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#27 - Blockchain Gaming and Web3 Communities with Jon Allen
44 Plays4 months ago
Jon Allen is the Founder of Game7, a company dedicated to advancing the web3 and blockchain gaming ecosystem. Jon is a long time cryptocurrency believer and former military officer.
The Role of DAOs in Gaming
Allen describes DAOs as transformative tools that can shift the paradigm from traditional, top-down governance models in gaming to more inclusive and democratic structures. This shift can potentially address long-standing issues in the gaming community, such as unfair revenue distribution, lack of transparency, and limited player influence on game development. DAOs empower players by giving them a stake in the decision-making processes, fostering a deeper connection between developers and their communities.
One of the core aspects of Game7's philosophy is the focus on community. Allen emphasizes the importance of building games that provide more than just entertainment; they need to foster engagement, interaction, and community building. This is achieved through the DAO structure, where each player's input can directly influence the game's direction. The communal efforts in DAOs can significantly enhance player engagement and satisfaction, promoting a model where players feel genuinely invested in the game's outcomes.
Challenges of Blockchain in Gaming
Despite the optimism surrounding blockchain in gaming, challenges remain. Issues such as scalability, user experience, and the integration of blockchain technology without compromising gameplay quality are significant hurdles. However, Allen is confident that these can be addressed through continuous innovation and community feedback. The potential benefits, such as enhanced security, transparency, and new economic models within gaming, present compelling reasons to pursue this integration.
Future Directions
Looking ahead, Allen envisions a future where blockchain is seamlessly integrated into the gaming industry, transcending its current niche status. The focus will likely shift toward enhancing user experience and ensuring that blockchain serves as a beneficial addition to gaming, rather than a cumbersome requirement. As Game7 continues to develop and implement DAOs within games, the broader gaming industry may look to these models as benchmarks for combining technology with user-centric governance.
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Transcript
Elden Ring DLC and Gaming Experiences
00:00:08
Speaker
Have you played the Elden Ring DLC yet? I actually haven't had the chance to. I'm ah unfortunately kind of bad at casually doing things. And so it's like, I feel like if I ah got into that, I wouldn't take a lot of time for getting anything else done. So um i've I've heard great things though. Have you?
00:00:24
Speaker
Yeah, I haven't played it yet. I've started a fresh Elden Ring playthrough, so I'm playing through the base game. And once I finish that, I'm going to jump into the DLC. And mainly because I was overleveled in my previous playthrough, I had spent a crazy amount of hours playing Elden Ring before. So i was like I thought that I'm going to be overleveled for the DLC. But from what I'm hearing is, no, you're not. like Even mobs can one-shot you, and it's absolutely crazy.
00:00:53
Speaker
um I can't wait to get into it, though I don't have... It's a time sucker, like you pointed out, right? And I don't have that much time to kind of, you know, blaze through the story and then get into DLC. So it's probably gonna take me a little while, um but I'm super excited about it.
Challenges in the Gaming Industry
00:01:07
Speaker
And I'm super excited that there are companies like From Software that are creating games that people actually like to play, like no hidden microtransactions, no, you know, sneaky keys. And I feel like that is a lot of what gaming does. And it's also, I feel in many ways,
00:01:25
Speaker
kind of aligns closely to your ah mission statement from what I was reading from the website and the vision behind game seven. Yeah, 100%, I mean, exactly on that. So um yeah, I mean, because I think the biggest thing about game seven was that, ah you know, really one of our core tenants is like, listen, then act, right? You know, for us, we really hate the way that kind of the single few large companies is kind of like, you know, just dominated the gaming space and really kind of force people to use these things like downloadable content and microtransactions, right? And it just seems very transactional and extractive.
00:01:59
Speaker
um But what was kind of interesting was like, you know, with that listen and act than act in mind, we interviewed hundreds of game developers and thousands of game players.
Opportunities in Web3 Gaming
00:02:07
Speaker
And, you know, for the game players, they're understandably frustrated. This isn't something that's new, right? You know, it's like game players yeah always complain, you know, but I think there was like some really interesting nuance to what they were complaining about that we that we got.
00:02:18
Speaker
But what was most interesting to me was when we talked to the game developers, a lot of them are like, I hate nickel and diming my users. right you know like I just want to make fun content. I want to get reviews where people are like, this is amazing content. This is a fun game. right And they just got really frustrated about the, hey, like quarter over quarter, you have to show growth. you know It's like, OK, well, let's bump up those microtransactions and let's reduce the amount of playable content. right And so it was interesting to see that both sides were very unhappy.
Game 7's Vision and Community
00:02:45
Speaker
And what we're kind of like proposing is that you know with this next evolution of gaming, being web-free gaming, we really have an opportunity to change those things, to make it much more aligned for both game developers and game players. But really what it's going to take is it's going to take a community effort. right It's like everyone has to come together and agree on what these standards are, what the best practices are.
00:03:05
Speaker
And so rather than kind of having a few single companies that are really solely focused on profit maximization, it's like, I think we can do something powerful. you know there's There's billions of gamers around the world. like This is larger than most nation states. right like There's so much power if we're able to kind of unite and work together to try to push things forward. And that's really kind of like the space that we're coming from at Game 7, is like let's make a meritocratic gaming nation.
00:03:29
Speaker
You know, it's a very kind of like ambitious North Star, right? But, you know, those are the kind of projects that I love working on. Yeah. Well, I think it's a fascinating mission and I feel like you need a mission like that to aim for. Like it's always better to aim for something for an ideal rather than settle for for something mediocre in between. I feel that's really important. You mentioned that you had some conversations with people in the gaming industry, developers and gamers alike.
Game Development Challenges
00:03:56
Speaker
um I'm really curious to hear about and the game developers. Have they had any feedback in terms of if if those are the working hours they're putting in and the company culture and stuff like that? I know like there's kind of this idea that the game developers are overworked and in some cases not treated fairly. How true is that based on your guys' research?
00:04:16
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think it is just because there's like so much pressure, right? Especially if you're trying to do an ambitious game, um where it's like, you know, you need to get this out as fast as possible. I mean, I think the interesting kind of, you know, dichotomy between kind of like web two and web three is that web three tends to move at like lightning speed. You know, everyone is just like, hey, like, you know, everyone jokes about like one year is and and crypto is like seven years in the real world, right? And so like, but kind of aligning that, if you look at these traditional studios, for something like an MMO, it can take seven to 10 years, right? You know, for an FPS can be like three to five years. So like these are massive dev cycles that require tons of time and resources and maybe they land, maybe they don't, right? You know, we've seen some really well-funded games in the web two space that haven't really performed that well. And so um I think that's kind of interesting to see that balance between web three expects things to happen very quickly.
00:05:07
Speaker
But a lot of times you can't rush a game. right you know You have to take time, be methodical, and there's so much that actually goes into it. um I think that was the most interesting thing in talking with these these
Game Enjoyment and Social Elements
00:05:16
Speaker
game developers right from the traditional space. Just seeing the amount of nuance, just thinking of like every kind of like click, right you know every kind of little pop-up or modal. or kind of like the way that you're actually using colors right to like hit those dopamine receptors to make that this delightful experience. um I think like a lot of people just play games and they're like, I enjoy it. But really kind of like seeing those two, three, four layers below, everything is just so thoughtful to make something work. um And it's just incredibly amount of effort that gets put in, but it's it's very stressful. um And obviously, trying to compress time cycles as much as possible to get the best content out there as soon as possible is is a lot. yeah
00:05:56
Speaker
No, 100% is. And like you said, the development cycle is 5, 7, 10 years to to release a game. It's no easy task. It's it's it's a huge challenge. And I do understand the the financial aspect of it. right You want to make sure that after you've invested so much time and effort and and money into this project, you want to come out the other side at the very least breaking even. You don't want to bleed cash.
00:06:18
Speaker
Which is why I'm guessing that incentivizes companies
Critique of Gaming Franchises
00:06:22
Speaker
like Ubisoft to once they discover this magic formula, we're going to make Assassin's Creed 27. We're going to keep making them once a year like FIFA and stuff. And I don't know about you, but I feel like I enjoyed the first couple of Assassin's Creed games because it was like a unique story. It was original. It was fresh.
00:06:42
Speaker
But then I honestly don't understand who keeps playing them but at this point. it's yeah yeah It's the same thing all over again. You go around the map, you open bits of map around, and they're very grindy as well.
