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Leveling Up Lives: From Challenges to Healing Through Gaming with Jon Wolheim
146 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, we had the pleasure of sitting down with the incredible Jon Wolheim, a true powerhouse in the gaming industry. With an impressive background working for renowned companies like Apple and Amazon, Jon is now an advisor for Games for Love and a top voice in AI and gaming on LinkedIn. 🚀
Here are three major takeaways from our conversation with Jon:
1️⃣ LinkedIn: The Ballast Amongst the Socials
Jon emphasized his love for LinkedIn as a platform that provides a sense of stability and reliability. Unlike the chaotic and unpredictable nature of Twitter, LinkedIn offers a more trustworthy environment for professionals and gamers alike. So, if you're looking for a platform to connect with like-minded individuals, LinkedIn should be your go-to!
2️⃣ Valuable Resources and Tactical Information
During our discussion, Jon highlighted some incredible individuals to follow on LinkedIn. Amir Sattva, Justin Williams, Matt Herndon, Aida Figueroa, and Aaron Goldsmith were mentioned for their valuable resources, daily knowledge shares, tactical information, strategic thought, and inspirational stories. These industry experts are sure to provide you with the insights and guidance you need to level up your game!
3️⃣ Community and Collaboration
One of the standout aspects of the gaming industry, according to Jon, is the sense of community and collaboration found on LinkedIn. He praised the dedicated individuals who selflessly share resources and support aspiring gamers, purely out of their passion and care for the industry. Aida Figueroa, in particular, was highlighted for her efforts in hosting an engaging audio event on the neuroscience of games, which sparked an incredible conversation within the community.
Tune in now to the Player Engage Podcast on your favorite podcast platform, and join us as we explore the fascinating world of gaming with industry experts like Jon Wolheim. Get ready for some mind-blowing insights and inspiration that will level up your gaming journey! 🎧✨
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Transcript
Introduction to the Player Engage Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Player Engage podcast, where we dive into the biggest challenges, technologies, trends, and best practices for creating unforgettable player experiences. Player Engage is brought to you as a collaboration between Keyword Studios and HelpShift. Here is your host, Greg Posner.
00:00:16
Speaker
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Player Engage Podcast.
Guest Introduction: John Woolheim
00:00:19
Speaker
Today, we are joined by John Woolheim, who has a myriad of titles associated with his name. But let's start in the beginning. He worked for companies such as REI. He made a jump to a little company called Apple, where he spent about almost eight years there. Amazon,
00:00:34
Speaker
And now he works or is an advisor for a company called Games for Love, as well as he's a top voice in AI and gaming on LinkedIn. He's a wealth of knowledge, talks to tons of people, and we are excited and honored to be talking to him today. So John, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Is there anything you'd like to say about yourself? You forgot my real title, which is Chief Schmuck Officer Who Talks Too Much, who's vice president of being a windbag. So I'm excited to demonstrate that here with you today.
00:01:03
Speaker
Well, it's great. I actually don't love talking up until college. I was a very quiet person and something changed, but I'm a great listener. So so we can kick it off and kind of just start in the beginning. Right.
John's Gaming Interests
00:01:13
Speaker
Let's start with some simple questions like what's the last game you played? Oh, man. So I am playing. So in addition to World of Warcraft retail, which it's almost like admitting, yes, my name is John and I play World of Warcraft.
00:01:26
Speaker
as powerfully addictive as that game is. The current iteration Dragonflight 10.2 is so good. And anybody who isn't playing and hasn't for a while, this is me telling you, get back in now. It is so good. It went at BlizzCon when they announced the three
00:01:42
Speaker
expansions, I was, I had the incredible fortune to be in that audience. And that was the moment it was back on for me. And then I'm playing a game on mobile called far light 84, uh, which is made by Lilla studios, which is, um, it's sort of a survival pub G Fortnite esque, but it's all jet pack mobility based. It's really well done. Really well done. I'll have to check that out. I'm kind of currently, uh, don't have any mobile games in my lineup. So I gotta, I gotta check out what's out there and play some, some new stuff and get some fresh blood in there.
00:02:11
Speaker
Yeah. So let's talk about how John gets into
Career Journey and Advisory Role
00:02:14
Speaker
gaming, right? When you look at your kind of background, right? What I see is REI, which everyone loves. You're from, you're from California. I feel like everyone in California is outdoorsy and has to do that stuff. You jump to Apple a little few years after the iPhone. So probably still like in a peak time of Apple, you do a lot at Apple. So like, I usually save this question for a little later into the podcast, but let's start in the beginning of little John, little John, that's a good one. Uh, John growing up, right? What?
00:02:39
Speaker
What brought you into gaming? Did you dream of working in gaming, or did you just happen to fall into it? Oh, man. There's so many layers to that delicious tiramisu of a question, Greg. So first, Lil Jon is OK. I had to do it. The second you said Lil Jon. Nailed it. Perfect. So Lil Jon was not very little. I was actually a strangely large kid. I was 6 foot 2 in sixth grade.
00:03:07
Speaker
That's how tall I am now. It pretty much peaked out right then and there. Probably because I started drinking Dr. Pepper and eating Twinkies for like most of my nutrition for a good sustained few years after that, which led to Lil Jon being particularly not little in high school. I actually weighed more than 350 pounds in high school. So like yourself introverted would barely even begin to describe me in my first couple of years of high school before I decided to make some changes that for me and my individual,
00:03:36
Speaker
choices resulted in me feeling better and in a variety of ways.
Childhood and Gaming Interest Origins
00:03:40
Speaker
But let's go back to, you know, further behind to answer your question of why games or how did I get into games? So my dad was a long haul coast to coast trucker and he moved people's household goods from one part of the United States to another part of the United States. And so I got to grow up moving people's houses with him. And so that meant
00:04:04
Speaker
A, travel, and I got to be in every single state before I was 10 years old, which was really, really cool. I got to see every single national monument of note, but most notably, I got to meet really amazing people and spend a lot of time in truck stops, which are a weird part of this world. If you've ever been to a truck stop, most people listening here, if your family wasn't in logistics,
00:04:27
Speaker
You probably had to pull over on a long drive and had this huge center. You walked into this place and it was like a mall almost with a big restaurant in it. These are truck stops. This is where truck drivers would usually park and sleep in their trucks overnight to save money on hotels and to really just not have to stop and keep going. These places always had arcades.
00:04:49
Speaker
And so I would work in the truck with my dad and he would pay me. And I would take that money and turn it into quarters. And I would play arcades all throughout the United States. And so I grew up with the sound of pinball, Jurassic park pinball, Terminator two, Adam's family. If you remember, that's the sound when you get the replay. That was the soundtrack of my childhood. And so that transitioned into consoles as I got a little bit older and actually started making a little bit more money in the truck with my dad. And I could actually buy a Nintendo.
