NEW YEAR - NEW META PLAY TO AIRDROP

Innovating Gaming Rewards: Unveiling the 'Play to Airdrop' Model

Discover the 'Play to Airdrop' concept revolutionizing the Web3 gaming world in this engaging transcript.

This comprehensive discussion provides a deep dive into how new incentive models are reshaping player engagement and rewards in the gaming industry.

Our panel share their insights and strategies, offering a unique perspective on integrating financial incentives with gaming experiences.

Explore an innovative approach, blending gaming fun with rewarding player participation.

~~TRANSCRIPT~~

Legendary 00:02:26 G m g m. It's good to be back with the CTX spaces. It's good to be back in 2024 with our first space that We'll start on a bit of a different topic, I would say.

Legendary 00:03:01 I feel like for the last year, the last spaces, We have focused a lot and rightly so, in speaking about the token matter in speaking about air drops in speaking about all of the hype that goes around projects that have or had a token launch, And the question is or the question of, was how sustainable is that movement and what's next? What's gonna happen after the token meta? How will the space evolve.

Legendary 00:03:30 And I'm pretty glad that we have the lineup that we have today with, both playmber with John from PlayAmber and lost local from Alagocchi as well as Charles from Lifty Island. Joining us a tad later in the show. So that we can talk a bit about different concepts. I feel like Avagotchi did a lot of stuff in the past, like the play drop, that many people are probably not aware of anymore or were around at that time that were quite innovative back then.

Legendary 00:04:00 Play Amber obviously gets a lot of the mind share on the timeline right now and is taking quite a creative approach, I would say, and quite a successful approach when it comes to their communications and to their marketing as well, to their questing as well. So I'm quite, quite happy to have these panelists with us today. And with that out of the way, GMTU karma, my co host, how are you doing? How has your new year started so far? And maybe what are some of your expectations when it comes to 2024, some of your prediction, not even necessarily around web 3 gaming, but in general.

Karma 00:04:38 Hello. Hello. DMGA, g n, and everything in between, no matter where you are, in the world. My 2024 has started great. To be honest with you all, I've kinda hated 2023, so I couldn't wait for it to be over. Even though I tend to prefer burn markets to the bull market. So right now, my predictions concentrate mostly on hey, us getting towards actually playable games.

Karma 00:05:06 What I mean by that is, you know, while we are all excited and almost amazed at the amount of of games being built in the space, we still haven't moved beyond majority of them being in beta, being in early player stage, And I'm just honestly most excited for the second half of this year when we are going to enter that that moment where I believe most of these projects will start to release more polished version, more updated versions. So Kind of like my approach is, hey, still heads down building. Not that much has changed. And 2024 is for sure going to be in sanely exciting.

Legendary 00:05:47 Love to hear that. John, welcome to the stage. How are you doing? What are some of your predictions for 2024?

Jon Hook 00:05:54 Yeah. GMGM, everyone. Predictions for 2024. Man, if you if you ask me just about mobile gaming, I feel a little bit more confident about, like, web 3 gaming and crypto. Can I just limit it to, like, what's gonna happen this week? Is that alright? I can't even think about that.

Legendary 00:06:11 Absolutely. That's still part of 2024.

Jon Hook 00:06:14 That works. Yeah. I mean, this week, everyone's waiting for the the ETF narrative, right? That's what's all over my my timeline. So is this ball where I'm gonna look like the previous 2, or is this thing just gonna explode and be far quicker than maybe a few of us that are planning some fun things would have liked. But I'm just super excited that web 3 gaming is front and center. Like, that for me is, like, the biggest thing right now. It's just great. And the other great thing is a lot of us have all been there together through the bear, right? It's not like we just suddenly arrived and we're we're just kinda spinning up a project.

Jon Hook 00:06:49 We've all been working really hard, like, behind the scenes for the past year, pulling together, you know, I remember, like, you know, been doing spaces in the bear and it was like ten people. So it's just amazing to, like, look down and see everyone here. So for me, look, I mean, I I know it's obvious, but I'm really hoping that for web 3 gaming this year, it's it's gonna go up a level. You're starting to see amazing folks like Infinity Gods, you know, AOFs. I think specifically within web 3 gaming this year might be the year of web 3 mobile gaming. To really, you know, bring web 2 in, but also bring, you know, web 3 into mobile as well.

Jon Hook 00:07:27 So I think, yeah, ETF, let's see and then web3 mobile gaming.

Legendary 00:07:32 Yeah. Absolutely. And I love how you went both ways with your predictions on the one hand. Web 3 gaming going mobile, but also mobile gaming, mobile gamers coming into web 3 as a result of that. Lost local welcome to the stage as well. How are you doing? And what are your predictions for 2024?

lostlocal.eth 👻🦇🔊 00:07:51 G m g m. I'm doing great. Just getting my day started on the West Coast right now. Predictions for 2024. I'll keep it simple. We're up only. You know, I'm sure we'll see some volatility along the way, but I think everybody's, feeling pretty good about the state of the market and the state of the space. So you know, I'm ready to, ride this whole trend up.

Legendary 00:08:15 Love to hear it. And with that being said, that we are up only, I think that is the most important message, and we can close the space after 8 minutes. There's nothing more to add to that. Jokes aside, Charles. Welcome. Welcome to the stage. I'm glad that you were able to join us today. As well. How are you doing, and what are your predictions for this year?

Charl3s 00:08:34 Hey. I'm well. Great to be here. Oh, man. I'm I don't know if I'm good with predictions, But I'll I guess, my my hope is that we see, like, you know, a couple, like, really killer games live and out. I think my view on, like, the web 3 gaming category is sort of, like, I've seen a lot of, like, web 3 gaming is inevitable and, like, I I I find it hard. Like, I I really think there's gonna be so many flops, and it will really be about whether, like, 1 or 2 connect And for me, that isn't anything that's not promised on any level.

Charl3s 00:09:05 It's, really, like, do a couple projects, do something really interesting that sort of validates the whole space, just like Axi did where, really, if you had didn't have Axie, you wouldn't have web 3 gaming, basically. Like, they validated the whole category. So it's a I'm I I really think, like, you know, we're we're looking for those 1 or 2 gyms. I think there'll be a lot of, a lot of flops too, so it's gonna be it'll be interesting.

Legendary 00:09:28 Yeah. I think that's a very fair point to mention with with all the hype. I think we have to be aware that not all of the projects and all of the games that are competing for players that are competing for attention span will make it in the long run. Next, how are you doing? Welcome to the stage. Any predictions, expectations maybe, for 2024 from your side?

N3XT 00:09:51 Thanks for having me. Pretty much I agree with Charles. I'm just hoping for, like, one gem that will hit in 2024, you know, and Hopefully, it's gonna be a good one and that will just, you know, pick, like, pick a bit of attention of, like, 2 gamers. And, you know, then it just up only. But until then, you know, just saying cautious and, you know, exploring around and seeing many games and trying to play them. So, yeah.

Legendary 00:10:19 Love to hear that. And, obviously, also love to hear up only a second time in this space in the first ten minutes. Hopefully, that's not a top signal, though. Anyhow with with that out of the way, let's straight get into the main topic of the space. The title is play to airdrop. And I said it, from the get go, the really cool thing about this stage is we have a nifty island who are about start their open beta. We have, who have tons and tons of experience in this space and have done something quite similar to play to a headlock in the past and have similar plans for the future as well.

Legendary 00:10:57 And we have Play Amber who are, again, dominating the timeline and are cooking something are doing, great, great things with the questing as well. So it is interesting that we basically get to visit projects that are in different stages of of their development. And I think that will definitely add to the conversation. With that being said, I think Charles, your open beta is to start on the and correct me if I'm wrong. Is it 18th or 17th January? 17th. So it's, Wednesday. Yeah. This this next week, unfortunately. Next week, it is in in 8 days.

