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#35 - Gaming industry trends, web3 gaming and the open metaverse
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Ryan is the founder and CEO of Emergence, whose mission is to make blockchain more accessible and meaningful in video games. Ryan works to create a gaming ecosystem akin to a real-life metaverse.
The Impact of Narrative in Modern Gaming
Ryan pointed to games such as "Control," "Alan Wake," and "Life is Strange." He believes that gaming offers a unique medium for transmodal and networked narratives, allowing for more immersive and interactive experiences. Independent games like "What Remains of Edith Finch" have also captured seen success due to their experimental approaches to storytelling and consciousness.
The discussion touched on the challenges of adapting video games into other media. While some adaptations like "The Last of Us" and "Fallout" have been successful, others have fallen short due to a lack of understanding of the source material. Ryan emphasized the importance of creators deeply engaging with the original content to produce faithful and compelling adaptations.
Ryan observed that industries, including gaming, often become risk-averse when they reach the top, leading to pattern matching and a reluctance to innovate.
Initially working in Hollywood, Ryan became disillusioned with the industry's resistance to new and diverse storytelling. He shifted his focus to innovation, technology, and venture capital, recognizing that technology was beginning to outpace traditional entertainment mediums. This led him to become one of the first venture capitalists in Los Angeles to engage deeply with crypto and Web3 technologies.
Pioneering in Crypto and Web3 Technology
Ryan's early involvement in crypto began around the Ethereum ICO, where he recognized the potential for decentralized infrastructure to foster new ventures. He worked closely with industry pioneers and even assisted the Japanese government in understanding and integrating blockchain technology. His experiences underscored the importance of balancing decentralization and centralization for sustainable growth.
Ryan noted that extreme positions on either side carry risks. He believes that integrating decentralized technologies into existing systems requires nuance and consideration of all stakeholders, including governments and regulatory bodies.
Leveraging his background in both gaming and blockchain, Ryan founded Emergence to simplify Web3 integration for game developers. Emergence offers an SDK for game engines like Unreal Engine and Unity, allowing developers to easily incorporate blockchain features into their games. With over 50,000 downloads, the platform empowers developers to create innovative, decentralized gaming experiences.
Partnerships and Collaborations Shaping the Open Metaverse
Ryan emphasized the importance of storytelling and collaboration in building the open metaverse. Emergence has partnered with entities like Futureverse and influential figures such as Neal Stephenson, the author of "Snow Crash." These collaborations aim to create interoperable worlds and cinematic universes that extend beyond traditional gaming boundaries.
This podcast is fuelled by Algorithmic crypto trading platform Aesir.
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Transcript
Love for Gaming and Narrative Worlds
00:00:08
Speaker
My love for gaming, my understanding of gaming came from when I was a kid, you know, sort of like all the way from the early Nintendo's N64. Really N64 is probably like the core of the love. I think like ah computer games as well. Like I remember there's a company called um Double Fine, I believe. The games were like Monkey Island and Grim Fandango.
00:00:38
Speaker
And right you know like these like narrative games, ah like really rich worlds, really amazing characters, like obviously GoldenEye,
00:00:49
Speaker
um you know the Zelda games, these are like where I really found my love for gaming.
Gaming as Storytelling Platform
00:00:57
Speaker
Now, i mean it's all very, very impressive. obviously this sort of massively open on online free-to-play thing, um you know the UGC elements of like how games are platforms now and everyone can build their own. i think The emergent property of those games are really exciting to me. I also, you know, I just, I really like the subject matter of games that are again driven by narrative. So there's a game guy, a game called control, which I really like, you know, I really enjoy like the, yeah, I really enjoy like the Alan Wake games. The episodic life is strange.
00:01:38
Speaker
things. like I like when people use gaming as like a new canvas for storytelling and and and this sort of idea of like trans-modal narrative, networks narrative. ah these things These things are really
Challenges in Game Adaptation
00:01:53
Speaker
interesting. And I also think they really lend themselves well for adaptations into TV series and films and the sort of like trend that we're going to see with gaming IP making its way into other forms of media.
00:02:07
Speaker
Yeah. Well, we've seen that happen a few times and sometimes it's, it's a good translation. Sometimes it's just got awful. Like we've had, um, the last of us recently really solid, right. And fall out really solid again, but we've had like some really bad ones in the past as well. So it really depends, I guess, on how much, you know,
00:02:25
Speaker
the actual writers of the series or film understand the source material. Like sometimes they just don't understand it very well, right? like it Like it's happened with Witcher. And I know that Witcher was based off of a book, but the game itself had a lot of impact into the actual culture and to to get it out there in the mainstream. I don't think the book would have been as popular without without the game itself. But then you look at the series, right? And season one's like, man, it's all right. They look at season two and three and it's like, absolute.
00:02:52
Speaker
Car Crash, not a great series at all. and And I'm not sure if you followed along with what happened there, but essentially, Henry Cavill was like trying, like pleading with everyone, like, guys, you're like butchering the source material. Let's do this. Let's do that. Let's do the other. And the writers were just annoyed with how enthusiastic he was about the source material. um So I think it's really important yeah to understand where the developers, where the original creators come from, whether it's a book or a game.
Innovative Storytelling in Games
00:03:23
Speaker
ah But back to what you were saying about Alan Wake, I i did play this to both of both of them and and they're fantastic games. I think it's one of those few games where the story is just so complex that you just want to keep on like diving into that world. It's absolutely fantastic. It's great to see that you like that as well.
00:03:44
Speaker
Yeah, and there's um a couple of friends of mine, brothers, that that make video games. um The level of what they make is art, really, truly. The Bell brothers, Steven and Chris, um have made games like What's what's Eating Edith Finch, and like Journey, and Sky, and um ah what remains sorry what what remains of Edith Finch. um That one specifically... Oh, that's an indie, yeah. or Yeah, the just like the, again, just the the more experimental ways of how a story is told, really. is like To me, the whether it's film, television, gaming, that's the that's the medium. Go back to Marshall McLuhan, the medium is the message. It's important to take the medium into account and understanding what's being said and told, but like the layer of narrative
00:04:39
Speaker
is just the human
Indie Developers and Tech Advancements
00:04:40
Speaker
part of it, right? So it's like these stories are being told and there's different ways to experience them. And I think that's that's kind of what I think is most fascinating and interesting and gaming is just more of like this sort of interactive, you know, ah merge of all different technologies together, merge of art and and and science. and But like what remains of Edith Finch is a great example of like how to get into consciousness in a more interesting way through a game than just like maybe watching a TV series or a film or something like that. so Yeah, I generally feel that they're a lot more immersive, like a ah heavily story-driven game that's presented in in the cinematic style, like what remains of Edith Finch. I think that kind of stays with you because you feel with the character's trauma and what she was going through and trying to find herself right in that journey.
