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Innovative Gaming with Mike O'Connor: Building a Social Sandbox with AI and Web3
65 Plays3 months ago
Description: In this exciting episode of the Player: Engage, Greg is joined by Mike O'Connor, CEO of Mr. Kite and the visionary behind Today The Game. Mike shares his insights on integrating AI and Web3 technologies to create an innovative social sandbox game. With a rich background in filmmaking and game development, Mike offers a unique perspective on the future of immersive gaming experiences.
Key Topics Discussed:
- Introduction to Mike O'Connor and Mr. Kite (00:00 - 01:14): Greg introduces Mike O'Connor and discusses his background in filmmaking and game development.
Overview of Today The Game and its unique approach to blending AI and Web3 technologies. - Integrating AI for Dynamic NPCs (01:14 - 01:37): Mike explains how AI is used to create dynamic, interactive NPCs that build genuine relationships with players.
The importance of creating immersive and engaging character interactions. - The Power of Storytelling in Gaming (06:46 - 07:34): Discussion on the significance of storytelling in Today The Game.
How Mike’s filmmaking background enhances the game's narrative experience. - Leveraging Web3 for Player Empowerment (21:21 - 22:46): Mike talks about the integration of Web3 technology to provide true ownership of in-game assets.
The benefits of a player-driven economy and fostering a sense of community. - Simplifying Onboarding and Player Experience (34:58 - 36:50): Addressing the challenges of onboarding players in Web3 games.
Today The Game’s approach to making the onboarding process seamless and enjoyable. - Future Innovations and Democratization of Game Development (40:46 - 42:55): How AI and generative technologies are democratizing game development.
Enabling smaller studios to compete with industry giants and innovate creatively. - Mike’s Journey and Career Insights (26:58 - 29:13): Mike shares his journey from a producer at Nintendo and Sega to becoming the CEO of Mr. Kite.
The importance of collaboration and having good processes in place in game development. - Upcoming Play Test and Community Engagement (37:29 - 40:08): Information about the upcoming closed play test for Today The Game.
How to get involved and provide feedback.
Call to Action: Don’t miss out on this insightful conversation! Listen to the full episode to learn more about the future of gaming with AI and Web3, and how Today The Game is setting new standards in the industry.
Follow Us:
Connect with Today The Game:
- Twitter: @TodayTheGame
- Website: Today The Game
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Player Engage Podcast
00:00:07
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to the Player Engage Podcast. Greg here. Today we are joined by Mike O'Connor. He is from a
Exploring 'Today The Game'
00:00:16
Speaker
company called Mr. Kite and they are building a cool project called Today The Game. ah It's really cool because the company itself has been making films, things such as Stutter, which won a Oscar a few years back, they're working on a new project called glimpse. And today of the game is really interesting because it's taking AI and web three and mashing it together to create a social sandbox type of game, which I'm excited to talk about and learn more about today. So Mike, thank you so much for joining me today. Is there anything you want to say about yourself?
Social Simulation and AI-driven Features
00:00:45
Speaker
um Well, first of all, thank you for the nice introduction. It's amazing to be here and and to chat chat to you. and Yeah, I'm Mike. i'm I'm the CEO of the team. and Mr. Kite is the name um that is building this game that is called Today. So yeah, very briefly today it's a social simulation. It's basically you have a sandbox or and an island that you're able to design and develop according to your own tastes and preferences. You're going to use AI to do that and that's going to create a whole selection box of creative tooling for you to do things in really fun, new and imaginative ways.
00:01:21
Speaker
And on top of that, you're going to be populating that island that you have um with AI NPCs. So this is like ah truly the next generation of what it's like to see a non-player character in the game. You're able to speak to them, create relationships with them, and ultimately um yeah kind of like cultivate connection. And that's what we're really interested in. I love it. And when AI first worked je ai when je a i first hit the scene in gaming, I was like, oh, when you're talking to NPCs, it's going to be so much more interesting than I just thought about walking around Skyrim and talking to the same characters who have the same dialogue. And when you can start to infuse Gen AI into that, it's
From Storytelling to Game Development
00:02:01
Speaker
amazing. it and
00:02:02
Speaker
The background you and and your partner have building this out, it's fascinating because, again, you won an Oscar for Stutterer, which I watched a few days ago, which was fascinating. It's a 12 minute movie on the New Yorker. I watched it on the New Yorker website, and it shows it. You guys are storytellers and you're building a game around that. And, you know, when you have a story behind it, it makes the game that much more ah immersive and experience that much better. And then you decide to throw in Web 3, which is like, whoa, why, how, right? I mean, Web 3 is still kind of in this little like, what's it going to be? How's it going to come out? and Which is great. But the elements that you're building, ah I guess my question goes, how do you go from this storytelling background to decide, you know what, let's build a Web 3 game and see what happens.
