Pixelmon & Playember - What can we learn from Palworld?

Unveiling Gaming Innovations: Lessons from Palworld for Pixelmon & Playember

Embark on a journey through the innovative realms of Pixelmon and Playember, as we dissect the valuable lessons learned from Palworld's success.

This transcript captures a vibrant discussion among gaming visionaries, exploring the nuances of game design, user engagement, and the strategic development of gaming IPs in the Web3 era.

Dive into this insightful narrative that blends expertise and creativity, highlighting how these gaming titans draw inspiration and chart new paths in the ever-evolving digital playground.

~~TRANSCRIPT~~

Legendary 00:02:37 Gmgm, everyone and welcome back to our weekly spaces.

Legendary 00:03:18 Very, very excited about this week's episode. We will have a bit of a of a deep dive into both, pixelmon and playmber, but also more touching on, a couple of different topics, one of which is gonna be the hyper casual gaming sector, how gaming, connect to AI. The other topic that we really wanna dive into is IP. Especially since the fall, the whole timeline over the last couple of weeks, or the last 2 weeks was fall with the tremendous success of Palworld.

Legendary 00:03:57 And I definitely wanna hear from our panelists, wanna hear from both John and Julia today, if if there are any learnings in there, for web 3, for web 3 gaming in specific, And also, Play Ember had a very, very successful mint that we wanna dive a bit into a pixelmon just had a very almost on the personal note, very lovely announcement announcing their ambassadors very happy for everyone who is part of their team.

Legendary 00:04:29 Obviously, including myself, very happy to be, part of that lineup myself, but With that of of the way, I think we have, an amazing discussion planned for today with that being said, Julio. Welcome. Welcome back to the stage you've been with us before. How are you doing? How is your week going so far?

GiulioX 00:04:50 Hey, thank you for having me. Week's going well. Can't say we can't say you got a lot of free time put it that way, but there's always an opportunity and there's always a fire. But, you know, I guess that's That's part of things going well. There wouldn't be fires if people didn't care, and there wouldn't be opportunities if people didn't care. So, very, very glad of the opportunities we have, at this point in time, and this is one of them. So thank you for having me.

Legendary 00:05:21 Absolutely. What's what's the last fire? You have to put out.

GiulioX 00:05:25 So I I just, unfortunately discovered that we weren't we didn't have the right process in place. So, you know, we we gone up, a bit in terms of attention and popularity in the last couple of months. And, I realized that our ticketing system in this court had gotten a little bit unattended. So effectively a customer service, failure And, I think failure on my end, because we should have been really having KPIs and and daily reports and escalation processes and average resolution time, particularly, and all of those things that actually in ecommerce are really good at, and I failed to implement over here.

GiulioX 00:06:04 So a little bit of a little bit of interest in customer service, but it'll get fixed.

Legendary 00:06:11 Gotcha. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And I also love that as a bit of a spicy icebreaker question, So I'm gonna throw it straight to you, John. Welcome back. What is the last fire that you have to put out?

Jon Hook 00:06:23 Well, on a personal level, my tire went on the drive home this morning. So that was like a personal story that wasn't ideal that screwed up my morning. What does it say? I mean, it's not a fiery. I think at the stage we're at, I mean, a bit like what Julia is saying, I think you you've you've constantly got a filter through, like a lot of the exciting opportunities coming your way, but there's also got to be some level of prioritization in here. Map to, you know, kinda short term what we're we're deploying and also just at a basic human human level.

Jon Hook 00:06:54 There's only so many hours in a day and there's a limit to how much hatred I can take from my developers at the moment, and it's really important that they don't burn out. I think it's it's really trying to manage, constantly manage that, you know, expectation and commitment to the community and holders versus, yeah, trying to continue to build and grow the business in a sustainable way. And, you know, every every day, you know, at times that can feel like a a fire because you're you're trying to keep a lot of people happy in the business driving forward. But my tire's fixed, so I'm happy about that.

Legendary 00:07:29 Love to hear that and definitely agree. That balance is super, super important if you want to approach things in a sustainable long term way Ashley, welcome to the stage. Any fires you've been putting out recently? Well, that's in web 1, web 2, web 3, web 4.

Ashley 00:07:44 You know, I I'd like to, you know, come in right with you guys, but I just got back from, Spain last week. I guess the only fire that I was putting out is severe jetlag. Ira's there just because, like, She's having to go in and out of town because she lives in North Carolina. I live in Texas. So, you know, it's it's a very exciting time, but, I guess so it's more stress and excitement rather than anything else. So I guess those are good problems to have.

Legendary 00:08:21 Definitely good problems to have. And I think for many, many reasons this week in in in January or at least those 3 days in January that we have this week are the most exciting ones. Carmel, welcome to the stage. How have you been any fires for you to put out?

Karma 00:08:37 Hello. Hello, everybody. Incredibly excited for this panel. And thank you, John. Thank you, Julia, for tuning in in the midst of what is very, very exciting and stressful period for both of you. Also, thank you for every single person joining. Very, very untypically to my life, there are no fires at the moment other than constant travel. Majority of my life just consists of, you know, future proofing different decisions against my future stupidity. So recently, I've been I've been actually doing very well.

Karma 00:09:10 The the Twitter spaces here with you legendary have been like as very, very steadfast rock in my calendar every single week. So, maybe that has contributed to it, a little bit of stability in the digital life.

Legendary 00:09:27 I love it. I love it when our spaces become the stability, the the rock in your life. With that being said, let's let's get into it. John, I would quite like to start with you since you have successfully, very successfully minted out last week. Since we've started on a on on a spicy note, let's fits by seat. And let's not start with the warm up question, but with the maybe the more challenging one in hindsight, would you still have done a free mint? Am I hugging?

Ashley 00:10:05 Voice John. No. No. You're not working. He isn't unmuted yet. I don't think.

Legendary 00:10:12 All ready. Then maybe let's give him a bit of time.

Playember 00:10:16 Come back on stage.

GiulioX 00:10:17 Hey, guys.