00:05:31
Speaker
yeah um I think that that's really and it's fantastic to see you know small like independent gaming studios using the technologies that we currently have to to come up and create this content which was not possible ten fifteen ten years ago like the barrier for entry to create a game used to be so high and used to be so like exclusive to these like big companies like Ubisoft.
Industry Trends and Innovator's Dilemma
00:05:54
Speaker
And now, because we've got like open source materials that people can use because we've got a community of gamers, people that want to make it it build games for the like just the sheer passion of it, um I think that levels that playing field. And you can see that in the stock price that Ubisoft recorded recently. Massive crash, right? That just happened recently. so um It just goes to show that also people in the gaming industry itself is kind of looking for something new to fill in the gap rather than these formulaic early releases where everything is just the iteration of an old, old thing. um It's just good to see that gaming is moving there. Do you reckon from your perspective that we're we're more likely to see more unique titles and more experimentation or do you still think that the gaming industry is quite risk averse in general?
00:06:47
Speaker
I think all industries are pretty risk averse at the top, right? Like if you're making a lot of money, you have the concept of the innovator's dilemma, where it almost um disincentivizes you to break and disrupt things if you're if you're benefiting greatly from them, right?
Hollywood Bias and Film Innovation
00:07:05
Speaker
And when usually, industrially, when you sit at the top, you just kind of match patterns.
00:07:10
Speaker
Right. So it's like, why you look at this whole, the antithesis of the web three world is all of the sort of centralization and intermediaries, right? The people that sit in the middle and take these fees and stuff. And really what that world does is just match patterns to what has already worked. And, um, you know, before I was doing all this tech stuff, I was in, I was in Hollywood living in LA.
00:07:34
Speaker
And I remember distinctly, my first job was working for Ridley Scott and Tony Scott, these like you know amazing filmmakers who who do a lot of like really interesting original stuff, but when they do remakes and s sequels, they do them right. you know And I remember the juxtaposition of, at that time, the sort of industry standard of, of I had executives and agents tell me, like look me right in the eye as like a you know a new ah new kid in LA.
00:08:02
Speaker
like, you know, ah black-led films don't don't open in the box office globally and women-led films don't open in the box office globally. And, you know, they always kind of backtrack and they're like, you know, it's not my prejudice, it's just the way it is. Right? And that was at that moment what they saw in the data. And then you get, wow you get you get Bridesmaids, right? You get Bridesmaids and you get um Black Panther.
00:08:28
Speaker
which just shatters the i the paradigm that that would be true. And then now everybody's jumping on. Those same people are now jumping on, you know, supporting those scripts and those and those teams. um And now that's why we have like all the kind of diversity in in storytelling that we have, but they're just so myopically stuck to the idea of what the data tells them. But if you don't really try new things, you're not going to get new data.
00:08:55
Speaker
If you just keep doing the same thing, you're just going to reinforce its confirmation bias over and over about your worldview on what works in the market. you know And it's it's it's such a foolish thing now looking back with hindsight to imagine that that would have been the mindset, but it really was for for so long you know before, I would say before like 2014, 2013, 14. As recent as 2013, that's wild.
00:09:24
Speaker
Yeah, I mean go look at what the dates of Ridesmaids and black pen The First Black Panther were. those those were like Those kind of shattered that idea to which now new pattern matching was done and yeah the sort of the foreign distribution mindset of like what, because you you have to remember again, this isn't necessarily gaming as much, but in film,
00:09:46
Speaker
like, film box office was really pre sold. So other countries would buy the film based off of the actor that was in it, you know, the movie star, they would never see the film, I didn't even care what it was about. It was just based off of that one name that could pre sell the world. So um just the mindset, you know, and I do see the more Hollywood does
Gaming and Web3 Experimentation
00:10:08
Speaker
adapt gaming, it will it will fit into those boxes, which is why you get the borderlands and these things that are just clearly you know pattern matching, which don't do so well. But um you know I think there's also space for a whole new thing through the internet, through Web3, through what we're doing and what we're building.
00:10:27
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. Although I do feel like even before 2014, we had like some amazing films with like black protagonists. If you look at the work that Tarantino did like with like Django or you know pop fiction, those did break. I think pop fiction is kind of the color classic that's just everywhere. Everyone knows about pop fiction. Everyone thinks pop fiction is cool. It kind of break through broke through the box office globally. right um but But maybe there's there's more of that happening today than than it used to, for sure.
00:11:01
Speaker
Yeah, I think the, not to go down these tangents, but I think the mindset there would have been that was a Tarantino opening, right? Like Tarantino is the reason why that did so well and in the box office versus saying like, it's new talent. We're giving, we're giving new talent, telling a story from the point of view of the black community, from black America, from the women's point of view. Like, you know what I mean? That was why there was these walls up from doing that until the box office showed them.
00:11:28
Speaker
that like from a business perspective it's worth it and the the the people that really choose to. Take those risks because they know on a human level. stories are stories, if it's a good interesting point of view with a good story, you know, and and a good team behind it, then it can do well. it does no There's no invisible boundaries on what works and what doesn't. And I think, you know, if you're a disruptor, you understand that if if if you do things, regardless of whether you've seen them work or not, that's where we get new ideas and new things happening.