00:02:49
Speaker
ah Yeah, it's a great question. man yeah and So, yeah, it's well first of all, it's interesting that you bring up Skyrim and and and NPCs because one of our one of the members of our team, um the very talented and brilliant Manuel Quimares, um has a PhD in AI and software engineering focused on AI and and specifically focused on NPCs. And he spent a significant amount of time actually engineering AI and for for Skyrim actually for his PhD, which is interesting because it is ah and it it is actually ah a baseline for a lot for a lot of gamers when it comes to NPCs. So um yeah, so that's ah it's a nice reference that you threw in. And by the way, I also just, and I'm not, I will answer the question. I love the posters behind your wall as well. thank you
00:03:35
Speaker
Yeah it's cool. i like Doom for me was ah ah you know a total landmark game and I actually had the pleasure of briefly working with John Romero and met about a decade ago with his studios. He has a studio called Romero Games at the moment. and But anyway, um to get back on topic, how did we get into this, you know, via the prism of of ah of storytelling and film? So my background personally is I was a Nintendo and Sega ah producer. And before that, I dabbled in, like, I initially was like a musician, I was playing, I was a drummer. And then um moving on from music, I started producing kind of low budget or even micro budget, kind of like,
00:04:17
Speaker
I guess there are kind of like ah crime feature films, ah kind of gangster, Dublin gangster feature feature films by a director called Mark O'Connor. So I had this background in cinema that I was kind of, I was really interested when I moved into games in this emerging landscape of narrative driven
Influences and Storytelling in Games
00:04:38
Speaker
games. You know, like I was always a massive fan of games like Point and Click Adventures, Lucas Hart's games, stuff like Monkey Island and Grim Fandango and all of these games were like massive for me growing up. And one of the reasons was was because I was able to immerse into the story. And as we saw stories started starting to permeate its way more formidably into the games industry, like, for example, with things like The Last of Us, I remember watching the like opening kind of sequence in The Last of Us and and showing it to all my cinema buddies and going, hey, like,
00:05:10
Speaker
video games are changing and it's this hybrid thing that's beginning and it's no longer, you know, the plumber cap, you know, saves the princess, you know? um so So I just felt as if it was ah it was an emerging time for all of this change. Now at the same time, one of my best pals, a guy called Benjamin Cleary had been, he'd finished his master's degree in screenwriting and he was he he had this crazy idea of making this short film, which turned out to be stutterer. and and which then ended up winning the yeah best the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short. So we both had this kind of, like we were we were really close friends and we had this different skill set. I was focused on a lot of interactive entertainment, working at Nintendo, working at Sega, and he was quickly becoming one of the most um
00:06:02
Speaker
I suppose one of the most up and coming film, young filmmakers in Hollywood having just won an Oscar. He just had been, you know, he was making a film called Swan Song Apple had given him like $40 million dollars to make ah um a movie with like a load of amazing stars like Mahershala Ali and Glenn Close. So we were just like, okay, we're both at good points in our career. Let's find a way to like to use that storytelling background that he has and the background that I have in games and What can we do with that? What does it look like if we throw that skill set into a cauldron and stir it all around? And the result of that really is is today, is the game. And one of the things that we were interested by is how we could use emerging technologies, in particular artificial intelligence and blockchain, to do something really new with storytelling and with video games. And that kind of led us to to to what we're building at the moment, yeah.
00:06:58
Speaker
Yeah, I love it. I was reading about Benjamin, and yeah, the the swan song was fascinating. And I love your background, right? You worked on football manager, you worked on Donkey Kong. So you have your video game background, and you have the storytelling background from both your side and Benjamin's side. And and it kind of like, I'm not gonna lie, it like boggles my mind that It's an open world looking game, but it's also an immersive storytelling game. And I don't know how those two, I guess I could think of GTA, which is open world and storytelling, but like, how do, how hard is it or how do you go about creating an immersive storytelling game in a world where I can go wherever I want and do whatever I want to do? Yeah, great question. I mean, there are different ways of doing it. I mean, like.
00:07:47
Speaker
You kind of have, you can kind of break things down inside of of games often anyway to kind of macro and micro stories, right? You've got the kind of main global narrative that's happening, but then you can go into these kind of like, what you might call subplots as well, like these character narratives that you start following and stuff. On games we call them side quests as well sometimes, right? So there are kind of tools, there are narrative tools and game tools that we can use even some aspects of cinematic tools that we can that we can use in order to be able to try to tell compelling stories inside of interactive products. But the real revolutionary thing that's happening now is what the impact of artificial intelligence has on that as a tool set that can really enable a different type of storytelling.
00:08:34
Speaker
So like before, we would have never been able to just write the amount of text that would have been required in order to have a really compelling, realistic, deep character. You could maybe do one, two, maybe three of them inside of a video game. But to have a big cast of really, really interesting characters, it just would create huge amounts of manpower requirements and but just shit loads of writers. And of course, there was an endgame because you could just never keep writing, right? You could just like, you know, there there has to be an end to that story, right? Whereas actually, that's pretty much changing now because now we're able to build almost things like close to people, we're able to build what are close to people, the characters have a new form of depth, a new form of
00:09:22
Speaker
Like they have a backstory, but their, the ability for them to expand on the backstory is generated by artificial intelligence. You know, so we can create a backstory, but the AI can interpret that backstory in really, really interesting ways. So just the sheer amount of content that could be created now. is a game changing opportunity. And what that creates is the ability for us to immerse players in far more realistic ways, and because you can have more deep and more emotional conversations. Like before you use stuff with like click A, B, C or D, right? It's like, hey, do you want the shovel? Do you want, you know, the hat? Do you want the sword or the armor? You know, now you walk into one of these, like ah you walk into a shop and the the AI person who's there kind of goes, hey, I haven't seen you in a while. How are you?
