

it yeah and as a funny story when i first saw david um before the conference started he said oh you know it's really important go and network just walk up to sign one random and ask them what do you do who are you and so i tried that oh yeah i did try it yeah i walked i was i was searching the area and there was only people one to one so i thought they're probably having a private conversation i should try to find a group okay so i saw these three guys and i thought okay i'm gonna try this and i walked up to them and i said hello i meant to be speaking with people i don't know can i join your conversation and they looked at me really awkwardly and they said ah oh we're having a meeting david david what did you suggest you know i did the same thing follow my own advice i just walked up to somebody hi i'm david who are you he says you know i'm rory i said what do you do he says i'm the sound guy here

but you know don't one one defeat you gotta you know don't you can't take that knock back yeah right just just keep going powerful there is a happy story because then i did it again today and and i managed to meet um [Music] a studio that is based also in london so it's quite random so now we're going to meet up when i'm back in london oh there you go yeah that's a happy ending that is a happy ending manufactured serendipity love that yeah i have um i can make a suggestion to you know people who come to gdc and are raising rounds um i feel like there's two types of teams that i speak to or founders that i speak to one of like some of them are have made an agenda and they want to leave gdc with like you know uh like term sheets and the others are like you know i'm just gonna come here and i'm just gonna get to know investors and it kind of as an investor you kind of feel which type of founder you're speaking to and i think that

the people that go away and well that come here with the intention to just get to know people are actually leaving closer to a term sheet than the one that actually come with the intention of getting a term cheat and that makes sense it's like unless like there are some people who are just naturally really good at fundraising right um but others yeah and and like i've been on the i've done my share of fundraising rounds and um i was very good and uh like i can from the other side of the table right now say that you know um to try to try to you know approach an event like this especially if it doesn't happen too often more as a you know getting to know people because you know if you're chill and relaxed as a person like like i'm like i like you you know i want to hang out with you and that is probably most important when it comes to getting funded let me ask a question about that are people pitching with like decks like powerpoint presentations on their laptops or is it all conversational uh both okay and i don't necessarily have a preference um i think yeah i think both are useful

i guess it also depends on what you want to show like if you have something like like video or something you want to show then a deck makes sense um i think most people do have decks and they use that to pitch i've had pitches without decks but that those were companies that i already knew so um so yeah a bit of both i think decks are definitely not a no-go i think and nico are people actively seeking you out or is this more like fluid like people are just you know talking to you and they just open up their laptop no no no it's it's it i mean they come with an with an agenda you know i i do notice that um i've so i've put on on twitter and linkedin that i was gonna be here and i'm happy to meet up um and so a bunch of people reached out and and most of them were actually talking to me not because i'm interesting because i'm because i've i potentially invest in them which is fine you know uh i'm happy to do that that's my job um and then um i've also had a bunch of meeting requests through the gdc like i don't know platform good stuff but i like if you're contacting me there

i'm so sorry like i have like so many messages there and i haven't looked at them um so if you really want to get in touch with me like reach out on linkedin and or twitter bigger chance for that so yeah you are interesting nico we love you thanks thanks david on the flip side sorry marie i don't mean to interrupt but um i'm just curious like what would your advice be to founders who are approaching gdc as a funding event uh i never found that um i found it and i'd say the same thing with e3 same thing with dice that trying to pitch something with a view to getting millions of dollars in squinting in the sunshine or trying to turn up the volume so you can see the sound of a video you're really just not doing your justice to the game or the company it's just really not the best way of getting those ideas across now what i what i always i don't really do this so much anymore but if i was pitching to studios then i'd always go to there to the company so i'd go and go to