Legendary 00:11:37 And, obviously, with the trail and all the content that, you know, you and the team have created and put out, you made it quite clear that the the overarching topic is played to Adrop. Can you maybe, you know, elaborate a bit for our audience, what they can expect from the open beta and what basically the thinking behind that play to to adrop campaign on your end was Yeah.

Charl3s 00:12:04 Absolutely. So on January 17th, we'll be rolling out not a little experiment or a demo or kind of vertical slice or anything like that, it will be kind of a full fledged open web 3 game world where every user has their own island, they can customize it in all manner of ways, build it up, host crazy custom games on it, and compete in prize fueled quests. That that's what's coming. You'll be able to play as, I think we have just under 200,000, unique token gated avatars, now assimilated into the game. So that is across a 120 communities. So it's basically all of web 3 will be there.

Charl3s 00:12:43 All the big NFT communities will be there. Be building islands, playing games, and competing in play to airdrop. And play to airdrop really is a way of us solving the cold start problem that Open Game World's and have. They're fun if everyone's in there. They're not so fun if nobody's in there. So, played airdrop rewards people for playing the game. Farming on an off chain currency called blooms that can be used to upgrade your island and, acquire NFT rewards. And then also for sharing and evangelizing the best thing you can do during play to airdrop is share your island link a lot. Highly recommend doing that. Referring users and driving quality engagement to your island. So Yeah.

Charl3s 00:13:19 Really, I mean, I can talk about the rationale around it, of course, you know, at nauseam, but I'll stop there just. That's, you know, that is factually what it is.

Legendary 00:13:29 Gotcha. And sorry. I had to step up for a quick moment because I just wasn't able to mute myself on on the space. You know, you you said you want to stop then basically not to go into all the details of all the singing process behind it, but maybe just one follow-up question on that. Was it always clear clear from you from, you know, your perspective, the team's perspective, you want to do, a play to ad hoc campaign structured like that, or have you explored other thought options, as well?

Charl3s 00:14:03 So I think we've always want to do play to airdrop. We've considered a few different mechanisms for delivering it. We had a kind of a battle pass model that I think at some point in time, we might do. But we're considering that. Would have involved kind of issuing new NFT inventory. And over the summer, it really felt like that was sort of the worst thing we could ask if our partner projects was like, hey. Do you wanna do some kinda, like, co branded mint because I think just the the market was one where people weren't excited to mint new stuff. But but so in but in any way, we've always wanted to do it in some form.

Charl3s 00:14:38 For us, like, we really think putting a token out there is this incredible, you know, accelerant to growth. And we've always wanted to do it in a way that drives usage of the product. So we've, like, wanted to say, like, hey, just like during DeFi summer, you know, DeX's and lending protocols, went from nothing to, you know, institutions within the space because of how they put their token out. We think it can be done the same way in games. We can get everybody in suddenly, you know, Nifty Island's just part of the meta. It's just like, Hey. Okay. I own NFTs. Well, of course, I I play in Nifty. Of course, we have avatars in there. Of course, I'm sharing my own link. We think that's how we achieve ubiquity. So, yeah, it's always been something we wanted to do.

Legendary 00:15:20 Gotcha. Gotcha. I would also love to get you into the conversation lost local because I think it was in 2021 that, Avagocchi did the the play drop in in the godci verse. Can you maybe you know, it is quite a while ago, and I think that not everyone who's in this space has been around back then. Can you maybe elaborate on that concept a bit and what that meant for the, token, basically, ecosystem back then for Ava Got you, the PlayDrop. Absolutely.

lostlocal.eth 👻🦇🔊 00:15:52 And I will admittedly say, that was a little bit before, my time at Avagashi, and I've got, way more information about our upcoming, drop. However, this was very, very early in the space, as you know, based on the date that you mentioned. We launched ghost token in 2020. So knowing that our, long term plan was to create a gaming environment that lives in web 3, we wanted to figure out how we could put that token to use and start to reward our players.

lostlocal.eth 👻🦇🔊 00:16:23 That initial play drop was you know, the very, very 1st stage in us creating, a roller based system utilizing Ghost token, for our players So, you know, it was a it was a very basic mechanic at the time, but, you know, it was basically us kicking the tires on the ecosystem, figuring out how we start to create interest in, play and also let our community know exactly where we were headed.

lostlocal.eth 👻🦇🔊 00:16:52 So, you know, it was it was very early in the process and and what we're working on now, as we approach you know, actual adoption and actual products that are gonna get in the hands of the public. We've we've got some pretty exciting stuff in the form of, you know, a similar play to be rewarded model for our upcoming founders pass.

Legendary 00:17:17 Can you share a bit more on that and maybe also share, a bit of if if you can talk to that, how how that will work Absolutely.

lostlocal.eth 👻🦇🔊 00:17:28 So we have a handful of titles, launching this year alongside the Avagashi virtual gaming console. So what our founders have been working on here is is really exciting, because it it goes well beyond just a a gaming type we are creating a a truly 360 gaming ecosystem that's gonna utilize Ghost as well as our crafting tokens and, glitter, which speeds up time, as a means to reward and encourage players to join our ecosystem and and get involved.

lostlocal.eth 👻🦇🔊 00:18:03 As part of this, we're gonna be releasing a founder's pass this spring, which will have assets for our first three titles going live. Those titles are Liquies Escape, which is currently in, open beta. So if anyone wants to check that out and you've got an iOS device, you can go to the Abigache game center on our website and, become part of the test light there. That's a mobile puzzle game. Then we have Gotcha Guardians, which is our tower defense model and, Spirit Force Arena, which is our, arena Battleer.

lostlocal.eth 👻🦇🔊 00:18:38 In this founder's past, we're gonna be releasing a ton of assets for those 3 titles, potentially more, along with a bunch keys for, various loop boxes. The model that we're using to do this, however, this will be a Dutch auction mint. But we are going to be incentivizing folks leading up to that mint with the opportunity to play various games and, accomplish various in game questing. And by doing that, there'll be 7 achievements that you can you know, conquer. And in doing that, you'll receive almost, a third off of the total mint price.

lostlocal.eth 👻🦇🔊 00:19:19 And that will increment incrementally happen as you are, getting through these achievements. So we what we wanted to do is we wanted to obviously bring more players into the ecosystem But we also wanna give them tools so that they're rewarded for being early, and participating in this experience. So, we thought this was a really, really interesting way to motivate play as well as letting folks walk away with, not only assets they can use, but, getting those assets at a bit of a discount for participating.

Legendary 00:19:55 Gotcha. That makes a lot of sense, and I also like to hear basically how you know, that that line of thought has evolved from 2021 to what's still big then was, an innovative concept but now has matured and has gotten way more complex than it was back then. Karma, I see you with your hand up. Would love to hear from you as well.

Karma 00:20:15 Yeah. I have to admit I was just, like, you know, really interested. It's kind of like, play to discount in a way where you still need a buy in, but via your active participation as a player, as a community member, you get to, yeah, just have something, like, at the more affordable rate. I think we are going to see more and more of these, you know, blended systems and blended mechanisms for discount while also still maintaining people's buy in. And I'm just really excited for that. To be honest, with you. Like, I just haven't heard about this, this, model before.

Karma 00:20:54 And the reason why I'm excited about it is something I wanted to say is I know everybody loves free mends, but there is something special about how having to buy something, having skin in the game. And I think very often, that play to air drop narrative helps assure that even if people, you know, drop off afterwards, at the very least, they had a chance to try out your product. They are more likely to come back if you refine, maybe come back later, what we know about web3 is that the audience is incredibly easy to reactivate.

