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#37 - Gaming, Blockchain and mobile games advertising
45 Plays1 month ago
GeeZee, Head of Gaming from Mantle, a low-cost Ethereum rollup, shares insights on the latest gaming innovations. Alan is the Founder of MetaCene, a Web3 MMORPG.
Introduction
A recent discussion brought together perspectives on how blockchain technology is reshaping the gaming space. Two core themes took center stage: the importance of building genuinely enjoyable games and the role of decentralization in empowering players. The conversation offered insights into how certain Web3 implementations failed early on, why new titles are taking a different approach, and how developers are striving to make gamers’ lives easier by seamlessly integrating blockchain features.
From Magic: The Gathering to Slay the Spire
Early gaming experiences helped shape the guests’ understanding of what makes a game fun. Trading card games (TCGs), including Magic: The Gathering, and popular deck builders like Slay the Spire came up as favorites.
Observations on Game Hardware
The group touched briefly on competitive gaming hardware and how it provides advantages or leads to debates over fair play. A keyboard feature known as “Snap Tops” came up as an example: it shortens the time between pressing different directional inputs, granting a slight competitive edge. They also acknowledged that hardware or software “cheats” remain a major frustration in online play—developers ban them, but new workarounds emerge constantly.
Skepticism of blockchain-based gaming was another key topic. Early Play-to-Earn experiments often came off as little more than pyramid schemes, driving many to doubt the viability of Web3 games. The conversation stressed that real value only comes from creating a solid, engaging experience.
The group also pointed out that major publishers once tried squeezing NFTs into existing products without meaningful gameplay benefits, which increased suspicion among traditional gamers.
Several specifics emerged on how MetaCene’s team aims to blend compelling MMO gameplay with on-chain possibilities. Core gameplay remains traditional: questing, boss fights, PvE and PvP modes, and character progression.
A flexible wallet system ensures that newcomers can simply log in with an email and only deal with token transfers or fees when they decide to move valuable items on-chain. Rather than interrupting the flow of combat by popping up transaction requests, NFTs reside in the game’s internal system. Once an asset becomes truly special, a player can choose to mint it on Mantle’s network.
One participant highlighted a future “server fight” feature in MetaCene, where different organizations or groups can manage their own servers, attract new players, and earn a share of the revenue. This concept underscores the broader idea: blockchain is not meant to weigh down gameplay with fees and friction. Instead, it can expand game experiences by giving players partial ownership and aligning their incentives with the game’s success.
Marketing Challenges and Future Possibilities
Traditional mobile ads rely on massive networks like Google, Facebook, and ByteDance for user acquisition, often leading to clickbait ads that don’t accurately represent the product. In a blockchain-powered ecosystem, developers foresee better targeting. With user activities publicly recorded, studios can accurately tailor their ads instead of relying on big data monopolies. This opens the door to ads that genuinely match a gamer’s preferences rather than tricking them with misleading videos.
This Podcast is Fueled by crypto trading bot platform Aesir. Get 20% off using code AESIRPOT20.
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Transcript
Introduction to Gaming Preferences
00:00:00
Speaker
I'm a pretty like hardcore Magic the Gathering player. And so I've been playing like Magic Arena and enjoying those games. And also in Parallel, which is a you a kind of web 3 version of the kind of treat training guard game genre. I absolutely love what they're doing. So ah that was a fun one to be a part part of as well, or two. I'm enjoying it as well. That's very cool. So you're kind of you're into RPGs. right If you're into Magic the Gathering, you're kind of into RPGs.
00:00:29
Speaker
ah trading card games and yeah I'd say RPGs as well nice man that's awesome I love RPGs I love trading card games and like deck builders as well I recently got into this deck builder called Slay the Spire not sure if you've heard of it it's very good it's really very good Yeah, I published a slave aspire in the Chinese market.
Professional Background in Game Publishing
00:00:52
Speaker
so No share. It's been a good time. Yeah, I mean, so one of the companies I used to ah like ah before kind of know the Web3 and my Web3, I used to lead operations and publishing at a company called Tap Tap. And essentially through Tap Tap, I've got to work on
00:01:13
Speaker
almost every mobile game that was popular enough to, you know, enter the Chinese market. Right. Oh, wow. That's fantastic. So you published it in in Asia, but it's a European game. Well, the team is not the team was not from Chinese, but the kind of like China side, we had a partnership with the team to essentially help help them reach the Chinese market in terms of like marketing, user acquisition and branding and ah regulations and all that stuff. Got it. That's super exciting stuff, man. I had no idea. That is that is actually really cool. What a cool coincidence. um How about you, Henry? What kind of games are you playing when you're not building them? Yeah, like, of course, I cannot say our own game, right, Metasy?
00:02:05
Speaker
ah Recently, I've not been having that much time to play. Once in a while, I just go online and do some multiplayer like you know Counter-Strike 2 or and't like Overwatch, something like that. Play a quick game and that's it. It's what I'm having time recently. Apart from that, I'm not having much time to play other stuff that require like more playing time, to be honest.
00:02:32
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's totally fair, man. I absolutely get that. So ah interesting, because you say you're playing like those quick games like Overwatch and like Counter-Strike, which you know in many ways influenced, I'm guessing, the way Metacine works and Metacine looks, because it's sort of, it's an MMO, right? But it's an MMO with those rapid, like quick shooting elements, which I thought it was pretty interesting.
00:02:56
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the city has three different weapons, right? So there's a lot of strategy and and because of the PvP and the PvE in the game, you really have a lot of interaction between players and it can get pretty fast paced depending on what you're playing, especially when there are some events that people are competing for rewards or trying to grab a nice loot. It's always like a really, really nice, you know, like the the competition and everyone getting together to play and so on. But it's not that much time recently to play that many other games, yeah. Yeah, no, 100%. So when you do have the time to play Counter-Strike or something, have you looked into... It's come out, I think, a couple of months ago, and I think that the community has already ruled on it and banned it, but have you seen those new keyboards that came out
Tech Features and Controversies in Gaming
00:03:49
Speaker
from... One of them is from Razer, and they have this feature called Snap Taps.
00:03:53
Speaker
So you know how when you press a key, it kind of only actuates at a certain point on the key press. So they've brought these points a lot higher into the keystroke, so it it ah it activates a lot earlier. And on a normal key, let's say you press right, and then you press left at the same time, your character doesn't move, you know, it just stays static.
00:04:14
Speaker
But with this keyboard, if you press right and then you press left as well, it will only take your last input. So you get you get from moving left to immediately moving right. You don't have that like split second when your statics that apparently gives a ah huge advantage. People playing Counter-Strike. Yeah, the thing about these multiplayer games sometimes is that and like cheaters, they you know, they make sometimes playing online kind of annoying, right? um the yeah In ah any live game, you you you end up finding these people. I mean, you know in this case, you're talking about the keyboard, but there are always people that are trying to have some, you know, like auto-aim or something, and then the the the dev will bet it, and then they will come up with a way of making a new cheat. I used to play PUBG, for example, and
00:05:06
Speaker
and There was a point where there were so many cheaters that, you know, you lose the interest of playing the game again. you Oh yeah, a hundred percent. And like, so for Counter-Strike, they've had, that there's a, there's a lot of cheater in Counter-Strike, a lot of cheaters in Counter-Strike or Call of Duty as well. But the thing, the interesting thing about this keyboard is that initially writing esports, everyone said, Oh, you know what? Like Snapchat, totally cool. Go ahead and use it. Right. And now a few months into that, they've just banned it. You cannot use keyboards with Snapchat in competitive esports, like, you know, Overwatch or Counter-Strike or stuff like that. You just can't do it anymore.
