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#9 POT: The Cryptocurrency Podcast - Horizon: Building The Future of Web3 Gaming
47 Plays1 year ago
The idea for Horizon started from a desire to introduce the world to Web 3 through engaging and enjoyable means. Co-founder Peter, and CEO of Horizon, was one of the first to conceptualize blockchain games and web3 gaming.
This idea crystallized into the development of Skyweaver, a free-to-play trading card game that utilizes blockchain technology, allowing players to own and trade digital collectibles. This game development journey highlighted the need for a robust infrastructure to overcome blockchain-related challenges, leading to the creation of Sequence.
Sequence, born out of the challenges faced while developing Skyweaver, is an all-in-one development platform designed to simplify the creation of Web 3 games. It addresses various complexities associated with blockchain infrastructure, such as wallet integration, transaction management, and data indexing. Sequence offers a no-code dashboard, enabling both technical and non-technical developers to craft Web 3 experiences efficiently.
Horizon recognizes the critical role of developers in the evolution of Web 3 technologies. Providing tools that simplify interaction with blockchain technologies, making them accessible to game developers who may not specialize in blockchain infrastructure.
Horizon has successfully attracted a wide range of gaming partners, spanning various genres from RPGs to farming simulators. The platform supports both ERC-1155 and ERC-721 token standards, catering to different game dynamics and item types, from fungible collectibles to unique digital assets.
This podcast is fueled by Aesir, an Algorithmic cryptocurrency Trading Platform that I helped develop over the last 2 years that offers a unique set of features.
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Transcript
Web3 Game Economies and Macroeconomics
00:00:00
Speaker
going to have a next generation of economies in games, because Web3 is going to shift this to a large degree. And we're just at the
00:00:10
Speaker
Like we're at the beginning, right? In terms of the kinds of economies that will exist. And what's interesting is I actually think a lot of these game economies are going to start to influence kind of like macroeconomic, um, like global economies, because there's, you know, if there's like hundreds of thousands of games being built and each one of them has a slightly different economy,
00:00:34
Speaker
We're going to discover something as a species like, whoa, like this is a really powerful economy design. We should actually extrapolate that and implement it more broadly, not just in the, like into the physical world.
Meet Michael from Horizon.io
00:00:55
Speaker
I'm here with Michael, who's the chief storyteller and co-founder of Horizon.io. Now, Horizon have built this incredible ecosystem of Web3 tools designed to make building and using Web3 a lot easier than it is right now. I think that's a fantastic initiative that you guys have, and thanks a lot for joining me, Michael. Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Andre. It's great to be here.
00:01:19
Speaker
Let me just start by saying that I love the vaporwave aesthetic of your website. Like that sun, which is like kind of orangey with the background. It's honestly so cool. I'm a fan of those like cyberpunk vaporwave aesthetics. Do you want to maybe start by exploring a little bit the vision behind Horizon and giving like a high level introduction into what Horizon is and what got you guys and especially you as a co-founder to kind of start that idea?
Horizon.io's Web3 Mission
00:01:48
Speaker
Yeah, so our mission is to make Web3 easy, fun, and accessible for users and builders, so everyone. And personally, I've been in the blockchain space since 2010, met Vitalik Buterin in 2014 before Ethereum's launch, and back then really fell in love with the notion of Web3.
00:02:10
Speaker
And this next generation of the internet, like these new applications and experiences where both users and creators share in the value of the ecosystems they participate in, more of a symbiotic internet. And at Horizon, one of my co-founders, Peter, and our CEO, to my knowledge, was the first person to conceptualize blockchain games.
00:02:33
Speaker
And he told me about this idea back in 2017. And I thought like, holy shit, this is it. This is how we can welcome the world to Web3 and do it in a really fun and playful and loving way. That's not necessarily about like explicitly educating people about why this space is so cool, but just giving them really wonderful experiences and then welcoming them into this ecosystem.
00:02:55
Speaker
And so, yeah, we set out, we founded Horizon at the end of 2017. And again, it was all about making Web3 easy, fun, and accessible for everyone. And we started with a game. So we wanted to make an experience that our friends could enjoy. And we didn't want them to need
00:03:14
Speaker
to have to have any blockchain or crypto knowledge. We just wanted to give them something that they could play and enjoy.
Building Skyweaver: Challenges and Solutions
00:03:20
Speaker
So Skyweaver is a free to play trading card game where you can actually own and trade the cards, right? Because they're digital collectibles secured on the blockchain and
00:03:29
Speaker
In order to make Skyweaver, starting six years ago, we knew we were going to have to overcome a ton of pain points around blockchain infrastructure in order to deliver a seamless experience that anyone could enjoy. This ranges from things like wallets and how you onboard into a game or application.
00:03:50
Speaker
Things like transactions and gas fees and payments because you know there's added complexity when you deal with the blockchain. Things like working with blockchain data and indexing chains and displaying information to your users. All sorts of stuff you know and we over the years we ultimately we've solved these infrastructure pain points and productized our solutions into sequence.
00:04:15
Speaker
and Sequences, our all-in-one development platform to make building Web3 games easy. Right. So you first had the game out and as you were building the infrastructure for the game, you realized that there's something really special there, which is the infrastructure itself, which probably nobody had it at the time.
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah, although it wasn't like we knew it right from the beginning that the infrastructure was essential because there just wasn't anything available, right? So we knew right from the outset we were building both the game and the developer platform because it was out of necessity. And the game, you know, of course informs all of our
00:04:55
Speaker
thinking around how to build a platform, uh, rather than just because we all, you know, we wanted to build both the product, uh, both the game and the platform, but without a game, we wouldn't have really known how to approach it, right? Like how do you build a developer platform if you're not actually building it for a real world use case.
00:05:14
Speaker
Right. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Because you were, you first kind of have to build it yourself to understand what's required in order to then provide the relevant services, you know, so you can tell that, you know, it is a lot of thought going into making this like the right product for that kind of core audience.
00:05:31
Speaker
which also brings me to the point that we were just discussing a few minutes before, which is the need for Web3 developers to have this infrastructure, which is a trend that I've noticed has been going on for a few years now, and it kind of reminds me of back in the 90s, where you had, I don't remember the name of the guy, but if you remember that famous speech at this .NET lead, like kind of,
00:05:56
Speaker
the bald guy that was all sweaty wearing a blue shirt and he said, the secret to .NET is developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers.