00:12:04
Speaker
Of course, yeah, 100%. And you you do see that with games, you do see that across other industries. right like You can experiment with things and get like like a magical a magical new paradigm out there that then
Transition to Crypto and Web3
00:12:16
Speaker
everyone else copies. If you look at Elden Ring came out in 2021 and then It was criticized at the time by Ubisoft desk because Ubisoft was saying, oh, look at the way they deal with quests and look at the way they deal with character progression and storytelling. And no way this is game of the year. right They got butthurt because Elden Ring won game of the year instead of trying to understand what made Elden Ring such a special game you know at the time. And still is to this day. Right. um And I feel like
00:12:48
Speaker
When you're in a position where we're a like Ubisoft, right, keep that example in mind, um you kind of have a duty to understand what the gamer, what the customer wants rather than just creating the same sort formula. Like you were saying, you know assuming that this is what they continue to like because it's the only kind of tangent that you're pushing and it's the only data that you're getting, you know, from, from that interaction, like the confirmation bias. Oh, they've bought, you know, eight or 10 or however many Assassin's Creed games before they're going to continue to buy those Assassin's Creed games, which is not necessarily the case. No, it's going to have to stop at some point. Yeah. So how did you get into crypto? And like Web3 and building like the emergence as ah as a platform?
Early Crypto Involvement
00:13:38
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, kind of kind of fly through the the earlier part of it, but I, you know, very early on, like I said, I was more of a creative, kind of like self-taught musician, filmmaker, moved to LA to kind of do that stuff and was pretty disillusioned pretty pretty quickly by kind of what we're what we're we were just talking about. And um
00:14:06
Speaker
shifted really into innovation, technology, venture capital because I happened to ah get to LA and work at a very high level quickly to see that like you know Netflix was really moving into ah the source of which would fund and distribute films. you know And it was really changing the whole industry. So seeing that from a perspective that like technology now was almost leapfrogging and and taking a lead on things, even when it came to Hollywood and filmmaking and all this stuff. So um I just shifted over really. And I spent a lot of time in the venture capital world. um And in l LA, I was probably one of the very, very, very first few people that were like involved in venture capital that really like moved into
00:14:59
Speaker
crypto and Web3 and did it from that perspective of, you know, post Bitcoin um at the Ethereum ICO, post that point where like now other ICOs were being sort of born off of the Ethereum infrastructure, sort of seeing that clearly as being like a venture capital.
00:15:20
Speaker
um type behavior, where now it wasn't just an asset that was a bet and a hedge against the fiat system. It was actually now infrastructure designed to have layers of new things born from it and so you could accumulate your funding specifically from a larger number of people who might actually be you know your customers as opposed to just accumulate your funding from investors who would a lot of times be very supportive and helpful but really be concerned more about making making their money back to give to their LPs.
00:16:01
Speaker
you know So, there was just a really interesting behavioral shift and ah accumulation of energy that Ethereum represented. And so, yeah, I was um kind of among the first in the l LA world of of venture capital and angel investing and stuff to do that, kind of made a little bit of a name.
00:16:21
Speaker
um that way and you know some some people were very, very generous with their time who were you know kind of almost singular names in the beginning of the sort of whole crypto industry and certainly um popularizing Bitcoin globally. People like Brock Pierce you know gave, he was very generous with information and time and the network around him and you know hanging out around those places.
00:16:51
Speaker
um You just sort of were immersed into it, you know, and and everybody that would come in and out of the door would be somebody from some part of the world that was actually a part of writing the code or writing the ah you know, whether it was on the actual legislation side of working with governments to talk about how to regulate this stuff, or if it was just purely in the code of just the libertarian anarchist side of just, you know, build this and ignore the government. Like I got a real wide, wide range spectrum of everybody. um And then I actually went out to Japan myself.
00:17:32
Speaker
and took that skill set and helped the Japanese government sort of wrap their head around it a little bit more. and um So it it it pretty quickly went from like me understanding the technology kind of with the architect mind that I have and then going all over the world to help try to evangelize and and and translate what was happening to different stakeholders that yeah really are all
Crypto Innovation in Japan
00:17:55
Speaker
important. you know i think To me, it's like it's it's just as risky to be 100% decentralized as it is to be 100% centralized. like There's a balance here. And in order for this to really grow into the ah world, and all stakeholders have to be considered. you know So early days, it certainly was a lot more of that like really, really like
00:18:22
Speaker
you know um almost overly committed like like libertarian anarchist kind of thing because it was a direct was all the direct response to the banks failing and to the governments being untrustworthy and you know all of that stuff. But I think now where we're at,
00:18:39
Speaker
Specifically from where I come from like media storytelling gaming this kind of creative Side of things it it needs simplification it needs it needs to be integrated into those sort of like lifestyles in the real world Day-to-day reality of people and that's been that's been the challenge so far as it's been very very complex for a long time but that's okay because it's been a community of people that love complexity and It wasn't really an issue in that little pocket, but most people don't like complexity, right? it It turns them off from it and they find it hard to keep up with. So that's really the gap that we've had to be mindful of for many years now. And I think where we're, we're getting closer to crossing that threshold, you know, when it, when it comes to the sort of like more fun gaming and storytelling and stuff like that.
00:19:34
Speaker
Yeah. And I definitely want to touch upon the complexity issue in in a moment, but I wanted to also mention you've said that yeah at some point you worked with the Japanese government. but kind of What was the nature of your work at the time with the with the Japanese government and kind of what what year we're looking at? I think that was like an interesting um interesting thing there. Yeah. I mean, there was a period, obviously, you know behaviorally, when people um find themselves in a bull market.
00:20:03
Speaker
versus a bear market. it's The funny thing is in bull markets, it really was getting to the point where people didn't actually like, they hadn't understood the complexity anymore.
00:20:15
Speaker
But they finally just sort of like dove into it because of the sort of like fear of missing out, not getting rich, positioning everybody else get wealthy and not being left behind, right? Not understanding fully the first principle of what the technology is, but just going into it anyways. And I think.