00:05:43
Speaker
I mean, it's kind of an advantage, let's say, like that, right? I guess if everyone is using it in a competition, it should be okay, right? but Yeah, no,
Web3 Gaming Skepticism and Potential
00:05:53
Speaker
100%. You're probably aware of the sort of, I guess that those skepticism that gamers have when it comes to web three or or blockchain games, quote unquote, right. um And I just want to understand what you think kind of created that skepticism in the first place, and how is the industry planning to go around it?
00:06:18
Speaker
a You want to go first or should I kind of throw in Hendrik? I want to hear from both of you. I think you each have some probably some perspective. I mean, umll I'll be pretty brutally honest. The first generation of Web3 games or but this idea of Playchair, most of them were just Ponzi schemes. They were scams. The idea of creating, they were moving money around without actually generating real value. And when 99% of the player base is just looking to exit and looking to make some money from a game, you you don't have an economy. You have a huge ledger of liabilities and debt. And so that skepticism, I think, is very natural because after the big collapses of these Ponzi schemes and a lot of people got hurt, it was
00:07:10
Speaker
It was very evident that yeah the this kind of model isn't sustainable and it's something that I think users or gamers have the right and also are, are I think, no, justifiably disappointed or angry at.
00:07:29
Speaker
No, at what 3 games from that point on and while this is something that always happens whenever new technologies implemented in the games industry, like, there's always going to be people and people trying to take advantage of others through this new technology or through a new narrative. The inherent financial nature of blockchain technology enabled.
00:07:52
Speaker
This kind of ah problem to be a lot more to amplify this problem quite a bit. And so it was hurt. It would hurt a lot more people than. let's say like a mobile game, no gambling scam that was ran back in like or 2016 or a kind of you know internet like game scam or whatever that was ran back in a couple of years ago as well because ah those things were not actually financially, but they did not have a financial background. So that was pretty unfortunate. And in terms of what we're doing in terms, two kind of fixes is number one, we do see value in
00:08:29
Speaker
Watching technology in gaming, it has potential to improve user experiences. It has the potential to improve the way that games are developed and it has the potential to improve the way that games are actually well, ah ah in terms of the games are funded and in terms of how the games are actually published.
00:08:46
Speaker
um I can go into more details about that but later, but essentially because we see this value, we also know that the only way to really overturn these stigmas that was created beforehand was is to actually create some true fun gaming experiences and show them show users and make sure that they can actually enjoy the real benefits or the proper benefits of blockchain technology in games and very high quality experiences.
00:09:12
Speaker
i mean Like games like medicine, it's that's why we're looking to support games like medicine, or hu like party icons ah or like these are games that if you play them, there's a true game experience and something that is quite unique. And, you know, ones, that I think are very, very much enhanced by watching technology. And the more that these kind of games come out, the quicker I think we'll be able to overturn the stigma that's out there.
00:09:44
Speaker
Thank you, yeah, agreed. And I think just to add to that point is, I think definitely part of the problem is that games um web games sometimes um focus on the financial aspect of it more than anything else. So it becomes this kind of you know farming experience or you know people actively looking for exploits to make as much money out of this game as possible before the Ponzi scheme just collapses. But then there's also companies like Ubisoft, completely legit gaming companies, huge gaming companies.
00:10:18
Speaker
that are just looking to make a profit off of NFTs, right? that They were starting to, their onboarding into Web3 was how can we jam NFTs into our games so that we can just get more money out of the players, right? And both of these approaches are the wrong approaches. I think, completely agree with you there, the right approach is to make a game that, you know, uses this technology to do new things that normal games would normally not be able to do. I think that's where the value lies. I mean,
00:10:47
Speaker
I don't want to go too hard on Ubisoft. They are investors in my company and we're we're very close, but I can see. It's fine. They're not investors in mine, so I can go hard on them. It's all good. They are they are a business and you know they do have a responsibility to try and make the best decision for their shareholders and for their you know stakeholders. i That's the nicest way for me to put it. But like complete there's a sensible and a nonsensical way to to implement blockchain technology and games. I mean, like, for example, FPS games, man, like, I just want to, FPS player, you just want to sit down and shoot people. Like, you want to and enjoy the experience of, you know, shooting others and like, you know, doing this battle. You don't want to, like, most of these players are not going to want to also have to, like, manage asset values, understand how, how different, you know, assets are.
00:11:41
Speaker
Like how much liquidity is in know a skin that's an existence in the game and all that stuff. And the so, but a game like medicine, where it's a MMORPG, where it's all about the second life, about what you can own in this kind of, essentially the metaverse or in the games universe, like suddenly that makes sense. So yeah, it's, I think that that's a big kind of area where developers are still trying to figure things out.
00:12:07
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. Over to you, Henry. keen to hear your point on it look I think some of the points were very good, right? ah First of all, the first batch of games, they were not very good games, right? They were basically ah DeFi protocols that were disqui disguised as games, right?
00:12:31
Speaker
And that didn't last for too long. So it's understandable. There there are so many scams in that time. I remember I was part of the market as an investor.
00:12:41
Speaker
ah not not part of any big organization, but only as a personal investor. And I remember so many projects that they would launch, and then they would run for maybe a month, and then they would die, right? And then sometimes the teams, they would change the skin of the project. For example, before it was like a playing game, they would change to a car game, and then they would launch the project again. And there were projects that have done that like three times even that I know like the same dev change the same project like three times and launch to the market and scan people three times so when you have something like that it's easy to understand like people that experienced this kind of games before why they have certain restrictions and like
00:13:36
Speaker
are not very open to blockchain gaming, right? But I think that right now you see that there are many more games that, ah you know, that they are they considered they're considering more about user experience, gameplay. They're games that people are spending a lot of time to consider about how these games can be entertaining and be fun, right? Because, I mean, if it's a game and the game is not entertaining, I guess that's the problem with it, right? The game has to be entertaining, has to be interesting. Even if it's a casual game, it can be very entertaining, right? There are games out there that's been around for like 10 years, like, I don't know, Candy Crush or something, that they're still out there and people are still playing because they're entertaining. There are people thinking they're fun, right? So I think that right now,
00:14:24
Speaker
um the project' quality is the the The quality the projects are higher, right? um The teams are spending much more time into developing an actual decent user experience. Format the scene has been more than two years developing the game, ah testing the game. and We did three alphas first, right? And then now we we are on our fourth alpha.
00:14:50
Speaker
Oh, wow. We, yeah, it's been a long time. And, you know, wait we, we waited all this time and we just released our token recently, last week. So it was like two years. Congratulations. um but Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So two years just developing the project, testing the first office. They didn't even have.
00:15:09
Speaker
any kind of NFT or anything like that. It was only about gameplay, right? So I think that slowly ah people are getting a little more open about it, but it's it's it's understandable, right? Regarding because of the history and everything else. But for me, um I always like to tell this story, but I've been on the gaming industry for 10 years, right? And I was working for a ah game developer, very very big one, mobile game developer before.