00:05:17
Speaker
And then it just kind of went from there, kept playing, kept playing. And that evolved over time, fast forward way down the road. That love of games led me to build PCs so I could play Starcraft competitively. And that love of technology led me to consistently be that person who was always trying to push the edge with tech, which is one of the things I'm most excited to talk about here on this call, which is jobs and games and why
00:05:42
Speaker
being a gamer is a huge competitive advantage when you let it be. But it was for me in that sense when I was at REI.
00:05:50
Speaker
the iPhone had come out, the iPad had just come out. And I'm out here always talking about how do we use this tech? And REI is a wonderful company. And they said, here, John, go buy some iPads and do something with them. And we have to do all this cool test pilot stuff. And in the meantime, I built relationships at Apple. And they said, well, you obviously love this stuff, so you might as well come over here and do the hiring that you're doing over there over here. And there it was. It was Gizmet. And then fast forward to today.
00:06:16
Speaker
That runs through Amazon. That runs through an AI startup that we had the amazing good fortune to take public.
Involvement with Games for Love
00:06:24
Speaker
And here we are at Games for Love, which is a nonprofit that puts games into children's hospitals to replace pain with play to improve health outcomes.
00:06:32
Speaker
I want to make sure we talk about that. But backing up, I love your story because it all comes down to the community aspect of it. We talk about community and gaming and making community sound more important to help people. And what we often talk about with a few of our guests, their first hire was someone that was in the community helping people out.
00:06:52
Speaker
I was providing customer support for the game or helping players out and then they reach out to someone like me or whoever and offer them a job and it's just like, that's the coolest. Like again, this community is a really tight knit community and it's all about helping each other, right? I mean, you can go to other services and I just don't think that people are as passionate and maybe they are and I'm just mistaken, right? But like we go home and we probably play games, right? We play games with our friends that work in other places and other verticals as well, but it's a really tight knit community. I love how like,
00:07:19
Speaker
You just owned the electronics, right? You brought iPads into REI, which now everyone's like, no, duh. But like, this was years ago before everyone even believed in the iPad to be other than something big iPhone, like an Apple took notice of that. And that's awesome. But let's talk about a little bit of for games for love, because, you know, we both have children and we've kind of talked about this. And I'm
00:07:40
Speaker
every time I see something now online where something happens to families, it's like heartbreaking to me and it's devastating. And I think kids deserve every opportunity that they get, right? And it's our job as humans, right, to help enable our children for a better future, a better tomorrow. So I love the idea of Games for Love. And I'd like you if you can give a brief overview on what it's for, but like, how did you get involved in it? Yeah, you know, Greg, one of the things you just mentioned this sort of like, make the world better,
00:08:07
Speaker
give our kids a better world maybe than we had is another way to perhaps paint that very similar picture there.
Family Insights and Giving Back
00:08:14
Speaker
It's not unlike the purpose that you find in playing games being a parent, I think. And of course, it's in some cases for some people and not
00:08:24
Speaker
being a parent is a choice that many people make or is a choice that was made for them. So I don't want to say that being a parent is the only source of this tremendous purpose and meaning. It has been for me, so I'll speak only in my own experience. As my partner and I, we welcomed our first biological child into our lives here this past January. And that little lady turns one years old, 13 days from the time of this recording, which is very, very exciting.
00:08:50
Speaker
And I have a 21-year-old adopted child who I adopted with a prior partner who is an amazing member of the trans community. If I refer to them, I will use they, them pronouns in case that is something that anybody hears and says, what is that? That's why. But kind of going back to your question, there's a reason that I mentioned these kids. And that's because I truly do believe that to your point, Greg, we have a calling
00:09:17
Speaker
I almost said the word responsibility, but I think it's more of a calling, call it an evolutionary response, call it a learned socialized response. But there's this need to make sure that these little beings that are looking at us saying, hey, what happens next? There's a need to be able to say something good and to have an answer for that because we're responsible for that.
00:09:39
Speaker
And especially when it's a it's a little infant, you know, and now it now almost a little toddler. Holy smokes. He's looking at you saying, you know, dada. Time will fly. Enjoy it while you can.
00:09:49
Speaker
Yeah, they say that the days are long, but the years are short. And I have to say that this year has been short and the days, specifically the nights, have been very long with plenty of spit ups and all kinds of diapers. But let's go back to Games for Love. So why did I get involved with Games for Love?
Games for Love: Mission and Impact
00:10:09
Speaker
Shortly after our little one was born and I actually exited the AI startup that I was part of after going public and it was just perfect timing. Took a first of my lifetime career pause to actually use this once in a lifetime chance to be there.
00:10:25
Speaker
to see the first year. And now that that's coming to an end, I'm excited to actually transition back into the workforce at some point in the future, which would be a lot of fun. So I might actually use some of this advice that I'm so privileged to be able to be out here helping to share with the amazing Amir's and Aaron's and all these wonderful ideas and Justin's chris's of the world. But games for love came along. It just happened to be a post that Justin Williams had mentioned a moment ago. He's a senior recruiter over at Activision Blizzard.
00:10:55
Speaker
He had shared a post about ways to get into gaming in unconventional ways, and one of those was volunteering. And I had run hiring for gaming at many, many places, including those big tech companies that we talked about, but I had never really been in it fully, professionally, in a completely 100% sense.
00:11:15
Speaker
And so that's what's next for me as I transition back into the workforce. That'll be it. But I wanted to, in the meantime, do something that benefited somebody beyond just the four walls of our home. And I, when I was 12 years old, I was actually in the hospital for some six months, in and out, very brief periods out of that hospital for some really unpleasant stuff.
00:11:37
Speaker
And this was before cell phones. This is way, way back in the day. And so technology wasn't great. In fact, the first Game Boy Color had just come out. So definitely people can do some math and get my pretty much exact carbon dated age right now. But basically what happened was when I went into that hospital, as I mentioned, my dad was a trucker and he was not
00:11:58
Speaker
You don't go into trucking for the money, folks. It is not a lucrative pursuit. But when I did go in and it became clear that I was going to be there for a long time and he wasn't going to be able to be there, he actually scraped together enough money and bought me that Game Boy color with Pokemon Red.
00:12:14
Speaker
And did I play the pixels out of that thing? I truly believe I walked every square inch of that game. Every possible pixel that your sprite could inhabit, I think I did. Mostly because I had so much time. But here's the thing. I don't remember.
00:12:31
Speaker
the bad parts of that hospital visit, which is crazy. I don't remember the smell. I don't remember doctors' conversations specifically. I don't remember a lot of the pain. And I know there was a lot of that. I do remember all the entire front to back of Pokemon Red. And that was, I think, a young mind latching onto something positive and a source of meaning and purpose in a sea of ambiguity, pain, and fear.