Playember 00:10:19 Hey, I'm I'm Hugo. I'll I'll I'll step in whilst Whilst films having some having some problems. It yes. I think we would do a freemint again. Yeah, it it allowed us to kind of really grow our community. And we're we're kind of really was obviously a stressful time, but we're really happy with how smooth the mint was, and we can already kind of see the the sprouts of our community, kind of really, really starting. Obviously, you're going to have those flippers, right? But yeah, I think we already have a few wells.

Playember 00:10:57 I think have something like 2020 holders above 20 NFTs each. We're kind of having 1 to 1 calls with them. So yeah, really, really enjoying, enjoying talking to the, to these big holders and the community yeah, so in short, we, we definitely could.

Legendary 00:11:23 Interesting that you mentioned the the fact that you have your 20 ish whales that you wanted to have the the one on one on one calls with them. Is it something you had initially planned, or was it like you will see and wait for the whole destruction then just reach out your biggest holder, how did that initiative came to be?

Playember 00:11:43 Yeah. To be honest, it was completely natural. I've actually just had a, I've just had a telegram from John saying, I can take over.

Jon Hook 00:11:50 So Johnny. Yeah, sorry. I just got completely rucked. Yeah. I mean, some of it is natural. Like as Hugo was saying with some of the some of the whales, it's it's really important that that we give them you know, kind of transparency information so that they can position accordingly, but some of these have been going on since before before mint from people that have been very interested in what we're doing, in what we're doing. So, you know, continuing to do that, like this week is just nonstop calls, in in some shape or form.

Jon Hook 00:12:24 And it's just really important at this early stage to, you know, just particularly with what's what's happening this week you know, we've been trying to do that for a long time. This isn't something we just decided around mid. You know, say with our our investors, we have very regular calls with them. And I think I think the best thing is is is the is the 2 way process. You know, some of the announcements that are coming out you know, this isn't something that we we can take credit for at all. It's very much a two way process with some amazing, you know, amazing leaders and creditors in this space.

Jon Hook 00:12:57 And that's probably the most enjoying thing is very much just not feeling alone in any of this and having the support and you know, brain power of of of not just our community, but other communities that we're welcoming in. So, it's it's really interesting working through this and you know, just kicking this around to see the best best path forward?

Legendary 00:13:20 The last thing we we had you with us on the ZTX spaces, you made point that, to you, it is super important to stay humble to not assume anything getting into the web 3 space And now you're obviously focusing on collecting feedback on having that conversation with your holders with the whales as well, do you think that, say, your typical your your average holder having maybe 1 or 2 MBs, and the whale holders have different demands or different expectations. And how do you manage to basically get both opinions from both subgroups in.

Jon Hook 00:13:57 Yeah. We we we're still learning. Right? Everyone everyone has as as much like, as much importance, whether you you you have 1 or whether you have, whether you have 50. You know, obviously we have sort of separate channels based on, the amounts you have. But in terms of balancing priorities, really try and treat everyone the same, right? So really when we start thinking about the the gains dropping, there are some similar questions in both channels in terms of you know, rightly so what what does that mean like for us as a holder?

Jon Hook 00:14:32 I think we're we're trying to you know, take, take a position here is particularly with everything happening right now. It's like the fund and one of our key pillars that playing but has always been about is kind of making great games. So we don't wanna have that barrier whether you're a holder or not into our ecosystem. Of course as an MB holder, there's gonna there's gonna be some extra, you know, benefits in in game entertainment that you should enjoy as someone that you know, invested in, in in what we're doing. But on the on the flip side, we also, you know, it's been operational for a while now.

Jon Hook 00:15:07 Any gamer should be able to come in and contribute to the ecosystem, and get entertainment and, you know, rewards tournaments, etcetera, even if they're not an NMB holder because we, you know, we're we're we're building this for the mass casual gaming market and there's a few billion of them. So that might completely damage the economics of our our system if we had like a 2,000,000,000 Genesis collection.

Jon Hook 00:15:33 So yeah, in summary, we're we're we're listening to everyone, trying to balance, you know, time obviously in Discord, but also, you know, being in important spaces like this representing play ember, you know, balance with one on one calls with, you know, a whole range of people in the space.

Legendary 00:15:51 Very, very well said, and I definitely do agree with you. Julia, I want to loop you in into this conversation talking about contributions to the ecosystem, you've announced a total of 10 ambassadors today joining the Pixelmon ecosystem with the goal to propel the brand, to propel the IP, and just to get them, them on board with Pixelmon, how maybe walk me a bit through the process. How did you come up with the ambassador program?

Legendary 00:16:23 What would make it a successful a program for you, say, in 6 months from now looking back to it, what are your thoughts on that?

GiulioX 00:16:32 Yeah. I'm so sorry. Thank you for bringing it up. We we've been working on this for a while. To be frank with you, it's, it's something that actually came up as an idea while we were. And it it's relatively well known now that we've done what is called as a private round or a strategic round. In the last, couple of months. And and during that round, frankly, we ended up meeting, yeah, great founders which was really what we were initially looking for.

GiulioX 00:17:07 Some, very, very strong strategic, partners but also we ended up meeting a lot of, people with a very strong network in the space that understand the space inside out and, whose opinion matters in two ways, the first one they are a great pulse, of what the space needs, and wants.

GiulioX 00:17:36 But at the same time, they are, if their opinion ends up being positive towards you, their opinion because of you know, how they behaved in the past tends to matter, also to to others to their networks. And what we realized is that effectively, these people could bring to the table, more, and we wanted them to be closer and have essentially a closer relationship with them.

GiulioX 00:18:04 And so so, you know, we we ended up branding it, as a separate program, but it is effectively ultimately a program that wants to create long term alignment between ourselves as a project, our community, and this group was of ambassadors. So so the core of it, when you ask me, why, you know, how how do you keep it successful? So I think success is gonna it is measured by alignment of incentives across these parties. So effectively, you know, we don't need someone to do short term marketing for Pixel on Pixel for better for worst is very well known.

