The Future of Gaming | Ryan Wyatt, Polygon Studios

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1:26weather and the fluctuations that new york often brings they have a patented built-in outer shell cover to keep your furniture dry from rain and dew it's the how did no one think of this before product for me on the outdoor furniture front i've absolutely loved it and i know you will too see the difference at liveouter.com room and now through may 1st you'll get 300 off plus free shipping again that's live outer o-u-t-e-r dot com slash room and get 300 off plus free shipping only available to our podcast listeners you're going to absolutely love it [Music] dude your haircut looks good man thank you fresh it's fresh it's uh i

2:16feel like it's got clean shape to it um still got some good height good what do you got for product in there today ask me how much i spent on this haircut do i want to know just am i going to feel bad because it's so low or am i going to be embarrassed for you because it's so high just look at the product like you said there's no way to not offend you with the answer here because either i go high and you're like oh it was am i that rich haircut guy or i go or i go low and you're like does it look bad um

2:5180 bucks 18 canadian dollars wow 13 us dollars oh no haircut inflation in in in canada these days huh nice yeah nice i dude i i i still i think i pay 65 for a haircut which feels high but you kind of get like a whole experience out of it like i get you get a like shoulder massage you get the like warm towel finish and stuff so it's a little bit of like it's almost like a spa day that you're paying for um and i don't know i like to treat myself with it it's one of my guilty pleasures totally well what do you got what do you want to

3:28talk about today oh man well we have an awesome guest coming on ryan wyatt who is sort of a microcosm of this whole like web 2 to web 3 shift in transition i mean he's a web 2 senior senior executive at google youtube he was the head of gaming and now has like fully red pilled and joined uh polygon studios as ceo so we have him on and given that fact i feel like a good lead in as we have to talk about some cool web 3 [ __ ] that's been happening and one of the latest which i wanted to just pick your brain on was around this

4:02whole hugo labs acquisition of uh the larval labs ip so yugo labs being the board api club's creators um acquired the ip of crypto punks and me bits which are under the larval labs umbrella and um i want to talk about that and then i also want to talk about stripe stripe crypto because that's a big deal so which one do you want to uh which one do you want to start on let's start with stripe okay so for people who aren't familiar stripe um i mean massive behemoth right now like i actually recently got an opportunity to invest in a secondary sale at stripe which you and i and others in our friend

4:41group have been joking about for a while was like something we were trying to do but the most recent valuation i saw was like 215 billion dollars um so i i passed on it personally i'm probably going to be an idiot for passing on it but the old like this has to become a trillion dollar company for me to get any sort of good return on it just not for me personally um so it's a massive like payments behemoth um they're kind of like the rails the infrastructure rails of payments globally their whole mission is they're going to expand the gdp of the internet um which i really

5:13like they're an amazing founding team um but recently they rolled out and entered into crypto and they did it in pretty prototypical stripe fashion which was they didn't roll out one tiny feature or feature set and say like hey we're in crypto they kind of threw the whole [ __ ] thing at you and went into everything and it was a big deal i mean they rolled out um everything from like kyc exchanges wallet enablement to um you know all of the kind of fiat to crypto on-ramps basically full support for crypto businesses so i'm curious what your thoughts are on it and what it means for the space

5:55i mean so when i first saw it i was well first of all pleasantly surprised uh what it means for the space is like i mean it's huge for the space like stripe 200 billion dollar company basically giving these sets of apis is like you know a huge stamp of approval for like so many big companies so love that it's like the equivalent of um shopify doing shopify nfts um and them going into that so i i i feel really good about that i also remember a time when stripe okay straight this is not the first time that stripe has gone into crypto okay stripe has gone into crypto i think it

6:41was initially with bitcoin in 2012 and then again in 2014 i believe and then i think they shut it down maybe in 16. um like the tldr in it was uh the fam the ceo i think his name is john collison is that his name uh patrick collinson's the ceo his brother they're they're brothers patrick and john i don't know what john's title is at the company patrick's kind of the face of the company i think i remember john saying like when they shut it down that we're just like not ready for it like it's just it's too early we tried we like experiment and it's too