00:12:58
Speaker
And there's millions of kids right now around the world who are in that exact place. And so Games for Love puts games, largely through the use of Nintendo switches, into hospitals, largely children's hospitals, and helps the medical professionals there to understand how to integrate that technology, games,
00:13:18
Speaker
into care protocols. So it's not just a dusty Xbox that's shoved into a back corner or something that the staff plays on their breaks, which is actually great to have that mental unloading because our healthcare professionals need that. And they actually use some of this technology as well. Creates a net good, but really it's there for the kids to again, replace pain with play and increasingly to be able to stay connected to their social
00:13:42
Speaker
aspects of their lives, their family, their friends, through online games. The role of Fortnite, for example, has been transformative. And I've seen so many stories already of kids saying, as silly as it might sound, even in the gaming community, we can sometimes laugh at ourselves and think that we sound like nerds when we say some of this stuff. And we do sound like nerds a lot of the time, to be fair.
00:14:04
Speaker
But when I say something like Fortnite, I truly believe I have met people for whom Fortnite has saved their life. And I truly believe that that is to be the case. Saying that out loud sounds almost silly and people might even laugh at me within the community. But I will say that with sincerity and commitment and zealous commitment because it's true.
00:14:25
Speaker
Anyway, I'll, I'll ramble on about games for love for eternity. Cause I think it's just fantastic. One thing to note games for love.org. We have an amazing volunteering program, a wonderful way to get into the games industry with real world experience. You could be coding a game less than a week from the time that you sign up, or you could be working with me and people in culture or all kinds of other things.
00:15:01
Speaker
met people that Fortnite maybe saved their lives. I 100% agree, I mean, from different people I've spoken to, I've got the opportunity to hear about, you know, a lot of times people, I'm a big Redditor, right? Like, people are very toxic because they can hide behind the mask of anonymity, like, bad at saying words here, right? Being anonymous online, right? And well, usually people are assholes when you're being anonymous online.
00:15:06
Speaker
I think it's such a great cause.
00:15:23
Speaker
There's also people that are maybe shy or scared or have anxiety and are afraid to express themselves. But when you're online behind a character, they have that, right? They have that courage, that strength to do so. And by being in the industry, right, you can go meet these communities, meet new friends. World of Warcraft is that perfect example, right? You mentioned it.
00:15:44
Speaker
earlier, right? Like when we chatted, it's, you've met people that have gotten married, relationships have grown through these games. And I think Fortnite is a huge platform, right? I love the concept of Fortnite. I stopped playing for years and I logged back in, it blew my mind what it's become. It's just, it's such a great community. And I think what you're doing for Games for Love, I think everyone and anyone who has the means to take a look into it should because again,
00:16:06
Speaker
with or without children, I believe that children are really the future and we need to be able to give them the best opportunity and for the unfortunate children, right, giving them these escapes.
00:16:16
Speaker
lets them forget what might be happening. And I think that's very powerful. So I thank you for sharing your story there. Absolutely. It also kind of goes into kind of, and maybe it's not, right? But like, we wanted to talk about a little bit about the neurosciences in biochemistry.
Gaming and Brain Chemistry
00:16:31
Speaker
What happens in our brain when we are playing, right? I spoke with an audio guy, Matt Ambler,
00:16:37
Speaker
He was talking about the dopamine effects of when you're listening to music and you're playing a game and you get that experience. I know that's something that you really like to kind of explore and talk about. So I guess starting at a high level, do you want to explain what we mean when we're talking about kind of the neuroscience in gaming? Yeah, absolutely.
00:16:55
Speaker
perfect spot to call out. I really enjoy the community here, specifically on LinkedIn and games, because there's just this unique sort of constellation right now of people who are just here sharing resources in the professional sense to help people get into games just because they want to and because they care.
00:17:14
Speaker
largely as a volunteer effort that has nothing to do with their work. One of those people is Aida Figueroa, who is out in Barcelona, who I'm excited to be able to actually go and visit here with my family soon, which is really, really exciting. But Aida recently hosted an audio event that she and I put together, which was the neuroscience of games. And it actually ended up being the highest engagement
00:17:38
Speaker
anything that I've been part of, including some of these big symposiums, because it created a conversation that it actually grew over time, instead of kind of echoing until it went silent. And I think that's because we're always curious about how our brains work. And it's, it's really incredible when you have something as poignant as games,
00:17:59
Speaker
because the examples are very, very powerful and they're very recent and they're very relatable. So reward-driven engagement is really the sort of main operating term to play with here. Reward-driven engagement is why a Quest system works so well in World of Warcraft. Reward-driven engagement is also why you are more likely to stick to your exercise goals when you use the Lose It app or
00:18:25
Speaker
or gamified tools like that for any sort of goals that you set for yourself. Whether your goal is farming 15 acorns that you're gonna give to the arch druid, or it's to walk five miles this week, either way, when you can see the incremental steps that you're taking, you're much more likely to continue doing it.
00:18:44
Speaker
and that's exactly what many many companies have figured out really excited to talk about web three which is has a huge adjacency here at some point in our conversation today but you really have a small number of uh i should say a short list of biochemical reactions and or endocrine
00:19:05
Speaker
elements that are at play in the mind. Dopamine is one of those. That's essentially what we have in our mind that tells us something feels good and we should do that more. Serotonin, which essentially maintains or tells us you are happy or maintains a mood. You've got oxytocin, which is essentially creating a sense of belonging and or love.
00:19:26
Speaker
Uh, and of course adrenaline, which is going to be trigger your fight or flight, get your heart beating real fast. These are all criminal simplifications, oversimplifications of the role of these things. But just for the sake of the conversation, this is what some of what these, these things do. Um, and when they are play together.
00:19:44
Speaker
You're usually seeing when you're playing a game that you really like, that game is actually a carefully orchestrated symphony of those chemicals being dispersed in your brain in a specific order that really ends up feeling like music, like kind of like Ratatouille, you know, the beautiful colors that you experience.
00:20:02
Speaker
You remember games, big moments in games. If you grew up in the 90s, you probably remember when you found the Master Sword in Link to the Past. That music, that huge moment. That was a real accomplishment. I remember, I had two friends in the room when that happened, and we were like cheering, oh, we did it, we did it, we did it.
00:20:21
Speaker
And that will always be with me because my dopamine was super high. I had incredible oxytocin because it was a social experience. There's a sense of belonging there with my friends, so on and so forth. So dopamine though, is the primary driver of reward driven engagement. And it is also
00:20:37
Speaker
I think it's really important to always talk about, you know, games are fantastic, but like anything, there's such a thing as too much. I don't think anybody listening to this needs to hear this necessarily, but for anybody who might be critical of saying like, oh, okay, we talk all about all this great stuff about games as an industry, as an element in society, and I truly believe that games are a force for good.
00:20:57
Speaker
But I also believe that Tylenol is a force for good. I believe that Penicillin is a force for good. You can take too much of those things, and so too with gaming. So I think that overstimulation and addiction are two, or maybe dependence is a better word to use.