Developer Platforms for Web3 Games
00:06:15
Speaker
Yes.
00:06:20
Speaker
It was such an iconic speech and it was back in the 90s and I just feel like this is that all over again because it's still a relatively new technology that we keep building on top of. These series of solutions are instrumental to then allowing the end user to effectively have a seamless product. And I'm still yet to see it from that perspective and I still think we need to take great care of developers
00:06:45
Speaker
first before you know getting at the very end of that of that chain basically. Absolutely developers are the ones who build the experiences that end users will ultimately come to enjoy right and oftentimes users might not even know what's possible.
00:07:03
Speaker
They might not be imagining what they could have because they're not as tapped into the technological innovation, whereas developers are exploring it. They're looking to create something brand new. They're looking to combine different technologies to have a competitive edge and to enable a new kind of creation that they find personally exciting.
00:07:23
Speaker
And so we need to give them tools that they can work with because up until recently, working with blockchain technologies was very cumbersome and, you know, opaque and part, you know, it's a nascent technology. So it's hard to figure out. And especially if you're a game developer, you're not necessarily in most cases, you're not an infrastructure developer, right? And especially not a web three infrastructure developer working with blockchain. So it's,
00:07:48
Speaker
kind of outside of your domain of expertise if you're a game developer. So for us, we need to give those game devs who, you know, they understand how to build amazing player experiences and game economies and communities. We need to give them the tools so that they can seamlessly and effectively interact with and build experiences that are blockchain enhanced. Yeah, it's really important to enable this next generation of games and experiences.
00:08:15
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And I've actually had a quick play with your sequence builder. Um, and I think I've managed to deploy a contract in about one and a half minutes and it cost me, I did it on polygon and it cost me 11 pens. So that's like 12 or 13 pennies or something like that. Super cheap. So in terms of.
00:08:36
Speaker
Thanks, man. In terms of the games that you're planning to support or the games that you have in mind, so Skyweaver is obviously is an online game where you have this trading and battle mechanic, a little bit like Gwent for people that don't know, maybe you're more familiar with Gwent. Are you thinking in terms of massive MMO or online games?
00:09:01
Speaker
So as a company, as Horizon, Skyweaver is likely the only game that will ever make and it's a trading card game. And yeah, it's a good comparison to Gwent. Other people have compared it to like somewhere in between Hearthstone and Magic the Gathering.
00:09:17
Speaker
Right. And which makes sense because we've actually had game designers from each of those games on our team. Um, so a lot of influence from those with of course, like unique mechanics and game design and economies and stuff. Um, in terms of other games though, because sequence, it enables all kinds of games, like it's agnostic in that sense. But of course, most of the games building with sequence will be live operations games.
00:09:42
Speaker
And so this this includes like in addition to trading card games, there will be RPGs and MMOs and strategy games, it really like any anything, even casual games can leverage sequence because it's it's a fairly generalized infrastructure platform.
00:09:59
Speaker
in terms of how it enables games. It's not as though there's infrastructure that's specific to a trading card game. But yeah, so we already have at the moment, I think we have 37 or 38 live gaming partners and they're across a variety of genres. You know, all the ones I just mentioned, even things like farming simulators and stuff like that.
00:10:23
Speaker
I get I love farming simulators. Yeah, there's actually a couple of them. It's pretty cool and like racing games and
00:10:31
Speaker
Yeah. All sorts of just like different genres. And, and we have, um, in addition to the 37 live partners, we have over 80 games in total that are working with us officially, like in official capacity. And then there's hundreds more that are exploring it. And we're in the conversation phase or that are kind of just working behind the scenes. And these range from.
00:10:53
Speaker
indie startups with a few developers on their team, all the way up to several of the world's largest AAA game publishers that, you know, everyone would recognize their names if they're a game, if they're a gamer. So, yeah, you know, on that front, like, stay tuned for more announcements. We'll be releasing more and more information about that, but it's, yeah, it's across genres.
Open Economies and Real-World Trade in Games
00:11:15
Speaker
That sounds genuinely exciting, knowing that a lot of game developers, AAA game developers, like you said, are working towards building more web3 based games. I think that just gives, especially if you're considering MMO and online games, it gives that kind of economy.
00:11:32
Speaker
that that sense that that economy is real and you can take it outside of the game itself there was there was one other game that I was I was actually talking to the guys at the paint swap team so they work with a with a phantom foundation and they built this game called
00:11:50
Speaker
S4Kingdom and it's an online idle play game where you have a character and you get items and then you do better things with those items like you get better at chopping wood or mining coal or stuff like that and the items you get and the and the tokens you get in the game are tradable
00:12:09
Speaker
on real markets you know like you can trade them outside you can trade them on a cryptocurrency exchange or you own a DEX or something like that and I think that's a completely new layer and level to games that we haven't really had before and I'm personally very excited once we have complex MMO worlds adding that kind of mechanic into their worlds.
00:12:30
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, it's incredibly exciting to have these open economies. It, you know, it more mimics the physical world in the sense that if you arrive, you know, if we buy a laptop from Apple, it's not as though Apple
00:12:45
Speaker
you know, maintains a sense of ownership over that, over that laptop, right? Like you or I could sell it to someone anywhere in the world, or gift it to whoever, right? We're not restricted to whatever Apple's terms and conditions are about who we could give it to. And so we're starting to see the digital world mimic those kind of physical ownership property rights, and then bring that to the digital world so that in games, just like you say, you can take the items you own, and
00:13:15
Speaker
Yeah, trade them in open markets or just give them to your friend if you want, or there can even be like lending mechanisms around them, or you can create additional and like supplementary experiences around those game items.
Brand Collaboration in Gaming
00:13:32
Speaker
Like just as an example, someone could take a Skyweaver trading card, right? And they could make a new game around those items with different rules.
00:13:39
Speaker
Um, just like you could take a Pokemon card in real life and you could decide with your friends like, oh, we're going to play a different version of the game that we just made up. Um, so it's really extending. Yeah. True, true ownership to folks. And then that unlocks new kinds of economies. It also unlocks new game design possibilities, right? Because like you can even have side quests for like quests that are kind of independent of the original game design.