00:15:39
Speaker
And I was a player on this game that he spent in one year on this mobile game, he spent over $100,000. And after one year, he got tired of the game. And because I knew many of these big whales from the project, right? He sent me a message and told me like, look, Harry, thanks a lot for for you guys provided me, but I know I'm busy and I got bored of the games. I'm not playing anymore.
00:16:06
Speaker
So basically, the guy just wasted $100,000 worth of characters, items, everything, because it's a web2, mobile game, centralized game, and he couldn't do enough with it, right? If ah the dev discovers that he sold his account or something, they could ban it because of that stuff you're not allowed. So basically, the guy lost everything, right? When I saw that,
00:16:29
Speaker
many, many years ago. um It was really something that made me think like, man, there should be something better than this, right? Because it doesn't make sense for the person to spend so much money and time into something. And then one case is like ah the the person stops playing or something. In other cases, maybe ah You know like the the devs they want to they launched the second version of the game And then they just discontinued the first one and then you lose everything that you had on the first one right stuff like that so yeah Blockchain just makes sense you know um The the perspective about the ownership of assets and everything the transparency right there are so many games that are
00:17:13
Speaker
Not very transparent regarding so many things. It's sometimes a little sketchy. yeah you know For me, it just makes sense. And I guess it will take time for people to be very, very open about it. you know But slowly we are we're getting there.
00:17:30
Speaker
Yeah, and fair point. and I wanted to go back to ah for a moment where you said that the gaming games, the primary purpose of games is to be entertaining.
Essentials for Web3 Gaming Success
00:17:39
Speaker
Right. And this is interesting because this also comes from um you might actually know the guy John Allen, ah the creator of ah Game 7G7. I think um you guys are are partnered with them, GZ.
00:17:52
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, they're one of our, I think biggest mental ecosystem partners, uh, gaming equal ecosystem partners. Well, John Allen is, uh, the kind of public founder, but the other founder Ronan Kirsch is the more, uh, the, the, the kind of founder founder, if that makes sense. But both of them are, ah both of them are amazing guys, truly yeah gaming industry veterans. Oh yeah. The people I can trust with, uh, when it comes to, you know, putting a game out there.
00:18:23
Speaker
yeah Well, John had a fantastic story of how he got into crypto and and he spoke about it when we had him on a couple of episodes ago. And he also spoke about, you know, games needing to be fun first and foremost. And one thing that I felt was really valuable is that he he was saying that Web3 gaming at some point will just become gaming.
00:18:45
Speaker
Underlining technology is going to be blockchain is going to be web free, but the end user doesn't necessarily need to know, you know, that this is a web free game or that it's using this chain or that chain or this protocol. It just, look, this is a fun game for you to play. Just go in and have fun and go nuts. And I think that it has to go maybe. Yeah. Most users, ah though, if you talk ah with web to users, they don't care about this this kind of stuff, right?
00:19:10
Speaker
They don't want to know like about the wallet, about what chain this is on. They want the game to work and to be entertaining. right So as long as you have a solid structure, for example, using mental, the game is really fine. The user is doing the transactions, they work, and they don't affect user experience, users will be happy. right So I 100% agree with that.
00:19:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a healthy way as well. like You don't really care you know what kind of underlining libraries your browser uses. You just care that it's going to take me onto the web and it's not Edge because that's a massive piece of shit. But other than that,
00:19:46
Speaker
you know I can just use whatever browser I want. And that's where the story ends, right? ah That's, I feel like it's very, and or look at like Apple's mobile phone. They just released it right recently. Um, people no longer care how, you know, of the inside of a phone. It's a complete black box. You don't know what happens on the hardware side. You don't know what happens on the software side or it carries that I'm having a great time. You know, you pay a price for it, but I'm having a great time using this device. It's giving me the value I want. Yeah, for sure.
00:20:19
Speaker
So I was actually saying before that, um John, who I've spoken to, had a great, had like an interesting story about how we got into crypto. And this is kind of one of the things we do. we um I like asking people about their stories. you know I feel like you get such interesting insights over how people stumble across crypto and blockchain. And I'd like to hear that from the both of you.
00:20:41
Speaker
oh Yeah, I'll go first, I guess. When it comes to blockchain, So I'll start kind of reasoning. The reason I went to blockchain technology is because so I think in the gaming space, like there really is all that that is in traditional games. I mean, like all that can be done has already essentially been done. I feel like it has become in a way stagnant. And um I mean, it's still growing. There's still so much like you know money and so much stuff to explore in the industry, but overall,
00:21:15
Speaker
it's become quite stagnant in terms of the way that things are run. And I just, I didn't want to be stagnant. I wanted to keep kind of trying to do new and exciting things. And so that's kind of how I ended up or choosing to work in the actually ah gaming space on the blockchain side. In terms of what I actually ended up doing is like that kind of got me to become interested in this. It's a little bit of an interesting story. Essentially, I was playing Ask the Affinity.
00:21:43
Speaker
I saw that the game was, but it was a fun game. It like it was an okay developed game. And then I looked at the valuation of it and it was like 36 billion dollars. And gene like just from a personal perspective, for someone who worked in the games industry, it's not worth that much. like it's It's just not. That's why I shorted it. Like anyone else, ah I mean, I shorted it.
00:22:11
Speaker
I made a pretty good bag from that. And, and then I figured like, you know, this is what they gave me. And the shoe really couldn't use some actual game developers and game publishing like background people. And that's kind of how I made that decision to become part of it. That's very cool. And that was also a very good call there. Yeah. If something just smells fishy, there's probably some, some funny stuff going on there.
00:22:38
Speaker
How about you, Henry? hendri Yeah. Yeah, in my case, I think the first game that I saw was Splinter Lens, maybe. um I joined the crypto space in 2017, and I always tried to follow like what was going on. The blockchain was always something that really interested me. right Actually, before Splinter Lens, there were like some Ethereum devs that started to play around the concept of gaming and stuff.
00:23:08
Speaker
even like crypto kitties and stuff. I remember following ah that these things happening and I was just think like, this is very interesting, right? Especially because coming from the traditional gaming industry.
00:23:20
Speaker
to start seeing these new concepts and and everything made me really interested. And just like this, I got tired of the traditional Web2game industry. I wanted to take part of something new and exciting and had had space for ah development and growth, you know, because ah when you work in the same industry ah for many years and then you're seeing that there's not many things changing.
00:23:42
Speaker
you can You can stay there and keep doing your thing, or you can just move or move out right and start doing something different. It's what I what i did as well. and i was The latest company I was working was Tencent. It's a very good company. I was happy there and everything, but I just wanted to ah try different things. Web2Gaming just got boring, I guess, for me. work-wise and I wanted to explore the blockchain opportunity so I just quit and went 100% in. yeah Awesome man, that's fantastic. a Quick question before we proceed, I'm not sure who's got it but could you just silence your phone so we don't like people don't hear the ping on the um in the audio.
00:24:30
Speaker
Nice one. Cheers, man. What was I going to say? Yeah, so you've you've you've both kind of noticed that a web two space, traditional gaming space has gotten a little bit stale, um ah which I completely agree with. I feel like games are very formulaic. Now there's a very well-defined formula for a game. It's going to have these elements and it does these things.
00:24:56
Speaker
um And I do agree that there is more there's more freedom in doing blockchain and Web3 games, which is why I wanted to discuss you know kind of the details or some more of the intricacies of Metaseen.