GiulioX 00:18:45 Thanks are mainly still to the original Mint and and slowly now for a bunch of other reasons. But, so so what we do need is, effectively, groups of people with strong reach and strong opinions, have an alignment of interest to that of the team. And, you know, for lack of that better words, so to be actually very direct about it, that means long term incentivization alignment, not short term incentivization alignment. So not paper post, but align long term on the, outcomes. And, and that's what we put in place. And I, you know, we'll know if it works.

GiulioX 00:19:24 If in 6 months, the incentive are still all aligned.

Legendary 00:19:29 Yeah. That's a very, very good point. And I think that's also the the challenging side of things to actually find a set of incentives that works for long term alignment and to find a set of people that have that long term incentive and who just don't see it as basically the next thing they can show on their timeline and then move on to the next project. How do you how do you make sure or how do you how do you find those people where you think, okay, this might be a good long term fit? Obviously, time will tell, but what's the process behind that?

GiulioX 00:20:02 So, I think there's there's a few slides to that. One is, inbound and the other one is outbound. So by inbound, I mean, effectively, I think the first layer, to this was actually to see who naturally came to us. And by that, I don't mean people coming in and and and asking us, but I mean, people that either were already caring for the project already talking about it independently or participating in our discord, independently.

GiulioX 00:20:35 People that were referred by people that we trust So there was just, you know, Angelio can introduce you to this guy. He writes great newsletters. With deep content on the space. Can I spin up a telegram chat between you and him? And and, you know, we got to know each other and then, I subscribed to that newsletter and few weeks later, and they're thinking, well, I think we should align each other more, clearly, on incentives. So that's the inbound side And I'll tell you, I think out of the list, we are looking probably at 80% inbound.

GiulioX 00:21:09 And then once we have that 80% inbound, so once we had you know, essentially thought that way there was the 2nd layer, which was effectively, okay. Now it makes sense to spin up an ambassador program. How do we spin, you know, how do we how do we add another, tool free to it At that point, the it's basically a round of chats within the people that we follow, we listen to, and our team listens to, and, then we try and reach out to them.

GiulioX 00:21:43 But, yeah, I'd say the ones we reached out to, probably 20% while the ones that we ended up happening to talk to either were 80%. And I think it's it's nice that way because it means there was an interest pre predating, any, let's say, commercial intent So it's it's an organic relationship from the get go is what you're saying.

Legendary 00:22:11 One one follow-up question on that because we do have, lots of creators on state or in in the audience with us. If a creator wants put themselves in a position where they might be able to get a deal with a brand like Pixel Mona Partnership and Ambassador with a brand like Pixelmon. What what advice could you give to them to put basically the best foot forward?

GiulioX 00:22:35 Yeah. So, look, my point is, I think especially, pick someone is what I would call a complex ecosystem. Compared to most NFT collect NFT projects, we have, a bit more, collections out there. Those collections have different individual utilities. Some are burnt. You know, the serums are burnt to create, pixel months, but you gotta check if a pixel been evolved or not, but there's a lot of we we are looking to streamline it, but there's a lot of complexity to it.

GiulioX 00:23:09 I mean, even just understanding our fraction wise IP, and royalty system, and what ultimately a Pixel 1 NFT represents, which is an IP shard it's not just a, PFP or in game asset, etcetera. These are layers of complexity effectively, you know, for me to explain fully pixel onto somebody, I probably not fully, but at least give them a high level idea of what the incentive structures are, I'd need 15 minutes of one on one time with me alone talking in a long monologue.

GiulioX 00:23:45 So then what I start really appreciating are people that talk to us or talk about us. But going one level of depth deeper into explaining our ecosystem. I truly appreciate the, you know, that the participants to the ecosystem that just understand and take the time to digest an aspect of us.

GiulioX 00:24:13 I mean, it can be, you know, seating that frankly decrypted our game design going backwards in my replies and our, newsletters to a level that even some members of my team had an, you know, non the gaming team, but the peripheral teams hadn't gotten to. He had truly understood some of the details, and it was obvious the moment I started speaking to him that homework at a deep level had been done. It wasn't just, oh, here's an interesting project. Let me, you know, superficially talk about it.

GiulioX 00:24:52 So again, I think for me, it's, the best advice is probably a founder 1 doesn't want people to just speak about him or his project. He wants people to help him communicate depth of complexity. And that means, go a few layer deeper, show that you fully understood and appreciate that. And it can be even finding a mistake. Yeah? That sometimes is the best.

Legendary 00:25:24 Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Wanted to add that. If you have such an understanding they can spot mistakes in the complex and that means you are really, really knowledgeable on what's going on there. Actually, I do wanna bring you in into that conversation and hear from you as a creator and get your thoughts on how you position yourself as a fellow creator to work with brands in this space?

Ashley 00:25:52 You know, it's all about, figuring out, like, where your strengths are because, like, your strengths are not my strengths, and my strengths are not your strengths. And trying to go outside of that is gonna be like an unnatural fit for both audiences. So I just go based off of, like, hey, which brands do I already have a good relationship with? Which ones can I do do I have a lot of interest in? Sometimes it's as simple as seeing a brand that you really love that you would represent anyway, regardless of whether you're an faster or working for them or not. And then you go into that, you know, with full support.

Ashley 00:26:30 And a lot of the times, the connection is pretty natural. Or, you know, like, some of, like, the most recent ambassadorship that I have with Magic Eden You know, I've, I've been a big Magic Ian fan for a long time. I've been, you know, friends with a lot of the team, so that was a very natural fit. A lot of the content creators, they try to kind of, like, be an all, what is the word that I'm looking for? They they try to do everything. And you don't need to do everything. You need to do the thing that you're good at, and you need to refine it. You need to work on it, you need to become the best at it.

Ashley 00:27:08 And I think that's, as a content creator, how you establish really meaningful partnerships and make your content not only more meaningful, but just better generally.