Moderation and Gaming Addiction
00:21:13
Speaker
Overstimulation and dependence are two things to really think about with games, where
00:21:17
Speaker
if you're dependent upon it, and it's the only reason you get out of bed, it's probably not good. Or if you game and for whatever reason, your unique biochemistry, you get so overstimulated that then you have a hard time interacting outside of that space. It's probably again, not good. And you probably want to moderate a little bit. But yeah, that's kind of a brief primer on the biochemistry.
00:21:39
Speaker
You know, I've spoken to a few game designers, and it's interesting to hear how they describe building those situations or those experiences into a game, whether it be like throwing a grenade and building out a few extra bounces for it to get where it needs, even though they don't need to, right? It's all really a symphony, right? A symphony of whatever, where everything has to play a role. I mean,
00:22:02
Speaker
As you were talking through the dopamine effect, I thought about booting up Mario 64 for the first time, because that was one of those major experiences for me, where you kind of fly down, see Mario in 3D, see the castle, as well as GTA 3. Because GTA 3 kind of pioneered open world. Yeah, GTA 2 was there, but it was overhead. And then all of a sudden, you saw everything from the eyes. And you're just like, wow. And Rockstar is phenomenal at that, because every GTA since then, they've managed to one up themselves. And you just think how that happens again. But I love that you
00:22:32
Speaker
you talk about the addictive side of it because rewards are a great way to help people get excited about it. But when you start having daily grinds, daily challenges, or it's 11.15, you're like, oh my God, I haven't logged in and collected all my gems yet. It's not the end of the world. I get it.
00:22:52
Speaker
know, I'm trying to try to pass that law a couple weeks ago, kind of, I know it's a little different than what was there, because it was very predatory. But like, there is that online again, if we hate to always bring the conversation back to kids here, right? Like, when I'm letting my son who's five now or jump into some of the games that I'm playing, I'm worried that he's gonna hit a button or figure out the wrong thing or
00:23:13
Speaker
you hear about roblox like roblox scares me just based on their practice and don't get me wrong it's a cool environment but you know it's it's the dopamine effect is fantastic and it's needed it builds these great things but you have to be careful because there are companies out there that are going to take advantage of those those sciences right and
00:23:31
Speaker
hook you. It's no different than social media. It's no different than anything else in the world. You said it in the beginning, like, know your limits. Go take a break. Go take a walk. And this can lead into Web3 because there are Web3 games now that address like, hey, Pokemon Go is a great example. Get outside. Go walking. Go move around. And I know there's many more
00:23:53
Speaker
Metaverse, Web 3 games that are being built that encourage it. And while I am not yet a true believer, I do see a path forward with it. Getting people to move around, getting people outside, I think, is only going to help everyone. And I think you've got to embrace that, especially post-COVID, because everyone was locked up for the longest time, and now we can get out
Web3 and Future of Gaming
00:24:11
Speaker
again. So I think you touched a lot of important things that are happening in gaming that people need to be aware of.
00:24:16
Speaker
Yeah, man, there was that magical time in 2016, that you remember this, everybody was out, you know, that that kiddo that I mentioned, that at the time, gossip, I believe they were 14, right? Something like that. No, even younger. We would literally after work, go out and just chase Pokemon and end up at big like duck ponds with hundreds of other people with our lights on. We were team valor because we make good life choices and other people were mystic and
00:24:46
Speaker
whatever the yellow one was. But there was this amazing singular community moment. I'll never forget those days, not only because it was such an awesome moment with that amazing little human, but also because I've never experienced something like that. I don't know if we will again.
00:25:05
Speaker
have that sort of cohesion as a community where everybody's just on this one thing in a physical space. Maybe with spatial computing, Web 3 and spatial computing are definitely, I believe, the two, as we kind of look toward the future of games, which I'm super excited to actually start next week at the time of this recording, starting next week and the week after I'm doing a whole series on future of games, because so many questions that are coming up now are like, what's next? What should we think about? How should I think about my career? How should I think about what I'm learning
00:25:34
Speaker
to code, to design, to understand. And I think it's important to think about spatial computing, but ultimately Web3 is a sort of underlying architecture for everything. But anyway, yeah, that was such a cool time. I'm so glad you brought up Pokemon Go. Let's hear your take on Web3, right? Can you put your sales head on and talk to me about Web3 in your vision?
00:25:57
Speaker
Yeah, so alongside my amazing time with Games4Love, I've had this opportunity to become an advisor for a number of game studios and a number of folks that make technology that supports games. A couple of startups and a couple of larger brands. One of those is actually these guys. They're called Freename.io. They actually make this shirt that I'm wearing right now. And they make web3domains and sell them. And they gave me john.gaming.
00:26:27
Speaker
that's pretty amazing that John.game was even available, but that's a Web3 ID. That's an example of a domain, an SLD, that I now own and I've minted to my blockchain. And I'm excited about that because now if you go on any Web3 enabled browser and you type in John.gaming, you go to this stunning 3D website made by this group called Peach Worlds that lets you see a live preview in this 3D immersive space that's ready for spatial computing, by the way.
00:26:56
Speaker
You can see my Twitch stream, what's going on live, my TikTok, my LinkedIn, my Instagram, a live feed of everything that I kind of care about and want to share with you in this sort of immersive social media-esque experience that goes way beyond what we've ever seen before. Think of it as like a link tree, but with like five dimensions built into it of personality and immersion.
00:27:22
Speaker
Anyway, web three, why web three? Why do I care about this? Why did I start working with the free name to IO peeps? By the way, you can go to free name to IO and you can get your dot gaming, uh, domain before they're selling very rapidly. And so it's probably not super likely that like Greg dot gaming is still available, but you know, out of my price range right now.
00:27:43
Speaker
Well, it's usually like between 50 and sometimes 200 bucks. But, you know, let's say you're like, you know, Uber Panther 28 or whatever your gaming handle is, that's probably Uber Panther 28 is probably still available.
00:27:55
Speaker
Anyway, Web 3, the reason I even got involved with these guys is one, they're brilliant, and two, the fungibility of Web 3, I believe, is something that's going to completely transform gaming. And there's an example that I like to talk about that for me was where I really started to start to understand the role of blockchain in games.
00:28:15
Speaker
So Greg, if you were like me, you made some awesome decisions in high school and you were probably sitting in the back of the cafeteria playing magic cards. So if anybody, this is that like, you know, there's the tears of nerddom, right? We all, we can look up and down, like somewhere in the middle here towards the bottom, at least in my experience was the magic card players. Back in the day, it was D&D. Now D&D players like way up here. They're like the alpha nerds, which is super cool.
00:28:42
Speaker
But back then the magic card players and the dnd players were not the alpha nerds We were the people sitting in the back, uh of the cafeteria Magic cards are a great example, right? Like at the time You would buy packs of cards just like you buy your hearthstone cards Just like you buy any of these uh, other many many training card games But you had one card and that one card was singular in the world, right? There were other versions there copies of it But that one thing that you were holding was the only place that that existed and you only had one
00:29:12
Speaker
And you can trade it, right? And just like with NFTs, right? What we learned from NFTs was, first of all, it was an interesting learning experience, but NFTs as a sort of actual currency definitely weren't this, you know, future of monetary currency that many people were touting it to be.