Metacine's Blockchain Integration
00:25:08
Speaker
What are the actual Web3 blockchain aspects of the game and and what makes it you know different from a traditional game? You you mentioned, um Henry, that you've released your token recently.
00:25:20
Speaker
So maybe we can start there discussing how that token impacts, you know, game world real economy and kind of go into the like the deeper aspects of of the blockchain functionality there. Yeah, sure. ah So, you know, like Alan, our CEO, he used to build MMORPGs since like over 20 years ago, right? So most traditionally, they all have some, ah you know, gameplay that people are very familiar with.
00:25:49
Speaker
PVP, PVE, Quest System, Character Progression, everything and everything. We have everything on our game as well. right ah Like you were mentioning the blockchain, how the blockchain integrated is that, for example, ah there there are a few different areas. right One area is regarding the NFTs, of course. so the game When the player dejoins a meta scene, they start to acquire equipment in the game or weapons right for their characters.
00:26:19
Speaker
they are centralized items. These are like lower level equipment and so on. From mid to ah higher levels, you start having the NFTs that actually can bring some benefits to for users to hold them. right So you have these NFTs that are like equipment ah the some weapons, mid to higher levels. And then ah we introduced ah in our latest version, our latest alpha,
00:26:48
Speaker
a Reactor Core gameplay playto earned gameplay. Basically, you have a Reactor Core, and then you can, by killing some bosses and participating in some events, you get some energy to feed this Reactor Core, right and then generate NFTs that bring you token rewards. I think that right now in Meta Scene, you have the Reactor Core function, you have mining machines that mine resources that can also be ah cover your tokens right then you have these markets that are open. The users they can do ah open trading between themselves. So if you have a person from your guild and you want to sell something to the blur person you can directly sell, right? I think like MMO seems very early on. You had this kind of like trading and this kind of mechanic, but right now with blockchain so many more opportunities, right?
00:27:40
Speaker
And then we also have the NFT collections outside the game itself, right? One that act act acts like a pass. It's called a man, right? It's like a battle pass. You know, like in a game, in traditional Web2 game, you would buy a battle pass, pay a fee every month, and then you get some benefits. We have our battle pass, if I can say like that. We have our pass where the users they get airdrops, they get benefits in the game, they get access to special dungeons and stuff like that. And this is on the blockchain, right? This NFT is an NFT. And then we also have an NFT collection that's called the Treasure Box. It's a stick-torn collection. So you don't have time to play the game. ah You want to be involved into the ecosystem. You can stake it. And earn rewards as well, earn some benefits as well, you know.
00:28:29
Speaker
And yeah, we are building a server file as well. It's something that we can I can explain a little more, but you know, we have the tokens, we have the NFTs, we have the mining machines. um And we're we're going to do a lot more, and the governance and know the servers, as I'm mentioning. So it's an MMO with the extra layer of blockchain. um We don't intend it to disrupt the the player experience. So even on metacine, when you get an FT, it goes to your wallet, but it's not on-chain, right? It goes through the wallet inside you the SDK from the game. So when you want to put it on-chain,
00:29:09
Speaker
you do the transaction into inside the game into the wallet and you do it. So it doesn't affect the player actually experienced while they are playing the game. Even but we we started even pushing the game through Web2 channels. And you know, where like Web2 users, they can use their email to create an account, come and play, right? They don't need ah to have crypto knowledge to enjoy the game. So I guess it's it's briefly speaking, someone like that. Yeah.
00:29:35
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think that's important. It's important that people don't have the, they they don't even to necessarily have the knowledge to to play a game. they They just need to be able to play the game, right? And I think that's important 100%. So you've mentioned that the NFTs or the tokens stay in the applications SDK. So they probably stay on a whatever server and then they can get transferred to their wallet. But until they make the transfer, it's technically not theirs.
00:30:07
Speaker
yeah ah the When the user uses their email, they get a wallet created for them inside the game right in our SDK. When the users they want to put it on chain, they just need inside the game to do the transaction to pass it to the chain. right so the The thing is that it's an MMO. You're playing PvP against a guy and then you're killing a boss and then you get an NFT, just think about it.
00:30:33
Speaker
You got an NFT and then you got to pay a guest transaction fee. It's stopping the middle of the battle, just to drop the thing. It doesn't make any sense, right? So it has to be dynamic, right? Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. I actually saw a video and I think it was a joke, probably. I'm pretty sure it was a joke. But I saw this video on YouTube um a while back with um signing, signing transactions every time you attack or something. So every sort of strike is like signed transaction. And then a new metamask pops up, signed transaction. Of course, that would have worked. That's games like that. I've seen games like that before. ah Right now, it's not that common anymore. But I remember seeing games like that. And sometimes it was like,
00:31:13
Speaker
You're in the middle of the game. I remember there was a game on Polygon. I don't remember exactly the name, but I went to a show, right? to like ah Some like people who were sharing about projects and I was watching the ah keynote. And the guy was showing the game live.
00:31:28
Speaker
And then he did a transaction on polygon in the middle of the game. And the transaction wouldn't go through. So he got stuck in the middle of the presentation. And he was so embarrassed because it was like everyone was looking like, what the hell is going on? like what Why is the game? like What's going on? you know So yeah, i mean we evolved from there, for sure. But I've seen things like that before, yeah.
00:31:51
Speaker
It's crazy that someone thought that's acceptable as a user experience to kind of just have that obvious disruption you know happening before in your gameplay experience. And the I think, yeah, I mean, the medicine team is very much sensible with the way they're implementing the blocking side of this game. If it's a single attack, there's no reason to put it on chain. But if it's like an asset that a user took like hours of their life grinding and crafting and creating,
00:32:23
Speaker
And to help secure the value of the asset and help ensure that it is you know truly there's maybe in creating a gas fee or know paying a small transaction as a cost. Yeah, the users will do it. And I think that is something that is valuable enough for users. We're doing this is something that the team is just very, very good at doing. And, you know,
00:32:46
Speaker
Like Henry Van, I love the guy. He's a little modest. He's a little modest. When it comes to this founder, Alan Tan, like the guy is, he's not just an MMORPG guy. He is like the legendary, the MMORPG guy. He's the founder of a company called Shauna Games, which was essentially like one of the biggest and most successful MMORPG games, game companies in essentially the world. They are in many ways. Alan is like the grandfather of MMORPG games. He worked on Mirror, he worked on Lineage, MapleStory, like if all the executives of like Tencent, NetEase, Netmarble, Nexon, either work with him or work for him at some point in time.
00:33:32
Speaker
like Oh, wow. well he He was that guy and then he retired. He had his bag and he he took some time just to like chill and play around and then he saw what three as an opportunity to me.
00:33:46
Speaker
an amazing, amazing MMO. Like, something that is truly new and innovative and fun. And so he decided to build this team. And when he announced he wanted to build this team, literally all the top talent in the MMORPG game development industry. Like, I'm not kidding. and Every single person wanted to be on this team. So his team of game developers is just a group of legends. Like, that in every single way in the games industry. It is ridiculous how much, like,
00:34:16
Speaker
how much talent, how much, basically, their, like, experience is on that team. And then, yeah, so, I mean, like, the guy's crazy. And then, like, amazing. And then, after all that, so, I am so grateful to be able to work with this guy as well, like, you know, given his background and being able to work with Alan. And then, one of the things that I think really, really showed and it's a really good precursor to the are two kind of web 3 and blockchain gaming is the or open economic system games is a game called fancy. It's the flagship of net ease. It's been in operation for about 20 years and has generated about 26 billion in US s dollars worth of revenue.