Karma 00:21:31 That's just something I wanna throw in the arena where in traditional web 2 gaming, if you release something and the audience doesn't like it, your game is absolutely dead. To the point where if a game, you know, for example, gets leaked before its release, even if millions were pumped into its development, very often a project cut because they will just never be able to reactivate that community, reactivate that hype.

Karma 00:21:56 That's very different in web3 where You can basically lie dormant for a few months, and as soon as you release new bullish catalysts, new bullish update, with a little bit of marketing, you are able to very much reactivate that, just like have a fresh start. Maybe not a new lease in life, but you can keep iterating. And I think those, like, you know, play to discount, play to air drop, play to earn whichever way we want to call it, are really interesting strategies for us to keep reactivating the communities, keep rewarding them as we refine our products. So that's just something I wanted to throw in there.

Karma 00:22:34 I think it's very interesting how these models evolve.

Legendary 00:22:39 Yeah. Absolutely. And you also have to, you know, appreciate it kind of as an evolution of our last spaces. We talked about a great deal about how, perfectly adverts are suited to what TGEs are suited to drive user acquisition, but not really the perfect model to go into user attention and to keep users or gamers engaged. And of course, there's, like, still a lot of economic challenges in the long run on how to create a good token design. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Legendary 00:23:10 But I do like that with those play to Adrop or play to discount as you just named it models, you basically, like, form that very proactive behavior from the get go. You form that feeling that you have to do more than, you know, just mint and wait for a token to come, but you have to participate to be able to Reep Grata benefits. I think, Encarna is doing something very, very similar with having both an ad hoc for the holders, but also having an active campaign for those who want to play test the game.

Legendary 00:23:48 So it's as, you know, very often in life that we don't see, like, a single model in isolation that works perfectly, but we see the blend and the combinations of of many more models But you also mentioned, you know, obviously, the comps, the marketing behind that, behind getting the attention. And I think that's also the perfect moment to loop John, the co founder of play and we're into that conversation because as I already said, play Embraer and the Ambulist are dominating the the timeline dominating the interest, right now in web 3 gaming, what is What is the secret sauce behind that, John?

Jon Hook 00:24:29 Well, I mean, the the the secret sauce is hopefully part of it is actually coming to this space having been around for a while in web 2 and been humble and not assume that we we're just gonna replicate that success in web 3. You know, we've been here for a couple of years. And what we've been trying to figure out is how do we replicate our success in web 2 distribution, user acquisition onboarding in web 3, and what does that player experience look like, for the audience that we're trying to bring into web 3 and grow. So there's some really great points and, you know, really interesting view Karma just put in about play to discount.

Jon Hook 00:25:07 And and I think part of the the reason it's starting to work is we're not necessarily reinventing the wheel. Right? A lot of these behaviors gamers know how to do, like, rewarded video. It's called rewarded video. Right? We all know that you watch a video and you get a reward. It's just in web 2, you know, it's a skin that it's just some off chain item that you you you don't get a direct financial benefit from, but there's just a fun benefit in the game. You've got you know, platforms like skills, right? Hugely successful IPO at the time where you've got you know, play to airdrop, e g, winner Tesla. Right?

Jon Hook 00:25:44 So you've got a lot of existing behaviors in web 2 that we can build on.

Jon Hook 00:25:48 I think the key difference in web 3 is course 1, you you've got a different set of technology that you can now build on to put some of these behaviors or on steroids but I think specifically when you start thinking about this play to air drop discussion, it's then creating something really powerful that you just don't get in web two games, specifically casual games, which is this extra motivation for players to hang around in an ecosystem And if you start to bring in UGC opportunities for them as well, and there's loads of great low code tools in web 2, like, build box, for example, it's just incredibly powerful, you know, like, I agree with coming.

Jon Hook 00:26:26 There's nothing more powerful than than someone actually pet buying an object. There's also equally nothing more powerful than than someone creating a piece of content or a game, sharing that on social media, bringing their friendship group directly into that play and to play their game with them and all getting rewarded for that. And that's when you start to see really interesting network effects. It's just been very hard to do in web web 2, because of the, yeah, the the the technology challenges.

Jon Hook 00:26:55 So I I think for for us, it's you know, we're we're still at the start of our, our journey, but it's about building on top of sort of data points we continue to see as we bring web 2 in. But being laser focused on the different audiences we encounter in web 2, but also web 3 from a motivation standpoint. And to what everyone else was saying is just then designing loops that cater to those motivations, but also, you know, overlap and don't cannibalize each other.

Jon Hook 00:27:26 And, you know, I agree with Charles about, you know, GEO sort of trailblazing with with with Axi and, you know, you you listen to GEO and that initial idea, initial, learning early on that it was like one whale that basically got them through the first, their first cycle. And and the key learning there is again that balancing and designing an economy that allows, you know, whales or people that may not be active in terms of playing the game, but allowing them to heavily financially contribute and be rewarded from, you know, investing in that ecosystem.

Jon Hook 00:28:00 Whilst also be bringing in and continue to build a player base that, you're driving towards and teaching this open market model. That, you know, are are are directly benefiting from those early community members or whales that are, you know, pulling them into that web 3 direction. So yeah, that's just a little bit in terms of, like, how we we think about it and how absolutely all these different player motivations you know, should be able to work together.

Legendary 00:28:30 Absolutely appreciate the the line of thinking behind that. And you said, you know, two things that really were standing out to me. You have all that experience in web 2 yet from the get go. You said you approach the web 3 space in a in a humble way in a way that had the expectation that WIP 3 is obviously, different to web 2. And you also said specifically that those network effects are difficult to achieve in web 2 for, technological reasons because of technological barriers and are more, achievable in web 3.

Legendary 00:29:07 Could you maybe you know, elaborate a bit more on that, on that concept?

Jon Hook 00:29:14 Yeah. Of course. So if if you look at, I mean, some of the great casual businesses in, in web 2, you know, if you look at let's look at just casual games is where we focus. You had nearly $12,000,000,000 spent in in app purchases last year. Right? That $12,000,000,000 of money in, not through ads, people putting money into a game, and it's just mental that none of that gets returned to to gamers, right? We are all heavily financialized in web 2. Where does that money go? It goes to the ad networks. It goes to the different people involved in distribution. It goes to the app stores. It it's just it's just crazy.

Jon Hook 00:29:53 Yet, you've got players there saying, Hey, I love these games and putting 1,000,000,000 of dollars in. So with web 3 like technology, we now have ways, and like incentive loops to be able to you know, redistribute that. So, you know, as a as as as a player, you know, I can I now own an asset and I have complete control? However, whether I want to, you know, play and increase the value of that that asset, and I do nothing else with that because I just love playing the game, and I just wanna keep you know, or you now have the option that you can you can benefit from that. I can I can sell, I can buy another item to accelerate my progress?

Jon Hook 00:30:34 And what that starts to do is teach players that, hey, actually, this is this is really, you know, this is really great. I can actually get it, get if I decide to stop playing a game, I can get a little bit of money out at the end of it, which you can't do in web 2.

Jon Hook 00:30:47 So imagine all those people playing candy crush that have poured hours into it and loads of money, this really simple idea that at the end of it, if I just wanted to walk away and sell my account or sell my progress, I could get, you know, 50 bucks a $100 you know, for web to mass casual gamers, that's just a very simple to understand idea, but then start to imagine that you've got a connected ecosystem of of of these casual games where, you know, quite often unlike, let's say RPG games, let's take over world, for an example, where it's, you know, a a very significant investment, and and one large game.