00:06:57
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think it's um like like you mentioned, right? It's a lot easier to iterate on existing content or existing IP than to do something entirely new, right? It's it's quicker development cycles to some extent, um you know, but then it's also like more likely to land. um I think the interesting thing, though, is that, you know, if you have this kind of very well-known and beloved IP and you flop,
00:07:18
Speaker
it's gonna be really rough you know I think we've seen a few games like that that are just like hey you know like everyone loves this IP we can put out whatever and people are gonna play it but I don't think that's always true um but I do think like just kind of like circling back I mean one of my my favorite games I think that the best game of all time honestly was like World of Warcraft and so kind of like got before the before the military
MMOs and Social Dynamics
00:07:36
Speaker
before crypto before everything like that was like it for me, you know, it's like I played for 12 months and I had six months time played and they're like I was playing 12 hours a day, you know, and it's like, for a year, because it was just insane. It was like an entire world, you know, I made some of the deepest and closest friendships during that time, right, you know, and it's like, it's just the social element, the kind of achievement, the competitive aspect and like,
00:07:57
Speaker
the difference between directed play and free play. It was just, it was just beautiful for me. And so I think like a lot of that I've kind of distilled into my mental model of how we're thinking about game seven and kind of communities in general, right? um You know, I think a lot of communities are really kind of predicated on, Hey, let's do like a discord and Twitter and you know, we'll do a lot of these like social aspects of it.
00:08:16
Speaker
But I think what a lot of them are missing is like what makes that sticky. you know kind of like Really, that sustained player engagement is what everyone's searching for. right you know like That is kind of like the thing that you really want, is how do you get people continually coming back? um And I think like a lot of kind of communities inside and out of gaming, that's what they're searching for. But they really focus on vanity metrics. They're like, how do we get a million people on our Discord? But for me, it's like, how do I get 5,000 groups of 25?
00:08:45
Speaker
in my community? How do I engage them at that level? How do I have this macro competition, or macro coordination rather, but micro competition, right? Where kind of people can be at the shared kind of like journey shared destination. But really, you have these smaller competitive elements that makes it so it's not just like, hey, this monolithic centralized company that like, everyone's just following because they're in love with it, right? I think I think that's the special kind of differentiation between successful games, and some communities that may not be as performant or or optimized.
00:09:16
Speaker
Yeah, and I totally agree that MMOs are ah this like, it's almost like a magical ah kind of game. Like for me MMOs were, I love playing and MMOs. I haven't played World of Warcraft, but I used to play Cabal online.
00:09:30
Speaker
um it was this and MMO that was I think imported from some Korean developers and it got really popular in Europe, I think about 10 to 12 years ago, um maybe a bit more than that. And what made it an incredible experience for me is like you said, you had all these these groups of people, you had guilds, you had ah its own economy, it had its own like, it made it such an engaging experience that the game would actually provide you with so much more value than single player experiences could provide you um like those rinse and repeat single player experiences. You would grind, you'd go and do the same dungeons with your friends time and time and time again, but there was something unique and fantastic about those experiences that I really, really enjoyed.
00:10:14
Speaker
um You've also mentioned that you ah got into, well, you got into military after World of Warcraft. And I did see that on your, on your like spec. And I thought, I just remember the term explosive ordnance disposal technician. And I thought, dude, I gotta to ask you about that. Because it sounds incredible.
00:10:36
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's a, you know, ah part part of the journey for sure. I mean, background, my background's a little eclectic, but yeah, I was, I was in the army for five years and I did EOD. So I mean, everybody always like a few people have seen the movie like Hurt Locker. That is like very Hollywoodized version, right? But it's like, yeah, I mean, learned how to kind of like ah render safe and basically disarm bombs um and, you know,
Career Paths and Transition to Crypto
00:10:58
Speaker
deployment to Afghanistan. And yeah, it was, it was, is it's quite the experience for sure.
00:11:04
Speaker
Yeah, I bet it was. How did you get into EOD specifically? Was it something you you were you were specifically interested in? Um, I mean, for me, it was like, um, you know, my, my parents were extremely blue collar, yeah you know, and it's like, um, I, I wanted to go to kind of like the best schools, but you know, we couldn't really afford it. And so I was a little bit frustrated at that. So for me, it was like, I was doing research and I'm like, Hey, like what is the best path to get to where do I want to, where I want to be? And I started looking around and it's like, Hey, like if I joined the military, I can not only start to work on my degree while I'm in, um, but I can also get the GI bill after the fact and it can pay for, um, you know, pay my way towards school.
00:11:41
Speaker
So for me, like my original plan was, you know, get my bachelor's while I'm in the military, then go to law school. Obviously things change, you know, like I was only able to get my associates because like, you know, trying to get trying to work full time, be in the military, deploy all of that and do full time school is is very challenging. And then also when I got out, I was just not that passionate about law anymore. You know, for me, it was like entrepreneurship. I was like, this is probably the path I'm most interested in. um But yeah, I mean, honestly, it was like,
00:12:08
Speaker
I want to pay for school. OK, what's the biggest bonus? ah You know, it's like either Special Forces or EOD. EOD had like the bigger bonus. um And, you know, my recruiter was like, hey, you get to go to Florida. It's a year training. You get to sit on the beach, blow up stuff. I'm like, this is awesome. ah But then I got in and it like turns out there's like an 80 percent fail out rate. um You know, it's like one of the most one of the most challenging schools in the military. And so i I expected to be physically challenged, but it was also very mentally challenging. Right. so yeah just ended up really falling in love with it and ah yeah got got quite lucky picking it. It was ah it was a very great experience. Well, congratulations on your years of service. How many years did you serve for? For five, yeah. Five years, all in EOD. Yep. Yeah, correct. Wow. ah That's crazy. And did you um you said you were challenged mentally. Did you have to learn like engineering about how like explosive devices work and how to reverse engineering, I'm guessing.
00:13:06
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Because it's like, um I mean, so there's like traditional ordinance, which, you know, it's all the bombs and missiles and rockets and things that you kind of think of. But then there's kind of the other side of it, which is a lot more applicable because it's like obviously with like Iraq and Afghanistan, like a lot of it was impro improvised explosive devices. And so like, you know, most of the stuff we were seeing out there is literally pallet boards with like a flip-flop spacer, you know, you have like a carbon rod D cell battery used as kind of like, ah you know, the point of kind of point of one of contact and then like you've had like nine volt battery and then you have like, I don't know, like a one liter oil canister filled with kind of like ammonia nitrate, right? You know, so it's like super simple stuff, probably costs like 10 bucks to make, right? um But it's like, I had to learn kind of
00:13:49
Speaker
all of the traditional kind of ordinance, but then really specialize, you know, based on kind of where we were deploying to, um, on improvised explosive devices. So yeah, like I said, it was like a, it's like a nine month school. Um, so you learn a ton there and then you get to your unit and you basically learn, Hey, like forget most of the stuff you learned, like ah learn stuff about kind of the area of operations you're going to. So, um, yeah.
00:14:11
Speaker
a lot of A lot of knowledge I ah most likely won't use, although I would say a couple of years ago, I ended up joining Marana as like managing partner for their family office. um But then they started this Bitdow initiative. And this fantastic artist named Schlomes came up with the idea of like, hey, like his whole thing, his whole shake is kind of like, we can destroy things, but kind of create art out of them. um right And he was like, what if we blew up a Lamborghini?
00:14:41
Speaker
Um, I was like, wait a second. Like I didn't think I'd ever be using this skill set, but it was actually funny. Like we ended up going to Las Vegas. Um, you know, and, uh, one of the guys who was doing all the demo was like an XEOD guy. And so we were talking about like shape charges and flex linear shape charge, you know, like where to actually put things to like blow it up, but actually kind of keep it whole enough to distribute after the fact. And.
00:15:01
Speaker
Yeah, so anyway, a bit of a bit of a tangent, but it was a it's kind of funny. It's like a skill set. I never thought I'd really use in the civilian world that that was ah kind of interesting. Yeah, no, for sure. And I'm i'm guessing that there is still probably a niche in movie making and special effects and and stuff like that, where it's skills like you'd normally think that i wouldn't be used. I probably have a good purpose in these kind of like creative industries.