00:14:06
Speaker
that exist amongst communities whereby, you know, it might just be like, oh, you have to collect 10 of this kind of card. And then when you're in this community over here and you have that, you get rewarded with something. Maybe it's like, you know, it could be a trip, for example, or an invite to an exclusive event. Brands can even, like third party brands can even add value to a game world. So if you were to imagine something like NBA 2K, right? Like the basketball game.
00:14:34
Speaker
Right. And players in it who buy gear for their players, and they might buy like, let's say they buy Adidas shoes, for example, and Adidas, the brand, now I'm saying like, imagine these were web three items, like imagine the Adidas shoes bought into the A2K were secured to the blockchain. Well, then like Adidas as a brand could actually just look at the blockchain and see, oh, which player's own
00:15:00
Speaker
Adidas shoes in NBA 2K and then they could airdrop them a gift of some sort. Adidas could be like, oh, here's an additional pair of Adidas shoes or like here's a feature to make them like invisible or flame of fire, you know, glow or whatever. Or you could also give those players like vouchers to
00:15:21
Speaker
you know, real world merchandise. So like an Adidas hoodie, you could be like, here, this for that or 50% off or whatever. So it allows third party brands to add additional value and utility to the player's experience, which then of course enhances not only the player's experience, but also NBA2K as a game and makes it an even more exciting destination. So you're creating this like wonderful symbiosis where Adidas wins, NBA2K wins and the players win.
00:15:50
Speaker
So it's like, it's an area that's like incredibly ripe for innovation and experimentation that we're really excited about.
00:15:57
Speaker
And I think that's really, really the interesting part of it is that effectively, at the end of the day, it's not just about integrating different chains or different data to communicate with different systems. You're also opening up the possibilities of what a game might look like and how interactions between different game developers, different brands, different partners can all work. This basically creates a clean slate where
00:16:26
Speaker
different parties that didn't use to collaborate unless it was super formal can now collaborate in a much more seamless way. And that kind of also speaks to your guy's approach for the tools themselves for sequence, for instance, you have this really cool Unity engine SDK. We spoke a little bit about it last week and that got me really interested in it. The fact that you can
00:16:54
Speaker
query the chain or use on-chain data in Unity through your SDK. And I think that's really fascinating if you want to share more information around how that would work. That'd be fantastic. Yeah, so it's both. It's Unity. It's Unreal Engine. We really want to make it easy for game developers where they're building, because not every game is built in the browser, right? In fact, most of them aren't.
00:17:21
Speaker
There are a lot of incredible browser games for sure, and more and more coming online. And so we serve those folks. But yeah, like a lot of game devs are building on Unreal Engine, they're building on Unity. So we want to make our entire stack accessible and easy for those folks to leverage so that exactly, man, like you can have
00:17:38
Speaker
um, marketplaces in game where you're trading web three items in a, like in a secondary market. There can also be primary sales. Furthermore, like players can log into their unity game, uh, using the, the sequence wallet infrastructure. Um, but it's basically allows a game dev.
00:17:57
Speaker
to make the wallet invisible to their players, essentially. Like it just looks, it feels and looks like a player account that's similar to in traditional gaming. And yet it's a non-custodial smart contract wallet behind the scenes. Um, but it's as seamless as like using Stripe is in terms of making a payment with a credit card or a debit card on the internet, right? Like most folks aren't even aware that they're interacting with Stripe. And similarly, a lot of gamers won't even know that sequence is powering
00:18:25
Speaker
the game and the accounts behind the scenes. And then, yeah, that'll work on Unity, Unreal Engine-powered games, mobile games, browser-based games, because it's all about allowing devs to build for their users, right? And we don't necessarily want to dictate where they are, because the game dev's going to have a better sense of where they want to find their users and what they like.
00:18:48
Speaker
Right. And regarding getting the data from the chain, is there any delay? Are developers expected to treat this data in any way different than they query regular data? Are there any best practices or anything to kind of, yeah, is there a special way of treating on-chain data in a game than normal data?
Real-Time Blockchain Data for Games
00:19:09
Speaker
Yeah, so we've done a lot of work around working with blockchain data. We built both Web3's fastest indexer, and we created a node gateway. So the node gateway, of course, like as you know, and probably a lot of the viewers know that every blockchain application, whether it's game or something else, is interacting with a node in some way. And nodes occasionally go down, which then
00:19:37
Speaker
you know, that sucks for the players, for the game dev, because then they can't, yeah, they can't really play the game, or there's certain aspects of the game that are blocked at that time. So we created a node gateway that aggregates the various leading node providers, including some internally managed nodes.
00:19:53
Speaker
And then in the event that one of them goes down, the no gate would just automatically switches between them to ensure that your game is always up and running for you and your players. And then we also built the indexer, which allows games and brands and whoever else is developing with sequence to query NFT, token data, blockchain data generally, including all metadata, balances, history, prices, and display that information to their players in real time.
00:20:22
Speaker
Because it's very important, depending on the kind of game you're building, it's very important that the on-chain data is delivered to users in real time. Otherwise, it could break the experience or something. For example, if you needed to own a particular collectible to play in a certain level or world, if the data is not there in real time, then the user could get kicked out of that world. So it's very important that you're indexing the chain and serving that data to users in real time.
00:20:53
Speaker
Right, and you're only indexing, I'm guessing, a very small slice of the chain. You're checking whether, okay, is this item owned by that master contract and does this player own that item? That's basically what indexing does. You wouldn't query a vast.
00:21:10
Speaker
range of data normally. Yeah. Well, the indexer can, it can query like any data, but you as an individual dev, like it's specific to what you're seeking. And so if folks even want to try it out, you can go to sequence.build and there's an explore button and you can just type in like whatever contract you're looking for or collectibles and you can see all of the data across all EVM chains.
00:21:34
Speaker
Yeah, so it's robust and powerful and also built for game dev. So it's really cool.