Jon Hook 00:31:23 In casual games, usually you have a you know, a a series of 3, 4, 5, you know, if you look at OmniOM as an example, I don't know, 10, 15 games, I built around a character IP, but there's no transferability of that IP between games. You can't transfer your progress. So so that's what I mean about how web 3 technology can now solve those those problems just by allowing people to move between game a, b, c, and d, and transfer progress assets with them. And then it's entirely down to them, you know, we try and create an ecosystem for the do to do that, but it's entirely down to them what that motivation is to do next.

Jon Hook 00:32:02 Do they, you know, are they are they trading to lever up and accelerate progress? Is there motivation, you know, playing to win? Is it playing to earn? And again, all of that is possible through, through web 3 technology.

Legendary 00:32:16 Absolutely appreciate the deep dive. And I love that you went beyond just talking about the financial incentives to play a specific game, but also talk about on chain profiles, talk about how progress, how achievements, how unlock, in specific games can now be viewed, across games. And I think that is also something that, Avagotchi is working on, I that you lost local switched from your personal account to the, official Ava got your account, and I would love to have you chime in on the topic of, you know, on chain gaming profiles and and your thoughts about it.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 00:32:54 Yes. I'm much more adorable now. Yeah. Player progression and player profiles. This is, you know, at the center point of what we're trying to build over at Evagache. And and a big part of why we are doing the discounted mint for players. All of these games were only able to be developed by having the community there to give input and to be the active beta testers So it's only right that we, you know, reward those players for helping us build all these gains in this entire ecosystem.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 00:33:29 So through Avagashi and, you know, through many of our partners as well, you know, we've got really awesome launch partners in, 1 Kin and Carve and hyper play. You know, all of these platforms, are gonna be offering a different player profiles and the ability to track your in game and cross game, you know, achievements. And, we are focused very much on creating a player reward system that utilizes badges, drip rewards, all of that good stuff to make sure that our players are receiving the most benefit by playing our games through our portal.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 00:34:09 So I think that's gonna be a very interesting part of this entire equation moving forward is, there's gonna be heavy incentives across the board for people not only to play these individual games, but to access these games and to action access other gaming experiences, because we do have now the ability to track all of that progress across the board and across games, which is extremely exciting, because as you mentioned right now, for most players, the experience is extremely fragmented. They've got achievements that are spread out across different platforms, different consoles, different gaming ecosystems.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 00:34:50 And, you know, at Avagache, we see an opportunity not only with our internal games, but with partner projects to allow some of those rewards to carry over, create incentives to bring players into our ecosystem as well as drive our players out to external game gaming projects, that we also support and believe in. You know, so that's kind of the high level, way that we're approaching this. We're seeing it across the board. We're seeing lots of folks focus on, how they're gonna reward the players, and and we think that is definitely the right approach.

Legendary 00:35:29 Gotcha. Yeah. That that makes a lot of, you know, the m pretty much, agree with business that you're putting on on those on chain profiles. And I would love to, you know, get you back into the conversation. With us, Charles, because John did speak about, you know, the way how we are incentivized. It's 3 to do things. We literally have Chrome extensions that reward you for sharing your bandwidth. So to some extent, we're at a point where basically all actions so many actions have that, you know, financial expectation.

Legendary 00:36:08 And you launch with a big open beta, you launch with a big plate Adrop campaign. And I think for my, you know, my thought would be that it can be quite challenging to then out how much of the intro open beta is generally driven by the game by the game experience. People who are incentivized to get the air drop.

Legendary 00:36:35 And also in that, like, how do you basically, you know, plan to establish feedback processes so you make sure that you get the best feedback for the beta and you can That let's call it quantum. Outdoor hunter. You're sorry.

Charl3s 00:36:54 It was cutting out a little oh, Sorry. Did you did you get the, the the question, or should I I got the gist of it. Got the gist of it. Sorry. No. No. I I did. I did. I got the gist. Sorry. It was just cut out, and I thought you were done talking. But, yeah, it wasn't right. So, yeah, good question. Let's see. So we, I mean, we the way the plate air drop campaign is set up, we didn't want it to be kind of like an endless grind.

Charl3s 00:37:23 Where, you know, you you you have to spend, you know, 24 hours a day in the game to be competitive for it because if if there's no upper bound there in terms of time spent and reward that you can extract, then people who are sort of want to live normal lives and maybe play a game a little bit, but not kind of, like, ruin their lives, you know, we'll we'll be scared away. And then like, really, really determined farmers, we just kinda dominate it. So we intentionally have some upper bounds on what you can farm, like, in a 24 hour period. For that reason.

Charl3s 00:37:57 And and so what I think we're gonna see a little bit of is, like, there's a few actions you'd be able to take each day that are gonna be, like, the most efficient ways to, you know, keep progressing in the play to air drop campaign. And kinda what we're gonna wanna see is, like, the delta between that and how much more people play. So it's like, oh, this person already done their daily challenges, and they've done a few other things. They've really, you know, they've maxed out most of what they could do for the day. But they're continuing to play. They're continuing to share. These are the sort of things we're gonna be looking for. Perclivity to share is, one of the most important things we're looking at that is incentivized, but only to a point. So I think, you know, it won't be easy to disentangle them, but there are some things we can do there.

Charl3s 00:38:37 And then the key thing for me too is that It's like if you lead with prizes and incentives, the game has to always be about prizes and incentives in my book. So it's like, It's not that Play to Airdrop ends, and then nifty Island just becomes, like, Fortnite or something where I'm like, okay, there's no more, there are no more prizes. We we our our goal is just to make the prizes more sustainable. And and that will look like a couple things. We have our quest system where you can give away NFTs or white list spots through the game.

Charl3s 00:39:07 We're gonna be flushing that out and really hope that it becomes part of the meta for just how people do 2 drops that are, kind of whitelist giveaways that are bought resistant, more fun, actually build community in the process of giving them out. So That's sort of an endless stream of prizes that I think people will like. And then and and then I'm always down to jam with it. If there's anyone who's, like, a gig of brand who wants to hash this one out with me, let me know. But I'm really interested in, like, you know, skill based wagering and sort of more financialized games that can be built on top of nifty. And and those are probably, you know, 2 of the things that I'll be most focused on beyond open beta. I already find myself thinking about it a lot, even though we have a impending launch. So Yeah.

Charl3s 00:39:44 It's gonna continue to be about prizes beyond played airdrop, but we also hope that people play beyond the narrower requirements of played airdrop, and we'll be measuring that.

Karma 00:39:54 Yeah. And let me jump in here. I think it's a good way to phrase it to say that play to air drop is more often not a hook that gets people in, gets them to try out, gets them to help you in the initial stages where your product really needs the feedback, needs the really active engagement. And we all know that the web3 space, especially the web3 gaming space is quite predatory. Now I don't mean that necessarily in a very negative way. It's just how incentives are structured.

Karma 00:40:26 If you can be paid more for, you know, like, 10 minutes of your time elsewhere, a game must be really excellent for you to give up the other financial opportunity. We are all here at least partially in crypto because we were attracted by the new monetization strategy. That's just the truth of it that is, you know, unavoidable. But just utilizing that very skillfully to get that first hook, Get people to try something out and get them accustomed to just like a fun environment, which keeps changing, keeps, you know, keeping them on their toes.

Karma 00:41:01 Like you said, Charles, the rewards, as long as the platform is set up in a way that allows other people to come in, their words can keep changing because other people will keep building their own experiences within that platform. And wagering, I personally believe, you know, previously we told we talked a little bit about, sort of, like, predictions for 2024. I believe that wagering types of bets, and sort of decentralized bet making, is going to be really, really huge for metaverse type experiences going forward.