00:15:30
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, it was like, um, it was kind of interesting because it's like, you know, for me, I was kind of 50 50 on stain on them in the military. Um, because it's like, I ended up really enjoying it. You know, it's like super small group. You know, you get to work with special operations a lot of the time, like when you're deployed and like, it was, it was just really interesting. But, um, actually on my last deployment, um, I ended up getting blown up. Um, you know, somebody behind me stepped on an IED, so ended up getting medivax, had like a year long kind of recovery, had 13 surgeries. Um,
00:16:00
Speaker
And you know I ended up having to get medically retired from the military because of that. um And then for me, it was like I had all this free time while I'm going through physical therapy. And I happened up on the Bitcoin white paper in 2013.
00:16:11
Speaker
And for me, it was like, okay, you know, going through this weird transition, I don't know what I'm gonna do, right? And then I find these crypto folks, right? You know, these Bitcoiners, and they're like, hey, we can change the world, we can improve it, we can make everything better, you know? And I was like, this kind of like idealism, this optimism for me was like infectious. um And that's really kind of when I started going down the rabbit hole in crypto, because I'm like, you know, these are my kinds of people, you know, the people who are like, hey, we have these existing systems and structures, but like,
00:16:40
Speaker
why, you know, just like questioning, you know, can we do this better? Can we improve this, right? And I think that was kind of like, you know, just a point along the journey, right, where it's like, for me, I think community has really been everything, you know, it's like, not to go too far back, but it was like, I was in a very kind of like, ah very, um ah like a jazz band that was like very competitive, right? um You know, we competed like a lot and then I went into the military and it was like this very kind of specialized kind of like elite group, right? And then, you know, ended up going to Berkeley and a few other things, right? But it's like, I feel like
00:17:12
Speaker
All of those things have all been about the community, right? You know, World of Warcraft, all of this stuff, right? It's all been about the people that I've surrounded myself with that have like motivated me and driven me. um And I just think it's just like so interesting. And that's, that's really why every time I start thinking about what I'm doing, it's just like, how do I better engage communities, right? And how do I make more powerful, kind of strong communities?
00:17:32
Speaker
um
00:17:35
Speaker
That's fantastic story, dude. It's it's an incredible story. Thanks. And it's a really unique way of getting into into crypto and blockchain. um I think 2013 was about the time where I first kind of learned about Bitcoin and I was looking to i was mining on my GPU, on my on my device.
00:17:58
Speaker
um And I don't think I ever actually managed to to get access to that crypto again. Like I set up this wallet, I've been mining for a while, forgot the wallet, and then I go back into crypto in 2017. So I always say that i've had i've been i've I've entered crypto twice because of that.
00:18:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it was it wasn't a lot going on, right? You know, it's like kind of like the whole Mt. Gox hack was really why it was like a little bit like more. ah It was some buzz around it. And I tried to like stay really plugged into like what's going on in tech, kind of like where's tech going? And like, um you know, it's like, just I think I feel like I just kind of really got lucky just kind of like happening to it and then like meeting people who are so so passionate about it.
Crypto Growth and Community Innovation
00:18:36
Speaker
um because like Yeah, 2013 Mt. Gox happened, but then 2014-15 was like just hovering from $200 to $400. Every time like there were rumors that China was going to ban Bitcoin, it was like, wow, like Bitcoin could actually die. you know it's like I actually had this alert system that notified me every time Bitcoin was mentioned on kind of like Google search results. and like so Every morning I'd wake up and I would spend like a couple hours a day like reading every time Bitcoin was mentioned, just to like try to just ingest as much content and information. and I was always on this like whale call team speak, just trying to like listen to traders right and like understand what was going on, learn how to trade, like learn markets.
00:19:14
Speaker
um looking back to that now, it's like, imagine if you set up an alert that notified you anytime something crypto related was mentioned. It's just in insane, like just the exponential growth um has been incredible. And I think that's like what I'm like most deeply passionate about is like,
00:19:30
Speaker
I will always bet on millions of people being able to permissionlessly contribute because that's what allows for fractal growth, right? You know, it's like you have thousands of people, millions of people throwing stuff at a wall, something sticks, something hits, and then all of a sudden, thousands of people can then build onto onto that, right? Oh, yeah. And just the pace of development, you just see this exponential curve.
00:19:49
Speaker
Um, and I think that's something that's so powerful and it's really why we've situated game seven to be a Dow to be community oriented, you know, to be owned run kind of champion by the community, because I think it's just a much more optimal structure in the mid to long term.
00:20:03
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, that's what the Internet was at the beginning. In the 90s, people were just figuring out what what this technology is and how to kind of make it work. And you had different people building different forums, all communicating and connecting with each other. Like the Internet was never supposed to be owned by Google, Amazon and Facebook, you know. And I stand firmly with against that. um like and Google owns over 99% of the world search traffic and AWS owns over 50% of all computing on the internet, like if AWS goes down, like half of the intakes down half of the internet with it, it also
00:20:45
Speaker
is gonna take down validator nodes for god knows how many blockchains cuz a lot of validators got a well yeah i could roll my own but you know that's a lot of hassle so i'm just gonna rent like this cheap ah computer in the cloud and just
Decentralization Challenges
00:20:58
Speaker
just create a no that way which. I get it but also is that really decentralized if we're talking about decentralization. Yeah and i think that's like for for me at like the protocol level this kind of like um.
00:21:11
Speaker
progressive decentralization or path to decentralization. I think like, you know, having kind of been in the space for a long time, it's like i I, you know, probably have a little bit more extreme views on that, right? Where it's like, I think it's so easy to be like, hey, like we want bleeding edge performance, you know, at all costs. um But that cost is really,
00:21:28
Speaker
the whole point of blockchain, in my opinion, right? You know, it's like, you're kind of like giving up efficiency for something else. And like, what is that something else is like trust, right? So if you're able to trust, you get decentralized trust, like that's such an interesting primitive. Whereas like you're saying, right, if you have like 90% of the network hosted on AWS instances,
00:21:49
Speaker
If those go down, it's kind of like over, right? And so I think like there's kind of this interesting dialogue going on right now in the Ethereum community, right? Where it's like, hey, like we need to scale faster. So it's like, what concessions can we make? um You see this in all these different communities, right? Where it's like, I think if you're talking about kind of like Solana, or you're talking about Ethereum, or you're talking about any of these like L2Us or L1s, like,
00:22:08
Speaker
All of them are just making different concessions, and I don't think there's like a right or a wrong, right? I think it's very interesting to see how it plays out. and But what I really enjoy about Web3 is that, you know, if you kind of go down this like Harare path, i I'm a huge fan, like of a kind of like some of his books, right? But he talks about like these millions of experiments that have kind of gotten us here.
00:22:28
Speaker
But I think with kind of like this this movement toward like nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction, you have much less experiments, right? Like borders are quite locked. There's like much less large scale wars. Obviously, there's a lot of these small proxy wars that I'm deeply familiar with. But you know, it's like you don't have these giant upheavals and these giant social movements as much.
00:22:49
Speaker
Whereas I think you have this kind of layer above now and it's kind of like this this cloud communities, right? These like digital nations and you can really bring back a lot of that experimentation and start to see that progress. And so I think that's what's what's cool to me is right is like you have this physical world that is.
00:23:05
Speaker
Generally kind of stagnant. you know There's a lot of frustration that things aren't changing or moving or progressing and it's for a lot of reasons. Whereas you have this virtual nation, these virtual communities that are related to speed running governance, speed running economics, you know speed running all of these core primitives that I already started deep-seated in the traditional world. right And it's it's really interesting to see that some of the things that don't work in the real like the physical world still don't work in the digital world. Whereas maybe other things are enabled by new technology right and we can actually try things in a new novel way.
00:23:37
Speaker
Oh, yeah, no, 100%. And in fact, the the virtual world is only a representation of of the physical world and what we've built as humans in the physical space. So if you're thinking about technologies or or considering certain technologies potentially dangerous or whatever,
00:23:55
Speaker
Well, you go back to to human nature. That is human nature. Some people will take advantage of stuff. Some people will be greedy. Some people will exploit systems. That doesn't mean that we should stop innovating or we should put people like um the guy that's developed tornado cash in jail for life because he's developed a protocol to to anonymize you know ah Bitcoin.