playstation's office or go to microsoft office because then you're more likely to get a good quality time you're more likely to get more people in the room you'll be connected up to their tv in the you know in the meeting room and then you'll go for lunch and you'll probably go out for dinner if you're staying over and just get a much better opportunity to describe what it is that you're doing to the people that you're hoping to invest money whether that's project financing or vc financing i suppose so i don't think uh events are the best way of putting across what is you're trying to do i agree with nico it's more sort of getting to know you and some of that is he getting to know you is here's the games we're making but i think if you're if your final slide is oh you know we want this match million many millions and here's a small spreadsheet that explains how we're going that's not the deck to be that's not the thing to be presenting do you think it's partly because of the costs of coming to the conference that you maybe people get nervous that they must have a guaranteed return from the investment that they're making of coming

to something that's quite an expensive investment especially if you're bootstrapping and you don't have that that investment ready to yeah maybe or maybe they feel it's expected um that if you're meeting somebody that can invest then to not ask for an investment seems odd but that just isn't how it i don't think that's how it works but it's not how it's best i feel like um in searching investments is the more desperate it becomes the more important it is the less comfortable you feel the more stress you are the less likelihood of success you'll have like very paradoxically and so i think but i think you're right maria i think i remember going to conferences when i was raising not gdc those are like payment conferences which are like million times as boring as this one um and so i remember like those being quite expensive as well and me thinking like i need to make the best out of this and taking the wrong approach you know the one i just described you shouldn't do so i was like going i was expecting like i

i need like term sheets or like good leads coming back instead of just like i want to get to know people that are investing and i think that like yeah that's um that's again the approach but i i totally get that why why people would you know come here it's expensive right uh just staying here you know if you have to have a flight i think like staying staying here is by far the most expensive thing for me at least the flight was like five times as cheap as the hotel or something you did you were telling me earlier that you're glad you came to the event i mean you think it's a fun event overall or well describe it from now on i'll i'll be at gdc each year not for gdc but just because people are here honestly like i i live in brussels which is like in gaming terms the middle of nowhere nothing happens there um and so i'm just happy to see people you know and just hang out i'm always jealous of people talking like i live in new york and i had me like a lunch with that guy and met that guy um so anyway i'll be here each year so um if you want to start prepping and reach out for next year i'm uh 100 down i think my my takeaway from this is uh

travel to brussels to give nico company i mean uh it's it's a good idea yeah yeah i'll um i'll hang with you 100 and and you have good content for newsletters subsequent navic you know you you absorbing content that you can see that's going to come out in the form of new letters or magnetic thanks for the plug david uh and if anybody who's listening has watched a gdc event that they particularly liked please send it fosee novik dot co uh we'd love to you know feature it in the newsletter obviously like there's a lot of conversations and talks happening and i'm gonna miss a lot of them but if you particularly resonated with one do reach out with it i that's the beauty of gdc they open source it after the event you don't necessarily need to attend what do you mean by you mean they put it up on youtube or their vault yeah on their vault yeah yeah is it me or is it does it seem like if you come to gdc and it's almost a waste of time if you're doing all of the presentations

well it depends where your job is if your job is a developer to write code and then you're sitting in a bunch of code conferences new you know until dusk that's the best way of spending gdc it's just that you know maybe is it them worth to come here like isn't it then better to just stay at home and watch the like the you know the the the videos at like to to exceed something uh maybe i i even when i was attending for the content then it's still just not the same it's a very expensive you know it's hard to justify and you know somebody that would run a studio where people want to come out to gdc then it's it's tough because a lot of people want to come but it's like 5-10 grand ahead or something and particularly if you get a pass right policies they're not inexpensive but so it is it's hard to justify but at the same time you definitely pick up on some sort of macro things

it's hard this may be hard to put a value on but it's certainly important yeah yeah i think um i'm here mainly to attend the conferences and i think the experience is very different depending where you are in your career for example i've been in games maybe two two and a half years so i don't have a big network i don't have these big dinners um and secret parties that i can attend i only i can only attend what's put out in a in an agenda that is public to to everyone and so i still think it's worth having one or two people from a company come here and even as a even as an investment in the mind opening opportunities and conversations for someone in your company that's not a leadership level to have because just the debates that i've had in lunch breaks meeting people who are with some of my co-workers talks in the pub you just discuss things and it helps you