Karma 00:41:38 That's certainly something that we are looking at at ZT X as well. A little bit of alpha, you know, of course, without day or any details. But, yeah, like, any type of a big platform that allows users to interact socially will eventually converge into some kind of a betting platform. That's just we are just hazardous by nature, not just us, you know, in web me. But, sorry.

Karma 00:42:04 This was just a little bit of my thoughts, but I wanted to direct the conversation back into the Select AirDrop Hunter versus organic engagement member, direction and speak a little bit about, you know, something called civil resistance in games, something, in the direction of how do we actually diversify between that predatory farming engagement and the actual community that cares. And once stay long term, even beyond the rewards.

Karma 00:42:38 And I would love to, you know, pull you in John here back, and maybe hear your some of your thoughts about this. You know, I believe that while we really love those initial rewards, it does set up that unrealistic expectation of always being financially rewarded for every single action. And Bill's a very don't pitchfork Me, but a very entitled community, which is rarely easy to retain long term. So, yeah, just would you mind sharing your thoughts about that?

Jon Hook 00:43:10 Yeah. I mean, first of all, I'd love to jam with details of this skill based gaming. Like, I'm fascinated by that model, but yeah, I mean, so when I think about our web 2 audience, this is interesting to us because they're they're coming in with no motivation to, at all. They're coming in 1st and foremost because they've seen one of our ads on an app network and they're like, hey, that game just looks really fun. I'm gonna play it. And and that's that that's their hook in. And then when they're there, and we've done loads of testing over the past 2 years, on ad networks on TikTok.

Jon Hook 00:43:47 Any any actual sort of incentive to come in related to a token or NFT, performs really badly in terms of as an acquisition tool versus, you know, web web 2 prizes, you know, no surprises is something that they understand. They're very comfortable with. You know, PayPal, Fiat, they they they understand that, and it's been around for a long time in, you know, like, skill based gaming, right? Like real cash cash prizes? So I think part of it is just rather than fighting, just accepting the motivation of, you know, that audience that you are, are building for.

Jon Hook 00:44:25 And wording is, I agree, is really key as soon as you, you know, play to win is nothing new, you know, play to farm is nothing new, you know, play to air drops existed in in in other forms. But yeah, with the web 3 games, that's also again, like, to my intro. We we didn't assume anything. But what we wanted to do was get exposure to, what we call a crypto curious audience. So an audience who are coming into a game with a financial motivation to earn from it because we we just wanted to you know, talk to them because with, you know, our web 2 games, typically that community isn't something that's living in Discord.

Jon Hook 00:45:04 So what we did is we we partnered with Ebersi and we deployed 5 games on the Lightning Network. So you can play these games and you can earn, you know, fractional amounts of of Bitcoin. And what we saw was was was pretty pretty obvious is that it wasn't really about the game. They would play any any game, and were making fast calculations about the game they could earn the most from. The most interesting thing is once we got past that point, the real surprise was they actually then really cared about the the game, so that's the earlier point about network effects.

Jon Hook 00:45:40 They really cared about the game, and were openly suggesting in discord new game mechanic and Gacha mechanics, that we could try that we did. So in, like, Bitcoin cast away over weekends, we ran live treasure hunts in the mobile game where we we hid fraction amounts of Bitcoin in the little treasure chests, and the community loved that and they were then more receptive to then bringing in friends to play the game because they're now understanding that, okay, this is a fun game.

Jon Hook 00:46:08 We've directly contributed to the early economy of this game, they understood because we were very open them about how to sustain this kind of model that, you know, again, the more players you get in the more we can balance this game through ad revenue that is rewarding you for your time. So early on, that really surprised us once you kind of get past that barrier of I can play this game, I can earn it, I cash out, you're not trying to rug me, they're more inclined to sort of be open and realize that you're actually here to build a game ecosystem. But there's no getting away in that model that the initial entry point is an expectation that I'm coming here to play and earn.

Jon Hook 00:46:48 And, you know, that that that audience for that for that type of model for sure, and we saw it in the last ball run they will be as they they will be there for as long as you as a developer can sustain that ecosystem. The minute you can't sustain that ecosystem and there's something else where the players can figure out they can get, you know, quicker earnings or rewards that they're gonna go there.

Jon Hook 00:47:09 So I think that's something that is a real challenge to Charles's point that as soon as you label your game in that space, it's a problem in so far as if you can't figure out to sustain that long term, then, yeah, you're you're going to struggle to, you know, maintain that game or ecosystem I think for us, it's it's very much about bringing people in, and making our ecosystem about, you know, playing fun games about collecting, not just one thing, collecting a series of things within this really funny ecosystem, and making sure that you get rewarded for that and then designing a system where those rewards, you know, of course, are sustainable, but are rewards that actually something that that you give a shit about rather than just coming in and this is all about, you know, earning a specific type of reward.

Jon Hook 00:47:59 Sorry, Carm. I can see how you have that, but yeah, that's how we think about Yeah.

Karma 00:48:03 No. These were amazing thoughts. Oh, sorry, legendary.

Legendary 00:48:08 Apology for connecting. Go ahead. I'll I'll go after you.

Karma 00:48:12 Yes. So these were amazing thoughts, John, and I fully agree with everything you've outlined. Something I wanted to just throw into the general audience and, you know, something that I've just been thinking of, maybe this is directed mostly to Ava Goci because you guys just have the most experience you've been you've been playing this game the longest. What I often wonder about is We've already mentioned, hey. We are now transitioning to looking towards DeFi.

Karma 00:48:42 You know, DeFi has been, about much longer than our web3 games have been live, they have at least another cycle or 2 behind their belts so we can look at the distribution of air drops in DeFi distribution of rewards in DeFi, and try to select draw conclusions as to how the potential attainment of participants could look like, for for the players themselves.

Karma 00:49:07 So again, this is a very open question, but I wonder, Have you noticed as Avaguchi ecosystem has been growing, or have you been trucking, how many of the wallets keep returning if there is a correlation between wallets that, you know, have sort of, like, earned the most rewards and how often they return Or has there been no correlation whatsoever? And this is a bit, you know, like, of an open question.

Karma 00:49:34 I know at ZT X, we have certainly noticed that the wallets that participated in the play test, we have 2 of them, and then we opened the beta these wallets kept coming back and kept coming back in a very regular manner. So I wonder if there are any other takeaways from other projects like that?

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 00:49:56 Yeah. I think that absolutely, you know, at Avagache, especially, we have a very, very, dedicated user base and a very loyal community that's been around with us. Since the beginning. And, you know, obviously, they've been a massive part of us building everything that we've had. If we didn't have them informing and, giving feedback as well as participating, the project would never have gotten to where it is now. On the tip of DeFi, we definitely see a lot of our users take advantage of our token ecosystem.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 00:50:35 Many of them obviously did find the project through DeFi. So it was a, you know, a little bit of a of a backwards, kind of path to getting to us where we see, obviously, in the future, more of the public will likely find out about DeFi after playing our games and learning a bit more about our ecosystem. I think that the long term vision there is we have these tokens and we want to give our users and our community benefits for holding those tokens in addition to playing our game.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 00:51:13 So all of these, DeFi protocols that are out there and all of these partners we've got that offer LP pairs, those are all things that we think you know, the public will have an opportunity to participate in at, various levels based on their appetite they have obviously been a very big driver in how we developed. But I I think that now as we move forward, the focus is absolutely for us on gaming.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 00:51:42 However, we wanna make sure that this financial ecosystem that we develop as a necessity inside of the game can also be taken advantage of for anyone on the outside that sees the financial benefits.