00:20:34
Speaker
certain bull markets that that expanded into governments in nation states and branches of the private and public sector off of governments. and so i It wasn't just Japan. Japan was the one that I really immersed myself into, moved to Japan, got involved you know really at the level of essentially kind of interfacing with the the private company sector, some of the public you know investor circles and the government, the FSA, the sort of their SEC. So it's like triangulating between the entrepreneurs, the bankers, the investors and the government to try to understand the opportunity at hand. um Japan was in a lot of ways at that time
00:21:26
Speaker
really going for it and trying a lot of new things and accumulating participation from, you know, the institutions, the banks and the government and the regulators. And just like everybody else felt in some ways like, you know, that bull market went a little overheated, people got burnt, it went into a bear market and then everybody That correction made everybody like lose the enthusiasm, you know but there's still there's still a lot of really innovative people out there trying
Risks of Decentralization vs. Centralization
00:21:57
Speaker
incredible things. like For example, there were there were projects tokenizing people's time you know in Japan, and I was working a lot with um
00:22:06
Speaker
deep innovation circles like A a and&A Airlines has an entire avatar subsidiary company for like telepresence, you know, where you will control avatars with VR. um You know, in a future where that telepresence means you'll get you'll get on the plane. They are playing less, you know, so um they were just like really forward thinking and trying things and That was an exciting thing to be a part of. But back in LA, because I would go back and forth back in LA, I was working a lot with them with a guy named Peter Diamandis, who is an important ah figure in innovation across from space travel to
00:22:46
Speaker
um the climate to longevity. And, you know, one of his organization's enterprise was the way that, you know, like an A and&A airlines would be encouraged and create a model around that type of innovation to look ahead that far and create solutions of to your own problems, essentially.
00:23:09
Speaker
Right. And that's cool. And that's like really important because I feel like that's the kind of innovation that you want people to to experiment with in in crypto, in blockchain, you know to push the boundaries of what's possible technologically. I think part of the issue and why we've been having you know those major corrections, you know part of it is just normal market behavior, but but also you know you're looking at companies that are creating financial structures or business structures that are only ah working when you've got a bull market. and And you could print money doing anything in a bull market. You don't really need to be you know business savvy. And we saw that being confirmed in 2021 at the end of the bull run when everything come came crashing down.
00:23:54
Speaker
But I hope that that would was like an important lesson for everyone within that space, ah well within this space that you can't just build or promise things that are just really not achievable in in under any other market conditions.
00:24:11
Speaker
um One thing I also wanted to talk to you about, because I thought it was interesting, you've said this a couple of minutes ago that you've you said um that it it can't be something be 100% decentralized or 100% centralized. I wonder if you could expand a bit more on that.
00:24:32
Speaker
Yeah, I just think that the diversification in the sort of like present day is important. Um, cause you know, we, we had a hundred percent centralized for quite some time. I feel that we peaked in that past. Any point would be kind of, you know, damaging. We've, we've seen the ah sort of downside to that. Um, and then you have a response from an internet community of people.
00:24:59
Speaker
And many of them just want to go 100% decentralized. right like Burn the whole thing down. I'm not going to deal with any anything, any KYC, any government integration, nothing like that.
00:25:11
Speaker
And it to me, from my point of view, feels like there's equal risk on both sides to be completely 100% dependent on one or the other. um You can certainly get by being totally decentralized right now, if you're into the complexity, if you understand the risks.
00:25:30
Speaker
but um It's a hard thing to exist in the world as as it is today and then you know equally if you just rely fully on the fiat standard i mean more clearly than it has been in the past right now that's a that's a big mistake um so you have to find.
00:25:49
Speaker
you know, across the available environment, you have to find a way to diversify and really deeply innovate in the ways that you can, you know, cover yourself, protect yourself, accumulate wealth that might be digital on chain, totally in cold storage, but also, you know, as a citizen or dual citizen of certain countries, you just, you need to be tied into some level of, you know,
00:26:16
Speaker
that identification system, that banking system, you know, a lot of these things require KYC
US Crypto Regulations and Innovation
00:26:21
Speaker
now. So I don't believe that it's um it's the right way to go to just be 100% polar on the other side.
00:26:32
Speaker
Yeah, no and that's a fair point ah because even to participate in a DAO or to form a DAO, if you wanted to register your DAO, right the only legal structure that that seems to work at the moment um is one that has unlimited liability.
00:26:50
Speaker
meaning that the risk exposure is a lot higher in ah in a structure you know as a DAO rather than any other corporate structure that has some form of you know legal ah buffer between you as an individual and the business. That's not the case with a DAO. If you participate in a DAO and the DAO fucks up, yeah it's possible that you know you could be liable. You might not, but you could be. ah I guess that that just depends on is the size of the DAO itself.
00:27:20
Speaker
yeah yeah depend house It depends how it's set up. Crucible is a company and Emergence is our product, but we have OpenMETA as well, which is a DAO. um a Post November, will be sort of the token will be listed and everything. so um but yeah that That side of things, there's a lot of compliance to think about in terms of entity structure. um The way we've chosen to do it is in Switzerland, you know as a Swiss association, as a nonprofit that is set up as a nonprofit where me and you know my my director level people have a certain level of liability. you know Our identity is attached to that and it is designed to have that layer
00:28:08
Speaker
for governance, but then everybody else in that association as a member is a member of the DAO, and there' is there's no liability in that sense. So it really depends how you set it up. you know Again, when you have a relationship from the decentralized side of the internet back to a specific entity of a specific government, you know that's where it takes a lot of um nuance. And you have to be coming from the right place You have to have the chart right true north in order to structure these things the right way because if you really are just looking to manipulate a point of time in the market to extract as much as you can, you know these these things aren't necessarily set up to have given you zero liability on that.
00:28:56
Speaker
Oh yeah, 100%. No, i think I think unlimited liability mostly happens in the US. I think there are a couple of of corporate structures that you can apply for where you incorporate. I think one of them was a fairly new one out of Wyoming and I literally think it's called a Tao. But I think according to um ah what I've what heard about it is that it's actually that it takes a lot of bureaucracy to be able to go through this process and call yourself an actual DAO before you know you can actually be one and it's only just the name. You're still you know complying and or operating as a limited company um without the added benefits.
00:29:36
Speaker
Yeah, Wyoming historically has some of the more beneficial things due to that state and its history with entity structuring and formation, but anything in the US is subject to the SEC, is subject to the quite frankly, very unfriendly nature of that nation and ah and its regulations.