00:34:58
Speaker
the in the like As part of this game, they have this open market system where players can trade assets and trade weapons and stuff. And weapons are going up to like hundreds of thousands of dollars. And people are buying and trading them. And you have players or users who are literally spending time on protruding and exchanging and crafting items just in this marketplace and becoming millionaires and actually making a living out of it. And that is something I think it's But truly, and that's truly, truly you what web 3 gaming can become like eventual potential for a web 3 games. And I think no one, ah maybe other than the team itself, no one understands this, like, system and this type of game better than the founder of medicine.
00:35:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's fantastic. um I knew he was ah he was the founder of this massive and MMO. ah It's basically a venture capital venture capitalist company, isn't it, that kind of invests into all of these big MMOs, right? So he's been doing that for a long time. um and that Develop, publish, invest, basically the whole journey for MMORPGs. Oh, wow. Yeah. That is really cool. So so ah in many ways, the medicine is really in good hands from from that perspective.
00:36:20
Speaker
Amazing. So um you mentioned something really interesting that there was this this game. i didn't catch I didn't quite catch the name because I think you're breaking up for a moment. um What was the name of the game? that that was go ah Fantasy Westward Journey. It's a game that uses like social and ah a lot of social and economic kind of systems in the game to drive a lot of user interaction and drive the growth of the game. And so it's it's really one of the it's really the flagship game for NEPIs, which is one of the biggest gaming companies in the world. And yeah, that game is built on a
00:37:01
Speaker
the game has gone 20 years of like amazing economic kind of flow and economic but transition without any delays. And I think that's something think that's really amazing that the medicine team was able to gain the great love for core mechanisms from that game into a web 3 MMORPG.
00:37:23
Speaker
Got it. Fantasy Westworld journey. Amazing. Pfizer is just there typing the the name of the game. Thank you for that. um I'll check this out. that sounds That sounds really interesting. And I'm always like into you know checking out new and innovative things, I think.
00:37:39
Speaker
you know Even we were talking a bit earlier about um the beginning of Web3 games and the kind of the beginning of you know seeing stuff like every action you know requires a transaction or signing or something like that. Even if that's horrible UI, and it most definitely is, I think it's good that someone made that step. you know I think it's great that someone decided to go and build a completely different kind of game using completely different experience. And that was maybe just the first pass. like you need even You need even bad ideas in in this space you know to to propel um the ecosystem itself.
00:38:19
Speaker
And I think this is definitely one thing that this this ecosystem, this industry is really good at, and I'm mainly talking about crypto, at trying out the limits of of what what's possible, what is good, what is bad, what we leave behind. right If you think about uh the bull market that we had in 2019 we had all these like high yield apy kind of staking farming businesses and everyone was just making money virtually doing nothing oh just just take your coins and you're just going to make 20% api or ridiculous numbers like that
00:38:52
Speaker
And obviously, you know once the bull market was over, it turns out that these companies were not financially sustainable during a ah any other market, but a bull market. So they all went crashing down, like you had Celsius, you had oh all these you know kind of high-yield farming businesses. But that taught us, that taught the industry that this is the wrong way of doing things. Let's be better in the future. and So I think that also applies to gaming, to Web3 gaming. um Let's stop doing cash grabs. Let's stop doing like, ah you know, overly NFT-fying everything and just focus on the aspects of the game that are really important in that matter. um It's great to hear you guys talking about that as well.
00:39:37
Speaker
Yeah, and that I think that any anyone that's trying to build honest products in the space, I think it's always valid, right? It always helps as long as they're not building scheming projects. I think everyone that's trying to make something different, that's trying It brings value to to to the space and helps other projects as well, right? People need to try things and fail in order to find the things that work, right? So I think it's even the games that were launched many years ago that were very bad and so on, but it's it helped to reach ah help us to reach where we are at the moment for sure, yeah.
00:40:16
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. ah So I just want to get a little bit into more of the technical aspects with regards to how Metacine works with
Support from Mantle for Gaming Projects
00:40:26
Speaker
Mantle. What is the connection there? um And also maybe Jeezy, if you want to briefly explain exactly where Mantle sits in in the EVM layer network. I think that would be important for people to kind of understand the connection and where people expect to have their tokens and how they can withdraw them, trade them or anything like that.
00:40:49
Speaker
I think you're on mute, by the way. Yeah, I guess I can start with just explaining a little bit about starting with, I'll focus on gaming style of mental. We are a little bit different from a lot of the other ecosystems. So I'm the head of gaming at mental. My actual name is Grant, by the way. I just don't use that name because people think I'm money and not a real person. So I go easy. Yeah. and Like, the team I built with the gaming team, I built at Mantle. We all come from a background of games, publishing games, operations. Like, I work on games like League of Legends, we're publishing a team by tactics, lead head of operations at Tap Tap, had Ragnarok.
00:41:30
Speaker
ah Game of Thrones game and a Transformers game, like ah've I've done extensive amount of, you know, games publishing and required already 800 million players into games. And everyone that I hired on to this team ah that I built is also have a background in games publishing. And the reason I did this is so that we can actually get involved into the games that we commit to.
00:41:52
Speaker
In terms of providing support beyond just. Like, traditional ecosystems where it might just be like a couple of tweets to Twitter, or a couple of, you know, ah like, some funding and stuff like that. Like, we can do all that as well. And we do, but in addition, you know, we get involved in tokenomics and to gain design into marketing design marketing campaigns into. Uh, go to market in terms of fundraising in terms of listing and all these things. And so.
00:42:21
Speaker
That's kind of one of the things that we and end up kind of doing a little bit differently from other ecosystems. And the other thing is because of this extensive kind of support system that we put into each game we commit to, we don't actually select a lot of games to work on.
00:42:36
Speaker
And our my goal right now is seven games, seven games to get them out there and get them to see a hundred percent success rate across seven games, which it's something yeah pretty much impossible and like unheard of in the games industry. What what do you mean by hundred really quickly? What do you mean by a hundred percent success rate?
00:42:54
Speaker
I mean, 100% success rate, meaning making them into genre defining games in. Like, or each team into genre defining games in their own kind system. So, for example, the 1st game that we put out there was cousin cousin is the telephone game, highest revenue generating.
00:43:10
Speaker
Highest revenue generating and um most users and essentially kicked off this entire kind of telegram mini game ecosystem menacing. This mm lar p tree that is truly changing how I built after him. Like, I think based on and I hope based on how we end up, you know.
00:43:31
Speaker
Putting out animal medicine, we're going to show the world this new type of experience that I believe is going to have the world copy it. And then, you know, we have games like party icons, which is going to be probably the most.
00:43:44
Speaker
the most interesting way that I can think of of publishing a party game that gets everyone involved into the ecosystem, whether it is the influencers, the people that are streaming the game, whether it's the investors, the players themselves, they all have a different goal that they get in and they're all linked together through the token. So each game that we put out there, we want them to be essentially the genre defining game or the genre leading game in their own.
00:44:13
Speaker
Uh, system and so. That's the type of support that we put and then on top of that, we have the tech side. So from a tech side, like mental is, uh, so far 1, the lowest gases, if not the lowest gas, the, um, you know, EBM L2 or like, I think about you out there, which basically means.