Legendary 00:27:20 Yeah. Don't be a jack of all trades. Find your specialty laughter advice Cramer would love to get you into this conversation as well. We've been planning this show, and we, we've spoken quite a lot about IP. We spoken a lot about power world. And, I would love was to pivot a bit into that direction and then hear your thoughts on that.

Karma 00:27:41 Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, let me apologize for refocusing the conversation in a slightly different direction. But it's something I've been thinking and, you know, having both you here, like with Pixelmon and Playaumburg experience, we obviously want to pivot towards the direction of mobile and high for casual gaming as a topic. But before that, I really would love for us all to just exchange some thoughts about the power world. Success.

Karma 00:28:08 Now not necessarily just because it's, you know, like, the hot new thing and an exciting new topic, but I also believe the history of pal world team is you know, very, very keen to many, you know, more junior in these studios building within web3 right now. You know, some of the founders do have web3 background experience, even if power itself is a fully web 2 game, it was a small studio, which with, you know, relatively low, I would say, low supply of, you know, time and work hours has created a huge blockbuster.

Karma 00:28:45 So I'm going to direct this to you, Julia, first, because obviously there are parallels being drawn between success of Palworld, success of the monster hunting type of game as a wider narrative, Do you see any particular take takeaways from power success? Is there any type of a way that you are looking at it and trying to take something out for Pixel Moon itself.

GiulioX 00:29:12 Fantastic question. I mean, it's a as you can imagine, I've heard this quite few times, in the last few weeks, and we've had these conversations internally. Now maybe maybe one step back. I think what power world proves which is something that I think not many people had doubts of once you stopped and thought about it was that there is a massive, massive market for over sixteen year old, targeted monster collecting games.

GiulioX 00:29:47 And particularly for monster collecting games, outside the traditional Nintendo devices. So for Monster collecting RPGs, not on, switch. I think in Pixelmon, sorry, Pokemon is by far the highest grossing IP franchise ever. But every single RPG they've made is on one device, and that device has only sold 50 mile 50,000,000 pieces, worldwide. So again, metabolize this.

GiulioX 00:30:24 The biggest consumer IP in the world only runs its RPGs on a device category with 50,000,000 devices. So then you make a good game, that targets a slightly older age group because people that love Pokemon have aged, and one of them, and, you put it on a device that wasn't targeted earlier. And again, the game loop is great. I just explode. I think that's confirmation of market size. If ever we needed it, if it's there. The the other layer is then, you know, can you learn anything from this in terms of game design.

GiulioX 00:31:04 So what I think is genius of it's it's so simple but it's genius, is that, you know, you start thinking, stop thinking of demands just as an army of duelers, start thinking of the moms as a workforce. And hopefully down the line, an expansion they could add or somebody else could add, start thinking of the Monza as an army, not of dualers, but an army of many when you can send them on, like, raids using 2030. Maybe you start with a bit less, but whatnot of your mons.

GiulioX 00:31:42 So that simple variation, think of your mom's as, or pals in that case as a workforce. In addition to a, combat force is so deep, but effectively it flips the game. It becomes rust plus Pokemon put together, and that's great. We are looking at a lot of what they've implemented. There's a lot to learn there, not just in terms game design, but also pragmatic design. Like, a lot, that game is done in a very pragmatic way. They haven't over invested in animations. They've used a lot of off the shelf art assets, but they but it just works because the underlying design is so great.

GiulioX 00:32:21 And the sum of the parts work works. So, we are trying to learn from it, but also, I mean, now it's being done also you don't wanna be a me too. I don't think it's enough to just say, oh, I'm gonna do power world, but on web, on on on the chain. Now that that not gonna be enough, not for a project like us. So, yeah, there are learnings. But we whoever wants to do that needs to innovate really strongly on top of it.

Legendary 00:32:54 I do I do have a follow-up question on that. You describe pal world as essentially rust plus Pokemon. So, basically, it's 2 very successful brands, 2 very successful IPs blended together into a new thing and or to successful concepts blended together.

Legendary 00:33:11 And with with that description, the question that came to my mind is, how important do you think is it to build your own IP to stand out Do you even need to have your own unique IP to have your own unique brand, or can you be successful by just not just by by putting together 2 different concepts that maybe many people will describe how well as Rust plus Pokemon and nobody really cares too much about the IP. Where do you land on on those two sites?

GiulioX 00:33:42 So I think in its I believe, put it. I mean, and and then I've I maybe listens to too many, speeches that games come, but I believe that effectively one can build you can build a $1,000,000,000 revenue game, by just creating a great game loop and making it smoothly on the right devices.

GiulioX 00:34:08 But it will be very difficult for you to then create other product, say other games in other genres, or a TV series or merchandise, unless you in the process of creating that game, you really focus and think through what is the IP emotional value. Of it.

GiulioX 00:34:33 So there are fantastic game loops that don't survive it's first to release or if they survive it, it's only in the form of, okay, number 2, number 3, of the same exact genre. It works for premium games, not for free to play. And there are said, let's say, average to good games, but with a very deep IP that managed to spread across in general. So, I mean, I I think Powell, you know, now they've they've proved to be very great execution.

GiulioX 00:35:12 So I don't wanna speak poorly of any but maybe the only angle where it seems like the focus was a lot less and very different from how we had picked someone who had been thinking thinking. We've always put the monsters design and the world building first. So we've always thought ultimately we're gonna live and die on how I'm how from the emotional connection between players and our monsters. Yes. And how they think they think they will fit in this world, which is Pokemon meets game of Thrones. The one we we are thinking through.

GiulioX 00:35:44 And instead it's pretty evident that that, the team at, Powell thought a lot more about we're gonna live and die on the game loop and, we're gonna have an AI generate the monsters and, you know, they could look this that, but ultimately, they are functional. They're not strategic. So I think it's different choices. I think an IP might be a little bit derisked because you can spread it, you can make different bets on different product. And, have more longevity.

GiulioX 00:36:18 But again, you know, if you can just, in a week, you have, more than a 100,000,000 sales on steam, you can probably say that, you did things in your own way focusing on your own strengths and those strengths were game design.