Legendary 00:52:01 Absolutely. Love love to hear how you think about Connect thing, the the gaming set of things, with the DeFi set of things.

Legendary 00:52:08 And I also absolutely loved, John's take by basically playing that user journey, it sounded very interesting how, John explained, you know, first, the game looks at what is the biggest opportunity out there in terms of the games establishes if, you know, the threshold is there to be worth their time, And then is, then the second step is getting involved in the game, caring about the game, giving feedback, and based on that, I would like to ask you another question with local as, you know, a team who is building multiple games at a time how do you basically approach that potential competition that could stem from that and exist in between or between between your games because some of them might, you know, draw more gamers, draw more users because, people might think that playing ace specific game in the ecosystem or doing a specific, type of game in the ecosystem might be more lucrative.

Legendary 00:53:12 So how do you deal with that sort of internal competition.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 00:53:18 So at this point, Honestly, I think we're avoiding that competition by really approaching this entire endeavor as a gaming studio. Our founders onboarded an amazing team across the board. We've got different game directors for every single one of our titles. And they all come from a traditional gaming background. So for us, I think it comes down to intention.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 00:53:46 We are building games that are fun games to play with the strategy of, believing that if you create a good product everything else on the back end, all of these benefits, the ability to track, player profiles across across different games and different ecosystems. All of those benefits are gonna make themselves known, over the past couple years as we attend more traditional gaming conventions, like GDC, We are seeing that the narrative is now shifting to web 3 becoming a utility layer for gamers across the board.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 00:54:23 Less is it's going to be less in our opinion about web 3 games and more about web 3 benefits around games. So that being said, I think if you are building games with making them fun and then allowing those rewards to be the secondary benefit of having a good time by playing those games.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 00:54:47 You're gonna make it if you are building a game that is designed to incentivize rewards first, you're gonna end up with one of the social 5 platforms, which at the end of the day, is masquerading as a game, but often really just like some type of dopamine treadmill or some type of, you know, lack of a better word. It is a bit of a pyramid scheme where you've onboard more people. You're receiving rewards for onboarding, and, and that just kind of trickles down. So, you know, to keep it short, like, We just wanna make good games. We wanna reward the players.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 00:55:26 We believe that this is the future of gaming. So if we do that, everything else will fall into place.

Legendary 00:55:34 Absolutely agree with that. And and as you said, it's it's not sustainable if the main point of the game is to just onboard more people to keep the machine going to keep the pyramid building, then that's not gonna turn out to be a sustainable, game at all. And at the heart of it, is still that the game needs to be fun. And I like, how you, Karma did, you know, share a bit about the the plans for ZKX and explain the human notion of when there's a social platform, when whether it's a gaming platform, whether it's a social platform, per se, a metaverse, whatever form it is, And there is room for communication.

Legendary 00:56:11 People will have the notion to want to wager to want to bet and including that notion of decentralized betting. And I think that also goes, like, hand in hand with, what those local just said that At the end of the day, nobody really cares about, is it web 3? What's the tech stack behind that? They will care about is the game fun and is is the metaverse? Is the social experience, whatever, is open and inclusive enough for them to be able to do the things that they want to do while that's talking, chatting, having fun in a game, or or, or wagering placing bets.

Legendary 00:56:47 And I would like to hear more about that from you, Karma, to the extent that you are able to share what basically that thought process behind including or thinking about including, wagering as in in whatever way in in in the ZT X space.

Karma 00:57:07 Yeah. And I'm going to be very, very broad, in my fault. Like I said, we we are thinking about different things. We are pursuing different projects. But, like, the foundational thought process behind it. And quite frankly, I don't think that's just for ZTX. For every single project on this panel, you know, we really curated it so nicely. Avaguchi, Play Amber, Misty Island. These are not just, you know, contained singular self standing games per se. I wouldn't may maybe maybe the other founders will disagree. I wouldn't I wouldn't describe them as such.

Karma 00:57:44 It's much more like a platform, you know, whether we call it a publisher, whether we call it, you know, a social platform, etcetera. It's It's an ecosystem which allows players to interact with each other, but also to some extent, participate in building an expansion of that world. Now this is either via UGC. This is either via, you know, like, just more in-depth economic structures, like ownership of assets being able to then take these assets out of the platform, build particular, you know, financialized products on top of that.

Karma 00:58:20 And at the end of the day, betting, you know, any type of of something like that is just an add on that can live on top of any other game. And, you know, in Charles, you mentioned, not just in this space, but in some other the island spaces, there will be different mini games in Misty Island. Like, you you enter you you go into an island of your friend, but, like, what do you do then? Like, you want to play, you want to have fun. So there it it isn't that far removed from reality that you can then say, hey.

Karma 00:58:53 Like, maybe me and my decent friend, we really want to play a round of something, like go karts, like some simple hyper casual game, and whoever wins gets this NFT, that, you know, that I have. Like, it just adds an additional layer of excitement, adds additional layer of higher stakes to it, that at the same time, you can entirely tweak yourself with your friends. You do not subject to, you know, like, pre arranged. I don't know. I personally, for example, really hate playing ranked matches or, like, any type of competitive games online because it's stresses the hell out of me.

Karma 00:59:30 But when it's something, you know, like, lower stakes that I can agree upon with friends, yeah, don't laugh at me. I'm horrible at first person shoot shooters. I still have trauma. All my friends were so good. I was always just, like, the worst one they've had to carry me. I will never recover. But, yeah, this is why I'm building a mess of hers without without guns, story of my life. Anyhow, back back to the back to the wagering. I think I think it's just a natural thing to give people more control over the gameplay. Any type of wagering betting does just that.

Karma 01:00:06 Simultaneously raises excitement and gives people more control over the gameplay, I think many projects will see that integrated. For financial reasons, for excitement reasons, for publicity reasons, as long as they can, of course, meander around different, regulatory concerns. Which are, you know, like, very, very nebulous. And, yeah, I see I see Charles's hands showed up.

Karma 01:00:29 I'm just going to close this point off by saying, at ZT X, similarly, you know, we will be thriving towards these mini games similar to our web 2 counterparts at petal, where you will be able to, you know, eventually once we are once we are there, integrate those wagering And I look forward to seeing, you know, the growth of Misty Island. I think it's going to be an incredible thing to behold and looking forward to chapter Charles more on these betting mechanisms.

Charl3s 01:01:01 Yeah. Cool. I'll I'll just add on. Really appreciate that. Thank you. And, yeah, I think with this one, basically, there there's so much appeal or kind of wagering based games. Part of it is that there's really only two ways to monetize an on chain in an on chain way, and it's either you're selling more inventory like, more NFTs or tokens or whatever that is, and and and really no one wants to do that indefinitely, because it's just sort of a runaway inflation problem as you dilute and dilute. And then the the other, the other business model is really the only other business model I've seen in crypto is just taxing throughput of some kind.

Charl3s 01:01:35 That's what Binance does, Uniswap, OpenC, you know, that's the really, it's just either you're issuing inventory or you're taxing throughput and wagering kind of can potentially offer you to do both, but it it very clearly is a case where you could tax throughput, which gets really appealing. And, yeah, I think from, like, a gain perspective, the thing we're trying to nail down. And if people have thoughts or if there's anyone out there who wants to build one of these things, let us know. But where I'd love to take Nifty would be that basically We see people building their own kind of financialized games that have some NFT inventory that gates your ability to play it on your island or to host it. And then you know, they're launching this cool game through our marketplace.