7:21early interesting yeah and in 20 i want to say 19 or 20 there was a bunch of job postings on the stripe website basically alluding to the fact that they were hiring a massive crypto team i remember this that had to be like 20 mid late 20 when that was happening because you and i were already friends at that point i remember us all texting about it exactly so interesting what i love about it is they like dabbled a few times they they they cut it short and then they were like okay 20 20 hits it's here we believe in it we understand it we're going like we're gonna build

8:02the swiss army knife for crypto and we're going like all in um i just hope that we don't find ourselves in 12 months from now 18 months from now and they're just like we tried it and we're not gonna you know support it yeah yeah it's interesting i mean the the industrial logic behind it is very strong for them you know they probably saw what a lot of us have seen that the number of businesses building on web 3 rails or building crypto native rails has like 10x or you know there was some stat like the number of developers the number like however you look at it it's

8:31massively massively scaled and they are probably looking at it as both defensive and offensive move right they don't want someone to come in and be the like stripe of crypto and come in and build a better set of rails and infrastructure that kind of push them out from what could be a massive burgeoning market so that's kind of the defensive side and then the offensive side says um you know we we can go out and actually expand the space and be a huge driver of new companies you know with actual fiat on-ramps today and companies that have built in the fiat web 2 world coming into web3 and actually drive you know to

9:03their point on the expansion of gdp on the internet internet the the core mission statement for the company they can actually help promote that within the crypto world and so like i think of an example i heard it i think it was on the bankless podcast they talked about um they use sub stack for their newsletter or convertkit rather you know for a lot of people like i'm going to be switching over to convertkit soon for my newsletter and the rails of that for any payments or are stripe um that's what you're collecting payment through stripe had previously never enabled crypto payments and so you know i have plenty

9:34of friends that are doing crypto newsletters writing about crypto um and they want to be able to collect you know in crypto right like there are people that are subscribers that want to be able to pay in crypto and that was never enabled through sub stack convertkit anywhere but now with stripe offering all of these new crypto features these traditionally web 2 business models actually have an opportunity to now integrate with more web3 features which becomes more inclusive it you know you're going to capture more customers there's new growth opportunities new levers all of this stuff that suddenly becomes becomes open so i think it's a really

10:05interesting step forward it's also just an example of stripe being just maniacal in terms of their execution like what what they rolled out here in one fell swoop was super super impressive and i think there's more to come on that same bankless podcast when they talked about it they were saying that they tried to get the head of stripe crypto um to come on the show and um he or she delayed it because they said there was more coming and so they wanted to come come on the show after that all got rolled out so i thought it was super interesting and clearly more to come from them on it

10:38yeah i think when i think of stripe i think of just like flawless product execution like everything about about them is just like so well done you go to their website you go to stripe atlas like you know the animations are amazing so you just know that if they're coming out with a product it's going to be amazing they feel kind of like the apple of payments yeah when when i think of paypal i think of like old guard clunkies or interface um 90s and on paypal you can send you know buy and buy crypto right and send crypto so it was kind of wild that paypal was quote

11:13unquote ahead of of stripe in in 2019 or 2020 when they launched it that's a great analogy too because i do think like everyone's heard of the paypal mafia you know you had like elon musk peter thiel all these guys that that came out um of paypal uh i think the stripe mafia is probably like the today equivalent of that like if you look 10 years into the future stripe engineers that leave and are starting their next thing you're lucky if you can get in under like a 50 post money valuation into those companies because they're in such high demand because that system is just breeding this

11:49unbelievable product design product management focus um driving things forward and this is an example of that executing so um that's a great one super excited to see what comes from them let's uh before we before we run out of time before ryan gets on here um let's talk about uh yuga and larval labs yeah i mean that was that was huge yeah i think like it was huge on so many levels like the fact that the two you know behemoths in this space became one overnight was just is just so big and there's just so many downstream effects of that happening like people didn't know what was going to happen

12:26and yeah people don't know what's going to happen and just to set the stage on it hugo labs is the creator of board api club um which i think they meant it originally in like what march 2021 or april 2021 um april first actually something like that yeah okay okay um and it was you know it was a it was a big deal at the time people that were real observers of the space realized there was something different that they were doing it was kind of one of the first like uh of the 2021 rush of pfp projects and like something different that kind of got you unique access uh community etc