Karma 00:36:32 Yeah. Absolutely. And there were some amazing takes in there. I do believe I agree, and I think for Pixelmon particularly, you know, considering that some of the monsters, not to say all of them, are such an important part of the NFT ecosystem, It also lends itself, of course, to spending so much time and so much love into the design of these, to just incentivize the ownership and generally first something to the community that they will be, they will be, you know, proud owning.

Karma 00:37:05 Whereas for power world, these are a means to an end and certainly just fun element of the game, which they can afford to be a bit more, AI influence, I would say. And I would now love you know, to bring Play Amber to bring you John into this conversation back with not the same, but a similar question, going in the direction of IP.

Karma 00:37:29 Now, you know, having followed the PlayAmber, mint schedule of having followed your marketing, I do love the MB mascot, and it is for me emblematic of building, you know, IP, building something that people emotionally connect with isn't in form of simple mint graphics. It has been incredibly a active, and you've genuinely, you leaned into that strategy. So could you expand on that? You know, like, that building your own IP how the ties to play Amber as a wider ecosystem, and if there are any takeaways that you've also seen from power or from other players in the space.

Jon Hook 00:38:08 Yes. So, I mean, if if we start with with with Powell, I mean, I agree with, a a lot of what Julia said there. I think you know, for us in in casual games, I think what they've done very cleverly is you skirt this fine line between a character that feels very familiar but you always stop and check with the lawyers where you then start getting into a IP infringement. And the last thing you want is Yeah. Or or, yeah, or or or you don't, you know, I think that I think a lot of people just accept that risk.

Jon Hook 00:38:39 You know, I've seen a whole bunch of, like, casual hyper casual ads that have literally got Pokemon characters in, that if, you know, Nintendo had better things to do and went through every single casual ad in the past year, they'd probably have, I don't know, like a 100 lawsuits. So I I I think they played that very well. Like, the, you know, the the characters you know, I'm pretty sure there's a couple that, maybe a bit too close, but I think that that theme is something that has been around and free to play gaming for a long, long time. It's just, again, as Julia said, I think it's it's not just the character.

Jon Hook 00:39:11 It's just that they also it's, you know, they created the IP but obviously they applied the kind of like survival genre elements as well. Right? I don't think it was just because of the the IP there. So then the the other interesting thing is actually if you read read up on the team and, you know, again, very similar just to game development, game development is hard. You know, they'd previously previously shipped 3 other games with sort of various success. And then, you know, went back the drawing board completely switched from like unity to unreal. And and now they've had that hit game. So I've seen that many times working with with studios quite often your first attempt is is not the one that is to hit game.

Jon Hook 00:39:51 It might be, you know, number 2, 3, 4, 5. It's the team's ability just to a resilience to learn and go again. So so when it comes to us in, IP, you know, very similar approach you know, build building like gaming IP, you know, can be a long and expensive process. So for us, we just follow the same approach we always have, which is which is you know, a scientific one, you know, start creating a few concepts, start using, our audience to tell us what what they think has started putting a few you had a few few ads on like tiktok, YouTube, etcetera, to see the kind of direction and, you know, characterization that that worked.

Jon Hook 00:40:32 And then I think we deliberately drew the line and then started to, you know, that's why I find fascinating about building IP in Web 3 is very different is then kinda letting the community take over and giving them MB and seeing what what it meant to them and and and the root they took that in. And it's really interesting because of course, MB is 3 d, but we've seen some beautiful, like, two d characterizations of it, you know, from, you know, like MB and an anime style, you know, MB and a more almost like Mario Kart kind of environment. So when we think about building IP in web 3 in our ecosystem, you know, we our ecosystem is all about a collection of things.

Jon Hook 00:41:11 We're not going all in on on just envy, right? There's gonna be many other characters that come along. But I think that, you know, a good a good reference point when you think about sort of free to play games is is sort of how how king did it with, you know, their candy crush IP. There's a sort of recognizable, IP there. Then there's some, you know, new characters and record recognizable IP across sort of bubble witch saga, because you're you're dealing with a very sort of diverse audience. So I think that's the sort of line that we are thinking as we start to develop, you know, MB and and friends and other characters and and different genres is which IP is gonna work for audience.

Jon Hook 00:41:52 But yeah, that's the that's the key thing from power world is just it's really important with human psychology to build on that sense of familiarity I it's something that immediately I feel like I know this, but there's something very new there for me to explore.

Legendary 00:42:08 Yeah. I feel like those those are all really really great points that the 2 of you made. Julia saying that you take a very successful concept and apply it to a device that everyone has, and is not as limited in distribution as the Nintendo is. And you, John, mentioning the, a, the importance of IP, but also, b, that sense of of familiarity when you're, like, first exposed with with an IP, with a product, with a game.

Legendary 00:42:36 But also the fact that it often, like, takes more than one try to get to this point to have this kind of success and we it is in human nature to only see the success story and then think something is an overnight success where that's a content creator, an influencer, a game of product being built. We just see the last step of the journey, and we assume that is the entire journey. With with that being said, though, I wanted to build on Julia's point, namely that distribution on devices that are way more, popular or way more frequent than Nintendo.

Legendary 00:43:06 And obviously, a device their own has is a phone, bringing us to the hyper casual to the mobile gaming side of things, which in web 3 is, obviously a growing segment, but maybe face face is some, unique challenges because I still think that most people don't really interact with, web 3 with the wallets, at least not with the main wallets and the mobile phone. It's still, like, more of a laptop to desktop thing to do.

Legendary 00:43:42 On the other hand, gaming is obviously the mobile gaming market is growing the fastest. So I can imagine that building web 3 mobile games has its own, set of challenges that are unique to the fact that you're building, that game in a WIP's re environment and not in a quote unquote traditional web 2 environment and would love to hear your thoughts on that, John.