Charl3s 01:02:15 The game has some sort of wagering financial throughput mechanism that gets taxed and shared between the people who host the games on their island, the devs for the game, and nifty island, that'd be really fun. And I think there's a whole bunch of different genres that haven't been tried yet. That could be really fun. Like, there's obviously wet skilled, like, kind of dooling and wagering. That's great. But the thing I find really fun too, just to get a little bit more, you know, kind of speculative about it is, you know, imagine, like, a war between 2 or 3 or 4 NFT communities like the ladies versus 8.

Charl3s 01:02:47 And you replicate the Trump Biden token model that we saw during that election where it's like, you know, if milady's win, milady token expires at $1 and 8 token expires 0. If apes win and milady's lose, milady token goes to 0, AP token goes to 1, and you could have a really fun thing where these communities war against each other, and you have a prediction market where people can kind of play the meta game around it. There's a lot of stuff. I mean, All very complicated to do in practice, like, just to actually make it fun and work, but there's just so much stuff like that that I get excited about. And yeah, I think it it clearly has to be where the secret sauce for this, you know, industry is.

Charl3s 01:03:25 It's it's it's gotta be something to do with money. It's gotta be financialized on some level. That's that that's, kind of the whole reason the space exists. So, yeah. Doesn't mean it can't be genuinely fun too, but but I think that enhances the fund.

Legendary 01:03:40 Yeah. It not only enhances the fund, but it also adds skin, skin in the game quite, quite literally. And I think it builds on top of what we see in web 3, which is a bunch of very, very passionate communities, whether that's specific games or whether that's specific PFP communities. And just by, how you are integrating the PFP and other communities in Nifty Island that is the perfect setup to have a bit of competition and have some some challenges between those subgroups in web 3.

Legendary 01:04:17 And, of course, if there is financial incentive of this a bit of betting, tied to that that will help to keep interest high because then Anyone wants to can have, a stake and and skin in this in this game. And you also mentioned that, you know, if if someone is interested to build that or if if that could build be built with the community that they could essentially reach out to you.

Legendary 01:04:44 And at this point, I would also love to hear, from you lost local because I know that, you know, you mentioned that we got you as a gaming studios on the one hand, working on multiple games, but I also know that there are community created games in the Avagogy ecosystem and would kinda like how, you know, that came to be. Is that an initiative that you fostered? Is that something that started to exist organically? What is, going on with the community created games in in your ecosystem?

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 01:05:13 Absolutely. So this is a great this is a great topic and something I'm really excited to talk about. From the very beginning, Avagache as a project for many people, the game has been building the game. So our DAO is one of the most active in the space. We are the 2nd most of DAO on Snapshot next to Abe. So we have a voracious community who is actively voting on SIG props and initiatives constantly for the development and direction of Avagashi and all of the games being built on the platform.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 01:05:47 So as we approach the launch of got gotcha gaming console, pixelcraft Studios, the company that I work for, that created Avagashi, has been working on some of the titles mentioned gotcha Guardians, Liquies Escape, Spirit Force Arena. In parallel, we've got awesome community members that have brought ideas to the Dow, proof of concepts for various schemes, and then have gone through the process of getting funded by the Dow and then have been developing games alongside Pixelcraft as independent game developers.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 01:06:22 And then we at Pixelcraft will help launch and get those games live inside of the Gotcha gaming console. And the goal here is to really foster community that is not only playing these games, but responsible for the direction of the entire ecosystem and also responsible for individual titles. Inside of the ecosystem. Additionally, we are extremely eager to bring in outside communities and partners to build many game and full game experiences inside of the Avagache ecosystem for Gachi console.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 01:06:57 We think Avagaches make a wonderful addition to anything. So it's always better with Agachi. So we're very interested in speaking to communities that are looking for a place to launch a gaming experience. Perhaps they have a 2 to 3 year time horizon on their main gaming experience, and they're looking for a place to deploy something to keep their community busy. In the meantime, our ecosystem is a perfect place to do that. So our community has taken advantage of that 1st and foremost, knowing that was coming down the pipe. They've been working behind the scenes individually on coming up with games, and some of those games are already up for playtest. We've got dropped.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 01:07:37 We've got Gautje Crawler. We've got, so many so many titles coming out. I believe there's 10 titles, coming out with the launch of the console and half of those titles are community based. So, yeah, if there's any questions about that process or about, you know, any of that, I'm more than happy to answer.

Legendary 01:08:05 Gotcha. Yeah. And I think that's that's a pretty, pretty impressive lineup I also would like to, you know, get you, John, a bit back into into the conversation.

Legendary 01:08:15 Obviously, you're a bit earlier in in the WIP 3 journey, not obviously not in the overall experience in the gaming space, but I would quite like to hear from you, you know, what your thoughts are on this conversation that we've been having on, on wagering, on on having, a skin or a stake in the game and on that ability to add this let's say, financialized layer on top of the game that is not necessarily played to airdrop, but is a bit, like, standing on the side of the game is not even DeFi is really that ability to have a bit of an extra stake in the game, bit of an ability to to gamble or to wage on something is is that something that you think can be, sustainable and can help drive genuine interest, or is it something that you think need where where you think that there needs to be a clear line that it doesn't turn into, like, a gambler's paradise or into a a casino at the end of a day?

Jon Hook 01:09:21 Yeah. I mean, great question. There's a there's a lot to, unpacking that. So, yeah, I think I mean, who who doesn't love gambling? Right? It's just like a massive dopamine hit, and it's, you know, it's it's just like one of the most decent things about web street, right? We're all you know, who doesn't love a bit of speculation, but at a game mechanic level, it is really exciting, right? And but again, they're not quite the same games.

Jon Hook 01:09:43 If you look at skill based wagering games, then again, you're you're coming to that game with the mentality that you're gonna wager you're sort of accepting, but you're not necessarily gambling per se, but you're accepting the element of, yeah, wagering in a in a tournament, you know, to try and get as to high level tournaments or higher winnings.

Jon Hook 01:10:03 And then there's, you know, where I where I look at web 3 gaming that's sort of getting some traction is you know, people like Infini Gods, for example, when you look at, you know, what web 2 are going mad for in, say, like, coin master, it's not gambling per se, and the same in monopoly go by the way, but if you look in those games at the meta around raiding, right? That's a really interesting, like, additional game loop that fits perfectly in the game, but but effectively what it is is gambling, right?

Jon Hook 01:10:35 So you you have this extra strategic decision and, to basically decide if you want to go and effectively raid someone else's, you know, bank or or or base. But there's a risk reward there because you you could go and raid and you'd be successful, you could go and raid and lose everything, or whilst you're out raiding, someone could raise you know, your base that you've been been building up. So I think when you think about that application in web 3, I mean, that kind of mechanic for me is just yeah, it's great for gamers, but I think it's great for web 3 gamers that love a bit of speculation because you've got a decision to make there.

Jon Hook 01:11:11 Do you you know, the risk reward, do you try and go for that, you know, bigger, you know, speculative reward by starting to rate other players, or do you just protect what you have. And then when you start thinking about token design and token syncs, I would imagine something like that potentially if done correctly could be a really in token burn mechanism. If you can encourage, you know, more and more players into that route that they are doing this raiding mechanic, and again, you, you know, you can set the controls somewhat, then I'd imagine that that could also be fun.

Jon Hook 01:11:45 But but yeah, I think there's many great games in Web 3 if you wanna you know, if you just wanna go go gamble, whether it's like the humble coin flip games or, you know, some of the bigger, like, web tree casinos or horse racing games around, I'm really excited for like what, you know, what they're doing and where they're going. But again, it comes back to what we've spoken about before. It just depends on your audience I'm with Karma, right? Some people just have an aversion to skill based games because, yeah, they just don't have that appetite for risk or again, it's a certain type of player.