Tools for Small Developers
00:21:42
Speaker
Right, yeah. That is really cool. I do like the combination between the traditional development layer and then you adding this another layer of complexity. Well, I say complexity, but in reality, you're simplifying what is otherwise a very complex mechanism where a lot of things can go wrong and you guys are just ensuring that
00:22:03
Speaker
as little of this as possible goes wrong and it's all managed and accounted for. So in terms of if you're thinking about small developer teams or small gaming studios or just independent developers that are looking to build or to experiment with Web3 gaming and Web3 platforms, what is the easiest way for them to onboard onto the Sequence Builder and to get started? And are there any fees for them to be aware of?
00:22:32
Speaker
Yeah, so sequence.build is how you access the builder. And just so everyone knows, the builder is actually a no-code dashboard for builders and brands and games to create and manage their Web3 experiences. So it empowers both technical devs, of course, and then even non-technical folks to deliver amazing Web3 experiences to their desired audience.
00:22:56
Speaker
And yeah, so go to sequence.build. You'll log in. And so it's free to get started. You can just start playing away. You'll see you're given a number of credits, like compute usage credits. And you can just use those. And then once you hit certain thresholds, then you'll be prompted to upgrade your account for paid services. And then there's also, we monetize via the marketplace. So we have the sequence marketplaces solution, which
00:23:25
Speaker
allows you to actually spin up a custom branded in-game or in-app marketplace. You can do it in less than one minute and have your own marketplace. And you can also set the royalties. Royalties are enforced in these marketplaces, which is excellent for both the game dev and the creators and even the players because it helps foster a more sustainable economy.
00:23:48
Speaker
And so the royalties can be customized based on what the developer wants. And then we, as sequence, we take a fee from that as well. So that's how we monetize. But yeah, folks can just get started. And then, of course, if you have any questions, there's help buttons and things of that nature within Builder. You can also join our Discord, which is discord.gg slash sequence. There's a developer community there, including our own team. You can ask questions.
00:24:18
Speaker
Yeah, there's FAQ, like a lot of support if you need it, docs, of course, as well. But yeah, you can just get started at sequence.build.
00:24:25
Speaker
Awesome, I'll make sure to leave links in the description down below for people to follow along and to go and play around in the sandbox. For the marketplace, I also had a look at that, and there's a specific white label marketplace that you can create for game items, semi-fungible, as you call them on the website, and then there's another one for non-fungible items.
Innovating Game Item Standards
00:24:47
Speaker
So is the semi-fungible one, is the only difference, the fact that it's 11.55s,
00:24:53
Speaker
Is that the gaming aspect of it or are there any other mechanisms that make it more game focused rather than the regular one? Yeah, so we actually co-created the ERC 1155 standard five years ago, I think it was. Damn, well done. Saved a lot of people a lot of money there.
00:25:15
Speaker
Yeah, our head of product Philippe Castanqué was instrumental in the creation of ERC-1155 and we needed to do it because in our game Skyweaver, it's a trading card game and I think there are about 800 different characters in the game.
00:25:34
Speaker
And there can be an arbitrary number of copies of a given character. Let's say we're talking about the etheric card. So there could be, you know, 15,000 copies of that card and then there might be
00:25:47
Speaker
40,000 copies of a Blue Dragon or whatever. So we needed to have a token standard that could enable multiple copies of an item that could then be priced the same way. Because the thing with ERC721 is that each one of them is technically its own market.
00:26:07
Speaker
whereas with ERC and M55 you can do things like an automated market maker exchange where the price is algorithmically calculated based on the supply and demand of those cards, right? So we created that token standard and it's also
00:26:24
Speaker
perfectly suitable to most kinds of game items, in fact, because most game items have multiple copies, you know, whether you're talking about like cars in a racing game or ammunition or like farming supplies or tools or skins or whatever.
00:26:40
Speaker
And so yeah, so that your C11 55 and then the sequence marketplaces allows you to create an automated market maker. So it just makes for, for anyone that doesn't really know what an AMM and automated market maker is. What it does is it makes buying for players instant, easy, and seamless. It's just like click and buy.
00:26:59
Speaker
or click and sell. And they don't have to wait. So it's really powerful because that's great for game economies. When players don't want to be waiting around, they might just need something right away. So they got to purchase it to keep their game experience going.
00:27:12
Speaker
Now, there are instances in which ERC 721, the NFT non-fungible token standard makes sense too, right? Like, let's say you have a car, you know, I mentioned car over on 1155, but let's say you have a unique car that's like decked out and has different features on it, and it's a one of one, right? Or if you win some special trophy, because you won a tournament, and you're the only one that has it, or maybe it's land in a,
00:27:42
Speaker
some kind of metaverse or game world experiences where that plot of land is unique to all others, then yeah, it makes sense to have the 721 standard. And there's many other examples. And typically with 721s, you kind of have to do an order book experience.
00:27:57
Speaker
for marketplaces whereby you place a bid order saying like, oh, I'll pay $10 for this thing. And then the seller either accepts or denies that. So sequence marketplaces allows you to have both of those experiences in a way that's seamless for players. So for 721s, they can bid or sell at whatever price they want for 1155.
00:28:17
Speaker
they can do it, the AMM instant click buy sell of that nature. But it's really the marketplace's tool is really made so that it just, it allows game devs to have that marketplace experience in their game rather than driving folks to a third party marketplace, which of course breaks the game experience. And, you know, maybe you send them to a third party and players aren't
00:28:41
Speaker
Uh, they don't, they don't know why they're going to a third party marketplace and they also might not understand or trust the third party marketplace because it's not branded the same as your game. Whereas if it's just in your gaming experience, you know, players, they trust it, uh, it makes it more seamless. And then you also get to retain them within your, your game experience, which you spend a lot of time and energy trying to bring them into in the first place.
00:29:04
Speaker
Right, exactly. And just going back to the previous idea of having different partners, rewarding users that have maybe different, a certain set of items and stuff. It's a lot, it's a lot easier for everyone to see the current supply and demand of items and to figure out what is exactly on the market. And I feel that's always been like, I used to be into MMO games. I'm not anymore right now, just because of lack of time, but I do love them.
00:29:29
Speaker
I used
00:29:44
Speaker
the supply of a certain item. Like if you're really looking for a rare sword or if you happen to find a rare sword in a dungeon, how would you really know how rare this sword is? There would be no way. You could probably get an approximation by looking at things like steam or something.