Jon Hook 00:44:09 Yeah. I mean, there's there's there's a lot in that. So if we if we break it down, I think kind of top top of funnel where where that's being lent into is is is really bringing in these you know, mass consumers and helping them discover web 3 gaming, but just in a way that they're very, very familiar with. And it, you know, it's gonna disappoint a lot of people in Web 3. That part is not the sexiest part, right?

Jon Hook 00:44:36 And it doesn't need to be, right, to really start getting them engaging and get their trust, trust to move them along this, you know, game journey into exploring, you know, the things that we all care about, we need to help them understand, you know, why ownership plus trading is something really exciting and empowering. And of course, to do that, it's back to power world. You need, you know, a a game and characterization that feels familiar that then encourages them and, it excites them to do that.

Jon Hook 00:45:07 I think the real the really big opportunity here for for for all of us is and I talk about this a lot is what what there is and what no one has cracked yet, and with, you know, with some partners, we're we're gonna take a very good run at it. Is really what that web 2.5 model looks like. Right? What does that web 2.5, web 3 modes of this is a mouthful, isn't it? Web 2.5 we've gotta come up with a better name for it, but like web 3, mobile casual game, like, what is the you know, what is the game design model? What is the economic model that works to allow, you know, web 3 gamers to come in and really enjoy it?

Jon Hook 00:45:47 And and get everything they want from the game, but also welcome in web 2 to create a really big community like around that concept. So, you know, in the early days of of of free to play, it was like when when supercell came along, they cracked it and then all of a sudden every developer was like, right. This is this is the model. We now understand exactly how to do that. And we just don't have that blueprint yet. So that's where we're gonna have a, you know, we're we're gonna apply what we what we know how to do, which is, you know, take a data led approach and it's gonna it's gonna change.

Jon Hook 00:46:20 So, you know, what we what what our thesis is at soft launch we'll invite everyone in, get their feedback, and then we'll go again, and we'll update it, and then we'll keep going until, you know, it's a point that everyone's really enjoying it. And and like power world, you know, maybe we don't get it right first time, but I think this is this is the real upside for all of us and the huge growth growth area and we're committed with, you know, everyone in the space that we're talking to about this because we're not doing it on our own.

Jon Hook 00:46:50 We generally believe that because of the speed that we can build these games, we we're pretty confident that we will find that model sooner than later, and then we just want to empower everyone else to to to build on it and start creating and, you know, start building on top of it, right? Because I think that's then where this grows very quickly. But yeah, the the the classic web 2 hyper casual model you know, there are some things we can do to fix that that we will be rolling out, but I think this bit that I've just been talking about, that's the far the far bigger and far more exciting opportunity for all of us.

Legendary 00:47:28 Thank you for that very, very detailed answer and breakdown Julia, I would love to bring you into this conversation as well and hear from you what role mobile gaming plays in the overall Pixelmon ecosystem.

GiulioX 00:47:42 Well, look, the way we think about it is, I'll take a step back. So if you think about the, just web3 adoption at the moment, we have a system, a setup where let's be honest, there's still a lot of, adversity and negativity, predominantly by, death top players predominantly in North America. That's, that's truth number 1.

GiulioX 00:48:15 Truth number 2 is that, generally, more the the more casual the player the more, open that player is to try, innovative product and to not judge a book by its cover, but just play around with it a little bit and then uninstall it if they want. If they're not happy with so let's say experimentation is probably higher on mobile. Third, you go back to, you know, pure, you know, what is crypto out.

GiulioX 00:48:51 It was born, as currencies and as currencies that, were potentially a better alternative to your national currency. Know, or at least to to your trust in the inflation or emissions of your national currency. And just statistically, you know, this might have changed with COVID statistically, developing countries tend to be less, tend to have higher inflation rates than trust their currencies less and trust crypto as an alternative more.

GiulioX 00:49:22 So and developing countries are predominantly mobile device driven, not just in gaming, but just in everyday, tech life.

GiulioX 00:49:32 When you put these free truths together, I think you know, it starts being quite, logical that ultimately the mass player base, for blockchain based games, statistically, at least, you know, of course, there can be one product that can drive 20,000,000 desktop users to crypto, to blockchain gaming, but absent that, stand out, unicorn effectively statistically, mobile seems to be the better bet and the bet that better fulfills the product, to technology fit to community fit.

GiulioX 00:50:15 So so when you you take that, all that in in, we realize that someone that our flagship product hunting rounds had to be a mobile, it had to be a mobile first. And, then only as a second crossover device, go to stop. And so and and all the other hyper casual, products had to be, very digestible on mobile browsers, And if anything, you have to optimize more for a mobile browser than for desktop browsers. So, pixel pals is as optimized as we can, to browsers.

GiulioX 00:50:50 It's actually harder to optimize for mobile browsers than it is to make to optimize for apps, because you're less adaptive, having using the browser, to screen size, etcetera. But we we've done it that way. Our flagship product is a is a mobile product, which is hunting rounds. We are also building one desktop product but, that's more because we want to ensure that the IP touches everyone. Yeah, our big bet, is on mobile. We adopt the same philosophy with our venture side in liquid X, when we make our passive investment tickets.

Legendary 00:51:31 Thank you. Thank you very, for the very, very detailed breakdown. Cramer, I would also like to bring you into this conversation here from ZT X's perspective, how you guys think about mobile.

Karma 00:51:43 Yeah. What a good question. The the more than $1,000,000 question. Well, quite frankly, I think it very much depends for us on on and I will expand on this on the time frame of onboarding our web to audience. Now bear with me here. So our backer and, you know, the company that we are enabled by IP and tech of Zepetto has over 400 and 30, um,000,000 lifetime users. But over 90% of this user base places a petal, the web to counter part of the app on mobile.

Karma 00:52:20 Now the reason why we decided to start developing ZT X, the web3 counterpart on desktop instead, is because it's operationally easier for us to figure out the complexities of the in game economy and of different, like, balancing mechanism of game loops, like, you know, how fun certain and sticky certain loops are. It's much, much more easy for us to figure this out in a more comprehensive desktop version, which allows us more, you know, freedom then immediately constrain cells to mobile. And for many of Lena, more complex games that Cepeta releases, that's a bit similar.