00:10:08
Speaker
And you're like, well, I'm here to go shopping. He's like, well, before we go shopping, I just want to say that I really like the, uh, you know, the the sneakers that you've got on today. You're like, Oh, well, that's really cool. Why are you a big sneakers fan? It's like, actually I'm a total sneaker head. And this AI NPC starts communicating its own tastes and preferences before you even get to the point where you were interacting about the, you know, the exchange or the transactional aspect of what you're doing inside the game. So these are kind of cool and exciting developments that give us the ability to immerse people in new ways. Well, what I imagine in my mind and I'm loving thinking about this is that, you know, each character A is dynamic. They can learn and it's almost like DLC is built in. It's almost like, Hey, you know what? I'm going to give this character now a new, new background. Maybe they went to school for the past year and now knows this. And all of a sudden you have this new thing to talk about. I think that's awesome. I think it almost makes the game endless. Like you're saying, you can keep talking. You can build this whole community.
Building and Innovating with Dreamia
00:11:03
Speaker
And in order to do this, right? You didn't look at the open source engines that are out there that that you built.
00:11:09
Speaker
ah your own engine called Dreamia right this is an AI and character storytelling engine ah can you give us kind of the idea of why you had to build your own engine and how do you even go about doing that is that something you worked on while you were at SIG and Nintendo was it a new skill you had to kind of itch Yeah, more so the latter, like ah people didn't really understand, certainly when I was working at those companies, and it's not just those companies, now when very few people really understand understood the impact that large language models or AI was going to have. We only really first first started seeing it about like two years ago, and you know, the advent of chat GPT, and even before that, like things like mid journey, where we're like, oh my God, this is a pretty game changing situation, you know,
00:11:56
Speaker
And I think that we're actually still, it's very much the tip of the iceberg in terms of the impact that we're going to see. So yeah, it was more so the latter that, you know, we, we became very interested in it before I would say it hit mainstream. So well yeah, we had a bit of a head start on a lot of companies. Um, we, we did believe that AI was going to become a very powerful storytelling tool that could enable a new type of video game. And so we invested pretty heavily in bringing on the right type of people who could help us bring that kind of vision and to the fore. So, you know, we had the, I suppose, let's say we had this concept of a very liberated game tool whereby you could create rich, deep, non-player characters very easily and then deploy them into virtual worlds, into video games.
00:12:49
Speaker
um And although that there were there were other folks, like a very small handful of folks out there who were looking at this particular problem, we didn't feel as if that those solutions were flexible enough for us as storytellers to be able to create the kind of characters we wanted to build into the kind of games that we wanted to make. So because of that, um the only solution that we saw at that time, um which I think was correct, was to build our own. And that's where Dream Yeah
00:13:21
Speaker
um That's kind of the genesis story of Dream yet. Like we we did try some of the existing services that were out there. They just frankly didn't give us the much idea type of immersion that we needed. And the type of flexibility that Ben, my co-founder, needs as a storyteller to be able to build really great and emotional connections between our players and the characters that we're we're creating, or indeed the characters that the players are creating. So. um So that's really kind of the the the genesis story and what we tried to focus on was we tried to kind of connect the dots between like, well, what is it that creates connection between players and NPCs, right? Of course, we can lean into like a depth of personality, like the take being able to have tastes and preferences and being able to communicate those things, you know? It's like, hey, I love the color red, you know? Like just ah by, by
00:14:14
Speaker
The sheer fact that people have tastes and preferences immediately gives them depth. And when they're able to communicate that in compelling ways, especially if they're kind of some of those tastes and preferences have similarity to our own, it creates an opportunity for connection but between humans and humans, not just humans and NPCs. So I suppose we're learning from some realms of psychology here in that sense. Other things that are really important on a primal level to create connection for us was we felt that we wanted to focus on the NPCs having a knowledge of their surroundings, right? So they're not just these kind of static beings that live inside of this world, but instead they're actually flexibly adapting to the world and they understand what's happening. If you place one thing on one side of the island, they might say, you know what, I wish you didn't place it on that kind of part of the island. I wish ah wish you placed that beautiful building on the other side where it hit the sun. Why did you do that?