00:30:01
Speaker
But with Web 3, with 11.55s and with, you know, you could build dashboards then. You could build all sorts of, you could visualize game item data, you know, open and available for everyone. And that would create a fair in-game economy as well as a result of that.
00:30:18
Speaker
Totally. And the game dev could either build it or the community could even build those dashboards, right? Because they can query the blockchain. They could use the sequence builder to create dashboards around it. So because it's transparent and to your point, yeah, get a correct and accurate understanding of that economy. So yeah, it's super powerful.
00:30:37
Speaker
Yeah, and another point I meant to mention about the 1155 is just for people who don't understand the exact differences. A 721, you could have multiple of 721, right? But you would always have a different, you wouldn't have the exact item. You could have the same
00:30:54
Speaker
looking item with the same image, but you'd have a different idea of that item, whereas 1155s have the exact same item. So it's basically like building two different cars that look like each other versus cloning the same car to have more of that exact car. That is the difference. And also to my understanding, that's also why it's a lot cheaper to run it to 1155 contracts and to make transactions with 1155 items rather than 721s. Yes. Yeah, exactly.
00:31:23
Speaker
I just wanted to go back into Skyweaver for a moment and talk about fungibility and volume of items. Obviously, it's a game that's growing and more players are being onboarded. How do you decide what is the current supply of a certain item? Is there a limited supply? And what happens once all of the items are owned and the treasury can't create any more items?
00:31:52
Speaker
What's the gaming dynamics in that perspective? So it depends on the kind of item and game mode. And we are actually in the process of releasing a massive update to Skyweaver that I won't go into a tremendous amount of detail, but it has new game modes like tournament systems, all sorts of incredible innovations to the game to really help it
00:32:17
Speaker
Become this crossover game that brings the traditional trading card game audience both physical and digital folks over to skyweaver and have this incredible Experience that happens to be powered by web 3 and so but in terms of items it just depends like For example, we had this game mode called conquest whereby the
00:32:44
Speaker
the winners of it. Okay, so I'll take a step back. There are base cards in the game, which are non blockchain items. And they're just they allow you free access to the game. And you would never have to pay anything. It's a free to play game. So you could just play with these base cards. And you would unlock over time by just leveling up, you would unlock access to all the different kinds of strategies.
00:33:05
Speaker
or you could buy silver cards, which are ERC 1155. So we call them SFTs, semi-fungible tokens. Other people call them NFTs, even though technically they're not non-fungible because they are fungible with another card. They're a digital collectible.
00:33:22
Speaker
Um, and so you can buy that to kind of like accelerate a bit. Um, you know, different strategies that you index you can build. And then there are gold cards, which are an even, um, they're, they're a rare form of the ownable cards. Um, but
00:33:41
Speaker
the base, silver, and gold all have the same mechanics. It's just there's differences in terms of ownership and rarity. And so the way that the gold cards were minted into existence was via this game mode called Conquest, which was a competitive mode that you would actually buy into with a silver card or with a $1.50 USDC.
00:34:04
Speaker
And the winners of the conquest, which was like this kind of eight-person tournament thing, the winners would generate a gold card. So it would mint into existence. It didn't exist previously. They would mint it into existence by winning a conquest. And then they would own it. And we would, for each week, we would have eight different characters that could be won via, as a gold card, via conquest.
00:34:30
Speaker
And then after that week, those gold cards would never be minted again of those eight characters. And then the next week, there'd be a new eight characters. So the supply of those golds just depended entirely on how many conquest tournaments were played each week.
00:34:49
Speaker
And then, you know, you could have sinks whereby someone just destroys a card, like they send it, they burn it. And then that would reduce the supply, but it would never increase. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. And is it, do you guys work with, do you have a dowel that kind of helps you make decisions around the kind of direction of the game? Or do you have a community that helps with ideas or new features that you want adding to the game or anything like that?
00:35:19
Speaker
Yeah, our community is huge. No official doubt, but our community is everything in a game, right? They're the ones who are playing it. They're the ones you're building for. You want them to love and appreciate it and derive tremendous joy and value from it. And I don't necessarily mean value in the economic sense. I mean it in just in terms of fun. And yeah, there can be some economic value, of course, as well.
00:35:48
Speaker
But yeah, we've been listening to our community. Like we've been building the game out in the open for, I mean, we've been building it for six years and we've been building it in the open for the last like five and a bit years since our very first alpha.
Community Collaboration in Game Development
00:36:00
Speaker
And it's been an open beta for almost two years now. I think I may be mixing up my timelines, but I think it's almost two years or a year and a half.
00:36:09
Speaker
And yeah, so we're constantly listening to our players. We have things like private test servers in which we invite select members of the community who are super passionate to test out new features and give us feedback on how those should change. We consult with various economists about how to level up the economy, which we're doing in this new massive update to Skyweaver.
00:36:37
Speaker
So yeah, it's very much, you know, in a sense, it's built by a village, it's built by a lot of people. And there's feedback solicited from everywhere. But at the same time, our team maintains authority over what actually ends up in the game. So it's not it's not like designed by committee, it's feedback and ideas solicited and created by the entire committee, but then decisions are made by
00:37:04
Speaker
you know, our game director, the game design team, our economy team. Right. But I think that's exactly what drives a lot of value from a Web3 organization is this two-way communication that you didn't use to have it nearly as much as you do right now. It's this close interaction between the community, between the people who
00:37:27
Speaker
know the solution and know what they want from it and also the people who have built it. And I just feel like it's creating almost like a flat structure between the organization and the user base with people listening on both sides. I'm really excited about how all of that works and seeing more and more organizations just work closely with the people to create the products and the services that they want.
00:37:55
Speaker
And I do hope this continues in the future, and I hope that the future of Web 3 remains in as much as possible, decentralized, and people being able to make decisions about the software or the games that they're passionate about. We all remember $3 horse armor that nobody wanted, so it's really important to have your finger on the pulse and just talk to the community at all times, I feel.