00:29:31
Speaker
Crypto may still have that role in the future for some folks, but certainly not NFTs, at least that I can see. However, imagine a world where you have a blockchain, an item that you've mentioned on a blockchain, let's say a sword, right? Like the sword of a thousand truths.
00:29:49
Speaker
that you have minted to you in World of Warcraft. Imagine a world where you have minted that to your blockchain wallet and your wallet is synced to, say, Valorant as well. And that exact same sword appears in Valorant, right? And now the fungibility of that thing, or the transferability, has gone up 10x. The interoperability now that you've got with that one item, like a magic card that you could swap between decks and play in different places,
00:30:18
Speaker
Now you can build really cool stuff around that. And the, the application for cross play 3.0 is insane. The, the ability to take all of this stuff, these assets that you, you've spent all this time building this thing over here. And if you ever built a character up somewhere and then walked away from a game, it can feel like you just. You know, burned like took 150 hours of your life and just threw it in a pile and just burned it.
00:30:43
Speaker
Well, imagine if every single moment you spent on a game added value to every other game you played for the rest of your life. That is really the power of web three. And I think that it's only starting to come along. The spatial computing is an accelerate this 10 X AI, of course. Can't have a conversation with technology without talking about AI.
00:31:03
Speaker
AI is why this adoption is picking up so quickly because it's so much easier to create around new technology because technology is creating so quickly. And it is becoming its own self-recursive loop or geometric expanding computing power plus new technology cycle.
00:31:24
Speaker
Yeah. So I don't want to make this the entire web tree call, but that's why I'm excited about web tree. That's the way I'm participating in it, which is with free named IO through the dot gaming, uh, world, which I think is going to be really transformative for people's central gaming identities. One day, I think all Twitch streamers will be Greg dot gaming, John dot gaming, Ninja dot gaming, Tim, the Tetman dot gaming, so on and so forth. Uh, Pokemon dot gaming.
00:31:47
Speaker
I like a lot of what you said, but I want to play devil's advocate to one of the points that you made because I hear it a lot, but I feel like, you know, right, if you create a sword in Warcraft and you want to bring it to Valorant, right? The problem is then Activision or Blizzard needs to be in talks with Riot to make sure that, hey, does this asset
00:32:08
Speaker
work in your game, right? It's not like you could take a square and put it in a circle game, it just doesn't work like that. And I love the idea of it, right? I love the ability to say, Hey, I purchased this, and I can bring it to any game where I realistically see that happening. And I don't know why it's not yet is like, for Electronic Arts, right? Electronic Arts has Madden cards, they have FIFA cards, they have all these mud, right? Like the online things like that,
00:32:34
Speaker
in a world makes a lot of sense for me to create, for lack of better words, like a metaverse, like here's your trading card universe. Here's the upgraded year, right? Your cards still carry over or Fortnite's doing a great job, right? If you buy a skin, you can turn it into a Lego skin or you can turn it into a car, right? Like there are places this works and there's places that they don't work. And going back to the whole NFT side of things, right? Like in even going back further to talk about the dopamine effect and the neuroscience, right?
00:33:02
Speaker
I think NFTs, maybe they will be something, but I think they put such a bad taste in people's mouth with how they first came out that it's going to be hard to get people to adopt them. I think it's one of those things that maybe they will be a thing, but you can't call it what it is. I had this one great conversation with someone that was like, every time Call of Duty comes out with a
00:33:22
Speaker
sequel update. They don't go out there and say, it's a whole new thing. Here's a brand new sequel update. It all happens behind the scenes, and it just works. It blends into the game. And I think that's what NFTs at least need. They just need to be a part of it, right? I don't know if any of that makes sense, but that's kind of my gut feeling. And I do think Web 3 will be something. Don't get me wrong. I mean, you and I are both around for the launch of Web 2, which I feel like it took a decade upon itself because people kept saying, oh, Web 2 is coming. Web 2 is coming. And the next thing you know,
00:33:49
Speaker
there, right? Like, I'm not sold, we just don't know what it is. I love the gaming stuff. I think all that stuff does make sense. And it will be will play a role in it. It's just, you know, it gets down to the nitty gritty of what are these assets that are going to carry over? How do they carry over who has ownership work? I think it becomes this fairly heavy conversation, which is fascinating to me. Like, I do think 2024 is the year of web three. I do. I just don't know the form it's going to fully take when it's time.
00:34:13
Speaker
Well, I would say if we if we were to rub a crystal ball or whatever you do with a crystal ball to see the future, I think that this is going to happen in Southeast Asia. So Southeast Asia is absolutely the hotbed of Web three game development, not only because there's so much interoperability so that you do something with one
00:34:42
Speaker
game or ecosystem. And that plugs into something else because there's so many new ecosystems coming up, but there's a huge amount of investment. There's one and a half billion dollars when in a web three game studio VC in 2023 alone. And that's on track to be three X that in 2024 to your point Greg of the year of year web three.
00:35:04
Speaker
So I think that it's it's actually it's probably a cultural thing. I think that you especially are very sort of Western, largely US centric game design, game philosophy, understanding of how games work. I think that you're going to see a Tencent or who knows, come along and and really integrate meaningfully, even if even if you only had
00:35:29
Speaker
like blockchain items that work between Honkai star rail and Genshin impact just two games within one universe or that even the same universe within one sort of game studio ecosystem right then and there you've already now introduced this sort of fungibility piece and Blizzard is actually starting to do some of this with their accounts where for example if you went to Blizzcon you get all this stuff you mounts appear in your
00:35:54
Speaker
in your collection you got card backs and her stone all the games you got some sort of new cool decoration or collateral. And it's starting to pick up speed now where.
00:36:05
Speaker
I believe that once one or two big market movers start to integrate blockchain technology to give people that serious return on investment, because here's the thing. Once you make things fungible, you make them sellable. And I think that coming back to Fortnite, the reason I'm so excited about what Epic's doing with Fortnite actually has nothing to do with the game. The game is phenomenal. We've all aligned around that.
00:36:31
Speaker
However, what they're doing with UEFN, Unreal Engine for Fortnite, and the marketplace they're building as a commerce hub and a hotbed, an accelerator for opportunity, there are people making millions of dollars right now building and creating and selling on that marketplace, just like Roblox.
00:36:52
Speaker
And I think it's creating a sort of generation of entrepreneurs that very few people that I know, even that are on the sort of bleeding edge of games have stopped to really consider. And I think that when you take a lot of money and a lot of speed of development and you add in the ability to actually make things resellable, like a domain, like a physical item, that of course is what blockchain does is it makes one thing and only one thing.