00:15:08
Speaker
And you're like, well, do you know what? that's That's cool that you noticed that. And maybe I can make an adjustment to make the island more beautiful. you know So they themselves, whereas another person might say, do you know what? I would way prefer if that was in the shade. Why did you listen to that person? So they've got this kind of awareness of what's happening. And they're adapting to it. Like we, I suppose, as humans, are constantly adapting our own case and preferences as we navigate this. um you know hilariously funny and difficult existence that we all live in as well. You know, I already get enough sass from my wife at home and why I did stuff. Now I feel like I'm going to be playing a game and getting sass from a whole bunch of islanders saying why do you put those buildings there. But it's awesome. like And I'm going to add questions, and there might be silly questions, and I apologize. But like one of the biggest fears of AI right now, I'm not fears, right? It's just the idea of hallucinations, right? Because but AI doesn't necessarily know. So like how do you understand that this NPC, this is its personality compared to this NPC? And how do they not, like,
00:16:06
Speaker
Again, this might be a common sense question that you don't know the answer, but how do you make sure each character, each thing is locked down to a specific individual? Well, I suppose the first thing is, is that we, we, we have backstories that are constructed for NPCs. Okay. So there's some NPCs that Ben, for example, has spent a lot of time writing the backstory for. You know, they've got a very dense understanding of of things that have previously happened before you've even met them. Okay. So that creates quite a lot of personality from the, from the outset, you know, like, um, for example, we have a character called Anderson who was into psycho acoustics and sound engineering. So he's kind of always keen to talk about things like sound and music with you, you know? Um,
00:16:51
Speaker
We've got Mia, who who kind of previously well used to look after animals. So she's deeply empathetic and always kind of wants to talk about so some beautiful natural elements to the island or guide you towards those specific things. So there are kind of some scripted, I suppose, aspects to the backstory that the AIs lean into as they communicate with you. um But inside of our game, people can even create characters. So you can actually set the rules, you can write the backstories, you know, you can construct the visual look of these folks and then they will deploy into the world, which is so much fun. Like you've been able to create these really densely um
00:17:31
Speaker
interesting beings and then to be able to speak to them and then to watch them grow. So like one of those, let's say, you know, Greg, you create one type of character that is, you know, really, you know, a really excitable, fun, um, party going person who's extroverted. Okay. And you place that, that character on my island. Okay. And then you place the same character on your island. Well, because the islands themselves are different, that character will be different a week later on my island than on your island, right? So they have these like sliding doors effects, do you know what I mean? Where they start living their own lives in these different places. And of course, because the the the ah environments that they're in are different, of course, it will be a different kind of reaction to each of the beings, which I think is really fun and exciting. You're like building evolution directly in
Web3 and Player Empowerment
00:18:24
Speaker
the game. Players are just evolving to where they are. And it's fascinating.
00:18:28
Speaker
It's funny, we're we're in like the gold rush here of Web3, right? Over the past two years, maybe, right? We had the metaverse come out, we had NFTs come out, and and you're talking about today to the game, man and a lot of this is focused on AI, which is great. ah But you decided to build this as a Web3 game, and the question is, everything we've spoken about so far is AI-based. What made you say, you know what? Let's make it a Web3 game. Let's see what happens here. Yeah, so I'm really interested in the history of virtual worlds and like down to like the early virtual worlds of like that people were creating like the wonderful
00:19:05
Speaker
Dr. Richard Bartle, who created MUD in 1977, which can be seen as one of the first kind of multiplayer game experiences. and And I'm really interested by how virtual worlds have evolved throughout the ages and what they become. One thing that I think that has been increasingly clear is that since the advent of multiplayer play or MMOs, that a lot of people use video games, not just as a means to entertain themselves in the singular fashion, but instead they use them as places to um identify, to communicate, to be able to create senses of community, to socialise. And if you look at now, there's you know especially amongst younger generations, um
00:19:54
Speaker
You can see that like right now there's more more in specific age groups. There's more kids, for example, inside of TikTok, or sorry, inside of Roblox than there are inside of TikTok, you know which I think is indicative of a growing trend that people are using these digital spaces in new ways to socialize and to hang with their friends and to create. And when we were building today, we wanted to contribute to the canon of games that were social and positive places where people could interact in the future, right? We wanted to to create a creative toolset where people could express themselves in cool ways. me They could build awesome things. And we believe in the future of virtual worlds that
00:20:40
Speaker
people should be empowered and there should be a greater economy where they're able to derive um the, essentially they're able to monetize what they've built and they they can take the money home from that as opposed to us as the developers taking all the money. We think that in that sense, it's kind of like what we're building as a platform, right? We're a platform people for people to be able to play and to be able to communicate and organize themselves. But when they build really cool things, I think it's only fair that, at the very least, they should be taking a percentage of the money from what they from what they build. Currently, inside of video games, that's extremely hard to do. but didn't you knowcur In what we might call traditional video games or web 2 games, it doesn't really happen that much. There's not the opportunity for players to be able to monetize their assets except for if they go into the black market.
00:21:28
Speaker
but they do you know that you You think of things like Chinese gold farming, people selling accounts of World of Warcraft, you know what i mean and across Reddit groups or Discord groups. well i think that's Instead of that being a bug, I think it we should make it a feature and we should empower secondary trade you know and let people be able to control all the assets they have. let people to be able to trade them, let people to be able to monetize them. And I think that's going to be really great for virtual worlds, broadly speaking. I think it's going to be great for the stakeholders, the key stakeholders of virtual worlds who are the players, not the companies, but the players themselves are the key stakeholders. Why shouldn't they be able to derive the financial value that they put in to create those really compelling worlds? So the most
00:22:14
Speaker
interesting and efficient way to be able to do that, in my view, to empower those secondary markets, to empower those types of trade economies, is to is to use blockchain technology. You know, the immutable and transparent nature of blockchain is particularly useful for this. And albeit it has been a controversial technology. um You know, specifically, there's been problems, there has been a lot of poor products that have hit the market. There have been probably some poor actors have hit the market too. But I don't really concern myself with the first generation of that. I mean, obviously, I have to concern myself to some capacity. But what really interests me is what does the technology do? How can we leverage the technology so it's of benefit to players, you know? And for me, the big thing for me is empowering secondary markets. So
00:23:04
Speaker
that's That's why we integrate the technology. you know We've got a vision where we foresee lots of people populating the worlds of today and we want them to have creativity and ownership inside of those worlds. Yeah, you know, honestly speaking, I don't know how much I believe in the true vision of Web3 today. I know it will be a thing, but I love the way you're coming at it, right? A, you're building a community. This is about a community. You build something. You own it. This is yours. You're going to you're going to profit from it, for lack of better words. I also love that you're approaching it as a storytelling game first, right? Like, this is an immersive game. This isn't just a wide open, here's a land. Maybe it is. You can go do whatever you want to do. but
00:23:44
Speaker
But there is a story behind it. So, you know, there are some bad actors. But if you're coming at it with an actual game, things you can do and platforms you can kind of build. And I agree. Right. I think the future Web3 will be will eventually be a platform where people can build products on top of it, similar to how Roblox or Fortnite or any of these other companies are doing it today. So I like the vision that you're coming at it from. um Again, I don't know what the future of Web3 will be. There's no denying that it will be something. It's just kind of, you know, in that phase, which ah softening the edges here and making it easier. And I do like the way you're coming about it. It's community first and it sounds like that's what you're looking at it as. Usually about halfway through the interview, I like to do a fireball around. I'm just gonna throw some simple questions at you and get some answers. Yeah, right, you ready? That's it. If you're gonna go to a ah bar, what drink are you ordering? Negroni. If you, um and you came at me really quick with it, now I forgot my next question. um What did you have for breakfast?