00:38:21
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's incredibly exciting too. And to your point, there's many different structures and frameworks for which games can be developed now. You know, there are DAOs that govern certain games. You know, we'll see how those work because
00:38:37
Speaker
It does kind of depend on how much game design experience you have. Like building a game is very complex. It's difficult. Um, so it does in many scenarios help to have decision makers with authority, um, that can make kind of unilateral decisions because I think communities are amazing at identifying problems in games because, you know, you might have a game design team might have an idea for what will work, but then once it's.
00:39:05
Speaker
um, unleashed in the wild folks find all sorts of exploits or issues or whatever. Right. And then they tell you like, Hey, this thing's broken. This isn't working. Um, and then sometimes they do actually, the community actually will give you the exact solution. Like someone will say, like, I think you should do it like this. And then you think about it and you're like, yeah, that is the right approach. Um, other times people will provide you a solution that it
00:39:28
Speaker
They might think they want, but in fact, it would actually be terrible for the game, but they have identified the problem, which is incredibly valuable. So yeah, I think the symbiosis, the feedback loop is essential for a lot of these live ops games to make something that the players adore, right? Because that's ultimately, again, what you're trying to do is just create an experience that the players will love, that they'll tell the friends about, that they'll keep playing for years.
00:39:56
Speaker
Yeah. Do you think there's a potential use case for in-game rewards or tokens of some kind for people who do join early stage like Open Beta or Close Beta even to kind of monetize those bug bounties that people put their time into? Yeah. So I'll answer that question in two parts. One,
00:40:19
Speaker
In Skyweaver, as an example, I know many other games do this as well. We gave all of our alpha testers and private betas, like earlier versions of the game, we gave them all these crystals in the game. So they're, they're ERC 1155, but they're capped based on, like there's a finite number of them and none will ever create it. So I think there's like,
00:40:41
Speaker
I forget the exact numbers, but some of the crystals might have a supply of like 50. And then other of the crystals might have a supply of like 2000. And as the game keeps growing, right, those crystals are pretty cool because you see them on the player's title and profile. And so they might want to sell that at some point because there is demand for them. And then
00:41:07
Speaker
Yeah. In terms of other kinds of rewards and bug bounties for sure. Like I think that that makes a lot of sense to give, like we've, we've put out bounties for the community to create specific features for the game or like a tool that we could leverage for our marketing team as an example. Um, or if someone, yeah, like they figure out the solution to a particular issue. Um, bounties are a really wonderful way to like create even deeper engagement for those who are, uh, you know, technically inclined.
00:41:34
Speaker
Yeah. Um, what is your vision of the gaming industry, say five to 10 years from now?
Web3's Impact on Game and Global Economies
00:41:46
Speaker
Uh, so I think the majority of games being built five to 10 years from now, we'll leverage web three in some way. Um, and
00:42:03
Speaker
I think we're going to unlock a lot of new game design space. There's gonna be these innovative player experiences that weren't possible prior to. Every kind of new era of gaming has done this. It's unlocked new player experiences. Some might argue that free to play didn't as much, but I still think it did because it unlocked like a lot of mobile casual games and just like new kind of economic models too for game devs.
00:42:33
Speaker
But yeah, I think the majority of games in five to 10 years that are being built at that time will leverage web three in some way for these unprecedented player experiences. And I think much more passionate communities because of the things we've been talking about, like this sense of ownership that a community and players will have in a game, this sense of participation that they have towards how the game evolves.
00:42:58
Speaker
And we're going to have a next generation of economies in games, because web three is going to shift this to a large degree and we're just at the.
00:43:09
Speaker
Like we're at the beginning, right? In terms of the kinds of economies that will exist. And what's interesting is I actually think a lot of these game economies are going to start to influence kind of like macroeconomic, um, like global economies, because there's, you know, if there's like hundreds of thousands of games being built and each one of them has a slightly different economy.
00:43:33
Speaker
We're going to discover something as a species like, whoa, like this is a really powerful economy design we should actually extrapolate that and implement it more broadly, not just in the right, like into the physical world, because we're now testing like kind of real, like equivalence of real economies, rather than totally, like with real ownership.
00:43:57
Speaker
Yeah, I'm so excited for the next five to 10 years. And then beyond that, too, because I think the experience is going to be more immersive, more symbiotic, more fun. I think people are going to derive more meaning from them. And then when you start layering technologies like VR and AR and things like Apple Vision Pro and
00:44:18
Speaker
Oh man, that Apple Vision Pro is crazy. I can't wait to see the second or third iteration of it. People are going to stop leaving
Future of Gaming: VR, AR, and Reality Questions
00:44:25
Speaker
their houses. I'm 100% convinced people will live in the Vision Pro for the vast majority of the day.
00:44:33
Speaker
I'm not sure if you've played it or if you've heard of it, but there was a very good game that explored this concept. It was called Dreamfall, the longest chapters. It's a game from 2004, I believe. So you're playing as this girl called Zoe Castillo and all of a sudden you realize that there's actually two worlds.
00:44:54
Speaker
There's one world that's very science, very tech driven. You have flying cars and maglev trains. And one of the other things you have is this device that you just put on your face and it transports you into this other world, which is a magical world full of mythical beings and it's ruled by magic. But it turns out that these both worlds are actually real. And that's just the mechanism that allows you to connect to that other world.
00:45:20
Speaker
So in the technological world, people are addicted to these things because then they can go to this magical world and have different kind of interactions that are completely alien from that world. Yeah. So you may have noticed on horizon.io, we talk about a new dimension, where economies are fun, accessible, and for the benefit of all participants. And
00:45:47
Speaker
It's because this next generation of games that's powered by Web 3 and then might leverage also VR and AR and Apple Vision Pro and these different kinds of devices, it actually is another dimension, another layer of reality that people can explore and participate and enjoy.
00:46:09
Speaker
It's no, yeah, and it's not less real than this, this realm of reality, it's just maybe it's less physical. But, or there might be haptic experiences in which it becomes seemingly as physical.
00:46:24
Speaker
And this contemplation always makes me think that we already exist in a blockchain based virtual reality, the one that you and I are communicating in, you know, and like our clothes are NFTs or SFTs secured to the blockchain that prove that I can't wear the t-shirt at this t-shirt at the same time you're wearing it.