00:44:32
Speaker
As you guys said, the user doesn't want to pay for gas fees when just playing a game. They might want to pay for some gas fees when securing a very high value asset, like the token or no some weapon or armor that they spend hours and hours to farm and to create. But like.
00:44:48
Speaker
You know, if in that case, but we still want to imprint these users about a user activity on chain, or put these things into something that users accept, then having a lower gas fee will make it a lot easier and a lot cheaper for whether it's a developer or the kind of mental ecosystem. Number 2, as we do have one of the best funded chains in terms of development.
00:45:12
Speaker
We are treasury actually, I think in terms of mental is still the largest treasury in the web 3 space. We had about, well, it's about 5 billion. I think it's a little bit less now, but in terms of hard assets, meaning, you know, Ethereum, PTC, stable coins, and we're able to essentially make sure that we have all the best talent when it comes to development.
00:45:31
Speaker
Whereas other chains know may have seen some delays or segments at like 20 or 30 TPS at the like last year, end of December, we went up to, I think, almost 60 TPS and not a single delay, not a single like blockage, not a single piece of congestion. So in terms of like stability, something like that, it's something that I think.
00:45:53
Speaker
Developers can really trust and rely upon and then, yeah, and when it comes to gaming, it's just, I think a lot of gaming. Experience and expertise that given our background that I failed to contribute quite a bit into all the different projects that we've are committed to.
00:46:11
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. That sounds like a really good match, right, for you guys, like ah using using Mantle. I'm talking about Metal Scene, using Mantle to obviously power the Web 3 parts of the game. It just just feels like it's... working really well. um so Henry, yeah do do you maybe want to explain a little bit about like sort of are ah the the technical aspects of um the blockchain parts of the um of the game? okay so It obviously works on the Mantle network and people can withdraw their NFTs to the Mantle network and then they can swap on any EVM compatible chain.
00:46:51
Speaker
um Is there any, like, do people ever need to use a test net or anything that that um would kind of explain to people how they're expected to interact with with the Web3 aspects of it?
00:47:10
Speaker
Yeah, so ah our game is running an SDK from EHA, and in the SDK, the users, they can do basically everything inside the game. So the in-game it's everything in-game. They can put it for sale. They can buy equipment. They have the swap function. you'll have ah You the on-chain, off-chain ah transactions that you can do.
00:47:36
Speaker
So it's pretty straightforward, the in-game wallet and all the transactions. um We don't have and normally don't use any testnet or something like that. We just try to give like enough education and tutorials in our communities for users that are not familiar with ah blockchain.
00:47:53
Speaker
But and then we have a lot of influencers as well, content creators that also always help us to create um you know guides and and things like that, that I think is the easiest way for a web2 person to understand how to jump into the web2 aspects of a game. right So for example, we did an ambassador event on Gold Rush for the first month, and we had ah like more than 200 content creators that were creating content for the game, and many of them made videos on YouTube and other web2 platforms showing people how to ah get advantage from the meta scene, web3 aspects, how to transfer what they earned, you know, even like maybe some user they are not familiar with the and NFTs or they don't know how they can transfer with SDT to wear. These guys all have content ah teaching that and I think that
00:48:50
Speaker
It's the the the game not complicated, you know. um a For a person that's not familiar with blockchain, I think the medicine is pretty straightforward, right? But of course, knowing about transactions and wallets and these things like that, they might need to have some learnings, right? So that's also why our new Blade 2 Orange feature, the Reactor Core,
00:49:16
Speaker
it only starts after to use the user plays for some time. and They open it at level 24. So it's all something that the users, they join the game and they are doing this thing with NFTs because they many if if you are a WebG user, you might not be able to understand. But if you put some time into the game and you understand how the assets work, you see the equipments and start getting the items, you know, slowly you can much better understand um what are these NFT things? What are the the normal items? What's the difference? And then, if it's not something very clear, as I said, there's like really a bunch of tutorials and videos for the users to ah jump into to to check. But we really try to not make the blockchain aspects of the game too heavy. It's a very important part of our game, of course. We are a web tree game, right?
00:50:09
Speaker
um One thing that we are doing that I think it's very exciting in that sense is that we're we're coming from a concept called server fight, right? We want users to be a part of building the servers of the game with us, building the medicine universe with us. So, medicine is going to have many different servers and many that are not controlled ah completely by us, ah they're going to be controlled by organizations and and other people. and These servers, the users will be able to participate in governance. ah The servers will be able to have special events, localization, assets. One thing that we want to do is we want to have Web2 users also being able to join the servers. and the The main thing is that
00:50:59
Speaker
when you are ah participating in the server, when you hold the the NFT that's <unk> going to be the NFT for the server system, you'll be able to earn revenue share from the servers as well. So the users will be able to earn revenue share from both web to web to users that are participating into the game, right? So I think that these this is also something that blockchain-wise and that that we're pushing, that we're building, and I think that it's a very ah exciting as well. And something that we want to make the gap, you know, for the blockchain part and the web2 part, like smaller, put these people together, right? We're also going even to launch App Store and Google Play versions of our game for web2 users. So, you know, I think like blockchain is the, for any web2 game, it's a very
00:51:47
Speaker
important area, but at the same time, it can't disrupt the player experience. It has to improve it, right? So that's what we're trying to do here. That's very cool. that's very I have to say, I do like the fact that you're only focusing on like some important items that become interval. I imagine playing the game and then getting a cool-ass sword or weapon or pistol, and I'm like, I really want to admit this, because this is cool, and I might even sell it if I want. like i That's a cool idea, and I appreciate that.
00:52:16
Speaker
um And also you mentioned that people will be able to run their own servers or either organizations or individuals and they can further monetize through that. um But that brings me to to my question, which is how are you guys currently monetizing or are planning to monetize the game because it is free to play at the moment.
00:52:35
Speaker
Yeah, inside the game, you have some NFTs, you have schemes, you have the mining machines, and then you have the transactions, right? um And the users, you know, the token is the metasim token, we launched the token, the users will be able to ah use the token to buy blind boxes, you know, and then, you know, just like any traditional game,
00:52:57
Speaker
You can charge ah the some resources. You can use money to buy some resources inside the game. no It's not something that's game breaking, but if you want to spend the money to grab a special NFT or you know to to get some access to some resource, you can do it. right ah You have the path of users that they have the time.
00:53:21
Speaker
to put into the game, to green, and you have people that they don't want to put so much time, so they might spend money to help them with certain things into the game, right? And I think that's kind of what we are being doing, right? Our first NFT collection was 100% free, right? It was a free-meant collection. And then we launched the second one and, you know, like the the test so far, we've been giving away a lot of items and stuff. But at the same time, on Gold Rush,
00:53:54
Speaker
Just the first month, we had over 250,000 transactions on the chain for the game. So ah people are actually using the blockchain aspects, actually paying the fees, actually they're willing to do it because they're enjoying the game, right? So ah when you have people that are like that, then you have the revenue coming from all these sources, from the resources, from the NFTs and so on.
00:54:18
Speaker
ah that people are interested in getting, right? ah For example, our reactor core and so on. So yeah, that's kind of how we've been doing so far. And then we've certified we're going to have some extra you know areas and places that we can improve that as well. yeah Yeah, thank you. that's yeah That's pretty straightforward. Yeah, I would expect that to be part of like most, even like traditional and MMO games. That's kind of how they work, right? Free to play a MMO games. um I remember when I was playing, I used to play, I've said this before, but I used to play Cabal online um back in the day, like years and years ago when it was much bigger than it is today. I'm not sure if it's still online at this point. And yeah, you could go and buy like upgrade cores and stuff from the shop with real money if you wanted to just, you know, fast track your progress, um which is totally cool.