just think about the same topics you consider every day in a different way and i think that's that it brings more richness to the thought of people who are doing like the day-to-day work and going to the conferences right i still think it's valuable but i wouldn't bring the entire company to come to the conferences because as long as you just have some people doing some summaries of the most interesting takeaways yeah maybe it should be if you if you assume that it's people like doing it then maybe if if performance of that person has been great then that seems like uh it's a type of bonus in a way or is that yeah is that okay to think of it like that i certainly i would have done there's occasions when i begged my boss to come to gdc and that felt like a good reward i was happy to take that that feel more valuable than i know a thousand pound in my pay packet extra david on the flip side are you here do you have any intention to recruit or keep your eye out on talent that maybe

you've been speaking to that you know like is here obviously it's like the biggest concentration of people today i mean it's not the you know i don't know what proportion the games industry is here but there's not it's a tiny proportion of the programs and artists but it is people that i might form a company with at some point so i was at a conference not this one i don't know earlier in the year and people are saying how do you find who a cto or how do you find a cro or you know that that leadership team you know what would you put a job ad out and of course you don't that's not really how it works and the only answer i could get uh give was a not particularly useful one which is you have to have started a relationship five years ago by knowing that person and having a beer with them and understanding what they're doing and finding out if they were aligned so it wouldn't necessarily be programmers and artists and designers like here at higher and i have no idea when i'm meeting people it's not with a view to maybe we'll set up a company at some point in the future but getting to

know those people that you i guess might yeah is useful and also knowing people that are running other companies so you can talk about what you know what they're doing and what skills they look for and just getting so it might not be a direct recruitment but certainly mapping out that a little bit is useful yeah and you know i've i finally had a chance to chat with you david and you nico maybe an hour or so and you say and to be the takeaways i had from our conversations was more rich than i could have got from watching i don't know 24 hours of these conference videos because it's it's tailored to what you're feeling in that moment what you're experiencing in that moment in your career and what you're doing at work um you get to ask specific questions that will help you in that moment and maybe you're you're going through a challenge or i i don't know but you get to just have

tailored conversations about your specific context which i think is invaluable when compared to conferences which are also valuable but they're more generic and not tailored to your needs in that particular moment is it do you think it's useful from a career orientation point of view like mentorship it's on the spot mentorship to be able to speak with so many different people in a small concentrated amount of time and just get all of these inputs and you do get that from your co-workers in your day to day but you just see the same people over and over again and i think it's good to just have that moment of time when you get to expand the conversations you're having with a completely new network of people that you don't have in in your job i'll give a different perspective i know haven't really talked about my experience that much and my experience is i guess very different i went to my first event on sunday evening and i felt

like gdc at gdc yeah i felt like such an outsider i didn't really understand where people were coming from like everybody around me was like i work in games i do this in games and i was like i write a newsletter about games and like i helped run a consultancy in a research firm that's pretty cool i guess but then people started coming up to me and being like oh yo your newsletter helped me get a job and like yeah it really helped me be confident about what it is that the games industry is providing and like i recognize your name like you write for this or like you've been on the podcast and that was so validating um and it's just like really great to i guess be a part of an industry that's like welcoming and collaborative because i definitely had some imposter syndrome going to my first in-person event and like chatting with people who i didn't really know um that's awesome yeah i hope for it to continue and i hope for it to like continue for all the novik crew because

you know we we put in a lot of time on the side and this is just like an extra bonus for us to like come in and chat about the stuff we just chat about in our day-to-day lives i guess i think it's also a story of why you should sometimes throw yourself into things without you know i started doing this podcast without any idea of any kind of end game yeah you know and it's fine to not to have it in game and it's nice when you do things and then they they work out and then you meet people that say that they appreciate that or it's been interesting or useful to them in some way then yeah i think we're just having a moment team beautiful i love it my um like one of the takeaways i have um so i've also only recently joined the gaming industry right and i had like this i don't know preconception about you know i thought the typical game developer or builder was going to be way more like you know the the worst version of the typical gamer