00:46:44
Speaker
Yeah, I mean 100% who's to say what's real and what's not because we're here having a conversation Through magic underwater internet cables, right and I'm in my living room You're in your office and and but it is real even though we're not physically in this space The experience that we're having is real as real as it can be, you know through camera audio all that but imagine if you could stimulate the brain to feel sensations or emotions or
00:47:14
Speaker
that would be 100% a real experience. And as it is exciting, it's also frightening to think about at the same time. Totally, man. I mean, did you see the interview between Lex Friedman and Mark Zuckerberg in the meta world? I watched, I saw snippets of it. I watched like a compilation of the best bits of it. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm pretty sure it doesn't have haptic
00:47:42
Speaker
sense, sense yet. But when Lex is in this virtual experience, like a VR experience and interacting with Mark Zuckerberg, it's almost as though he's having this kind of, as though he's seeing God, because it's like he, he realizes he's like, his brain starts to not be able to differentiate between the fact that he's in a virtual experience. It just starts feeling so real to him that he's like, whoa, like he feels as though he's with Mark in this other realm.
00:48:12
Speaker
and unaware that it's a virtual experience. And then it makes him question like, okay, what is real? And I agree with your point of it. It's wonderful. And simultaneously, there is a frightening component to it because
00:48:28
Speaker
I don't particularly desire a world where people are just sitting in their house all day and drinking through a straw, some kind of supplement. I think we remain biological beings in our physical hardware. Our bodies require movement and activity to create and enable proper hormonal response within our physiological ecosystem.
00:48:53
Speaker
But I mean at the same time, if in fact, like maybe you and I right now are in a virtual reality, right? And these bodies we can move and it's as real and stimulating as we've ever known. So maybe we are sitting in a pod somewhere, but because we're stimulating our neurology in a particular way that like our physical vessels elsewhere, or if we even have a physical elsewhere in the other dimension, like maybe it's fine and perfectly healthy. I don't know. And maybe that's achievable in this next,
00:49:22
Speaker
iteration. Obviously lots to think about and both awe-inspiring and to your point at the same time there is a frightening component to it.
00:49:32
Speaker
I think if there's a balance to it, though, then that could definitely work. I feel like having a virtual space where you can have real experiences is needed purely because sometimes you have to communicate in an increasingly globalized world. You have to communicate with people remotely. You have to work with people remotely as well. So it makes perfect sense. I also think
00:49:54
Speaker
There will definitely be some people that are going to overdo it and are going to end up obsessing over that reality. But that's with all things. I feel like there's a certain thing about human beings that makes them obsess over something or gets them addicted to something. I'm not sure exactly what it is or to put my finger on.
00:50:14
Speaker
But it's humans. And if we learn to become better humans and control those urges, I feel like we shouldn't we shouldn't put a foot in front of innovation because because, you know, what if we get addicted to it? Yeah. Well, I hope we do get addicted to it and we learn from it.
00:50:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, to your point, there's a famous neuroscientist named Dr. Carl Hart, and in all the studies and scientific exploration he's done, he's concluded, whether he's right or wrong, I don't know, but he's concluded that there is no activity or substance on Earth that is any more addictive than any other.
00:50:53
Speaker
So heroin has the same addictive properties as going to the gym does, as going for long walks, as video games do, as writing does, as painting does. And it just depends on the individual human and their upbringing and genetics and environment and everything. And so I agree with your point that all tools have the potential for
00:51:19
Speaker
wonderful creations and for being exploited and overdone and detrimental, you know, like you could use a pencil to create beautiful art and poetry, or you could use it for violence by like, yeah, something with it, right? Like, it's a neutral thing. So I agree with you that we shouldn't like halt innovation around these technologies, because we're gonna and I think historically,
00:51:41
Speaker
most, almost all technologies, of course, not every single one, but almost all technologies have been net beneficial. Um, even if they have some downsides to them and on, if you take all of them together, it's definitely net beneficial, at least in my opinion. And I think most people, so it's good to continue the exploration and yeah, at times like regulation and oversight is required to just like keep things on the rails and not have us go too far out of control.
Optimism and Challenges in Tech Regulation
00:52:12
Speaker
But yeah, I think it's like, I'm tremendously optimistic and I always have been about where we're heading because I also think a lot of the people building these things have good intentions. I know like we do, like our company values that love openness and play, right? So that's what we're trying to infuse more of into the world. And I know we're not the only ones. So yeah, I'm really optimistic and excited.
00:52:33
Speaker
And the more we learn about ourselves as humans, the more we can mediate any kind of addiction or anything like that. I'm just going to look it up because I've recently heard a quick talk between Andrew Huberman and David Goggins about a certain part of the brain that was just discovered recently, and it was called, I'll tell you right now,
00:52:59
Speaker
It's called the mid-singulate cortex. You actually have two of those in your brain. One on your left side, one on your right side. And it has to do with basically drive and willpower. The more things you do that you don't like doing,
00:53:14
Speaker
them bigger that area becomes. So you'll see like athletes or people who were overweight and then they lost a ton of weight. You'll see that these areas are really large, which means that, you know, if you're used to doing things you don't like to do, you're also less likely to be addicted about things because you're used to that. Oh, this sucks, but I'm used to that sucky feeling, you know? Yeah, totally, man. I mean, I, it doesn't surprise me. I've heard Huberman talk about that. Not with, what did you call the part of the brain?
00:53:45
Speaker
Uh, mid-singulate cortex. Cool. Mid-singulate cortex. So I've heard him talk about that notion of doing hard things and the consequences of it. Not with not having yet identified the name of that part of the brain, but you know, I can identify personally with that. Like as a kid, I was overweight and then I became like a pretty hardcore athlete, you know, and I move and I work out physically every day of my life. Like this morning I did, you know, every day I love movement and.
00:54:13
Speaker
and exertion. And I tend not to have like an addictive personality thing. I don't find things addictive really. I mean, I may be addicted to movement and physical activity. And I also might be kind of addicted to like, that's a good kind of addiction though. Yeah, exactly. And like, I love working and creating and, um,
00:54:34
Speaker
But yeah, I understand and it's cool that you share that. Things like ice baths, for example. I don't know if you do those, but they're hard. At first, they don't feel good, but then the more you do it, the more you're just like, yeah, I can do this. And you become a bit desensitized, but at the same time, you derive the benefit from it.