13:03um yugo labs then had this like slew of value that was created for the initial kind of mentors and owners of board api club i saw a tweet yesterday that just said if you bought and hold a single board ape from that initial mint which was .08 eth 230 at the time you would have gotten one ape which is now a floor of 93 each 263 thousand dollars one mutant tape because that was the spinoff project you got access that's a floor of 19 eth one kennel club ape which is 7.2 eth and now the ape coin that they airdrop to all ape owners uh you would have gotten 13

13:41848 ape coins which is worth around 200 000 so the 230 initial mint to get the first board ape that you got would now be worth well north of 500 000 and that's the worst case scenario right that is the worst that is the floor the floor so it's totally possible that you meant something rare and it's like a gold ape and you're sitting on two million dollars this has to go down by the way is one of my worst investment misses of my life at this point now that i'm looking at it because i had friends who talked i don't think i would have gotten in the initial

14:15mint but i could have bought one at like you know i don't know probably one eighth realistically um at the time i think you talked about it i shared it yeah and i just i at the time i didn't know what an nft was i didn't have time to think about it but completely whiffed um so i'm pretty embarrassed looking at it but the the point with this acquisition that was interesting beyond just you know this incredible growth of the board ape ecosystem was i think this ip thing which which we've discussed in the past um in the context of disney and and old world versus new world and there's a

14:47little bit of that happening here yugo labs has been um from a commercial standpoint much more open with the ip so any board ape owner if you own a board ape um you actually own the commercial rights to that ape meaning if you want to put your board ape in a tv show or in a movie or in some art you own that and the value comes to you you actually accrue the value that your board ape might create in that world crypto punx which was a larva labs product didn't have that the ip was still owned by larva labs so if you owned a punk

15:21which is really the like first pfp you know amazing pfp project the commercial rights to that are actually still owned by larva labs and so in this acquisition the big deal i thought was that hugo labs acquired all of the ip from larva labs around both crypto punks and me bits another project and then actually gave all the commercial rights to the holders of the punks um to the holders of those assets and so suddenly it was like you took this old world strategy which is a little confusing to me that crypto punks had in the first place and it actually just gets brought into the new world

15:54where everything is all of a sudden open and you own the commercial rights if you own a punk i try to comment on that piece the end piece what would have been the only thing that would have made that more badass would have been if they gave uh all punk holders cco which we've talked about on the pod before public domain where all of all of the punks are now in the public domain and and basically people if anyone wants to print a t-shirt with on it they could um and that's not just to clarify so cco um is different from what yooka labs does right so like they

16:32uh board apes are not cco technically right like i can't um sell a t-shirt with your board ape on it right now that's right and and that's why and this isn't financial advice but that's this is like why i'm so bullish on cco like i actually think that like the next generation of big pfp projects and big nft projects are going to be cco so that's the one thing i would have changed well let me push back on you there because because i think this is an interesting actual point of debate so so with cco i guess i totally agree with you that cco is part of the future if the like

17:09brand level continues to benefit from it so like if crypto punks went cco and everyone's allowed to put punks on billboards and everywhere and it doesn't matter it's public domain you can use it in artwork etc the broader punk ecosystem i think benefits from it but my punk that i own i'm not actually getting any value from that maybe i am indirectly i suppose through the like ecosystem growing but my punk someone's just using it and showing it everywhere so like the um the provenance i feel like might get deluded in my in my mind versus what this is which is like i can commercially sell and use my individual

17:50pumpkin so if i want to go get t-shirts made and sell them with my punk on it i have the right to do that but at the broader level no one else can use it so i guess i'm wrestling with like it's a broader it's a broader play and a broader perspective on what kind of value expansion and value looks like in this cco world when people explain nfts to people who don't get nfts the example that most people use is the mona lisa example and i think you've used that example in the past where you say like you know yes i can go and take a picture

18:28of the mona lisa and i can go print uh a print of it and put on my wall but there's only one mona lisa in the louvre in paris france it's the bullish case for cco says uh a very similar thing which is you can go and print as many crypto punks let's say it is cco you can go and print it everywhere and the idea is that the more people the more people see the meme the better it is and the value accrues to the whole project that as a whole very much so um that's actually great i'm changing my mind on it in real time as you're