00:24:40
Speaker
Um, I had, uh, a vegan tempeh rap. Vegan tempeh rap. That's going to be the first time I heard that one. I'll tell you that one. Um, what game are you playing? Uh, the last game I've been playing the most of, um, maybe Dave the diver. Nice. What game got you into gaming? Oh God. Um.
00:25:11
Speaker
Uh, I don't know, maybe Street Fighter two, maybe Mario, maybe Street Fighter two. I'll go with Street Fighter two. SNS. Uh, yeah. Well, yeah, I actually, I might have to go back even further and revise that because I did have a Nez before that. So maybe it may have been Mario too. I think the weird Mario way to go. Um, last question I have would be, what is your dream vacation? Wow. My God, my dream vacation.
00:25:42
Speaker
um
00:25:47
Speaker
Really interesting. I think about so many different options here. I've got option anxiety is what my girlfriend would say. and I think maybe my dream vacation is being able to probably go like road tripping, road tripping through like really interesting places, um road tripping through deserts and then like hitting nice places and then being able to like find ways to still essentially work. so So like, you know, like the my ideal vacation is the ability to be able to go to beautiful places, road tripping, but also have the capacity to be able to dive in and kind of keep working on the game that I'm so passionate about.
00:26:28
Speaker
Sounds like you're going to need a camper once things take off and you can kind of just bring your hotspot wherever you go. Very nice, very nice. that's all That's all I got for you for the Hasi. You are off the Hasi. Oh, wow. Okay. So yeah it I want to talk a little bit about Mike.
Transition to CEO and Leadership
00:26:43
Speaker
um So I'm looking at your LinkedIn, right? You're a great company, Sports Interactive, Nintendo, Electric Skies, producer, producer, producer. Can you explain to me and to our listeners what is the role of a producer and for today, the game? Like what what skill do you find yourself using most often these days? Oh, and interesting. Well, i I suppose I'm not a producer anymore because since I started, you know, Mr. Kite, I've now I'm the CEO. So I work with a team of producers. The producers are people who
00:27:20
Speaker
um organize the development, and they work as a bridge between the leadership team, the design team, and the engineering and art teams. They work as a communicative bridge between those teams. And um like in some sense, you could kind of look at as kind of matt project management, but there's also a lot of evangelism. You're trying to ah build conviction in the things that people are all building so
00:27:53
Speaker
It's my view that in order to have a really productive video games team, you need to have really good processes in place. um It's because it's hard to build gi video video games, like desperately hard. So it's important to have good processes in place. And the people who are kind of managing those press processes need to have huge amounts of conviction in the kind of vision of the project because they're going to be on, they're kind of in the trenches, you know, always communicating with the team. um That's one aspect to it. I think also producers often
00:28:27
Speaker
kind of in some sense having a directorial aspect to what they do. They're trying to kind of provide vision even to design teams. So when I was working as a producer at Sports Interactive, it wasn't that I was a project manager as much as I was working on design, on live operations, on business strategy, things like that, you know how to manage free to play, working with Outsource Studios. So you're kind of touching on aspects of the business. So it's a pretty cool job in that sense. In terms of the skill set you you need, you don't need as many hard skill sets ah like ah programming or art skills in order to be able to be a producer, although it can help massively because you're able to communicate more efficiently with those team members. um One thing I think you've got to be good at and is you've got to have good people skills and be able to have a strong sense of empathy and self-drive. I think that's a very important part of being a producer.
00:29:20
Speaker
Um, in terms of my own role now, it's kind of pivoted from that into well fully running the company. So, you know, I have to make sure that we've like, we raised enough finance and, you know, I deal with a lot of investors. I, um, try to champion more strategic global vision of what we're trying to do. Um, and then try to make sure that the team that I put together are able to execute on that vision as well. So, um, that includes everything from, you know, the type of people that we want to bring on to the type of technology that we use or the type of partnerships that we do or what technologies we want to implement. So, and yeah, all-encompassing. At this this moment, I've got my fingers in all the pies.