00:54:55
Speaker
And then you can apply that to all areas of your life because to create something really powerful and beneficial, it's likely going to require some difficulty and struggle. And if you can endure through that, then the opportunity on the other side, like the reward, the fulfillment is so incredibly powerful. Well, you wouldn't have been able to get there unless you could have subjected yourself to some of the hardship.
00:55:16
Speaker
Oh yeah, and I think that's exactly what humans will need throughout their development. They need that kind of hardship, whether it happens and it's incidental. You listen to some of the best self-made people out there in the world, and more often than not, they have had hard experiences. They have had things they had to go through, which eventually,
00:55:39
Speaker
kick-started their growth you know and like you said that the ice baths is definitely one of them um i i don't have like a proper um a proper ice bath i have i have my bathtub i live in an apartment and i'll tell you what during winter the
00:55:54
Speaker
That water gets so cold. It's not as cold in the summer because the pipes are warmer. So if you go full cold, it's manageable. But in the winter, oh my God, I actually did one before the podcast and my skin was all red and I was shaking and I was numb and it sucked, but I felt great afterwards.
00:56:11
Speaker
Yeah, man. Oh, totally. I love that you have that setup. And I can certainly empathize with the difference of how the water feels when you're in a cold climate versus being in a hot one when you crank it all the way. I mean, it's equivalent to an ice bath, even if the temperature is a bit different. Personally, I find like below a certain level, I'm not even able to differentiate that much. It's just like my brain and body are registering it as like, this is extremely cold. And I think you get the same benefit.
00:56:39
Speaker
Yeah, how cold do you normally go or for how long? Some of my friends run this, they founded this company in Canada that's now expanding into the US and I'm sure globally. It's called Othership and it's like sauna and ice bath and it's wonderful, like really incredible community.
00:56:58
Speaker
the ice baths they have there, I think they range anywhere between like zero degrees Celsius and up to six degrees Celsius, just depending like how many people might have cycled through it, it'll affect the temperature. But like I've even had the experience of going into the lake and like eight degree water that's moving will feel more intense than zero degree water that's still
00:57:26
Speaker
Oh yeah. Yeah. And I've been in two degree water that's moving. Like it's, uh, actually I've been in yet minus one degree water because we like broke through the ice. So like it, it depends on our state. Like I kind of treat two minutes as like the baseline as like that. I think that's when you derive most, like a lot of the benefits come in the first 30 seconds. And then I think you get most of them within two minutes.
00:57:49
Speaker
And then I think when you go beyond that, a lot of it's just about like willpower and, and actually you can begin to acclimatize and feel more comfortable the longer you spend in it. I think the longest I've ever gone though, it's like six minutes. My fiance is gone like 11 minutes. I have some, but I usually just do like two to three minutes.
00:58:08
Speaker
Yeah, about the same. I've been doing two to three minutes in the winter when the water is a lot colder. I had to make up for it in the summer, so I stay longer. I go like 11, 15 minutes or however long it takes until I feel like I hate this. And then once I get to that point, I just get out. But this is cool. I didn't know about other ship. I've just checked it out now. That seems like a really cool idea. Yeah, it's awesome, man. And some of my best friends, they're really growing. It's really cool to see.
00:58:38
Speaker
That's sweet, dude. Do you have any announcements at all or any upcoming things that you wish to announce regarding Horizon? Any developments, any games, anything new and up and coming that people should be aware of?
00:58:51
Speaker
Um, yeah, I would say just stay tuned to sequence dot XYZ and like follow our Twitter on there because we'll be announcing more and more gaming partnerships. Um, really exciting games over like all of this year and into the years to come. There's some, there's some big exciting games coming and some also like.
00:59:09
Speaker
really cool indie games in the pipeline. And yeah, just try out. And also if you're a gamer like Skyweaver, there's a big update coming soon. So pay attention to Skyweaver.net and follow the Twitter there. And yeah, actually we'll later be announcing a really big
00:59:27
Speaker
hire that joined our team, but I can't disclose who it is yet. But just follow our socials and you'll be up to date. And if you are a dev, go try out Sequence Builder at sequence.build. I think you'll find it really powerful, really easy to use. And of course, we're always open to feedback if you think of issues you're having with it or new ideas for it. So yeah.
00:59:54
Speaker
Awesome, dude. Well, thanks a lot for the amazing conversation. It's been a pleasure having you here. I do have one more thing that I meant to ask and I forgot and just came back into my mind now. You guys have managed to partner up and secure investments for some of the biggest gaming studios out there. One of them is Take Two, which is the parent company of Rockstar. Are we expecting Rockstar to step into Web 3? And are we expecting GTA 6 to have cryptocurrencies? Is the question on everyone's mind?
01:00:24
Speaker
I hope so, but nothing official yet. I don't think they'll have anything when GTA six first comes out, but because it's a live operations game.
01:00:37
Speaker
there's nothing stopping it from having Web 3 in the future. Because, you know, GTA 5 has been rocking for, what, 10 years? Yeah, more than 10 years, yeah. So I think GTA 6, they're probably hoping and planning for it to last that long as well. So it can release without Web 3 and blockchain, but then add in the future. Nothing official yet, though, and it's
01:01:02
Speaker
Yeah, but we are really fortunate to have Take Two as an investor in Horizon. They've been incredibly supportive. Also Ubisoft as an investor. And then in like the Web3 space Coinbase, Polygon, Brevin Howard was our lead investor in our Series A. And we've been really fortunate to have the support of some of the most visionary and brilliant tech, gaming, and venture investors and companies in the world.
01:01:30
Speaker
Right. Well, it does look like there's a lot of talent and a lot of passion there for making great products and great games. And all of these gaming studios are in really safe hands when it comes to building web 3 infrastructure. And I'm happy and excited about your guys' partnerships. And I'm really looking forward to see what are the new things that you guys are going to be building as well as some of the games that are definitely going to come out that are going to be using your stack.
01:01:55
Speaker
Um, once again, great, great conversation, man. Thanks a lot. Um, and have a great rest of your day. Thanks so much, Andre. Thanks to everyone listening. Thank you. Thanks everyone. Bye.