Karma 00:53:00 Some of them are only available or mobile. Some of them are only on on desktop. Now, of course, because the goal is to pull over the audience from the web to counterpart over time, mobile version of ZT X or mobile ZT X experiences are only a matter of time.

Karma 00:53:19 It's just very much a balancing act of how soon do you want to invest into switching to that onboarding strategy because quite frankly, the biggest and, you know, most challenging part is having that economy balanced, you know, having the token, having the all the resources that you can farm and utilize in game, be in equilibrium, and for users to be able to exchange these resources at rates, which, again, create a sustainable economy. It's something that's incredibly difficult to do.

Karma 00:53:53 It's, you know, tokenomics on steroids, and we really want to make sure that this is in balance before we move over to that web to audience via mobile. So I think for ZT X, it's a much, much different, you know, balancing act because we do have that backstop of our web to audience, which we know we can tap in tap into. So our timelines are just a bit different. Now this was a lot of a lot of words to say that, you know, certainly across 2024, 2025, mobile is going to be a big topic for us.

Karma 00:54:28 But any release dates are still very much something I cannot share at this moment.

Legendary 00:54:35 Gotcha. Thank you very much for for sharing your thoughts, though. Even if you can share share the release date, Julia, I do have a follow-up question for you. You said Bigbeds or mobile mobile product is first, but there will also be something to be built out on desktop. Do you think that is important that there is a connection between those two platforms? So should there be any any touch points for people going for the desktop product with the mobile 1, or is it important to keep those 2 completely separated?

GiulioX 00:55:09 So I think that there's two layers to that. No. So I think let me, the way I think about it is So there's the game layer and then there's the IP dash blockchain interoperability layer. So on the game layer, I think it really depends on the game genre. What we're building on desktop is effectively a Brawler meets a, Musa style game. I don't know if you've ever played dynasty warriors when you were younger or one piece pirate warriors. So effectively, it's that kind of fight against the horde in, co op or or single player. Now that is a product that stays on desktop and doesn't go to mobile.

GiulioX 00:55:49 Hunting grounds is a product that because it's an RPG, it's built to be optimized for mobile. So just to, essentially, the asset packs are optimized for mobile, for mobile device, power, the, the gameplay loop is thought for a mobile player, so somebody who spends x minutes of attention span, not X Hours. But because of the genre, it makes sense to also have a PC version. That if somebody wants to sit down comfortably and play it, he also has PC. So I think the choice of whether your multi platform or not is, depending on the product.

GiulioX 00:56:25 But I do think all of these products, if you're really building a web3 IP, should have interoperability at some layer in assets. So the monster NFT, the L2 monster NFT should have interoperability from the desktop product, to the mobile product, to maybe even the product for PlayStation, but by logging into a back end account and, making sure you target, to your account.

GiulioX 00:56:52 And the way we are trying to solve for this is not just through the NFT, the L2 layer 2 NFTs of the assets in the game, but also by unifying one product in the back end, which is essentially a gamer account management system that is shared across all of our games. So effectively, you have, you can, you have the same account in, that you would log into a hyper casual browser game as you would log into the death op game as you would log in to a completely separate mobile game.

GiulioX 00:57:30 So we have a unified user profiling And that then allows us to say if you have this NSD asset in one game, you should also have access to it in the other game. That that's that's one answer. That's the answer to your question. Then sorry. I I'm I'm gonna hear jump in with a little bit of a I I know we're hitting time. So I wanna make a small announcement, that goes outside, of the the normal, question flow, you tell me if you're gonna give me a space to do that in a moment or so, a little bit of alpha. If not, I'll do it now, but if if there's a separate question, then I'll I'll just with later, separate slot.

Legendary 00:58:07 Just just just go for it now. We are always here for the alpha. So we're not gonna toner to later, but just go straight for it.

GiulioX 00:58:14 Yeah. So look, I think 2 preambles here. I, as I said, we're very big believers in mobile, and we think mobile is plans from, you know, genschen impact, full open world RPG on mobile. Mobile is the biggest player category, all the way to super hyper casual teams. So and and we've made it very clear. When we are building for mobile, we are our mobile product is ultimately what you a high fidelity, high definition and essentially open world RPG on mobile. At the same time though, we recognize that the hyper casual market is huge.

GiulioX 00:58:50 We also recognize that the players that are good at doing hyper casual are hyper specialized at it. And, it's not something we need to necessarily build in house. Secondly, we've said a few times, we see Pixelmon as an open We want we want pick someone to be everywhere. We want our characters to be adopted, licensed, and used.

GiulioX 00:59:12 And and today, I want to, you know, announce the first high scale, licensing and usage of our characters through a, of the actually of, not our characters, but our communities' characters where where John and I connected, a few weeks back and, we decided that play Amber and pick someone are gonna work together. It's not just a normal partnership. It's not a white list here, white list there, raffle here, ruffle there. Nothing against those, but this is, like, play Amber and Pixelmon will be building a whole, new Pixelmon, hyper casual mobile game. It will be created and published by Playember. On top of everything we're doing.

GiulioX 00:59:51 So on top of the 5, 6 games we have in development, in in the next year and a half. This is gonna be built by the Play Amber team that are I mean, they've got tens of millions of downloads on their Android account. Just go check it out. Launching sometime in Q2, you know, how timings are in gaming could be out of Q3, but we're targeting Q2. And, Yeah. We're really excited about this, and I really thank John for the vote of confidence and then picking our IP for to bring into his ecosystem of a 100 plus million downloads.

Legendary 01:00:26 Holy shit. That is some serious alpha. John absolutely would love to hear from your from from your perspective as well on that partnership.

Jon Hook 01:00:35 Yeah. I mean, look, it's like, it's our absolute privilege. If anyone's gonna say thank you, it's me. Just really enjoyed, talking to Giulio and and the team about their vision and standing where they're going and sharing ours. And this is what I was kind of talking in code earlier and also messaging Julia on Telegram in terms of, like, are you gonna say it? Am I gonna say it? But you know, this for me is just really exciting. We are both committed now to, delivering these, you know, blockchain powers like mobile hyper casual casual gaming experiences, and and delivering this.