00:24:14
Speaker
I think that's nuts. like Take that code line by line. Show me where is the illegal code. Has he used illegal characters that just can't be used? Every line of that code is legal, yet the product, ah and he was charged with laundering money himself, which he did not. it's It's crazy that he's going that way, but I'm also happy that it's it's decentralized systems, decentralized governments that that are creating you know these communities that cannot be governed in that way. like You cannot really hold a DAO responsible in the same way that you hold a private company or a limited company responsible. And I find that really interesting. I'm really curious to hear ah because obviously you're you're working with DAOs. um if there are any like What are the differences in regulation? Do you have any kind of you know regulatory ah challenges that you're facing? Or because it's a DAO, because it's decentralized, you've got to be more freedom to play with?
00:25:11
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think that's the really interesting part, right, is it's like different shades of gray. um Like, you know, I think you can talk to anyone legal, e etc. in the space, and like, no one will be like, hey, like, this is the right way to do it. You know, it's clearly black and white, right? um You know, I think a lot of the stuff when you get into tokens and DAOs and communities, right, it's like,
00:25:31
Speaker
There's different shades of gray. um I think every country is kind of taking a different stance and policy on it and like kind of like there's a bunch of different law firms that are taking different stances on it. And so really, it's like, what's the most risk minimized way of doing it?
DAO Governance and Game 7
00:25:44
Speaker
um But it's not necessarily right or wrong. So that's another kind of like leaning back to that rapid experimentation, right, is a bunch of people are trying new structures and trying new things, right, and seeing what works. You know, I think like,
00:25:55
Speaker
You have kind of like the end of the spectrum, something like Ookido, right? The CFTC came after it because it was like, hey, like you're kind of decentralized, but you're also trading financial products. Like what are you doing? It's clearly illegal, right? And then you have like the bleeding edge of like, hey, like, you know, you can't do anything, right? You can't market it. You can't even talk about it. You can't do anything, but it's like,
00:26:15
Speaker
Okay, well, that's that's kind of extreme. you know How do you actually build a community or how do you build anything if you're just like, hey, like can't do anything for it, can't support it, no one can like help help help you know help when i like push things forward. And so I think like striking that balance and really what it's all predicated on is like true decentralization. um you know I think like where I'm taking the standpoint of like I think from a protocol perspective,
00:26:37
Speaker
Like progressive decentralization is very hard because you get caught into the fact of like, hey, we have a bunch of efficiency. We don't want to give that up to be more decentralized. Like we're already kind of here. I think it's very hard to go back. Whereas I do think for DAOs, especially something like game seven that has a very large treasury, you can't necessarily just be like, Hey, we have a massive treasury. Here's a bunch of tokens. Everybody like.
00:26:55
Speaker
Hopefully you don't do crazy stuff with it, right? So I do think on this community management, progressive decentralization does make sense. And that's why we've taken the stance with game seven that it's like we have three separate phases. So the first phase is a core team. You have kind of like a forum, you have kind of input from the community. Like, you know, you you really try to have this spirit of we want the community guiding and shaping, and we want to build structures that a community can help add to and evolve.
00:27:21
Speaker
Um, but at the same time you have a core team that's kind of directing things, keeping things on the rails, right? Being ultimately kind of like, um, you know, very involved. Then you have this phase two where it's saying, Hey, like we've created these structures, which happy to deep dive down structures, but I don't know if it's interesting to you, but it's like, audience i I love, I love that stuff. Yeah. i would I would love to hear about it. I was actually going, my men to ask you about it. I um was was talking to the author of the DAO, like back from the 2015 at some point, and he's heard this joke that really stuck in in my head. He said, I sometimes say that DAO stands for dudes arguing online. So I really wanted to ask you about how how you guys manage governance and everything.
00:28:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, governance I'm i'm super passionate about. So I mean, we can do go another down the rabbit hole, but you know I guess to like touch on a few things, it's like, for me, it's like I've been i've been a member of quite a few different Dows. I mean, definitely not one of the OG like original Dow creators, right? Or like the Moloch Dow, right? Or like Aragon or like some of these early entrants. I appreciate, you know, we stand on the shoulder of giants kind of thing, right? um But kind of like my my take forward is that I've just seen time and time again that, you know, you give people tokens and you have this $1, one token, one vote.
00:28:28
Speaker
And that doesn't incentivize people to do anything. you know it's like It's actually like a disincentive. you know It's like saying, hey, like hopefully the early people who got the tokens or the early people who had a lot of money to buy the tokens are going to continue pushing this forward in a positive way for the next two, three, four years.
00:28:46
Speaker
That's really not true. um One, you have really low ver voter turnout, right? And two, you have a lot of people who are kind of free riding. They're like, Hey, I'm going to buy this governance token. And hopefully the people who are putting an effort make it worth more. And it just turns into this like weird speculative thing that's not really predicated on success or engagement. And so kind of like what we're trying to do at game seven is saying, Hey, like We really explored this like economic contribution, right? It's kind of like one of these core primitives for how to like run a community. But we really want to introduce something else and have a spectrum where it's like, what if we only cared about the time and effort and engagement that you put into the community?
00:29:25
Speaker
And so that's really kind of like where the portal came from that we've launched um where we're saying, hey, like we want to build a meritocratic nation. That's like kind of what we put in the original proposal. And we're like, okay, like that's exciting. You know, I'm i'm really interested in this kind of like meritocratic nation. But how do you actually do that? Right.
00:29:41
Speaker
um And in order to do a meritocratic nation, you have to understand very granularly what are people's contributions. And so that's through the portal, we've actually said, hey, you know, if you're playing games, if you're voting on governance proposals, you know, if you're active on Discord, if you're active on Twitter, right, if you're like completing quests, right, that is something that
Meritocratic Vision for Game 7
00:29:58
Speaker
you can build your reputation, you can build your level in a very kind of MMO-esque way.
00:30:02
Speaker
And so when you paint that spectrum, I think almost any community fits there, right? Where it's saying, hey, maybe I care 60% about your economic contribution and I care 40% about your actual engagement and the time and effort you put into it. But like somewhere on that spectrum, I would love to see, you know, I'm loving to see you kind of like all this experimentation take place where it's not just $1, one token, one vote. It's really tokens and votes for things that are relevant to that. But then you also have engagement where it's actually people's merit um There's kind of like deeming like how much access, how much control, how much say should they have in certain things.
00:30:37
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And I mean, that's kind of proof of work in a sense, but just for individuals, right? Just just showing that, Dave. Did you call it proof of play? Did I read that right? Was it on your website? I've read proof of play. ah No. Yeah. We don't call it proof of play. Yeah. I mean, I think that's... I'm trying to... I mean, proof of play is like pirate nation. It's kind of like the parent company. That's what they call it. Right. Fantastic game, by the way. But yeah. Yeah. Because I think you you absolutely need to to have a system in place to make sure that the members of your DAO are actually engaged and active in the DAO rather than speculative reasons, especially when cryptos become so speculative. And it it didn't used to be, right? Bitcoin, you did have the the novelty about it. So people were just buying Bitcoin, creating the node because of novelty. But then it became once you had altcoins coming out and then meme coins, it became so speculative. And I think this current bull cycle is probably
00:31:32
Speaker
the most speculative that I've ever seen because in the previous bull cycle, yes, we had meme coins and Ethereum and a couple of other chains like BNB and a few others. But now there's just so many being pumped out on Solana because it's just so cheap that anyone could just create their own meme coin within like a couple of Yeah.
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, and I think i think that's yeah it's it's kind of the problem, right? is that I think like there is so much innovation and again, that fractal growth, I'm all for it because I think it's like a beautiful structure and I think it like better is for the betterment of everyone. But you have this cycle where it's like everyone's launching a coin, everyone's launching a project. Some are extremely legitimate, right? But it's like if you have all these tokens, it's like who's actually buying? Who's excited about them?
00:32:12
Speaker
um And then so what you've had is you've had these like professional kind of like bot networks, you know professional civil networks that are like Trying to act like a real user for the sake of just getting as many tokens as possible to make as many as much As much money off of it as possible and that's like deeply problematic, right?
00:32:29
Speaker
And you've had um a lot of communities that, you know, I think layer zero was a really interesting experiment, right? Where they're saying like, hey, like um we're basically going to reward people for finding and and identifying symbols. Like initially we're going to let people turn themselves in and we'll actually give them a piece of their airdrop for actually being honest. But then after that, we're going to like engage all of these analysts and all of the community that if you turn somebody in, you can get a percentage of what they, the the bot network would have gotten.