00:29:59
Speaker
you know Even though I'm a US citizen, I have my attachment to that country for that. But for the work that I do and what we're here talking about, like I don't touch the US. Which is a shame i mean that's fair because it's it's my it's my natural born country. I'm a citizen. It's where a lot of my friends where all my family is, I would love for for them to participate in what this is as a rising tide, or even just as a fun thing to do. But you know it's there there are there are hundreds, if not thousands of me, that have like dedicated a lot of work to important things that now our own you know our own citizens of the country we come from, we have to
00:30:47
Speaker
ban them from it, we have to block them from it because of the risks that it associates to us personally.
Impact of US Elections on Crypto Adoption
00:30:54
Speaker
so Yeah, no, it sucks. and And you're not the only one, yeah. There's a lot of companies out there, a lot of decentralized protocols, one inch being one of them, they don't operate in the States. There's there's a bunch more that just completely go like, nope, we don't want to touch it. We're not getting there.
00:31:11
Speaker
um I do hope that with the upcoming elections and from what I'm hearing, it's like regardless of the outcome, it seems that all the options are more crypto friendly than they used to be. So I'm hoping that's a good thing and I'm hoping that they'll reverberate across the globe and and help with further adoption as well. Yeah, one side more friendly than the other, but um certainly now pandering to voters with crypto works. So again, coming back to pattern matching, you know if if that's clearly to be true, um your campaign platform will have to be at least ah acknowledging it, if not really like fully investing everything into it. So on one side, you have somebody who seems to be doing that. I don't know how
00:32:05
Speaker
sustained that support is should they get into office, but at least right now it's ah it's a huge talking point. Yeah, 100%. I wonder how many people own or are crypto positive in the United States. I'm not sure if there's any metrics about that online. it's There's probably numbers. I don't know how accurate it would be, but those are the people willing to to admit it. you know Yeah, so about 18 million, according to this CNN ah post that I'm seeing from 2023. It's good numbers, probably more, low more now. That's probably an accumulation of the um registered you know ah Coinbase users and the companies that can actually report those users.
00:32:56
Speaker
So 18 million Americans that use crypto in 2023, ah but Michael Novogratz and Anthony Scaramucci estimate that there may be up to 85 million crypto users in America.
Vision for Open Metaverse
00:33:10
Speaker
Wow. That's significant, actually.
00:33:15
Speaker
Yeah, Scaramucci, he runs Skybridge Capital, which invests in a lot of these companies. So I'm sure that they're pulling data from the actual platform usage of like what what people are registered using. Yeah, that makes sense. Add another 15%, 20% of people who are completely untraceable that are doing that.
00:33:38
Speaker
Yeah, fair point, fair point. ah So tell me a bit about emergence. um So what I know is ah you' you're you're building a platform, an SDK to connect with game engines to allow developers um to work seamlessly with Web3 data. um How did you first of all get into discovering that as a need for this industry and and how are you guys architecting that as a product?
00:34:08
Speaker
Yeah. So again, to go back, um, because I think context helps frame the answer to that question. Um, for as long as I can remember, like in l LA moving from entertainment to tech.
00:34:25
Speaker
i've had like these I've had these ideas, I don't know necessarily where they come from, and then my experiences work to enforce those ideas enough to get to a place where I'm convicted to do something with it. you know And so through all that experience, going back and forth to Japan, working with Peter Diamandis, spending days at a time with people like Philip Rosedale, spending you know weeks at a time with people like Brock Pierce, just gathering information essentially.
00:34:53
Speaker
Into this framework of the world as I saw it I kind of shaped this concept of the open metaverse which I felt very quickly was a real thesis for the future and So I developed that thesis further and as I was doing that I kind of really felt strongly that I could dedicate ten years to it and I had always been kind of navigating my my career to find that thing that I could really like fully jump into like cut everything else away, like set up a company and really dedicate, um you know, a decade to it in a way where I had the conviction, I knew that that arc over 10 years would only get stronger, that opportunity would only get more important. And so the open metaverse was like the first real thing that I could really sink my teeth into with that.
00:35:44
Speaker
um And the only other person really talking in these terms was Tim Sweeney at this time. You can go back and find a SIGGRAPH keynote from 2017.
00:35:56
Speaker
um where he from his position as the founder and CEO of Epic Games was talking about what the open metaverse would need infrastructurally on standards technically. Like, you know, he had built the engine and he had understood the sort of standardization that had happened in the technology industry. And so he did this like amazing keynote which is highly technical, and if you know Tim Sweeney, you know yeah know he's he's he's not the Steve Jobs orator, but what he says is insanely um profound, really. you know and I think that was proven by Matthew Ball, choosing to like to kind of take his vision and write it and put it into the media industry, and people saw the impact there. so
00:36:45
Speaker
At this time, it's probably 2018. You know, I have this concept of the open metaverse. I come from a very native web three paradigm with it. Right? Like when I say.
00:36:57
Speaker
when I say open metaverse, it's putting it on to all this decentralized infrastructure that I had been very close to as it was developing. And really, like crucible just came from that. So end of 2018, I incorporated that. I think I at first was traveling the world and meeting with investors a lot actually in Japan, just to kind of test the idea out.
00:37:23
Speaker
and yeah Almost nobody could really really like wrap their head around what I was saying. I just remember so many eyes glazing over. And this is this is like the VC arms of big gaming companies. This is the most innovative VCs that you could imagine. you know And there was one name that stood out. I actually never met him, but I was aware of his work online. And that's Jamie Burke of Outlier Ventures.
00:37:51
Speaker
And I just remember as I was like forming the concept of crucible, I didn't have a product. Like it was very much the inverse of the lean startup, which I was also very familiar with, right? You fully validate a market. You fully know the problem.
Emergence SDK Development
00:38:09
Speaker
And then you like build the prototype to solve it and you raise money. This was just like, I see what's happening in the present and where it's going to go in the future. And I understand.