Jon Hook 01:01:10 And, you know, as you've you've heard the timelines, we don't have to wait till next year, where we're gonna drop the game. This is gonna be out relatively soon. And we're really looking forward to doing this with the, you know, amazing pixel community. So, you know, from our side, just, you know, wanna thank, you know, their their team for the kind of vote of vote of confidence and trust, and, yeah, honestly could not be more excited about this.

Legendary 01:01:38 Love to hear that, mate. I think that also says a lot about how we approach, corporation, competition, coopetition, to bring out that word again in this space. And that that collaborative aspect is something that I truly, truly love to see in in web 3 and very excited to hear that news. I absolutely had no idea that this is coming at no idea that you guys plan to announce that on our spaces. So it is on me to say thank you for, sharing that with us and and our audience. Carma would love to hear your first thoughts on that as well.

GiulioX 01:02:14 And and, and sorry, well, you came first. So we our team just posted 1 minute after I spoke if you wanna pin it up. You really came first. Sorry, Carmen.

Legendary 01:02:23 I interrupted you that. Love it. I'll I'll pin it in the meantime.

Karma 01:02:26 Karma go for it. No. Thank you so much. And this this is just such a joyful moment. Know, having these spaces, not just as an exchange for, you know, great thoughts, for builders, for the listeners as well, but Also to hear that, you know, very, very first announcement of what I personally generally consider a very, very big, you know, meaningful collab and I was even caught up. Apologies for for choosing the wrong road, like alignment. I would say alignment. That's incredible.

Karma 01:02:55 And I'm stoked beyond belief, I think this is going to not only supercharge the user acquisition, which I believe we all agree is the most difficult problem to solve in this space, but also really, really helps propagate that, you know, thought of, hey, let's grow the pie together and, you know, aligning the communities like you said before, alignment of incentives is is what will really drive this space forward. So kudos to you guys for, for achieving this, this incredible acceleration. And I know I'm going to be looking at the official announcements now as well.

Karma 01:03:31 Very, very excited for these spaces to become, you know, the pillar of of, use in the web3 space, like it did just now.

Legendary 01:03:39 Yeah. Absolutely love that. And pinned pinned the announcement on top. I also think we we covered so, so many topics in today's basis as we're approaching the closed, I want to throw it to you first, Julian, then have a closing question for the both of you?

GiulioX 01:03:57 Oh, yeah. Sorry. I I'm I'm gonna keep interrupting today. I'm I'm terrible. So I was supposed to add something our our holders are collecting badges. It's a key part of the, you know, upcoming big event with Mon and the budget for today is Amber, just like Clay Embers or EMBR. Sorry, sorry for the technical intersection.

Legendary 01:04:22 Absolutely. So Ember, EMber is the badge before today. With that being said, we obviously have the massive, massive alpha announcement now, but I would love, to hear from both of you, John and Julia on basically, quote, unquote, and individual level. What is something that holders that a community can look forward to over the next couple of weeks or months, John going to you first.

Jon Hook 01:04:51 Yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, this, I think this is what we've been very open about is what we're committed to doing, is just simply building and shipping. So you're you're gonna see more of these level of announcements that I mean, I think Giulio we didn't write this, but basically said exactly that this isn't just another collab and maybe we'll do something in a couple of years and we'll throw a massive party, you know, just an absolute commitment to, yeah, trying to solve some of the, you know, the the challenges that we that we have at a gameplay and distribution level.

Jon Hook 01:05:26 So that that's that that's what you can expect from, expect from us. And, yeah, I'm just seeing my telegram right up from the team, just a mixture of excitement and be like, John, what have you signed us up for now? So I I I hear, I'm I'm really excited just to get get building because it's what we love doing. So, yeah, back to back to work, Hugo, get off spaces, please, and and and start coding.

Legendary 01:05:54 Love to hear that. Julia, your same question for you. What is something that the Pixelmont family can look forward over the next couple of weeks months?

GiulioX 01:06:01 I mean, it's a pretty busy period. So, in in no particular order. I mean, it's it's no secret that the, mon protocol, whitelist, wait list sale is, is coming soon. I think there's around 10,000 wallets already in waitlist, and that's nonholder wallets. Our holders still have a bit of a bit of wallets. Have a little bit of a wait list code. So do go and hunt them down, ask them for it if if you wanna participate.

GiulioX 01:06:36 With that, then comes our, a farming game, which is a the 1st farming PDP, turn based, card based game. I I have seen at least, web3 based, very excited of it pixel pals. And then then, I mean, in in no particular order also, and there'll be farming opportunities, surrounding Mon protocol, and, maybe Mon protocol itself, Mon itself, in a matter of weeks if not month in a singular level. So that it's a lot. Let's see if we can pack it all in.

Legendary 01:07:16 Absolutely. Love to hear that. Thank you so much for sharing, and Carmela, on to you to close us out for today's show.

Karma 01:07:23 Yeah. I'm still reeling back. Very excited. And, you know, quite frankly, I'm already thinking ahead to us jumping back on these spaces in a few months to, you know, to look back and and look at the the results of this incredible partnership. I think in a few months, the entire market is also going to look very different and we can talk about the takeaways. Hopefully, we are going to be talking about the all the successes and and plus about, you know, maybe pivots that we sometimes have to make.

Karma 01:07:57 Incredibly excited and just want to, again, extend heartfelt thank you to you, John, to you, Julia, to all the devs who sadly are being ushered into the basement as we speak, to not see the light of day for at least a couple more days now. Well tune into the ZT X Spaces next week, as we have just seen evidence by this amazing co announcement, it is the place to hear the alpha. It is the place to hear from the teams before they announce it to their teams themselves. So yeah, thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you to all the listeners. And thank you to you legendary for always being a legendary co host. Thank you everybody.