00:37:18
Speaker
then I think you're gonna really start to see something cool. So yeah, there's my ramble.
00:37:23
Speaker
Yeah, I like that. And I think the other thing I think 2024 is the year of is user-generated content. I think everyone's creating stuff now. I think we just talked about the predatory Roblox type of stuff. Epic at least is doing it by the books. So that's cool. But I love the ability for people to start creating content. I think that builds a stronger community, gives longer legs to games because more people are contributing stuff to it. The one thing I'm curious on your thought of is someone that is big in AI is
00:37:53
Speaker
When are we going to start seeing, and maybe we already do in user-generated content, is people just throwing stuff into Dolly or any other web generation tool and spamming it, right? This probably isn't the best and most thought-out question in general, but I guess my question is more around the AI and gaming, and is that something that
00:38:13
Speaker
worries you, excites you all the above. So AI and gaming for me, the first place that my mind goes when we start talking about that, if you just put that on the table and where my brain goes is the application to, or implications, I should say, for professional opportunities, IE jobs, because of AI.
AI's Impact on Gaming Industry
00:38:31
Speaker
And I think we've already probably seen the first wave of
00:38:36
Speaker
uh, reduction in force or layoffs is the appropriate word to use. And this is probably a good time to remind everybody that these opinions are my own. They have nothing to do with Apple or Amazon or any other entity with whom I've ever been affiliated or may ever be affiliated. Um, what's nice about being a unique sole entity right now is I can say these things, um, from a place of complete, just, it's just me. Nobody's, nobody's fan me right now.
00:39:00
Speaker
Uh, even as an advisor for free name, I'm just there as a, an advocate, uh, and there for the ride. Cause it's so exciting. Uh, now that said, I, I do think that we are going to see more layoffs in 2024. We were already seeing, you know, some 20.
00:39:19
Speaker
1,000 a few weeks into, thanks to Unity and some stuff that happened at Twitch and YouTube, which is unfortunate, or I should say Google specifically. This is unfortunate. These are people's jobs. These are human beings whose lives are fundamentally altered who
00:39:36
Speaker
ultimately got written a bad check. You know, people went to school, they wanted to get into this thing and they did. And then because of largely irresponsible or overly optimistic hiring, and I will always say bad business outcomes, 100% need to be attributed to leadership.
00:39:52
Speaker
That's just what it is. That's just all that there is to it. Look at how different things are in two different gaming companies, right? Take any of the gaming companies that have had major layoffs, specifically in the United States, then take a look at what Nintendo did in Q4 of 2023 and are doing now in Q1 of 2024. Every single executive took a significant pay cut. Many gave up big equity.
00:40:15
Speaker
Many took significant steps backward financially and acknowledged the fact that the market wasn't what they thought it would be, and they didn't bet correctly, essentially. And as such, no layoffs, right? As opposed to other entities that did not take that stance. And you've got plenty of executives who don't have anything different in their paychecks when thousands and thousands of people do, when that delta could have easily canceled the other one out, i.e. executives
00:40:45
Speaker
And I speak as a, as a quote unquote big leader in some of these companies. You have to own this. If you're an executive in the gaming company, you need to own the business outcomes, including the need to have layoffs and you need to do everything that you can to avoid that. Now, AI is unfortunately accelerating this because it's, it's kind of, I think speaking to people's kind of darker motivations.
00:41:08
Speaker
And for shareholders, sometimes that can speak to, wow, we could potentially have these double digit margin savings by erasing entire groups. And the only way we're going to find that out is if we try it and they're trying it. And I believe that it's not working. I believe that you're seeing AI not meaningfully integrated. It is to your point, Greg.
00:41:31
Speaker
It's almost becoming a meme now where people are creating stuff in the dollies and the mid journeys of the world. And I say, this is somebody who very openly creates a lot of stuff in mid journey, but I'm not trying to hide it, right? Like I'm, I use it for my silly graphics that I put on as like caricatures of other creators on LinkedIn in this.
00:41:49
Speaker
But I'm not trying to say, this is my original artwork. This is my prompt messing around for a couple of hours. But when people are trying to build games around AI-generated content, it's just not there yet. And I think people are making bad bets that it is here and it's going to be here soon. And it's costing jobs. And that's not OK. I believe that that's not OK, because that's people's lives that we're talking about.
00:42:13
Speaker
I am really excited to see some of the trajectory that's happening in the United States right now around protections, including unionization and some of the other work that people are doing to protect developers and to protect people who trusted and got into this industry to create amazing things and really just want to do that and do so with safety, psychological and financial safety. But AI is not helping with that right now, where I think in the next six months, when the corner turns, especially as interest rates start to come back down and in the economy,
00:42:43
Speaker
Fortunately, we are heading into an election, which is a huge source of uncertainty. So that might turn this actually around and reverse course and put us into more of an uncertain financial space, which means again, higher interest rates. But when money becomes more available, people become more willing to borrow it and get access to it and use it more jobs. And I think people are really going to stop and say, okay, we had our adolescents with AI, and now we have a good understanding of what we can actually do with this. That's meaningful and positive.
00:43:08
Speaker
as opposed to just novel and let me just see what I can do because everybody's doing this and I guess I have to do it too. And now my board is telling me I have to save all this money on payroll because they read an article this morning that said that AI could do all the level design, but it can't and it's not going to for a long time.
00:43:28
Speaker
I'm hopeful that backside of 2024, Q3, probably Q4, you're really going to see this big upswell hiring in games as studios realize the wonderful, brilliant creators that are human and understand how to design for humans are still here.
Embracing AI in Creative Work
00:43:47
Speaker
And let's bring them back and let's build some stuff.
00:43:49
Speaker
There's something to be said about the human touch, which I think is often overlooked in something. And I am a true believer in AI. I think people should embrace it. I don't think companies should fully embrace it yet. I think individuals should be utilizing these tools to strengthen what they do. I don't think it should be replacing what they do. And there are a lot of upsides, right? I mean, Unity is the example. They grew because they needed to put a lot of content out there during COVID, and they hired a ton of people, put a lot of content out there, and all of a sudden,
00:44:17
Speaker
the market starts to slow down. Fine, we have to get rid of people. But let's replace these people with machines and machines will just start automatically putting this content out there. And people see right through it. I mean, if you go online, right, people see images that are generated, they're like, why is that guy have six fingers? Why would like
00:44:32
Speaker
It's like people don't proof check the software key. It shouldn't stop people from learning and understanding how these tools work because it's one of those things that once the technology is out there and I know people are calling for it to go back, it's already out there. You can't escape it, so you might as well embrace it. I think it happened when we went from horse and buggy to cars. People are like, no, I don't want cars. What's going on with that? Trust me, a horse and buggy had no chance.