00:30:06
Speaker
That's awesome. I appreciate that visibility. And, you know, I think a lot of us dream of growing up and becoming the CEO of a company. and Maybe, maybe not a lot of us, but I know it was my dream at some point. And then I realized like, Oh, that's way too much work for me. like I don't want to be the guy up until midnight having to do stuff. But are there days you wake up and and are there tasks that you don't look forward to? Things that you're like, right when I can delegate that I'm going to delegate that maybe it's something you're just not strong at. But like, is there like a day to day activity that you realized right ah off the gate? Like, Nope, not for me, and you quickly got rid of it. um Yeah, I think i've ah think it's important part an important part of what I do, I think, is is is delegation. So absolutely, i very one of the first things I did when i when i but once we had the finance in place was I was able to bring on my friend and confidant, a guy called Lee Harris, who was from the Sega days. And Lee takes care of a lot of our operations. so
00:31:04
Speaker
takes, make sure that like a lot of the finance and the legal stuff is, is managed and make sure that the licensing deals and stuff like that are in place. And he makes sure that everything's clean, you know? Um, so yeah, without, uh, without people like Leo, I'd be in a very difficult position, you know, but I could name, ah I could name a ton of others, you know, people like, uh, Philippe Pina, who, who, who champions project management on the team. Of course, my co-founder Ben, who does huge huge amounts to be able to um ah creatively direct up the project. So yeah, it's it's very important to be able to know your own limitations and to be able to delegate efficiently. But I'm not afraid of, I'm not afraid of a fight. Listen, I'm not afraid of like, you know, doing something that's that's difficult, or doing I'm certainly not afraid of doing, you know, on
00:31:50
Speaker
on doing the thing that I'm not looking forward to, you know? so done Sometimes we all have to dig our heels in and and yeah and just go at it. So yeah, I like actually like that aspect of it too in some sense. I think it's very important for a leader to be able to get their hands dirty and at least understand what they're talking about, but also understanding where they need to draw the line saying, you know what? I can't get this past the finish line. I can get it to here. And one of the few of the people I've spoken to said it best is just hire good people and trust them, right? Like you're going to hire the head of this company or the head of this, or right? Like let them do their job. They know what they're doing. Like if you start micromanaging and getting in there, it starts to become messy and it's hard to delegate and get work done like that.
Challenges in Web3 Onboarding
00:32:32
Speaker
Yeah, 100% agreement, 100% agree. One of the biggest, going back to today now, um one of the biggest issues I've heard about Web3 games is the onboarding process and connecting your wallet, connecting this, figuring that out. And for the casual gamer, I don't know where that line will be drawn of how much work they're willing to do to get into that. How is that something you're taking a look at? If you're even at that point thinking about how are we going to start onboarding users once we get to this point? Yeah, I mean, the on-morning process in the first wave of Web 3 Games was pretty cumbersome. And um that drove a lot of people away and actually gave a lot of the broader Web 3 Games kind of industry a bad rap. A lot of the reasons for that, actually, I mean, one part of it, you could say, was infrastructural. There was a technological
00:33:19
Speaker
um challenges that needed it to be met, in particular, how to connect people to, how how to basically create a wallet for someone so they have custody of their own wallet. That was kind of really the challenge there. And it was cumbersome as hell. And lots of people were just like, well well, that's not fun. And one of the rules that you've got inside of games, especially free to play free-to-play games, is make it easy. Just make it easy for someone to win and get the core loop down. And then try to monetize them as quick as possible. That's what you do inside of free-to-play, right? um
00:33:51
Speaker
Yeah, it was terrible, really, honestly, for the first generation of Web 3 games. And the reason was was because no one had built, all the people who were building those games, they'd never built any other other games before. They didn't really have a skin on that. They were more like finance people or kind of like, you know, more like JavaScript web people. They hadn't really, they didn't have the, I suppose, the grammar of games at there at their disposal. So we didn't end up with that many great games, if I'm honest with you, and trying to get into play them was difficult, too. So that created a bad rap. Honestly, um most of that's been solved. It's it' quite an easy solve, you know? And onboarding people can be very, very fluid now. um It can be as easy as onboarding into a normal Web 2 game. um Yeah. like
00:34:37
Speaker
Part of that is because like probably billions have been invested in companies who are trying to solve that problem. But actually, I would probably say something even more, perhaps more controversial and something that the VCs might not want to hear. But it wasn't a billion dollar problem to solve. It actually just wasn wasn't that hard. it was You just make it easy to onboard into games. It was more about creativity. I think that there was just a lack of skill and inside of the industry at that point. um So yeah, I would say problem solved. And how we do it is we just let people play the game. If they want to onboard onto the crypto aspects, then they can do that. And if they don't want it, they can just keep playing the game. It's like crypto aspects are essentially optional. If you want to trade inside of our game, if you want to do specific things, you're going to need a wallet. But you can do loads of things without that. If you're like, hey, I don't want to go into those aspects of the game. It's like I had a great
00:35:31
Speaker
I worked with a great, a great leader called, uh, in the games industry called Miles Jacobson. He's, uh, he's the the studio director of football for football manager sports interactive. And one of the things he always said was let the people play the way that they want to play, you know, let people play the way that they want to play. And I think that liberating people to be able to do that is really important. and That includes onboarding, you know, the baseline that you need to take care of, but then just make it easy for people to play your game. I love your transparency there. A, you let people play the way they want to play is great, but you know, I love the fact that
00:36:05
Speaker
you just came out and say it's not a hard problem to solve. You know, people that probably started building these games weren't really true game builders to begin with, or they didn't know the true infrastructure. Once there was a little bit of momentum, those companies, whether it be an Excel or someone else that controls a wall, probably just looked at it and be like, Oh, all we got to do is this. And it's that simple. It's just having the right minds. Take a look at a problem in solving it again. that I think it goes back to hiring people that are smarter and better than you in these other places to come solve that problem. So I appreciate that transparency, but my favorite part is let people play they want to play. The fact that you can start playing today without having to connect your wallet, right? Maybe I just want to play a game and not have to worry about that stuff. Yeah, go for it, right? It's once you start forcing these things that people may not want to do, you're going to lose gamers just like that. But when you give them the option, yeah, the people that want to will and the people that won't won't. And eventually they probably will too, because they want to do more in the game.