00:55:09
Speaker
A while back, there was an experiment that Diablo 3 tried to do with this thing called the Auction House, where they essentially made a completely open market. And players can trade know anything that they they create and farm with each other. And that Auction House ended up being shut down within two weeks of launch. Actually, it was three months of launch. In two weeks, they limited it and changed it, but either way, they figured they could actually make it work.
00:55:35
Speaker
ah Looking back on that, one of the main reasons they couldn't make it work is because like it was too inflationary, meaning players, when players are able to trade things completely uninhibited and at a completely free, like costless rate, basically,
00:55:51
Speaker
it makes the game actually not that fun. It makes it so that a lot of players have to skip a lot are eight or can just skip a lot of the gameplay and skip a lot of the kind of elements that make the game fun to be able to go out and just essentially pay to win and still becoming the most classic pay to win possible. And I think that's something that, you know, Medicina has been like really understands and what they end up doing A little bit differently is providing a essentially kind of like a transaction fee. Or between the exchange of different assets and this fee basically acts as a deflationary mechanism and also acts as a kind of scarcity mechanism to ensure that.
00:56:35
Speaker
the assets that no players have hold on to their value and actually will grow in value over time. And that's something that also end up generating revenue for for the team. So it's a little bit, I think it's a little bit of a unique kind of approach to this, but also one that I think creates quite a lot. It's a very interesting model that's able to create value for all the parties involved.
00:57:02
Speaker
Yeah, no, for sure. And it it is like in internal game economy is one of the most important things because if it's a broken game economy, then the game does not as an m MMO, the game is not going to work. um And I guess there are different ways you can you can ah ensure that doesn't happen, you could make sure that you've got a limited or or a certain cadence of of supply release of any item so there's never too much supply or someone can't just flood the market with like too much of one item to the point that that becomes worthless. um But yeah, that that sounds like a good way of going about it. There is one thing
00:57:38
Speaker
That I meant to run past both of you because I thought it was um really interesting in terms of like how some web mobile gaming companies are are able to basically make a lot of money by really not building the game that they're saying they're building.
00:57:56
Speaker
And it just came into my head now that I was watching this video about, I'm sure you you're you're getting them as well. Like if you go on Twitter and you go on YouTube and you see ads from games ah that are like those, you know, like a guy shooting at the barrels coming his way or something and they're getting coins or or stuff like that.
00:58:13
Speaker
And um it turns out that the game that you're being advertised doesn't actually exist. What exists is and is a completely different game with a very limited version of the game that you're being advertised as a mini game in the game.
00:58:30
Speaker
um And that's just at almost at the at the edge of technically what's legal there, right? The reason they do this, then it's really interesting is that they're actually not building the game. They're building ads. They're like a marketing agency that are building ads and whatever is the best performing ad, whether it's, you know, shooting balloons or shooting barrels or like calculating numbers, they run that ad then on a mass scale and they build the mini game after getting the ad results.
00:58:59
Speaker
Yep, so in a way, kind of. ah The other thing that happens here, and it's kind of a games industry, a little bit secret, not secret, but a problem that's happening in, not the games, in the advertising industry that, you know, I suppose over to games industry is that all of the traffic is actually controlled by a couple of big entities.
00:59:23
Speaker
Facebook, Google, ByteDance, so TikTok, and though yeah yeah and like east major entity and they these And but they have all the user data in terms of you know like when these users sleep, what kind of projects, what kind of ads do they click on, what kind of ah what kind of products do they buy. They have all this data. And they don't share that data with anyone.
00:59:49
Speaker
i mean 1, because the legal issues, but 2 is because that's a lot of money. And so practice so like and they sell with these users through the forums, right? And they sell it to game publishers. And so 1 of the things that I did when I was publishing games was I went out and I bought users from these networks.
01:00:09
Speaker
as a game publisher. And ah I'd say out of the 800 million players I've acquired two different games I worked on, probably close to like 750 million of them was through ad networks like this and through exactly optimizing ad experiences.
01:00:26
Speaker
I it is first it is actually one of the most kind of depressing like just because what we what we end up doing is focusing on a conversion rate. We want to make sure our ads get like that's all we can really do is focus on conversion rates.
01:00:46
Speaker
We can give ads and create different ads that have the best conversion rates and then Google, Facebook, all these at networks will display it to more people. And then they get more money because ah the more people that click on these ads, the more of a new that we that they get because I click we're paying them for this.
01:01:05
Speaker
And so the way for us to optimize the performance is through conversion rates. The problem there, we have no idea how to get these users, or we have no idea what the quality of these users are, whether or not these users actually enjoy the game that we want to play, that we're showing them, or we'll engage in the game, or actually spend money in our game. So the reason we can't do that is because we don't have to have these users. Only Google, Facebook, and these major Google owners have this data.
01:01:33
Speaker
And that's also another reason why I believe in monthly technology and gaming so much, because everything's public. Everything's on the digital ledger. You can see, not completely, but like you can see a guy's wallet's history. And you can see a gamer, much assets that they're holding. Are they holding assets in medicine? No, they might like MMORPGs. Are they holding assets in no cash? And hell yeah, they they might be someone who enjoys hyper-casual games.
01:01:59
Speaker
like This is something that we can see, you know, where they put their transactions and what they're doing. And suddenly this data is at the hands of our game publishers. And now we can actually create ads and better the users that we want to target. and And also from a user and a gamer perspective, you're not getting recommended some fake ads, some something that just trying to trick you to convince you to, you know,
01:02:25
Speaker
click on this ad, you're actually getting recommended products or games that actually might be fun for you. That's something that you actually might enjoy. And that's what my old company actually ended up doing is ah Tap Tap ended up doing it, you know, hadn't become so successful. But I think the scale of what Tap Tap was able to accomplish was quite limited when compared to what we're going to be able to do with Web 3 and with blockchain technology.
01:02:54
Speaker
Right. Yeah, so that that that that completely makes sense to me. Obviously, the marketing department of any game publisher needs to focus on conversion, and needs to focus on getting their results 100%. The thing that did make sense to me, though, was um why would you go creating an ad which effectively advertises a very different product? And when you do that, you set different expectations into someone's mind. you you You're getting me to think, I'm going to go and pop balloons, but then I end up in a world building game.
01:03:24
Speaker
Right, like, you might get click-throughs because the ad itself is addictive and it creates, it's performing, but I think you lose retention rates because people are less likely to stick around once they found out that, you know, the game is not what they thought that it was going to be. Yeah, but you know like...
01:03:48
Speaker
Sorry, Guy, you can you can can talk first. I'll just say, the the problem there is, as game publishers, when we work with these major ad networks to buy users or to display ads, we don't get control over who these ads get shown to. The a network gets to choose. And the network, when they choose, their way of choosing who and how much we have to pay, because it works on a bidding model. It's always yeah how much you're willing to bid to for each of these ad spots.
01:04:15
Speaker
and we all And the other model the other thing they consider is conversion or click-through rate. How often are these eyes actually clicked? And these two things are the only thing that our networks really care about because that's how much money they make. So we can control our bid. Well, we always want to bid lower if possible. And the only way for us to bid lower is to raise raise the click-through rate.