19:06explaining it actually because um if you say that like being part of this community so say it's board apes um being part of this community has value uh right now you know maybe there's 10 million people in the world i don't know pick up a number that that understand board apes and the value of it you go cco with it suddenly board apes are in movies there's a comic show there's um content being created around it there's billboards there's events whatever you actually owning one and having the provenance of the single one that you own still gets you access to that community but suddenly that community

19:42has a lot more prestige around it because it's everywhere everyone is seeing the logos the images all the pictures all over the world and so suddenly you being a part of that community actually has more value than before because it's being so broadly memed and disseminated um so that actually is starting to click for me a little bit more yeah so to use that analogy of like the board apes movie for example like maybe it's yeah anyone can go and create a board board apes movie but there's incentives for the people creating uh let's say it's you know um mr tarantino who wants to go and create

20:20a board 8 movie i don't know if he would but let's just say he would and he has incentive to go work with the board ape community to get them involved because they have all the culture and buying and stuff like that so maybe every board ape holder is an executive producer of that film yeah it um it's starting to click for me a lot more it also kind of continues to speak to me about like what we talked about with gary vee um on the show when he was on i don't know when that was two months ago um about how most nft projects are going to

20:51go to zero and that there's a lot of downside pressure in all of them and it sort of makes sense right like 99 of movies go nowhere and make no money 99 of songs uh get zero listens right like the top point zero one percent of singers on spotify actually get any meaningful revenue from it and so i just think that's kind of the same right like it's the analog here is that 99 of these art projects are going to be worth nothing and zero and that's fine there's actually nothing wrong with that but for these ones that are end up being the premium you know premiere projects um

21:24there's going to be massive massive value created in the same way that like you know there were probably a million things that were created at the same time as star wars but only one of them ended up being star wars and george lucas is a billionaire because of it um so that's kind of how i'm starting to think about this space as i've like personally wrestled with it over time well i i'm glad you're coming along a little bit there um i don't necessarily sorry just to add one more point that doesn't necessarily make me like an investor in the space because um it speaks to the point that like i don't

21:56really understand what makes these projects um you know winners versus not i rely on smart friends like if you send a thing again and you say hey this looks really interesting it's an interesting project i'm probably gonna go like buy one of those things because i'm not doing the board ape thing again and actually that did happen with like cryptos that you tipped me off to that i ended up making some money on not this kind of money but um that's an example of it for sure and that's a great example because cryptos is cco and one of the reasons you were seeing it everywhere was because

22:26it is cco ah interesting yeah so it all comes full circle the last thing on the board apes thing and the you know you collapsing i think i'm sorry the eucalapsing and larval labs thing is you know money this is this is gonna you know go down as like the google you know buying youtube moment or the facebook buying instagram moment um you know it's just going to be such a pivotal time in nft history and i think that also coincided with the leaking of i don't know if you saw but they leaked or someone leaked the

23:05hugo labs fundraising deck it's like 95. um which i encourage everyone to go check out and it basically outlines what their whole strategy is what they're going to do with apecoin which is what which is what they dropped which is the in-game currency um with what they're going to do with virtual land they're going to sell like a cup you know i forget i forget how many but thousands of uh virtual land pieces um and what their profit margin is which is something crazy like 98 profit margin fascinating i got to pull this up we should add it to the show notes when this drops um super super interesting i

23:47think we've got ryan in the waiting room so let's uh let's bring him in and dive into uh to more of this stuff there he is what up guys what's up how you doing how you doing man i'm doing well thanks for asking how about yourself doing great we just had a full conversation with your chair that was a lot of fun actually oh sorry hi yeah i was i'm like all right they're not here yet so i'll go get some jokes i'm just giving you [ __ ] it was uh it was funny i got to throw in a good dad joke the chair's more exciting than me

24:18so hopefully you're ready for this uh i would yeah i'd push back against that we'll find out though i guess yeah yeah if this ever gets uploaded we'll know real quick 93 of your life is spent indoors but so many of our best moments are outdoors that's why i'm so excited to share with you outer outer makes the world's most beautiful comfortable and durable outdoor furniture when i moved to new york last year and got a new place one of my priorities was finding an outdoor workspace outer's products have provided me with that game changing experience i now have outdoor furniture that's durable that has modular designs it has