that you would see in movies and stuff right um and i i honestly like all the people that that are here are like such awesome people that i'm i'm like oh it's it's been great and i think um you know the the people actually building games are uh are awesome who were you expecting yeah that's what i'm wondering like like some sort of hacker nerds that were pretty much yeah okay all right we are closeted i was uh i was at this event last night and uh one of the speakers goes who plays fortnite and of course like nobody plays fortnite except for like 13 year olds um that's that's not true okay excuse me excuse me the bartender raises his hand everybody bursts out oh that's good that's a good gdc moment yeah what do you what's um can ask nico i guess at the risk of making every podcast have some nft blockchain element what do you think is the sentiment that

you're getting in sort of nfts versus the world how are we going to describe that but you know obviously there's sort of something of a divide between traditional gamers and this new type of games industry and maybe it's the first time that both parts have got together i mean i'm well i haven't been too much of gdc itself right i've been mostly here meeting other people around it doing side events and stuff and most of these stocks have been with people who are much into like what 3 and blockchain and gaming and that stuff so honestly like from my point of view it's um like it seems like you know this like honestly all of my talks have been around blockchain gaming and that's probably just because that's what like people like i'm interested in and what i invested as well so i think this question should probably be asked to um to maria and and like what has been the vibe you've noticed within like you know maybe talks you've seen or people conversations you've had or picked up on around this blockchain

stuff oh gosh um okay i need to collect my thoughts because i do i do have a lot of thought um so coming from free to play games with some casual interest in understanding the blockchain world just out of pure personal interest i think the vibes that i've been getting is at first it was interesting to see all of the web 3 related talks which were on the free-to-play track they were all packed there's interest that compared to how the conferences were but it's not about web3 and i think that shows some evidence that people are curious potentially to learn but it's not its own somebody mentioned it to me like this today they say you should always keep an eye on what's a summit summit is like the new uh like not quite enough to make its own track it's not design it's not art it's not so they make you know in time gone by it would be facebook game summit or it would be

mobile summit or something like that and after a while it just becomes part of the industry and it's not a summit so just keep an eye on what the on the summits i i was at an event you know i'd heard the same thing the the the the nft talks were well attended which was a surprise to me i went to an event of ceo's sort of networking event this great event on on the monday and then gabby from ygg did the final talk and um you know to me that's very interesting whatever you think about it's a new part of the games industry and uh it's real it's happening and uh he spoke for a while and all the questions at the end were in fact somebody asked like who's learned something new about nfts through gabby's talk and uh two thousand people put their hand up who's changed their mind about nfts and uh nobody put their hand up and the questions were all uh you know but there's nothing here that you can do without blockchain technology and i'm i think how long do we how at what point do you say this is

something new and it's real i'm pretty like how many years so i wonder whether or not it's really interesting to see the contrast and admittedly it's a small poll isn't it it's a small test but like i wonder whether or not the ceos and people with established businesses are saying i don't like this new stuff thank you i've got my own business i'm happy making money i don't need anything new coming along whereas maybe people that attend the event that might be younger you know or in a less senior position will see it more as a opportunity more open-minded to it maybe this is something i can do that will get me somewhere more interested in the games industry i'd love to know more around that i'm i'm not i'm not sure on the on the attendance but at least i think there are some really interesting takeaways for free to play um in one of the talks one of the four four warnings is that the first market segment to be disrupted by web 3 will be free to play because about

because of the players who engage with it you have big spenders in free-to-play who will be attracted to the um option to play games and then be able to recoup some of their investment and also about self-regulation and that there is this opportunity out there that we we as an industry can start self-regulating by being a part of it and exploring new ways to to use this technology i don't know i think overall i can't say i can't speak for other other people i just think what what strikes with me in terms of these conferences is that there is a middle ground we don't have to be anti web 3 we don't have to be super pro web 3 but we can consider it and maybe find what works for us well i was just going to say that at the very least it's people being open-minded yeah that's good sorry yeah no i was going to say as a i'm a consumer investor