00:44:56
Speaker
embraced change. It is scary, right? But especially for people who are first coming out of school now, this is a great opportunity to start learning these new tool sets, like talk to people in other companies that are like, no, I don't use chat GPT or anything. I was just like, you might as well throw like an email and say, how does this sound, right? Or something like don't put any personal stuff in there, right? You don't want that on the
00:45:14
Speaker
the LLMs, but utilize these tools. It won't replace you, but if you know how to use it, it's just going to make you a more powerful employee at what you have the ability to do. Also, going back to your original point, executives for sure should be responsible. Is anyone going to hold them responsible for the layoffs? Probably not, but yes, I agree with you. People have big eyes, big visions, big numbers in their mind. They're like, oh, we can hit these numbers and all of a sudden profits fall off a cliff. What are you going to do? It's a shitty place to be.
00:45:43
Speaker
I've been talking a lot here, but go ahead. Everything you just said, Greg, I couldn't align with more completely, especially the two of your sentiments, one of which my own version of that would be create
00:45:56
Speaker
with AI don't create as AI. So the idea of, you know, and like, like everybody, I, when trying it out, I first was like, Hey, can I have Jasper.ai or even chat GPT through make.com? Can I automate article creation? Let's just see how this works. Fortunately, I think, especially at the very beginning, many of us were, were.
00:46:23
Speaker
forward looking enough to say disclaimers, hey, this is AI just so you know, I'm kind of playing with this. This is not my work. And I think that the uncanny valley is a much deeper trough than anybody really wants to acknowledge and getting out of the uncanny valley.
00:46:38
Speaker
I think we're all realizing maybe we don't want to be. Maybe we don't want to get out of the valley where things that are deepfaked or images that were created by non-human hands get to be completely unmistakable from that of what a machine has generated. Yes, we will be there. We're going to get there. And our path to that place is faster every day. But it is further away, I think, than we all thought. Certainly further away than the people who are getting called out for their
00:47:09
Speaker
AI generated big banners printed at CES and some of the silly stuff that's still happening now, where you're like, who did not proofread that memo? But one of the other things that you'd mentioned, Greg, is this sort of responsibility and who's holding executives accountable. I think two answers to that, in my opinion, or three, really, if we add a level of personal advocacy that may or may not ring well with a lot of folks,
00:47:34
Speaker
One is we vote with our dollars. So like, are you going to buy a product from a company that laid off 5,000 people because they could? Not because they had to, but because they could. And they didn't make strides, right? And this goes to like a level of research, like with voting, voting with your dollars that not everybody wants to do. So I'll get off my soapbox with that one, but worth questioning, right? Like if you give your money to that group, what role did you play in that layoff?
00:48:03
Speaker
Second is I think we vote with our jobs, right? So if you are at a place that made that choice, do you decide to stay there and continue to perpetuate a culture that will just do it again, right? Especially if you have the same leadership.
00:48:19
Speaker
But the third is I think that there are executives out there, truly amazing executives. And there's two names that I think I would encourage everybody who's listening to this to go and kind of look at if you want to, in my opinion, in one person's opinion. And that's going to be Annie and Jeff Strang.
00:48:36
Speaker
These are people who've been in the games world since Blizzard in 97 or something like that. Undead Studios, now they have Britannia Media, which has Crop Circle Games and a number of other studios underneath this umbrella, where they're all about sustainable game creation. And the amount of diversity and inclusion that they build into their teams to make sure that they have intention and their design is absolutely breathtaking.
00:49:05
Speaker
And then also Ben Cavallo over at Midwest Games. Now these are production houses. These are essentially studios that perpetuate studios. But I love that because that means that everybody under that umbrella is safer and has a more trustworthy
00:49:22
Speaker
Backstory to rely upon when things change because market circumstances change I'm not saying that every single layout that's ever happened wasn't necessary. That's that's simply not true That's not the reality of business But I I do think that in a world where the economy has grown so significantly the industry has grown so significantly record profits are being posted and
00:49:41
Speaker
between something like four to some measure, 7% of them, of the entire industry being laid off
Innovative Gaming Technology: Azuron Keyboard
00:49:47
Speaker
in one year. That is inappropriate. So that that's where I'm coming from. And the Annie's and Jeff's and Ben's of the world, I think are the sort of counterpoint to that sort of work. So I know we're getting close to time and I want to do talk a little more about the layoffs and usually in the middle of the podcast, which I think we're way past, I do a quick spitfire around, uh, you're okay with that. I'll do it right now. It should take less than a minute. I'm going to just throw some questions at you.
00:50:10
Speaker
Thanks for your flexibility. Ready? Let's roll. What'd you have for breakfast? Sous vide egg bites, Gruyere, and uncured bacon. Some Starbucks, huh? Or make them. Made at home. Nice. As good as Starbucks I could get. There you go. Perfect. If you were to go to a bar, what type of drink are you getting? Iced tea. Iced tea, nice. Last one island Iced tea. What's the last book that you read?
00:50:39
Speaker
Ah, tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow. Okay. Perfect. Um, usually I ask what's the last game you played, but I cheated and asked you that one in the beginning. So let me ask you, this is someone that's an AI in tech. And for people that aren't watching the video, John has a lot of cool gadgets here. What is your favorite gadget you purchased in the last physical year? Oh, that's going to be this thing right here.
00:51:07
Speaker
So this is a one-handed gaming keyboard. It's made by a company called Azuron, and this is 3D printed. These guys are actually out of Ukraine, which is amazing that they're still completely in production. They're keeping their business rolling despite the ongoing conflict. Here are those little clicks.
00:51:29
Speaker
Yeah, every single one of those little pink dots is a key. So there's like 30 individual keys that you can hit all in sequence. So it completely replaces your keyboard. So if you're into MMOs like World of Warcraft, your response time and your ability to actually do all these crazy
00:51:49
Speaker
commands you're trying to do. It is, I would say probably reduced by about 80%. And so it's a completely different game. Like it, and it's so much fun and it feels like the future and it looks super weird. And it's cool conversation piece. John is looking like Thanos over here. And as long as you hear the clicks and not a snap, we're good to go. Oh my gosh. Ready? I am inevitable. There you go. All right. So you're off the hot seat. Hopefully that was easy enough. Um, I,
00:52:18
Speaker
truly respect and I'm trying to learn how to mimic your approach for like a better words on how you're helping the community amongst this time of layoffs between yourself and Amir you see a lot of big names in the industry trying to help each other provide resources and that's fantastic so maybe this could be a two-part question on
00:52:39
Speaker
Why? I mean, it's a silly question to ask, but what's drawing you to help these individuals and where can they find resources for this help? So second question first, there are a few places that I would recommend people look like here's buttons to click and
00:52:58
Speaker
Really, really excited to have a conversation with this amazing human named Camille, who are going to have a LinkedIn live next week. And she likes to describe herself as the clicky person. Like she's who you talk to and you want to learn exactly what to type into a Boolean string or exactly how to tweet your resume. As opposed to all this big strategy stuff, this is the like season 25 year recruiter who's telling you, here's exactly what to do.