00:32:56
Speaker
super interesting. right it yeah And you have something like Zika Sync that's saying like, hey, like we're just going to have it predicated on who is taking high risk activities because bot networks probably aren't going to take high risk activities, right? you know They're going to do things that they don't lose money. It looks like activity, but then they can just free roll basically tokens.
00:33:13
Speaker
There's been negative kind of like conversations about all of that. I think in general, like trying to distribute a token, like first principles, you're trying to distribute tokens to people who are engaged, who are real, because you hope that they help you continue to build your network. And again, that positive community engagement is what they're trying to seek.
Civil Resistance in DAOs
00:33:30
Speaker
And so for me, it's like, why don't you just start from that standpoint? Like, why are you trying to cherry pick all these data points that you're gonna have false positives, you're gonna have false negatives, like, as soon as somebody does a good structure that works really well, all the bots are gonna start doing that same structure, and then you have to change it for the next one. It's just like, this game of cat and mouse, where the way we're trying to orient it, again, is merit, you know, it's like, if we can have a structure where it's like,
00:33:51
Speaker
you have to put real time and effort into things, not just transactions on chain, but even like on chain and off chain, right? If you can increase that kind of social graph and understanding of your users, I think it it offers something very different where it's like, if you've spent like on game seven portal, for instance, if you've spent dozens of hours playing games and contributing in a positive way on the forum and voting and being active in discord and like all of these different data points,
00:34:17
Speaker
if you figured out how to bought that I probably want you in my community because you're actually engaging in like a very like positive and meaningful way and like you've spent a lot of time and effort and so I think effort for me is the best civil resistance and again like with enough time and effort it is you can but you can bought anything like let's let's be blunt about that right um so it's like it's just resistant it's not civil proof but I really think predicating civil resistance on engagement and effort is probably like a better better outcome than trying to cherry pick different on-chain data points, et cetera, to figure out who's real and who's not.
00:34:50
Speaker
Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. And you can bought everything, but just like you said, if you're having if you have all of these steps in order to earn basically your your stay, so to speak, in the Tao, then by all means you want that person in that Tao. They could have gone and and created macros for all sorts of other on-chain actions that they could take, but they've chosen to just spend all of their time trying to make it work for your specific use case.
00:35:18
Speaker
That takes effort. I'm sure there's a 13-year-old taking notes right now doing this tomorrow or something, you know but but that's in a sense, that's the beauty of it. you know yeah and yeah I was also going to ask about, you said something about yeah obviously you're having a core team and working with the the wider DAO to make decisions. How does that relationship work?
00:35:41
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think like to kind of give a little bit of context, I mean, for me, this is such an interesting problem, because like, you know, previously being in kind of like more of like the technical cryptography, kind of like, you know, like theory space, like, it's very math based, right? There's like, there's solutions, whereas like when you're dealing with people,
00:36:00
Speaker
People aren't necessarily rational, you know, it's like it's like it's a very hard problem like coordinating all of these things. And so I think, ah again, like the the problem is when you kick off a community, you want a structure in place that is clear enough that people can participate and engage in a meaningful way.
00:36:16
Speaker
And so it's like, how do I have a structure that is kind of rigid enough, you know, or defined enough that people feel like I can just jump in. I can go into your discord. I can go into the game seven portal and I can immediately start contributing in a positive way. So like, I know the rules. I know your goals. I know what you're trying to do. I know what you're about, right? Like.
00:36:34
Speaker
Making that onboarding as easy as possible is very important. But then the other piece of that is that you're saying, hey, like this is a set game. Like here's the chess board. Here are the rules. Here's all you can do. There's a ton of creativity that can happen to that, but we want to, obviously it's like chess has infinite possibilities, right?
00:36:49
Speaker
Not even but a lot, you know but it's like, um how do we allow the structure of our community to be flexible enough that we can shift, that we can change, right? You know, again, again the goal of game seven is to be this meritocratic nation. If you're trying to go to the size and scale of a nation state, there has to be a lot of room for movement and change, right? And so you have to have like these defined rules, but you can't have it too defined and too rigid that people feel like they can't contribute.
00:37:16
Speaker
And so, ah right back to your original question, it's like, for this first phase, we basically said, hey, like, here is a level system, here's an XP system, you have a soulbound avatar, you can earn items, you know, you can kind of like level up, right, by doing these different quests. But really, what we're leveraging the community for is what content should that progression path be based off of? Like, what are the games you're excited about? What are the games you wanna play?
00:37:42
Speaker
Because like for us, it's if we want people to engage, to build up their level, to eventually run the DAO, if it's a gaming nation, what better way than playing games? right And so we really leverage our community by saying, hey, like what are the games you want? What are you excited about? right like What are the most interesting stuff? What's the most rewarding stuff? Trying to highlight that to our community. So as far as content, um that's where we've really been focusing on. Whereas kind of for phase two, we're going to be shifting into, hey, like you need to elect leadership for all these sub-DAOs.
00:38:09
Speaker
Um, and I guess I kind of glossed over it in the beginning, right? But it's like that phase two, like phase one transition is predicated on. I think that all token holders shouldn't vote on every single thing. You know, if I'm saying like, Hey, like what color should we change the background of our portal? Like you don't need a token vote for that. Right. But I do think you need to have a formal hierarchy of who's deciding that.
00:38:32
Speaker
And so what we were really trying to push toward is like basically having all these small sub-dows and delegate control of the Dow out to the periphery, because that's how you make an efficient, flexible, kind of like progressive Dow in my opinion. um But then again, all token holders, if something starts going off the rails, they can remove those sub-dows, right? They can take away their budget. There's a lot of things they can do, right? But right yeah.
00:38:53
Speaker
Yeah. So, so anyway, that's kind of like a little, a little, ah a little peek into kind of like where we're going. You know, it's like, I think it's dozens of these sub-dows that are all coordinated by this large superset now, if you will.
00:39:06
Speaker
yeah that No, that's really interesting. So it's more you're taking a bit of decentralization and a bit of distributed network and you're kind of creating ah a really interesting interplay between them because I completely acknowledge that decentralized networks have one issue and that being that yes, it is technically decentralized, but also two people can take ownership of that network or or you know a small group.
00:39:34
Speaker
But if you distribute you know ownership across these what you call sub-dows, I feel like you get a better level of overall decentralization and distribution of power and decision making for the entirety of the organization. It's a great solution for it.
00:39:50
Speaker
Thanks, yeah, I appreciate it. I mean, I think it's, again, it's an experiment. We'll see how it lands, right? And like, see what works, see what doesn't. um But I think that's the fun aspect of it, right? um I think the other piece too is it's gonna be really interesting to see like, if people are elected, right? Because like, there's there's there's other DOWs, there's other ecosystems that have kind of this board, right? Are these people who are responsible for making decisions? But what we've realized is that it's usually the person who's like the loudest or the most popular. um But what's kind of interesting that I've seen in a couple of different communities is that the person who's the most popular, the most well known,
00:40:20
Speaker
probably getting chosen for a bunch of different things. And so if you're sitting on 20 different boards, are you really engaging the most? right And so like having these elections based off of, hey, this person's put a couple of hundred of hour hundred hours. right They've done every single content. They've done a bunch of different bounties. you know They've been super vocal. They've been consistently present. like That's, I think, what we're trying to optimize for. um Because having that context, knowing the community, right, kind of a finger having a finger on the pulse, I think, is what the leadership of these decentralized communities needs, if they're to be chosen. It's not just, hey, this person has a ton of Twitter followers, they're super popular, like, they probably know what's best. um Because I think it's like a bit of detriment to the community if they only have an hour a month to spend on it, right? Like, you're probably not going to get the best outcome than somebody who's there every single day trying to figure things out.
00:41:09
Speaker
It's very true. Yeah. And you guys are currently in phase one right now. of credit Yeah. So we launched like the community portal, um, end of April. So, you know, we've been live, um, you know, coming up on two months now. Um, and so it's really like, how do we have that foundation?