um by day and so what i've noticed is the pace of investments has significantly slowed down this year specifically in february and march late february it means you know like uh apps like facebook like that's what we would maybe invest in like commerce uh things that specifically target people you like you and i and uh yeah it's just like i i guess i would have expected the same sentiment to happen in the games industry january was such a hot month with those three big investments or three big acquisitions and so it's i think i guess it's like very validating to see that there's still a burgeoning interest around new categories around categories that maybe have seen some decline if you look at the sensor tower data and i like that i like that people are like still very enthusiastic about categories that

saw a big interest maybe saw a pullback but like i think it's this time of the market where people really start to like hone in and ground their ideas and like understand that this could be a big thing um when i'm speaking about nfts but not just nfts like games investments as a whole is it everywhere ever i mean web 3 feels like the new part of the new thing you know i've been here when vr was the new thing and mobile was in fact i remember one time this is more about me i remember walking through from the w to the moscone south passing candy crush posters and thinking get this out of the games industry what i know why are they wasting their time go go back home to stop david that's a really interesting point what's the game this year is it gensheen is it something else uh yeah i mean i'm not close enough to be interested i know you know i wonder what the trends are

it's you know so web 3 i see i don't know what the products are that everyone's yeah whether or not i mean also are there keynotes i should know this i mean there's all traditionally there's always been keynotes are the keynotes here happening keynotes what's what's the definition of miyamoto speaking at 10 o'clock in the south hall to 10 000 people oh not not to my knowledge okay but this might be on the secret agenda no no no that sort of thing isn't on this you know about that maybe they don't have keynotes this year maybe it's uh i don't know but but yeah i'm trying to think if there's any other sort of whether it's products games or whether or not is new emerging tech uh whether or not it's sort of you can imagine it might be ar with forthcoming apple glasses and people sort of doubling down on that but i haven't heard people talking about it um i heard you know sort of tick-tock and it's been someone that sort of moved into from games into tick tock and creating content for that and i can well believe that uh those sort of platforms

are absorbing more games and i don't know if there's other trends i am i did a little tour of the of the the the halls the the gtc halls and i um i got a demo of a vr application which was um basically experiencing esports events in vr that was really cool and you know i don't know if i've made this prediction publicly but i feel like you know this could be the year where you know the real cool in vr finally gets built right um it has been hyping over over over five years but i think i feel like we're finally getting there like what i've seen um it's pretty pretty cool what was the headset yeah it was on oculus like a quest too i think i think the trend that i've seen is a lot of ai application and discussion and in game development i think we'll start seeing perhaps more utilization even more so utilization of

ai to reduce the costs of game development and support the content treadmills for games yeah um i know you spoke about this in a previous in a previous round table but just seeing how many talks and companies people are having and exploring in this area i just think we'll see more and more of it yep okay that's it i can imagine that as well the expo floor hasn't opened yet is that right i think that's tomorrow yeah it's tomorrow so maybe there's some cool demos to be to be seen there that's probably worth the tour isn't it shout out 2019 google stadia expo floor oh really i don't know what that means there's a little tombstone there now yeah the google stadia oh oh okay okay i got i got it right okay okay yeah well um you have your dinner davis so we need to wrap up the special i need to put a tie

hey if you can see this this is got this from my wife she's amazing and i love this is my favorite t-shirt is that one of your loot bags that's actually yours it is i love how you declare the love for your wife quite frequently i do one podcast that's very romantic um and i've i heard that maybe someone from the constructor of fun listens to the metacasts oh yeah podcast so i just wanted to say that my christmas wish is to hear a deconstructor of fun comment that my bmi is awesome so five goals yeah well thanks for joining um you know thanks nico for lending out your hotel room for this what i don't yeah do it yourself for the cocktails on room 304 clipped hotel i think it was 307 thanks man okay thanks appreciate it and with that

thank you everybody yeah thank you yeah good to see you thanks for listening in and we'll see you next week cheers friends bye everyone [Music] you