01:04:40
Speaker
And so basically, the only way we can get our ad in front of more people at a cheaper rate is to put out ads that have high click through rates. We can't control who they're going to. We can't control who will know what the what the actual event is. That's essentially what happens as a traditional things publisher and.
01:05:01
Speaker
It sucked. It's something that is essentially why I'm doing one three games and one of the big reasons from it from from my perspective. So Henry, if you want to. No. Yeah. Yeah. I think he's made some very clear points. And one thing is that before.
01:05:19
Speaker
um because I worked for a long time with web-to-game publishing, right? And I remember when these kind of ads started to become popular, ah it was, I think the first ones I saw was maybe this kind of like game, like GardenScapes type of game, a similar type of game, right? And the thing is that The first companies that started to make these ads started to realize that they worked. let As he said, for the CTRs were really high, right? So people would click on them and they would be the the the reach on the the platform ads, sometimes they would just push on Facebook or something. It would be very, very big. And then
01:06:00
Speaker
People will be able to come to the game and then they're like, Oh, what the hell is going on? This is not the same game. Some people would leave. Some people would stay and play. Right. And then, but then what happened, you said that they started to the mini game sites that this company started to realize.
01:06:16
Speaker
First, ah legally, they were advertising something that was not actually the games, right? And then the second thing is that they start to realize that people were actually interested in the games that were showcased on these ads, right? So like, hey, people want to play this mini game that you're showing ads, let's do it. And then they started building these mini games inside their games.
01:06:36
Speaker
because people were clicking and were interested. People were like, oh, I wanted to play like the the little balloon game. like what what Where is it? right And then they started to put also inside the game. So this is really funny. right In the beginning, it's kind of like a clickbait strategy to drive people into opening the game and then playing it. We have a cheap, as you said, the cheap advertisement and so on.
01:06:59
Speaker
and then in the end it started to be like this became an extra extra gameplay inside the games because of these ads performed so well and people were so interested so I think that's really really funny. and and It is it is it's interesting that it's kind of it worked that way because you'd expect you get you get the product built and launched and ship it rather than you put the ad out and then you build the product and then you know you get the people to play the game that they wanted to play because they saw it yeah
01:07:29
Speaker
um But yeah, like like like you were saying, GZ, that wouldn't happen anymore, I guess, with a game where you can actually have some control over the kind of users that you're targeting, um which is which is great to hear. and Because I've worked in marketing for a while, and I understand that there's a certain element of I want this to perform as best as it possibly can, but also retaining the What are we doing here? Where is that line between is this still what we're actually offering, right?
01:08:05
Speaker
So I get that. I mean, the other unfortunate thing is a lot of times when you click through, like, one is that there's no game behind it. So, you know, they see which ad gets the best kind of, you know, click through rates for best attention, and then they make the game. But like that one, I'm okay with it for the most part. The other one is, like, a lot of times when you click on these kind of ads, and you'll see a lot of the games using almost the exact same type of ads, like the puzzle ad where you're like pulling pins and trying to do like yeah a physics game or,
01:08:36
Speaker
the kind of like ah choose your choose your next move ad where you know you choose different either way it's like it's always common like the same type of ads and you'll notice if you actually end up clicking any of them the game you kind of mostly it's a predatory monetization like which transaction pay to win and like slg and oh yeah almost always is an slg and if because that's one that basically makes the most money they don't need a high conversion rate they just need to get you know like 200 users spending a hundred thousand dollars a game and they're making they're making bank so it's worth it so that's right that's the type of uh projects they' out there and so just get the whales basically exactly that that's just hunting for the whales a couple whales
01:09:24
Speaker
Hopefully. I mean, not hopefully. I think that's something that as we develop the World 3 games industry and get more kind of user activity, gamer activity on-chain, we're going to be able to basically filter these games out and de-centivize these kind of projects from doing doing these type of products as much.
01:09:46
Speaker
Yeah, honestly, that that sounds that sounds great. um Well, listen, both. I think this has been a fantastic conversation. I'm really excited to to just keep up to date with what you guys are building at Metascene and obviously all of the partnerships and everything at Mantle as well. And um I had a quick look actually, I had a quick look at the game, got into it a little bit and I don't have much time to play anymore. But whenever time allows, I might just give it another shot just to see you know um any any new developments. i think it's i think it's a worth I think it's an idea worth pursuing. And um I think it's a well-balanced kind of mix between Web 2 and Web 3. And I just wanted to ask you guys if you had any anything that you wanted to announce or anything you wanted to say in closing before we wrap up.
01:10:36
Speaker
ah I kind of, sometimes I just always say whenever I do any type of things like this, is it's really for the gamers out there who's like, you know. If you're a gamer and you're tired of all these, like, you know, repeat experiences, you're tired of, like, Call of Duty coming out with a 15th game or, you know, the, like, all these types of things, it's the reason that these companies do so is because that's what the money is, right? And money, meaning no money from gamers like yourself. And so if you guys want new experiences, go out and, and fun experiences, go out and support the fun and new experiences. Stop playing and putting money into,
01:11:16
Speaker
you know these kind of repeats and stuff like that and show these kind of companies that that's not what you guys want. And yeah, at least from a mental perspective, that's essentially what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to really get these really fun, innovative and new experiences out there for four gamers out there. So if that is what you're looking for, come check out the games that we're working on with ah from the mental side. 100%, still funding the games you're bored with. Yes.
01:11:46
Speaker
Awesome. Anything from you, Henry? Yeah, you know, we'll start Season 2 very soon on Metasyn. Gold Rush is still ongoing. It's first test that it's totally open before we require users to have a whitelist to play, right? So people can go to download.metasyn.io, ah get an Android or the PC version. ah Same account works on both devices.
01:12:11
Speaker
And then, you know, I welcome users to join. We launched our token last week. We are on 10 different exchanges, if I remember right because um We have launched into four, and there were a couple of them that launched the token by themselves. and So yeah, EMEK token is live. We're going to add a lot of value and bring it ah into more and more utilities in the game. So yeah, welcome users to learn more about the project. Go check it out at the scene.
01:12:42
Speaker
go check out our token and join our Discord and follow us on Twitter for what's coming next, including server fight. There's a lot of things coming. That's it. Thanks a lot for the opportunity and for the time. Awesome, man. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. Bye. Bye.
01:13:01
Speaker
Nice one. Thanks a lot. um So I think your track is just uploading. It's got a little while to go left. But thanks a lot. I think it's been really helpful. And um I wish you guys all the best. And um yeah, really looking forward to see what you're going to, um you know, how how meta scene is going to evolve. I'm definitely going to keep an eye on out on it.
01:13:20
Speaker
And I meant to say this to, oh, thank you Faiza for organizing as well. I meant to say this to Jeezy as well. You're welcome anytime in the future to discuss or to announce anything new or or to just you know talk about the development of the project. I would love to have you on another time. Sure, sure. Thanks a lot for the
01:13:53
Speaker
um So we we don't typically do that, but we we can. ah We typically just leave it unedited. um We leave it quite raw, so we'll we'll just go in through edit. Well, normally we do video editing with the faces and with the camera shots, but I just keep this one as as audio.
01:14:14
Speaker
Awesome. um Well, thank you so much, and I'll catch you guys later. Take care.