00:38:21
Speaker
the different paths that could exist in that future and I don't see enough support in the one that I feel is the better one, the more healthy one, the one that's better for people. I see a lot of support in the closed one and if I do nothing, I actually feel like closed will just monopolize everything and that's what we'll have, right? so Um, while I'm forming the company and traveling the world to talk to investors, cause mind you, I have to fund everything myself at this point. Um, I just felt strongly like in my company first shouldn't start a product or even a business. It should start a movement and form an entire industry. And I just felt very strongly that Jamie Burke with outlier ventures. And at that time, his sole convergence thesis, um,
00:39:12
Speaker
an accelerator like Y Combinator, but investing into the kind of innovation that like you know that I had been a part of um for years at that point. Those things fit together so well in the way ge Jamie was writing and putting research out. I just clearly felt like that was that was my guy. So I had to jump some hurdles. you know he was he he ah He wouldn't meet with me at first. He didn't even really respond very much, but I i ended up um picking basically everything up in January of 2020 to move to London because I had been accepted to their accelerator program. Um, and that was with just the concept of this vision, really, quite frankly, it wasn't really a company or a product. And then just, um, can't explain how the rest of it happened, but you know, two weeks after I landed in London,
00:40:11
Speaker
COVID locks everything down. We can't physically be in the office anymore. so jamie Jamie reaches out to me and like invites me to live with them for three months for the remainder of that accelerator program. so you know Throughout all of COVID, like the world is locked down. I'm in the countryside with Jamie and his daughter, and we're just you know really spending this time. I'm finishing the accelerator you know that his company ah Facilitates, but him and I are spending time and that's that really I think if we were to like go really public with that time and that information I think that three months with him and I it was so formative for everything that has come next because he shifted outlier ventures into the open metaverse accelerator from that and Went from 12 people to a hundred people, you know ah billions in value hundreds of startups that have come from this so
00:41:06
Speaker
you know, with the collaboration between us and with his execution, like I think we were successful in forming ah a open metaverse industry, which is what we have today. I really believe that that's what that came from. And so while he was doing all of that, um, I actually moved to Amsterdam and started traveling when everything opened back up again and sort of built crucible slowly to develop it to what it is now. And the first form of the product is emergence.
00:41:36
Speaker
that we built.
Emergence SDK Success and Partnerships
00:41:38
Speaker
And the first ah way that Emergence met the market was through an SDK, um kind of game a game engine SDK that was was it was really meant to just simplify Web3 for game developers. Because the whole purpose of the Open Metaverse definition was that it is the internet built by game developers, right? So we all know the internet. We know it's been built by web developers and mobile developers. And now that same concept will continue to be built by game developers. And so really seeing how important the game developer was, quite frankly, before most of them did themselves. And then designing software, kind of inventing this combination of these different
00:42:28
Speaker
um code bases, really, and then simplifying that into an SDK and putting that on Unreal Engine and putting that on Unity. So now, you know fast forward, we're but we're best in class. We have over 50,000 downloads. It's functional on Unreal Engine 5. We're a verified solution on Unity. It's very easy. you know Anybody can get set up and in seconds, 15 seconds, get going in a minute. And if you know game development, then you can integrate All sort of like wallet enabled features for your avatars for your environments for your game objects for your economy um Quite simply really easy actually now what we're in the process of doing is expanding that into a marketplace
00:43:13
Speaker
that is on chain in the back end, but 3D in the front end. And so our own marketplace is built on our SDK. So it has rails directly into the engine, but on the web, you have this sort of game game asset marketplace that's on chain. So it feels like the space between OpenSea and the fab. OpenSea on the on chain and the innovation, fab fab on the gaming assets, skins, all this stuff. So I think that's the that's the next milestone to achieve what is I think next most important for the transition because
00:43:55
Speaker
a lot of game developers are still even figuring out their role in this. right Like I said before, I think we saw this before and had more conviction for it before most game developers themselves did. And you know there's millions of game developers out there, but most of them are at big companies. Most of them are at publishers and studios, there is an independent world that's growing. And there's a small subset of really innovative world builders or as I call them world producers, which is like a game developer who utilizes all this stuff to really create new worlds on chain and and what games look like from that perspective.
00:44:39
Speaker
I think the solution is really cool and really innovative. And and I think there's looking at it, there's definitely a need for that because I'm expecting gaming industry to adopt blockchain in a way that it will expand and you know really change what games are doing and and what they're capable of doing. And I'm not talking in a mercenary way where, hey, this is an NFT, pay one ETH to get like new unique shoes. like That's bullshit. I don't think gaming is going to move in that direction.
00:45:07
Speaker
um I think it's more about like getting offering features that are otherwise impossible without blockchain or stopping you know issues which which you couldn't really stop without blockchain. like You're thinking about an MMO and the ability to hack or dupe items like you used to see in World of Warcraft and all these things. like You wouldn't ha you wouldn't have that you't be able to do that with with blockchain powering it.
00:45:32
Speaker
um So I think it's a great feature and i'm I'm happy to hear that you you guys have like 50,000 downloads on Unity and Unreal Engine. Are you familiar by any chance with ah Horizon but.io? I'm not sure if you'd call them your direct or indirect. Yeah, yeah sequence the Sequence Builder, Sequence Engineer.
00:45:59
Speaker
Yeah, so a lot of respect, um you know, in a blue ocean, I don't really think competitors are the same, like we kind of really support uh, more people doing this to make it a real thing, uh, to validate it as, uh, possible in the world. You know, um, I think the, the arc that I'm taking emergence is so different than that, but like the actual SDK itself, the actual software for, you know, the game engine is similar. I would say sequence and emergence in their earliest stages are, are quite comparable. You could, you could consider them competitors. Yeah.
00:46:37
Speaker
Yes, I thought it went through when you mentioned you know what I was reading and you mentioned about emergence and everything. It just came into my head, um you know Michael, because I had him on the pod a few episodes ago and we also talked about this. And it's interesting to see that. It's not just like one guy with a crazy idea out there just doing this, you know not knowing or not whether that's going to happen. It's an emerging industry trend.
00:47:03
Speaker
And I think that's positive. I think it's positive that there's more than one player in the market. I think it's healthy. I think there's growth there. I think there's learnings to be had. And and yeah, I think it's overall really positive. Do you know of any other um any other players or any other companies that are building something similar?