00:41:26
Speaker
for of merit, right? How do we have that ah kind of foundation of, you know, who like of someone's reputation really. um So then we can start saying, Hey, like, what are the core things that the DAO needs? And let's start helping create some of these committees, right, create some of these initial governance processes, um and really kind of write this like Constitution s structure, right, where it's like, you know, maybe you can look at the DAO is like the federal system, you know, and then you can look look at the sub DAOs is the state system, and then They can have subcommittees being the cities right or like the like little like local ecosystems. So like um this nation state kind of parallel that I mentioned, like this gaming nation is like really how we're starting to kind of like look through how things are facilitated. and
00:42:06
Speaker
I love that and because it's the kind of um experiment that you can inform real world governance. that One of the things I love about DAOS is that you have different governance in place that can completely... Well, if if they if they can't make a change right now in the real world,
00:42:25
Speaker
at least we can learn that hey there are probably there are arguably better ways of of governing you know anything from countries to top-down company structures to supermarket managers to anything in between. um and It's super fascinating to to every time I kind of have a conversation with people like you that are kind of building these things to see what else has been tested what else is being built right now in terms of governance um and as fascinating I also meant to ask you what kind of games you can can you play at the moment in in game seven are there any other ah any games released
00:43:01
Speaker
Yeah, so like specifically not games that we've built, although I would give a quick shout out to Market Wars. like If you're into MMOs and World of Warcraft, I think you'll really like it. and So that's ah something that we'll be releasing a little bit later this year. Wait, World of Warcraft, you're going to be playing World of Warcraft and and participating in Game 7 governance with your World of Warcraft activity?
00:43:25
Speaker
So it's based off of World of Warcraft. So it's not specifically World of Warcraft, but it's a very interesting twist on it that I think is quite, it's very web-free aligned, but really focused on kind of, because I guess to circle back really quickly, right? It's like for us, when we were listening in our listening phase for game seven, what we figured out was that there were kind of three big problems that a lot of these game developers are having. It was like one of it was infrastructure that we're like, okay, you have some of these,
00:43:54
Speaker
chains as a service, startups, which is great. It's like, okay, cool. You have a chain, you have a token. And then developers are like, cool, I have a game. How do I, how do I match these together? You know, like, I feel like I have like 60% of the puzzle, but what's the other 40%, right? And so the infrastructure is a really a piece we want to focus on. The other is distribution, right? So it's like, let's have a portal. Let's have a very like a robust community that's engaged. That's not bots. That is real people that we can then orient them to things that are interesting in this space, right?
00:44:20
Speaker
um And then really the other one is sustained player engagement. You know, how do you get people who aren't just trying to farm out those tokens, you know, people who really want to engage in a meaningful way and find a community that they align with and resonate with. And so it's like, by really kind of like focusing on those pieces, we were like, what better way to figure out and trial a lot of these tools that we're building than to give an example, right? I think a lot of companies in the space have said like,
00:44:44
Speaker
Let's build infra. If we build infra, everyone else will figure it out. But for us, what we realized in doing these dev reports is that by building things ourselves, we've gotten so much more depth where it's like, hey, like my problem is that, you know, people don't like playing.
00:45:00
Speaker
And we're like, no, it's it's really like the UX. And the UX is predicated on the login, which is like predicated on the auth system. you know So it's like by kind of drilling down to like, OK, what are the fundamental problems, not the symptoms, um has been super helpful. And so for us, we're like, hey, like let's launch a game um that we think is very fun, very compelling. um And then we can kind of like use it to um highlight a lot of the infrastructure distribution and sustained player engagement mechanics that we started developing ourselves.
00:45:26
Speaker
and then hopefully distribute and share that with the rest of the Web 3 community. That's a great way of going about it. and That's pretty cool. ah So the games that are being built for Game 7, are there games that are specifically Web 3 games or could they just be regular Web 2 games or off-chain games that then you know kind of funnel back into the idea of governance? Because ah the reason I'm asking is I kind of i i was playing around with it and I played this avatar.
00:45:55
Speaker
And um that's when I realized that my avatar is kind of like my persona for the governance of game seven, but not something that I would be expected to to use to interact with in a 3D world or something like that.
00:46:11
Speaker
Well, I would say a little bit of alpha. that they're They're all game ready. All those avatars are game ready. So spend some conversations of how to introduce that and to into some games, right? To just like make it much more immersive and useful and that like add yeah additional utility to the soulbound token. um But I would say that a shout out to like ah our sister company ah Hyperplay. um Really, it's it's one of the big pieces of our distribution plan in addition to the portal.
00:46:35
Speaker
is they're a Web3 native game launcher and like game store. um And so what's nice is you can actually connect your Epic game store and play all the traditional games, like Web2 games, alongside your Web3 games. And so for the Web3 games, they have this really cool overlay that you know you can stay immersed in in the game. right You don't actually have to like they like minimize, approve the transaction on your wallet. right you knows It's a lot better experience. um But I would say like a little bit of peek into what our plan is, is that again, we're a gaming now, we want people who just enjoy playing games. And kind of like my stance is that right now we have this interim, are you a web three game or a web two game? I think that that is like a short term thing. I think eventually it's just gaming, you know, I think like,
00:47:20
Speaker
having it be a blockchain or a web3 game, it has to be one fun, you know, like, it's like, blockchain should just really be a feature, you know, it shouldn't really be your entire marketing pitch, like, because then you get the people who are speculating, and the people who are just trying to farm it out, and then it becomes this like weird extractive kind of like economic financial game, right. And and so I think like people are starting to thoughtfully introduce blockchain for what it's good at.
00:47:44
Speaker
but really again redirect to hey I just need to build a compelling game and blockchain is an extra tool in my toolkit that I think is is very powerful right like don't get me wrong I think it's I think it's a fantastic technology is really gonna level up gaming um as far as like community ownership and flexibility right and like a like composability but um yeah again so I But yeah, I guess to circle back, like Hyperplay, you can play Web 2 games, Web 3 games, where you have a direct collaboration with them, obviously, being the sister company of Game 7, that as you play any games on that, you're going to be able to level up and build your reputation on things like Fortnite or you know whatever you'd like. That is ah that a really cool thing. um I didn't expect you you'd have that level of of integration with with web with with regular games. so
00:48:31
Speaker
We're going to keep calling them regular games for now, but I completely agree with the sentiment um because when i like when I go and play a game, I never question, oh, have you built this in Unity? Have you used C sharp or Python or have you used like a water flow or have you used Agile development to build it? like Those things are not really relevant to me as a gamer. What is relevant, like you point out, is my experience with the game. Is it a good game? Does is it have a good story? Is it fun to play?
00:48:59
Speaker
and i think that's where the story ends and i also think that's exactly where i've seen other web three gaming companies that go out of their way to advertise these games as web three games whereas okay great you using the new technology but like what is the unique selling point there is just a new technology that you know you're gonna capture probably the most engaged um segment of this Web3 market, but like the more casual gamers, people just want to play games because they like playing games. You're probably going to miss out and you're probably going to alienate a lot of people by calling them Web3 games.
00:49:38
Speaker
yeah So, yeah, i think that's I think that's definitely going to happen in the future. And it's definitely, it's even as as simple as a branding thing. like There's not really any infrastructure change needed to stop calling it the Web3 game. It's just, yeah, it's game. Oh, yeah, if you're interested, if you're curious, it uses Web3, but i you don't need to worry about it.
00:49:58
Speaker
Yep, 100%. Yeah, and I think like a lot of that is like, the main point of friction is connecting a wallet. Like, yeah, you have to get a wallet, you have to connect a wallet, you have to be comfortable with wallet, you have to do transactions, right, I think like with a account abstraction and like a lot of these um kind of technologies that are being pushed, like, you know, being able to kind of pre-auth certain transactions, like start up to a certain extent, right, by and being able to, like, because your wallet is a smart contract, you can actually pre-define, like, what's something that is maybe slightly less secure, but makes your user experience better, right? um So, like, and then the other piece is,
00:50:32
Speaker
how um How can you make somebody, allow someone to like like easily onboard with something they already have, right? Where it's like, we have a lot of these biometrics in our phone, you know, like a lot of kind of like touch ID or face ID. It's like, why can't your wallet be based off of that? um And so I think there's like a ton of work going on. I think by the end of the year, we're gonna be well on our way.