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25:40interested in investing in commercial real estate but not sure where to start me too well lex has created a new way for you to invest in real estate lex turns individual buildings into public stocks via ipo so you can invest trade and manage your own portfolio of high quality commercial real estate any u.s investor can open a lex account browse opportunities in various asset classes such as multi-family and office buildings and buy shares of these individual buildings lex opens up direct and tax advantage ownership in an asset class that has previously been inaccessible to most investors get started today and explore lex's live assets in new york city and an upcoming

26:22ipo in seattle sign up for free at lex dash markets dot com slash room and get a 50 bonus when you deposit at least 500 well appreciate you coming on man this is a long time coming super super excited to have the discussion and um you know have a lot we wanted to dig in dig into with you um would love to just start with you know you are someone who if i track your career and some of the things you've done it strikes me that you've consistently been out in front and kind of on the frontier of things you've like been been one of these people that has

26:58you're going to call it luck but like this special ability to see into the future and i think the first iteration of that was with you know your role at google and youtube and gaming and kind of um esports streaming it wasn't really a thing when you when you joined so we'd love to just hear about like what called you to that how did you land there and what were some of the things you saw happening um that led to you making that jump do you want to do you want a rather long-winded explanation to some of that that provide content yeah as long as long as you uh as you

27:30see fit i love it okay so um what happened for me was um i was playing when i was in high school i played uh counter-strike competitively and i really liked that and i wasn't really good at it but i was still playing in like tournaments and really going down that that rabbit hole and that was very early days so this is let's say 2002 3 right like very early counter-strike was kind of still in its infancy but half-life had taken off the mods had taken off i i also played baseball in high school so i had this huge like deep love for sports competitively yes love that and

28:04um um gaming right and so i was like wow esports like this is a cool world i'm like it's kind of all the stuff that i love that intertwine and so after the introduction of that um i kind of like always became very enamored with with uh you know games being played at a higher level um when i was like yeah go ahead can we just talk about that moment for a little bit i confess as well i was a counter-strike you know esports player i participated in the world cyber games in 2000 oh nice yes um and i you know played uh cal premiere do you remember that

28:47yeah so cpo cal days were the best they're the best right so i know 99.9 percent of our listeners don't know what we're talking about but i want to talk about esports back then and how wild west it was and and and how you know because how i got into communities and internet communities was through you know irc yeah you know websites like got frag.com internet communities like that so i i think like tell that story because no one you know no one talks about it no that's funny greg like uh it's even nostalgic you even bringing things up uh like some of those like sub communities

29:22back then um yeah i mean basically what happened for me i got really into uh the different mods like team fortress classic and then counter-strike and then just started searching where people were coming together and so the cpl um obviously that's where players were playing at the highest level and i was not playing in that right um and that's where some legends like you know fatality come from where the cpl and wcg were really big and it was really the the dawn of uh pc esports in the united states of america right like you had already seen it you know happening with starcraft and south korea and so forth

29:52so it's really kind of coming to western english-speaking markets um and you know counter-strike and quake and a lot of these other big games are really starting to crack the surface here um and so for me i was like this is so cool right like look at this like people are filling out ballrooms they're playing video games for money i mean it was just like what a crazy experience and so you know as like a 14 15 year old you know i'm like oh yeah i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna be one of those guys one day right um and so i have you know you start in cal

30:19which was basically the cyber amateur league this they already have this great system on like how you could kind of go through the funnel as a you could be a terrible player and start in the open league find your rhythm find teams find organizations find community right and just find people that you want to play with and get along well as same skill level and then as you went through these tournament brackets you could go into like cali which was invitational and so forth ultimately leading to like what the what you know the top one percent of the one percent which were the ones that were playing in the tournaments so this

30:49is just my like i got introduced to this whole world you could watch the broadcast on half-life tv right so they basically would allow you to kind of like queue up as a spectator in the game and watch the game through the client which was like yeah i mean you're really starting to get into the like oh now you're broadcasting and watching other people you know you'd have like 100 people fill a room and watch it uh but it was just like it was really really cool times and cool experience and and you really saw the the the groundwork being laid for what the future inevitably would be of