00:47:24
Speaker
um Yeah, I would say third web. Third Web has part of their offering, which is really a gamer kit, I believe they call it, a gamer kit. Third Web's a company that Stephen Bartlett is a co-founder in. I'm here in London. you know he's a He's an important sort of figure in the in the business, finance business, entrepreneurial space. um so me To me, like Third Web gamer kit sequence and emergence are probably
00:47:58
Speaker
in the list of who have developed the furthest. right um But yeah, you mentioned it's emergent. Look, I don't i don't choose i don't choose my names randomly. yeah Crucible is a period of time where this entire world was in a crucible. Actually, we named it before before COVID, but we saw what was coming in that sense of like, that's what crucible represents. It's this changing point.
00:48:27
Speaker
you know And it's not always the like easiest, it's not painless. Crucibles melt things down and they they ah rebuild, um but emergence is the same thing. that's why That's why if you go to our Twitter, it's at time of emergence. It's like um this concept that the ah metaverse whatever is not really a thing, it's a period of time. right It's kind of like where we are now is the emergence of that. There's a natural almost nature-like form of the way that all of this is coming into shape and the way it's networking people together.
00:49:05
Speaker
to create new possibilities of that. um So yeah, we we look at like the competitive landscape as really positive, actually, because for a very long time, I feel like I was maybe, if not the only person, you know, going around the world talking about this with any level of conviction. So to see it, it's like as an investor, you you like seeing competition.
00:49:30
Speaker
a little bit because it validates that there's a market happening right you don't want to necessarily invest in like the pioneers the only one doing it so from that sense even as the founder like i can look at competition
Marketplace Launch with Emergence SDK
00:49:43
Speaker
through that lens and actually be you know be really overjoyed and happy to see that now other founders are on the path to do this the same thing.
00:49:54
Speaker
Oh yeah, 100%. It's fantastic to see it. um So have people built or do you have any examples of of like some cool ideas or concepts that people have already built using the Emergence SDK? I'd love to hear some examples. Yes. What are like some wacky gaming concepts that people have created? ah the The tricky thing was initially like like listing listing Emergence and then like having it be downloaded through the game engines made it very difficult because you know the way Epic works as a company is not to hold data. So I could have like tens of thousands of downloads of RSDK and not really have any visibility on who that was or or what they're doing with it unless they sort of showed up in our Discord to share that. So we have a Discord that's like 24 seven developer support and all kinds of like crazy ideas that people are doing.
00:50:50
Speaker
um But as a business, really took kind of ah a on like partnership collaboration, integration approach to this. So future versus fully integrated with emergence, everything, everything that future verse um is and has built and and is rolling out is emergence enabled. And that is a way for us to kind of create interoperability between these different kind of parts of the cinematic universe. um So, you know, the ready player one stuff they have ready verse, there's a game called open.
00:51:28
Speaker
which is a direct, not only just partnership, where it's like the rights of Ready Player One, but it's actually Ernest Cline and Dan, the producer of the films with Spielberg, that are co-founders in this. So they've actually come in to create it, really. And so um that with, you know, the evolution of the fluffs world into the Third Kingdom, and um all the other things that, you know, Futureverse is doing off of off their ecosystem.
00:51:57
Speaker
fully integrated from the identity layer um with Emergence. Also, ah Neil Stevenson, ah his company, which is called Lambda One. um you know If you know sci-fi, he's the guy that kind of formed the word metaverse and the concept. He's the main dude, yeah, 100%. No crash. Yeah, so. Yeah, I love that book. you know Really, lean leaning into storytelling is not only our strategy, but what I i think you know, makes me and my team most excited about all this, um, like really, really good storytelling that like compels people. So like ready player one is maybe the number one thing on a list that people would do think instantly if you say metaverse, you know, today. And then for those who know you go back to snow crash, that's, that's number one on the list, right? So being able to kind of play around in that world with those people, um, another partnership with, uh,
00:52:56
Speaker
Very close friend of mine, Ender, a company I helped him start as well, Pixelinks, that was acquired by Animoca and now has created the Core Protocol, which has Black Mirror and um really important names in music like Dixon and Dead Mouse and Richie Haughton. So it's like, in that sense, storytellers through music. Storytellers, you know, Black Mirror, again, on that list of when you talk about science fiction at all relevant to today. And that one leads, that one leans dystopian. But there's a reason for that. I think the people who write and create dystopia don't want that future. That's not what they prefer. They are trying to use almost sarcasm in a way, like, you know, wake up. It's not a problem. It's a warning for people. So being able to collaborate with the people who wrote and made that stuff
00:53:49
Speaker
And then bend it into the reality that we do prefer. That's, that's our role. You know, so we're actually launching our marketplace with our own IP, something that I'm forming with my team, which is all about that point about like.
00:54:05
Speaker
The ability to create reality, what does that look like? And what is a franchise that is born from interoperability, you know born from emergence from the beginning, designed to tell a story, but also create a cinematic universe that branches with you know from it with all these different partners and all of this other fabric of this giant canvas that is really existing. I think we'll be really successful if we can reach into Web 3, what it's become so far, and ki and convert it into a cinematic universe of its own. right The same way that Marvel kind of did with multiverse and and how that created this open canvas for so many new ideas within the comic books.
00:54:50
Speaker
um Yeah, I think, if anything, not just to Web3, but if with emergence you know and with what what we've built, being able to find that Web3 is leading the transition into this interoperable world of stories and the cinematic universe that can exist.
Global Innovation with Emergence
00:55:10
Speaker
Right. That's very cool. So you also mentioned that you've you've you've built ah the open metaverse. Is that at all based on Neil Stevenson's idea of the metaverse? Because I think, and a lot of people are probably not aware, ah but like you said, he's like the absolute granddaddy, the OG of the metaverse concept, right?
00:55:30
Speaker
And if you wanted to understand how to create a digital reality like what I loved about his book snowcrash is that the way people interacting with the metaverse is represented is that people are expected to engage or build or tinker with stuff in the metaverse, right? It's not the end product, right? you want You want your own avatar, you build that, you code it, or you know you can build a new features or code a sword or stuff like that. I think that's super interesting. And and do are there any of these aspects available in your in your metaverse? or and And if not, what are the like how does it actually work? And why is it called open metaverse as well?
00:56:12
Speaker
So open meta versus just the vision and the concept. I think what you're referring to is open meta and open meta. Open meta, right? Yeah, open meta is a DOW. It was a choice in 2021.