00:50:51
Speaker
Because again, it's like you know if somebody has to be like, hey, go download MetaMask you know or go download some other wallet, it's like that's a point of friction and you're going to lose a ton of people. And so I think if you can handle the onboarding, then you're going to start to see like a lot of that complexity abstracted away, and then it's going to be a much more seamless integration. um Yeah. Yeah. yeah um So I've seen that being done recently with, I'm not sure if you're familiar with them, horizon or.io.
00:51:15
Speaker
They're their're a Web3 gaming company. I spoke with Michael, and he explained to me that they basically created a sequence builder, like a Web3 game engine builder, where it it takes he takes care of all of these things under the hood. Wallet creation, NFT creations, like if your character is a 721 and then you have ah other NFTs that you own, then you have a wallet that owns all of these things. But the idea is that the user doesn't even need to know about this.
00:51:45
Speaker
um does the long-term plan, just not having the user deal with that complexity of like creating wallets and approving transactions. And what would be pretty cool, because you thought you're talking about biometrics, you could hook into the devices, camera, whatever, just read your face as you're playing the game, confirm, okay, biometrics confirmed, proceed with that transaction all under the hood. You wouldn't even know it's happening. You could you could totally do stuff like that.
00:52:11
Speaker
Definitely. Yeah. And I think that's where we're headed. I mean, like hopefully it is not like, you know, eyeball scanning and then, you know, the containing. And I think that is like a whole, well, they pivoted away from that a little bit, right? But, you know, I think like, you know, it's just like, let's not try to get to, you know, Black Mirror-esque, right? You know, but it's like, I do think that,
00:52:28
Speaker
there's a lot of work being done on that onboarding piece. And I think that's one of the big last big barriers, because I think there's quite a few different experiments taking place right now for like the scaling aspect of it. um But I do think that onboarding onboarding part is still a point of friction that um dozens of companies like you mentioned, Coinbase, Wallet, I think has a fantastic experience with their new release, like Horizon, as you mentioned, ah there's a bunch of folks like Open4, etc., who are like, ah account abstraction unlocks a lot of potential there. um And I think that's where we're going to see the most innovation over the next six to 12 months.
00:52:58
Speaker
yeah Yeah, and I think in the longer term as well for the like overall crypto and blockchain ecosystem, I think account abstraction will eventually get us to a point where there's no the people are no longer going to be concerned with what chain they're using. You're just going to connect to Web3 via a gateway that just abstracts away everything. um And I think that's exactly the point that it needs to get to really reach mainstream um adoption.
00:53:23
Speaker
um Until that happens, um I've probably said this and apologies if everyone listening is just listening to this for the fifth time, but um if you're new to crypto in 2024 and you want to get into it, dude, is's not like twenty so it's not like anymore. It's so confusing. like I wouldn't know where to start. I would just be like, this is too much. I'm just going to ignore it.
00:53:46
Speaker
Agreed. I mean, that's why like, um, you know, I think we really want to add social logins, right? Where you can just use your Google account or your Twitter account, but I mean, I won't get too down the rabbit hole, but like, there's a lot of concerns with like some of the current kind of like implementations of that. Cause a lot of them are walled gardens that, you know, if I use my Twitter account to log into your website, but I use another one because of a lot of the kind of like, uh, business models of these companies, if I have three websites and I use the same email to log in all three, I'll have three different wallets.
00:54:15
Speaker
for For me, that's crazy because it's like they're starting two cents per wallet per, yeah you know, per month, per per active wallet per month. And so it's like, they don't want you to have a unified wallet, right? But I do think that's something that's like this interim thing, that there's a lot of momentum to push this more unified kind of schema, right? Because it's like, as a new user, talk about confusing, you know, it's not only do I have all these chains to deal with, but I also have like all these wallets from the same email. And I'm like,
00:54:38
Speaker
You know, I might log into website A's wallet with this email or logs it. So I think like, but, uh, directionally, like where we're pushing the portal is that you can sign in being on any chain because then we don't care what network you're on because we're sponsoring all transactions. So when you're minting the avatar, when you're taking on chain actions, it's all free. Um, you know, because I think as fees get cheaper,
00:55:00
Speaker
we're able to basically say, hey, like, customer acquisition costs, it makes sense to just cover these fees, because we want people to have this kind of easy, delightful experience, right? um so So yeah, that's something where it's like, we don't care about the network, like you say, um you know, I think eventually, we're gonna get to the point where you don't even have to select a network. um But I think we're really both like sponsored transactions and kind of like gasless transactions, you can take that a step further, where if we're all using the same key pair,
00:55:26
Speaker
Why do I care what chain you're on? right you know You can take care of that in the back end. The user shouldn't be like, do I need to be on mantle? Do I need to be on Arbitrum? Do I need to be on ZK Sync? Do I need to be on Ether One? that's ah it's it's yeah It's very convoluted from a user perspective. yeah um what ah What authentication solution are you guys currently using? Have you rolled out your own or are you just using something out of the box?
00:55:48
Speaker
ah So we're currently using Web3 modal. I think we've we've got used a couple of different ah kind of like things, but we've we light aligned on that one. I think pretty much ah there's Web3 kit, there's Web3 modal, there's um am I forgetting another one? We've kind of trialed all of them and we've bounced around because with each new update, and um some of them are better fix some problems. Because again, it's like, there's dozens of wallets now, right? and There's dozens of chains. And sometimes it's like, you know, we have some problem with our existing solution not supporting ZK Sync fast enough, right? So we had to jump around. And then another one, it was like, hey, it doesn't support Coinbase wallet. So we had to do that. So like, we've done a bunch of custom work.
00:56:31
Speaker
um But I think there's some really fantastic teams that are that are doing work to get the bulk of it done. And then we're just kind of adding to that stack to to improve the user experience. Yeah, that makes sense. um makes sense um So I wanted to ask you something when you mentioned the some of the market research that you that you guys have been doing. um And we spoke a little bit at the beginning of the conversation for regarding developers um and the ah and also gamers that you've you've asked different, ah you've had different questions for.
00:57:01
Speaker
um I also meant to ask you if during your research you've come across any trends or any crucial insights regarding the future of blockchain and gaming or um the gaming industry in general. Yeah, I mean I think from from a high level what I found really interesting is that um a lot of people are a little like not as excited about like PVP or competitive stuff, you know like the traditional FPSs. I think that's a trend that I've been watching, right where it's like a lot of people like these team-based or kind of like you know how do we work together. They like the PVE. you know it's like um I think that's that's a trend. And if you kind of look, um I forget whose archetypes it is, but it talks about the different archetypes of gamers.
00:57:52
Speaker
um And it has like four main archetypes and a bunch of different sub subgroups, but it's like the vast majority of gamers, 80% is what it's saying, play for the social aspect. you know it's like right And I think that's one of the interesting things for me is like on trend. I mean, if you look at the Surgeon General in the US actually put out a statement that he's like, we're in crisis, a crisis of loneliness.
00:58:13
Speaker
But for me, that's crazy. You know, it's like they put out something about cigarettes, they put out stuff about other stuff, but it's like loneliness. Like, I don't think of loneliness as like a health crisis, but it's ubiquitous. I think I think COVID really expedited it, right, where it's like people just feel a sense of loneliness. You know, we're chronically online. We go to social media.
00:58:30
Speaker
We kind of like go to these social sites, with like Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, and we're like, hey, like this is where I connect with friends and connect with family. But it's not. It's just farming you for content. It's farming for engagement. It's serving you ads. It's extractive, right? In the same way that a lot of these like negative game perceptions are, right? and Um, but what I think is like really positive and what I'm really pushing for are like more of these um MMOS type games or more of these kinds of games where you're playing with your friends and you're going to have this like shared struggle, shared achievement, right? Because if people just want to find connection, right? And I think that's why a lot of the mental model of how we're thinking about structuring game seven and this like MMOS way with a portal and progression and people working together to achieve things, right? Is it's important because I think people are going to be more and more online.
00:59:17
Speaker
um And I think people are more and more lonely. And so basically having these communities that have that game-like factor of how do I have these shared struggles and shared achievements and shared accomplishments that bond me to people and make me like feel closer to them, that's the truly sticky thing.