Jon Hook 01:12:16 So it just comes back to building what makes sense for, you know, for your players, but you know, a 100% agree with the sentiment that, you know, gambling and web 3 on paper is is like a match made in heaven.

Legendary 01:12:31 Absolutely. My inner degener keeps, smiling. And I also think that you you have to find the right balance, and I think this is probably one of the trickiest things when you think about, you know, game theory that is attached to all those, well, not if you're, like, in the proper casino setting, but all those skill based gambling games. You have a certain element of game theory, and I think that nailing the complexity of that is really, really challenging. Because on the one hand, you don't want for it to be, super easy where it's just very blatant and straightforward.

Legendary 01:13:09 To figure out the best strategy and to play according to that strategy, but you also don't want to overwhelm your players with, an enormous amount of complexity so that they simply, you know, lose the fun and interest in figuring out how to approach a game. And as you said, it all really, really depends, on your individual audience. And with that being said, we've been going for a bit more than 1 hour. We have an amazing start into, our first gaming spaces with ZT X this year. Life listeners are definitely at an all time high with 930 people listening in life.

Legendary 01:13:49 That is an insane, insane number. And I want to be respectful to everyone's time, both everyone who's with us on stage as well as everyone in the audience. So what I wanna do is because we started a bit off on, you know, speculations, forecasts for 2024.

Legendary 01:14:08 So I kinda wanted round it up with something a bit more solid And that is the question, to all of our speakers, what is something that you know, our audience, the players, Aaron, who's listening in, can expect from your project, from your game in 2024, would love to start with you, Charles.

Charl3s 01:14:33 Sure thing. So I'll be repetitive here, but on So not tomorrow, day of the week is a Tuesday. So not tomorrow, but next Wednesday. So January 17th, the Nifty Island will go fully live. Into full open beta. That means an open web 3 game worlds where everyone can have their own island, build it up, host their own custom games on it, compete for crazy on chain prizes, with, alongside a 120 of the best communities in web 3, that means playing your sappy seal, your pudgy penguin, your crypto hunk, your board a, if your cyberkong, etcetera, etcetera. So, that will go live, and there'll be a play to air drop campaign with it. It'll be really fun.

Charl3s 01:15:11 The goal is to, you know, create this game world that serves as a public good for all of crypto, the gaming layer for NFTs, you will be able to earn the token by playing. It's gonna be fun. It's kind of a no brainer to hop in there, but do your thing if you don't want to. That's fine too. I would recommend it. And, beyond the initial launch, I think you're just gonna see us deepening the product. You know, we're gonna launch with a few games you can play on your island. The goal will be to deepen those games, open them up, let third parties create their own games within Nifty, introduce more financial consequence into the way you interact with people on their island and things like wagering, things like what we've been talking about. That's kind of next step.

Charl3s 01:15:51 But, yeah, no, I think you'll see This will be, you know, a true, full fledged launch with really fun incentives, and it's not coming, you know, q 3 2025. It's coming January 17th.

Legendary 01:16:03 So come on in. We'd love to hear that quick follow-up question. If someone who isn't familiar with nifty island wants to join the better, what do they have to do?

Charl3s 01:16:13 The good news is, you just have to you just have to come in there, January 17th, so there's no prerequisite assets you have to own. Bring the NFTs you already have. If you're excited about things that are on chain, there's a good chance you're eligible for rewards. So the the way to find out is to tune in January 17th. Also recommend following the Twitter. And, well, you may wanna turn notifications on for that because there's gonna be a lot of, like, time gated quests with pretty considerable rewards. So, Yeah. I'd recommend turning notifications on for the nifty account, January 17th onward. You're gonna see kind of really crazy challenges. Think Dookie dash, but over and over again, you know, on player created islands, it's gonna be good.

Legendary 01:16:53 Love it. And we have all the official accounts up on stage for your convenience John, the very same question to you, what can people expect from Play Amber in 2024?

Jon Hook 01:17:04 Well, I think I think from us, if you've been following along, you may or may not know that we're doing a mint relatively soon. So, that's absolutely coming. I think what you can expect from us this year is more great games to enjoy. There's gonna be a lot of characters, and IP that you're very familiar with in the web 3 space. Joining MB, in our games. And also MB is gonna be popping up in some really fun web 3 games. And you know, also a new part of our business. We love making games. We love self publishing our own games. But we've also started to co develop fund and publish the party games.

Jon Hook 01:17:43 So the first one that's gonna be out in soft launch at GDC is, is with CallCATs. A really nice match 3 mobile game. So you're gonna also start to see, you know, more more of those types of games with amazing web through brands and PFPs who really want to extend their IP to that web to audience, collabing with a to, you know, come up with those kinds of games. So that's that's what to expect from us.

Legendary 01:18:11 Love to hear that. And the very same question to you, lost local can people expect from Avagotchi in 2024?

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 01:18:18 The 3 main words, Gachi gaming console. So that's the big, big focus this year. We are extremely excited to go live with that console and a handful of games. So that is, you know, the centerpiece of everything that we're presenting, this year and our focus. But more immediately, we will be partnering with a few different projects leading up to that launch. Next week, there's gonna be a very cool tournament from a project called Nitroleague, which is a car racing game. You'll be able to play racing a very, very cool Avogache themed race car. So keep an eye out for that.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 01:18:55 And of course, please follow the official Avogache page. We're gonna be all over the place in the upcoming months, demoing our games, a massive presence at Ethereum Denver, massive presence at GDC, a presence at, NFT Paris. And, of course, all of this is going to be leading up to our founders pass.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 01:19:17 So make sure you're paying attention to the Avagashi official page because we're gonna be giving those opportunities for folks to knock out those 7 achievements, start building up those discounts, and then eventually all leading up to that Dutch auction mint, which will be filled with some really great assets, putting you way ahead of the pack once these games go live. So, cannot cannot stress enough. If you're a gamer and you're passionate about web 3, definitely pay attention to what we're doing.

Aavegotchi 👻 💜 01:19:47 One of the most OG projects in the space and we think people are gonna really, really love what we have, you know, to bring out to the public in the form of this founders pass and Gotcha gaming console. Thanks for having us.

Legendary 01:20:03 Absolutely. Sounds fantastic. And, Karma, now to you for the closing words for our space today?

Karma 01:20:10 Of course. Well, first, let me say that, you know, we're also incredibly excited for this year at ZT X. Our first step is to relaunch our beta. We survive fell fell victim to this success. And generally didn't expect the amount of players we had in the initial 1st week before the Christmas And we are now, like, upgrading the login flow and more and really excited to to get this back on track. Of course, we will continue, you know, expanding on the initial game loop.

Karma 01:20:43 We are going to continue integrating our ZT X Genesis Homes going then to proceed with lending strategies where owners, it's all about catering to different groups of players where whales or larger holders will be able to rent out their assets. And players will be able to, you know, participate in a very, very affordable manner. So, yeah, very excited about all of that. Definitely gonna be syncing with Charles to discuss some more on all those potential wagering, discussions. And, yeah, John, Charles, lost local.

Karma 01:21:20 Honestly, this has been an readable discussion as evidenced by us running over 20 minutes late, all time high in listeners, I'm sure umbilis hype helped a little, but I would like to I would like to think that it's it's all of our contributions that's really, really bring value to the space and to the listener And to everybody who is listening, make sure to follow all the speakers, make sure to follow all the projects, these truly are amazing trailblazers that are going to change how the gaming looks in the next months, and we are going to see lots of them. So I'm truly excited.

Karma 01:21:57 And on a humorous note, lost local, if you're ever bored of web3, I can see an incredible career for you in narrating, just basically anything. Like, gorgeous, deep voice, I honestly want to have you on all the time.