00:56:25
Speaker
to design our community to become a down, um to provide the tools for our community to not just be a community, but to actually be co-ownership, co-authorship, governance, all that stuff, right? And that's been a long path because Look, 2021 was a bull market. There were opportunistic things that were possible to do at that point. And I saw that that was a moment to establish rails.
00:57:00
Speaker
that now, many years later, where're we're going to put the rest of our company onto. But the the concept was always our community should be given the tools for that co-ownership, co-authorship, governance with us, and the branching of how the fabric between this ecosystem can actually be in the in the form of a DAO. Because it's what DAOs are for. You know what I mean? like i think There was a period where Dow's were just spit out to to to so raise money. Quite frankly, I don't think people cared much about the other pieces of it. But for ah for us, I mean, I was so oversubscribed in 2021.
00:57:42
Speaker
um I left so much of it on the table and just took what I felt like was really necessary. But in in that year, it was like 15 times oversubscribed with the interest and the demand for that.
00:57:56
Speaker
like took what we need to build and now we're at a point where and you know in November we're going to actually go go to market and list it and actually put that in manifest to the world so that our community can start to have those tools and those rails to to grow into. Awesome. Yeah, that was my next question. When are you planning to release this? So it's in November and does that come with a token release as well? And is there a way for people to but invest or acquire the token ahead of time?
00:58:24
Speaker
Yes. So we're at the very, very beginning stages of a two month go to market. So um we're recording this on October 2nd. So tomorrow we start our questing.
00:58:37
Speaker
Questing is just a way for everybody to get involved and to earn things, earn status and value within what we're doing. Um, the next milestone is in October where we're launching the marketplace, the MVP, and we're actually selling the first mint is our own mint from our own story in our world that we're creating. We will launch our marketplace with our story, not only as a way for us to tell our story, but almost the tutorialization of how other people could use our marketplace to do their own story. So it's like, we want to dog food and then show you exactly through ours, how it works, how it's designed so that now, once we unleash those tools to everybody, then you do whatever you want with them, you know, but you've seen an example of like,
00:59:26
Speaker
what it's designed for really. Um, so we're going to launch the marketplace. We're going to do founders pass. We're going to do our own mints around our own stories and then open it up to everybody. Um, and so by the time you said this will be early November, by the time this podcast is going live, the marketplace will be live. We'll have just done the founders pass mint and we'll be heading into our token sale. And so the end of this year will, uh,
00:59:57
Speaker
hopefully it end very strongly in a sense that like we're fully deployed in the market listed and we start next year to really scale that. to to to like Once you're in the market, you now are co-creating something with everyone. right For so many years, yeah this has been an idea in my head, then an idea in my team's head.
01:00:18
Speaker
and theoretical, just like a lot of this has been really based more in theory than anything. Now we're we're moving more into this tangibility stage and by next year we'll have essentially I think the foundation, the cornerstone foundation laid to really actually see what this becomes. Because the ideas in my head, I mean, to be honest with you, it stayed pretty consistent. I've been right about most of what I saw.
01:00:48
Speaker
But I think once once there's a global community of people who are bought into this and using it for their own their own ideas, it it becomes something very different than anything I could imagine. You know, that's kind of the most exciting part is when it becomes not just mine, not just ours, not crucibles, not even our industries, but like whatever anybody wants it to be. Like that's that's the point of the open metaverse is it becomes what we all want it to be.
Upcoming Launch of Emergence Platform
01:01:20
Speaker
you know Yeah, i think I think that's exactly that's exactly right. and When you create a tool that's on an infrastructure level that allows other people to to use this tool to create their own version of something truly unique, econ even you know you can't even think about or or try to predict how it's going to be used.
01:01:41
Speaker
or or what are the innovations that are gonna come out of it, right? Like there was the guy that founded dynamic, which is a web to authentication authentication solution that was talking about this and gave me the very example. He was like, when Steve Jobs built the first iPhone, there's no way he thought about Uber at the time that you could just, you know? Probably not. Probably not. And that's kind of that's kind of the beauty of it, right? I mean, like with jobs and with so many people you have,
01:02:10
Speaker
um Well, which object you at LSD, right? I mean, you you have like other dimensional things that bring ideas to your mind that are maybe yours, maybe you're a channel for them. You know, they're, they're filtered through your point of view, right? For him, he had this ability, he had this ability to get people to care about something that most people didn't understand and make it more human. And just that vision enough was enough for it to sort of spread globally.
01:02:39
Speaker
Then you know the app store created this entire interface moment where everybody else's ideas got to be built off of that. We talked a lot about interface moments with Peter Diamandis and this idea like Netscape on the web, the app store on the iPhone. um I would argue that's what we're doing here. I think Emergence is another interface moment.
01:03:06
Speaker
Well, listen man, that sounds super exciting and I would love to have you guys on in the future. Just post your release just to kind of discuss, you know, what are the cool new things that have come out of Emergence. I think that would be, you know, as ah as a blockchain, as a crypto and as a gaming enthusiast.
01:03:22
Speaker
I think that's super interesting for me. So I would gladly follow along with with what you guys are doing. um Thank you for coming on. I think it's been fantastic. And ah do you want to shout your socials in closing just so people know where to get it from, where to get a token sale, where to get the, you know, Twitter and and everything? Sure. Yeah. a Time of emergence on Twitter. um It's all there. We do have a Discord.
01:03:48
Speaker
um I think we're gonna post that on the Twitter very soon. So by the time this goes live, it'll be It'll be there on the, on the, on the Twitter feed. Um, crucible dot.networks, the website, although it's really more like a business card is not a huge website, but emergence dot.site is the emergence website. Um, we actually go live with questing tomorrow, which is October 3rd. So this will be, you know, questing will be live and going marketplace will be live by the time you hear this episode. So, um, by the time you're listening, listening to this, uh,
01:04:24
Speaker
go to Time of Emergence on Twitter and emergence dot.site and dive right in because we'll be we'll be cooking with gas at that point. Nice one, Ryan. Well, thanks a lot, man. Wish you guys all the best and speak soon. Thank you. Bye, everybody.