00:36:57
Speaker
Yeah, no, no, absolutely. Absolutely. It's really hard to acquire users to get them to start playing your game. And then the next problem is how do you, how can you retain them? How can you keep them in and a surefire way for them to drop off is to get them to do cumbersome technology things that they don't really care about or understand. know Yeah. Um, so I've been going to your website a lot cause it's fun, cool stuff, colorful, everything looks really exciting. And, uh, the alpha is going to be coming up, I think early next year. Kind of how do you, how do you mentally prep for that? What are those challenges that you still have ahead of you? Um, how do you face that? I mean, yeah, it's game development. So we live, like we develop inside of a perpetual bloodbath because that's what developing games is. Um, and it's never easy.
00:37:45
Speaker
it's It's a really hard medium to work in because you're touching a huge amount of different types of um skill sets and trying to bring
Preparing for Game Release
00:37:53
Speaker
them all together. um you know, we just do our best to stay on track, meet our milestones, you know, and take things step by step. So for example, we've got a closed play test, which is coming up in kind of in late August. And that's basically the opportunity for our community and maybe some other folks to be able to kind of dive in and just see where we are, we are at with some aspects of the development, not all aspects, we're kind of have a kind of a
00:38:24
Speaker
car compartmentalized kind of a build for people to be able to try, which is going to be showcasing a number of different features that we want to get feedback on, really. And we also want to show to our community to get them excited and give them some early access and stuff like that. So, um yes, that's ah happened at the end of August. And then, you know, we go in that period where then we're rushing into different development sprints again, you know, we've got A lot of really cool milestones coming up, but of course the big one is is that, you know, next year we're going to be launching a public version of the game. That's awesome. Exciting times. I mean, I'm sure everyone's excited to see the, uh, the play test in August and understand here from the community.
00:39:05
Speaker
ah what's working what's not working and we always preach about getting feedback on what you're building because yeah you have this vision and it's great but you need the players to also come and say you know what I love this or I don't love this because no one ever wants to call their baby ugly but when you start hearing feedback about how to build these things like it's important to take that feedback in and not everyone's feedback matters for lack of better words right some will be like oh yeah okay we'll do that we'll do that yeah yeah but but some will be very valuable that you need to take and and I think that's awesome when you start hearing about hearing that from your community because those are the people that are going to be passionate. Those are the people that are going to give you that feedback that you need to know. A hundred percent. Yeah. and And actually just there's an invitation to you if you want to come in and join that play test. If you would like to, if you like want want to come in and and try the game and let us know what you think would be very privileged. And actually I even extend that if there's people watching this and they want to jump in and
00:39:55
Speaker
and, and get an early access version, I would, um, urge them to reach out to our Twitter ah today, the game, Twitter, our Twitter handle is today, the game, uh, drop to Naldo, our community manager a message. And, you know, maybe we've got a few, so a few slots where we can get some, some people into getting early access, like super confidential play of what's going on. I will most likely take you up on that. I know I'm traveling a bit towards the end of August, but, uh, I would love to, uh, got into this because I want to play games for anyone else. So I'm super excited about that. um So thank you. um Looking ahead, you know, this is kind of
00:40:31
Speaker
towards the end of ah our interview here, but AI is changing
AI's Revolutionary Impact on Gaming
00:40:35
Speaker
consistently. And you know, AI has been around for years since Pong, since all this, but Gen AI is now here messing around with NPCs. How do you go to how you do take a look at kind of the future of AI and shaping it? What kind of innovations are you already thinking of, if any? And that's a very broad question, so. Yeah, yeah no no I think AI is doing some amazingly interesting things for games in and it can be seen from a different a couple of different vantage points. I mean from my own vantage point as a developer, the fact that we're going to be able to
00:41:07
Speaker
generate beautiful 3D assets. okay's like Inside of our game, you're able to generate buildings, and you're able to build in a new way because of that. And then you can customize those generated buildings using kind of fun manual tools. So that creates a really cool toolset where you can build beautiful virtual worlds. um And you can do it in new ways. And that's really awesome for the player. But it's actually also awesome for the developer as well. It means that we can create assets, 3D assets, way, way faster and way, way cheaper. you know, when you think about a game like GTA, was it six, GTA six, which is like, they're talking about that it could be like a $2 billion dollars budget, you know, and my like total back of a napkin gas is if the budget's that high, there could be like approximately 500 million being spent on art assets. Okay. Now what happens if
00:42:01
Speaker
Because of generative AI, you're able to generate those art assets for a hundredth of the price in a thousand of the time. you know What it means is is's like you can just be way more efficient as a game developer. It means that smaller studios can start competing against those bigger studios because everyone has access to the same pool of of of art repositories or you can generate your own art repositories. So that creates an evening of the play field, which I think is really cool for
00:42:34
Speaker
more people who want to create things. You can call this a democratization of creativity and in my view. I think that's a very positive thing for culture, broadly speaking. and So I think that that's ah that's going to be cool. I think the the major focus for us is is obviously on NPCs. What does it mean when we have really compelling beings that are existing, cohabiting inside of these virtual worlds? What does that mean for the future of virtual worlds? Um, I don't know fully the answer to that, but I'm really spending a lot of time exploring it. And, um, I'm convinced that whatever the answer is, is it's revolutionary or revolutionary change to how we interact with virtual worlds. So there's some, some amazing things, but there's lots of other things I think that you could probably focus on as well. I suppose, you know, um,
00:43:25
Speaker
it will create new opportunities for genre. you know The same way that like multiplayer or like networking, broad broadly speaking, created the opportunity to have like online first-person shooters, which basically have become massive. Or the the way the mobile phone kind of changed, like like but like basically empowered the idea of what casual games are. you know um I think that AI as a technology is so revolutionary, more revolutionary than potentially the internet. um So what will that do for genre? What kind of creativity will that inspire? like Is there some ah some kid somewhere who's got an idea that's gonna do something with video games and this technology that and just no one ever thought of? And I think that's cool.