00:59:34
Speaker
And so I guess kind of like from a macro trend, like I think we're going to have a lot less like, you know, 1v1 kind of PvP competitive aspects of it and a lot more kind of like more communal, like kind of like shared accomplishment, shared group um kind of movement. um I mean, if you look at a lot of the like past games of the year, a lot of them have not been PvP, they haven't been too competitive, right? It's a good point. Playing with their friends and having a good time. And yeah, I mean, there's a subset of people who really enjoy that, right? It's it's definitely a market that's not going to go away. But I think that that big bulk 80% of people who are playing for the social aspect um are just really craving that for for a lot of different reasons.
01:00:11
Speaker
Yeah, and I completely agree. like i um I've actually played ah Enshrouded recently with with a few of my friends. For anyone that doesn't know, it's this Valheim-like build their game where you can create your own base and then you can go out and you know kill mobs and get loot. and and it's actually so fun and so relaxing is almost like therapy just building away talking talking with your mates there's definitely e ever since valheim i feel like there's there's more and more games that is created a whole niche of people jumping into this world kind of connecting and talking and also gaming at the same time
01:00:43
Speaker
um Do you think the problem with people feeling isolated or feeling lonely online has to do with and this the dead internet theory, the the theory that there yeah are just mostly bots online and very few actual people that you can you can connect with?
01:01:02
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, i think ah I think a lot of it has to do with like the incentive structure around it, right? Where it's like, I think like a lot of these things are farming your attention, right? And it's not necessarily for your benefit. Yeah. So I think it's a lot to do with like the structures. I do think that something that makes it worse is exactly what you talked about, right? and Where it's basically saying like,
01:01:23
Speaker
With the rise of AI and with the rise of incentives of like more numbers more vanity metrics allow you to sell more ads to raise more venture funds right it's like you have these kind of like purpose incentives that. Create this dead internet right where it's like these aren't real people these aren't real connections and so i think that's something that's gonna become increasingly important is like who's real who has a real community and can i engage with these real people.
01:01:47
Speaker
Like having real attention I think is gonna be more and more powerful and I think that's really gonna be predicated on do you have something that real people want to do that's very hard for bots to do.
AI and Online Engagement Concerns
01:01:56
Speaker
um but But yeah i think I think AI just increases like the negative aspects of a lot of these these incentive structures that a lot of businesses have.
01:02:05
Speaker
yeah I think it's visible as well like the amount of spam on twitter i think it's visible how much is increasing say i everywhere is like the top comment on on reddit you know like every platform is like the top comments you know our top replies are always just like.
01:02:21
Speaker
chat gpts, you know, you're like, this doesn't sound like a real person. And I think what's going to get weird is like when you can't necessarily tell, because that's going to continually get better and better. And it's just going to be a very odd world. um And that's where I think this like notion of like identity and reputation is going to become more and more important as the world gets more and more noisy and more and more AI driven. um People are going to seek that realness out ah desperately.
01:02:44
Speaker
Yeah, so you're going to have to prove somehow that you're human on the internet but by by doing something that a bot couldn't do. And I'm guessing that the the easiest way of doing it is just maybe temporarily putting down, ah I don't know, like $5 for the positive amount to show that you're human or confirming your identity somehow. like I don't know. I you i mean, look at it like all the blue checks on Twitter, right? I mean, $8 isn't really a big barrier, right? And that again, that comes back, it comes back to, it's like very real. It's like what what crypto is going through, right? Where it's like, how do we find the symbols? You know, and it's like with enough incentive, you know, and enough time, people are just going to game all of this. And so again, it's like, I think that kind of the undertone of what we're doing at game seven is is really a DID. Like I've been super passionate about decentralized identity for a long time.
01:03:28
Speaker
But I think a lot of people who try to come up with these top down structures of like, here's the identity structure that everyone is going to have. Like, unless you're the government, you know, like, it's very hard to be like, everyone has this ID, or everyone has this piece, right? I think what's really, I think what really the solution, obviously, in my biased opinion is a lot of these communities, having systems like game seven has where you're measuring engagement and contribution,
01:03:53
Speaker
those start to be these trust anchors that I can say that like, hey, you know, if if you are part of 10 different communities and you know, you're level five or six or seven, right? I can start to have this composite and be like, you're probably a reasonably real person, right? Because even if I'm saying get a driver's license, you can buy a driver's license on the dark web, you know, you can, you know, anything's possible, right? So it's like, but if you're saying, hey, like I want to predicate identity on all these different data points of where you're active, where you're engaged, where you're contributing,
01:04:21
Speaker
If you're part of 10 communities and you put 100 hours into each, it's probably going to be a little bit more challenging for for a bot to do. I mean, you probably could buy accounts. And so, again, there's a bit of cat and mouse aspect to it. But I really think that's probably a better solution than just, like again, charging $8 because I see a bunch of blue check marks spam AI bots that have blue check marks and paying $8 a month that ah doesn't seem to really be doing it.
01:04:45
Speaker
No, that's a very good point. And I think for something like Twitter, that's probably where where this check would have to. like It's as much as a company like that can do because they're so big. But for smaller communities, you could always go out and and create physical events where people meet and and connect and have ah you know have discussions. like I think still the physical aspect of it is probably, well, it is the best way to confirm that someone is indeed human and is real. um So all these events, I think they deserve a real purpose to confirm that. ah sure yeah If you have hundreds of thousands of fans online, but then no one's coming to your event, you might have a problem.
01:05:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I want to check the IPs. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Have a look at those proxy networks. Lisa, man, I had a great time and um you're you've given me an amazing perspective on DAOs and um on what you guys are doing. And I think you're doing some amazing work. I'm definitely looking forward to the developments that you guys are going to be making.
01:05:50
Speaker
um And I just meant to ask you what are um some of the next steps for game seven and for yourself and for the future of the gaming and blockchain industry. Yeah, I mean, other than, ah um yeah yeah, I mean, like the next steps, except for us, I mean, really just continuing to help like, to help the web three gaming community push forward, right? I think like, you know, for us, it's non zero sum, where we want to partner and work with everybody to push the space forward. Because I think it's so much bigger than any one of us, right? And that like, all of us together can do something so deeply powerful and world changing. And those are the kind of people we like to work with. And those are the goals we kind of like, like to
Future of Game 7 and Community Engagement
01:06:27
Speaker
set.
01:06:27
Speaker
um So like right now, it's like you know going app.game7.io, like leveling up, engaging, we're doing a bunch of fun kind of like different activations, partnerships, distributing tons of rewards and things like that. But you know if you're really passionate about shaping the future of Web3 Gaming, um we would love to have you know anyone any anyone there. right you know I think there's a space for anyone to contribute.
01:06:48
Speaker
um I think we have a couple of things that are coming up, like Market Wars, I think Hyperplay continues to add games, and um there's going to be a couple very fun campaigns as we progress to our road of road to decentralization for Game 7. But yeah, hyper-focused on like the next quarter. We have a couple couple new features that I can't release too much about. you know We just released Loot Drop with Mantle, so it's like a 2 million MNT.
01:07:13
Speaker
ah kind of campaign um that folks, you know, based on their engagement and based on their effort ah can get larger shares of that pool. um But yeah, just engage, you know, ah like the only way we succeed is by giving an open space for people to participate and kind of like shape the future of game seven and web pre-gaming. So I hope to see you there and maybe some of your listeners as well.
01:07:37
Speaker
Awesome. No, I'll definitely keep an eye out on things. i um I love this kind of stuff. I'm going to probably lurk in the Discord, ah but ah you'll definitely see me. um So that's app.game7.io. Do you have any socials that you want to shout out? Maybe your own, maybe the company's.
01:07:54
Speaker
Yeah, I'm in game seven, definitely. I'm usually not like too active on my social a little bit. I was like Jonathan T. Allen 1, because I have a very common name, unfortunately. If anybody knows the ah John Allen, who hasn't been active in four years and can get him to give me his username, I would i would love that. But ah yeah game game seven, you know search
Closing Remarks and Appreciation
01:08:13
Speaker
that. um And then Jonathan T. Allen 1 would be mine.
01:08:16
Speaker
Awesome. Thanks a lot, John. Thanks a lot for the conversation. Thanks for coming here. I had a fantastic time and I would love to have you again at some point in the future to discuss the new developments and features that you guys have built in and to see how your community has grown in the meantime. Absolutely. Yeah, thanks so much. It was absolutely a pleasure talking and really enjoyed the conversation. but yeah Likewise. Likewise, man. um Listen, have a great rest of your day and take care. Yeah, you as well. Bye. Bye. See you, everybody.