00:53:21
Speaker
super excited to talk to her. But the clicky stuff is absolutely a mirror set that's jobs resources. So this is an impossibly valuable, even if you're not into games, honestly, like even if you don't have any interesting games, by the time you meaningfully participate in this thing as a mentor, as a mentee, as a learner,
00:53:43
Speaker
even just somebody who wants to see an amazing ecosystem and community, it's you'll want to be in games by the time you're done, because you'll see the extent to which people are helping each other, giving up their own time. Because we all want this industry to thrive. And we all believe in the people that have created the worlds in which we like to play and explore and belong. That's at least my motivation. I have a secondary motivation, though, which is this. Anytime there's big market changes,
00:54:11
Speaker
it's almost inevitable that the least represented people are the highest impacted in those shifts. And so if you look at BIPOC employees, female identifying and presenting employees,
00:54:22
Speaker
These are disproportionately, and some estimates are that approximately 42% of the people that were laid off were female presenting in an industry that still has about an 18 to 20% representation. That is a difference that you cannot ignore. And this is all, the reason I'm not quoting this data is I've seen very different numbers. That's some of the more optimistic numbers.
00:54:46
Speaker
Anybody who sees different numbers, I encourage you to please reach out to me. I'm a big fan of quoting and citing sources to keep reality in news and other places. And so with that, especially the work that I've done within the LGBTQ community, to really make sure that opportunity continues to be something that is more equally accessible every single day.
00:55:08
Speaker
Because so many people who worked so hard to be represented are less so now than they were at the beginning of 2023 that for me becomes a little bit more of a mission a little bit less of a hobby and that's why I love this stuff so much I have the impossible privilege to have time right now in between diapers and bottle feeds and
00:55:28
Speaker
reading about new ways to do both of those things. And by reading, I mean watching Instagram reels. Let's be very real here. That's like 85% of where I've learned everything about being a parent. For better or worse, I shouldn't admit that on camera. But I have that time right now and I'm really enjoying finding meaning and purpose and trying to
00:55:47
Speaker
And I will say this, you know, I've just rounded the base on like something like 250, these mentoring calls with the mirrors program, because I love it. And if even one person has a job today, because of that time that I spent, because the job that Amir has spent, then I think I can speak for him. I certainly speak for myself in saying that that time was worth it because that 200 or so hours or whatever went into that.
00:56:11
Speaker
that person, that one person whose life was hopefully improved by that, and Amir actually has stats on this, it's something like 1800 placements that have happened through these job resources. So it's not just one person, but if even if it was just that one person, at the end of just six months, they've already more than made up for the time that went into that. So I think that that's the
00:56:31
Speaker
Add that to a whole career. Add that to better reflection, which means games that are designed more inclusively to reflect and include and display more different people. We all get to play together more. And that's what matters to me. That's lovely. And, you know, you're talking about inclusive design. And I learned about that from Women in Games, the group. And I think it's such a... Some of this stuff seems like common sense when you figure out like this. No one, like I didn't think about this before, but duh.
00:56:58
Speaker
But I think it's a fantastic mission. And I feel similar to you, whereas like, if you can help even just one person just knowing that, hey, you help this person, this individual get to where they want to go, or just get back on their feet, right? I think there's, there's something to be said about that. It's just a feeling that you set dopamine effect, right? You're getting those people into positions that you just love. And it's a good feeling inside. And
00:57:20
Speaker
We'll make sure to link to Amir's job stuff that's on LinkedIn. We'll have links to all that stuff. So with all that being said, John, is there anyone you'd recommend or any influence that you have online that maybe people could check out?
00:57:36
Speaker
Yeah, you know, right, right now, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of lost feeling where, yes, there's a lot of people who've been laid off. Now, you know, somewhere, somewhere in the neighborhood of 21 to 23,000 just since January of 2023.
00:57:53
Speaker
in the games industry, but that does not incorporate all of the people who've graduated, who are literally getting degrees to work in this space and they're now, you know, working at Applebee's or whatever to make ends meet. So there's, you know, probably something like 100 to 150,000 people out there who are disenfranchised and probably asking, do I want anything to do with this industry anymore?
00:58:17
Speaker
And I'd like to share a few names that I recommend people follow on LinkedIn. And they're on all of these other socials, but I haven't really loved LinkedIn because it has a little bit more of a ballast and a little bit less of a like Twitter slash X, sort of a Wild West effect. So you can kind of trust LinkedIn a little bit more, I feel. But those people, I would say are certainly Amir Sattvat, not only for his resources, but also for his sort of daily knowledge shares.
00:58:46
Speaker
Justin Williams for very tactical information. Matt Herndon, another Blizzard person for really awesome strategic thought. Like here's industry top-down and kind of your role in it. Aida Figurola, who we talked about for inspiration. Aaron Goldsmith.
00:59:02
Speaker
for stories about kind of how to find your way into games and how, even if you don't see yourself there, how her journey into games is perhaps a template that could inform your own. Maria Blaza, who's the fairy job mother over at Netflix Games, she has, along with Elisa Jaleisen, this really awesome thing called Game Talk Unlocked, which is a community gathering tool, which is trying to replicate the Pokemon Go effect, actually, Greg, it's funny you mentioned that.
00:59:30
Speaker
And then a host of others, honestly, if you go to any of their pages, including my own, you'll probably see a lot of re-shares within this community. If you just sort of follow that rabbit hole for a while and just follow a bunch, your feed is going to be a much more informed one, I believe, when it comes to games industry, what's going on, how to get into it, and maybe even why you want to still do so.
00:59:50
Speaker
great. I agree with those resources. I follow all those resources well, so I'd highly recommend that. We can link to all that stuff as well. And John, you're one of these individuals that I randomly reached out into LinkedIn because I did follow you, and I was like, I hope he responds, and you did. And this has been an honor and a privilege for you to join me today. So thank you so much. And before we go, I'd like to just give you the floor if there's anything else.
01:00:13
Speaker
personal or whatever that you want to share with the audience. Go for it. One last call out for games for love.org. If you are interested in volunteering, of course we're a nonprofit. We exist almost entirely from charity streams. So if you're a streamer and you'd like to stream with us.
01:00:28
Speaker
We are so, so, so grateful for everybody that does any donations, of course. We're so excited to receive those. And every dollar as a kid helped in this world who needs it. And also call out to some of our big corporate donors who've helped us so much in this last year. Blizzard Entertainment was hugely generous with us. Corsair Games.
01:00:51
Speaker
secret labs these guys right here and Origin PC and a number of others just really really great and we're just very grateful to you the listener who hopefully wants to come and hang out with us and To all those entities for helping to perpetuate the work that we do
01:01:08
Speaker
We will have links to games for love, everything John related, as well as a lot of the resources that he mentioned. So once again, John, thank you so much. I hope you get some sleep. I hope you have a great rest of your day and I look forward to being in touch again. So thanks for joining. Thank you, Greg, for all that you do. Thank you.