00:44:13
Speaker
Yeah, we actually ah a few weeks ago released a podcast with a guy by the name of Patrick Jasmine, and he's building a unreal five game with his two kids. It's like the three of them and it looks looks like a triple A game they're using all the latest and greatest tools and it's just You know, there's so many tools out there here that can can expedite what you're doing, speed it up, make it. It's crazy to see how people are taking advantage of that. And to your point, there's going to be a kid out there right now that's going to build something that no one's ever thought about.
Technology and Partnerships
00:44:41
Speaker
And they're going to build it with ease using these tools. And it's going to be an exciting place to see where it goes.
00:44:46
Speaker
But with all this being said, I meant to ask this a little earlier, are you, can you talk a little bit about your tech stack? Are you looking at what engine are you building it on? I know you have dream yet, but is it built on another engine as well? Are you using a wallet back in? Like how do you look at the tech stack? Yeah, so Unreal Engine 5 is what we used. I'm always, I've always been. Unreal. I've worked in Unity as well. I've also worked in custom engines, but um I'm the major fanboy of Unreal Engine and what it does, and how you can create beautiful things efficiently inside of that engine is mesmerizing. I've always worked as well. ah Well, traditionally, I've been working with C++ plus plus programmers, and those folks like working inside of of Unreal Engine in the most.
00:45:32
Speaker
um so Yeah, that's that's where we work there. We've got your email, which powers the beings. um The blockchain that we're going to be building on, we're to be we're goingnna be talking about that soon. I don't have anything to announce on that right now, but some really pretty pretty interesting and fun things but that are going to happen. on that side. um And there's a myriad of different wallet solutions that are available these days, which you know largely due to what I mentioned before, the immense capitalization of all of those companies who are trying to solve that one not so hard to solve product or a problem, I should say. um So yeah, that we we like a couple of different folks who are out there, Stardust, Van Lee, a couple of other other really interesting solutions. um So yeah, what are the aspects of our tech stack?
00:46:25
Speaker
can I tell you about? um Yeah, I mean, we work largely with Amazon Web Service and for all of like you know our server stuff. and We work with NVIDIA quite a lot as well. um We have a partnership with NVIDIA whereby we're able to access um some really cool cloud GPUs in order to be able to train and fine-tune the yeah AI models that we work with. So that's been a really important partnership for us. um And there's a couple of other things, a couple of other big partnerships, which I can't say for NDA reasons. and But yeah, we work with a lot of the biggest names when it comes to AI. Let's but just put it that way. This is awesome. I'm so excited to see what comes of of today.
Closing Remarks and Community Engagement
00:47:09
Speaker
I mean, again, I'd recommend anyone go out there, just Google stutter. It's a short film, but you could just, I mean, it's.
00:47:17
Speaker
It's a great feeling film. I mean, it just makes you feel. And it's amazing. And I'm excited to see how you and Benjamin kind of put this into game mode for today to game. I think it's going to be fabulous. And I like all the approaches that you're taking. I think that's all the questions I have today. I'm going to give the mic to you to see if there's anything you want to tell or promote. But let us know where we can find you in your community. And yeah, go for it. Thank you. Well, first of all, Greg, absolute pleasure, sir. Thank you for the questions, enthusiasm and the passion in which you asked them and the great flow for this conversation. So it's been a pleasure to jump on here. um And if folks want to know more about today and what we're building, um I'd say the best place to lift off on is Twitter. So check out today the game on Twitter. You can also find us on Discord, where we've got a very passionate group of
00:48:08
Speaker
of fans in there who are working in in anticipation of the game. I think there's about 60,000 people in there at the moment. And we've got a community of about 200,000 on Twitter. So um yeah, were we're we're always looking to build that community and to try to incentivize people to be able to join this journey with us. and One of the first things will be that play tests. That's going to create some nice opportunities for the people who do actually go in and test the game. and um Yeah, that's, that's it for now. Cool. Well, you can find Mike at today, the game.com. Uh, he's the CEO at mr kite. We're going to have his information as long as well as, as today, the game, everything at our player engage website, we'll be tweeting out and posting about it as well on LinkedIn. So Mike, thank you so much for coming and sharing this story. I'm really looking forward to what comes and I hope you have a great rest of your day.