31:18just watching people play video games but it actually ironically started with the most hardcore niche part of what the gaming video industry is which is hardcore competitive esports it actually represents a very very small amount of the total percentage of gaming watch time when you think about it but it is now the most premium and upper echelon and so it gets a lot of praise but um yeah i kind of went in at a very like in that way my take uh my take is like if you want to see the future go to silicon valley but if you want to see the future also go check out what

31:53hardcore esports gamers are doing yeah that's like my background yeah silicon valley is overrated now man going to silicon valley i don't know allows you to uh to see if you i think there's probably more of the future in like discord servers um than you can find in actually on the ground in silicon valley these days i think that's right and i don't think that's a bad thing either i think that's just like the natural maturation of silicon valley that now has become so big right you know if you look at like 20 years past right you work there because it's on the cutting edge we don't know what the

32:24internet's going to look like these are the companies that are pushing it forward and they did right like you know when i when i even joined youtube like eight years ago it was you know 500 million users it was so big it wasn't two billion plus now right and so you do get to a certain point where it's like you know um i don't necessarily know that big tech is or should be responsible for the next iteration of innovation right i think it will i think it goes back full circle and belongs to the community much like you think about how silicon valley started in a lot of ways so i think it's

32:53an exciting part of the the loop right now yeah i agree with all that i mean i think like bellagi um who we all know and i'm sure have read you know his his various writings or tweets or whatever it was i think he was the first one i saw say that like the next silicon valley is going to be in the cloud uh and i thought that that was just like a very short punchy way of saying it that like you know opportunity is no longer geographically confined and it's been distributed and a lot of technology now is following that same path right where like

33:21a kid born wherever has the same access to things as someone born in silicon valley or in you know palo alto or wherever it is so i i agree with you that i think it's a great thing um you know it more evenly spreads opportunity at a minimum um and at a maximum it opens up a lot of collaboration that previously never existed as well yeah i agree honestly i think the best part about all of it is like the democratization of the tech because now everybody can get involved and i mean i think that's like a fun part about being polygon like we're already so global and

33:51the company started in india right and was able to get to the size that it did and that's um you know that's incredibly impressive and now you you see talent you know our our teams are distributed globally we're working remote and obviously we get to see each other you know at all these events because there's no shortage of uh crypto blockchain gaming events uh but yeah i agree i think there's a lot of good in that can we actually talk about that polygon founding story for a minute um i read a thread that i found on twitter recently um about the about one of the founders um

34:24uh jainty uh jante kanani and it was you know this whole breakdown basically of like it was the son of a diamond factory worker and gujarat founds an 11 billion crypto startup it's a pretty amazing and inspiring story um and it's a great microcosm of exactly what you just said of like this global collaboration and the ability to interact with people all over the world and go build something you know like builders just being able to build and not being confined to your geography or to your set of circumstances um any thoughts from like having now worked with this team um or kind of takeaways from that that um you

34:57know that have played through and how you're thinking about the future oh i mean i look the the founding team played a huge factor on joining polygon i mean the biggest thing i could say is like i just really you know i um i kind of always operated with a chip on my shoulder sometimes warranted sometimes like self-manufactured but i always have loved working with people that have one right i think it's it's fun it brings out the competitive side in me it brings out like i love i love being a part of the underdog in a lot of ways um and so what they were able to do with the

35:32conviction that they had against all odds and now be where they are today is just so impressive and i don't know how you can't wake up every day and work for polygon and not be so inspired by what they've been able to do uh you know a lot of people talk about like what you do you know like what motivates you wake up i mean that alone is is is enough right for me um and then there's probably a million other things i could add to that list too so yeah i love working with that team um and they were i mean honestly it was a huge huge driver for me joining

36:01polygon have you ever heard the phrase um josh wolfe is the first person that i saw say it chips on shoulders put chips in pockets i i think that's such a good it is good though yeah he says that i've seen him say it in a few interviews i'm always like it's it rings so true and so when you talk about it there it's like exactly i mean you even said for yourself you had a chip on your shoulder can you actually talk about that you know we had a quick back and forth twitter exchange the three of us before recording and you mentioned you know some of the kind of

36:30blue collar upbringing and you know maybe that that's part of the chip you feel like you have on your shoulder and that's driven you to succeed can you talk a little bit about that and and kind of what motivates you yeah and i don't even know if that's where the chip comes from but yeah i mean look i uh i was born in uh the suburbs of cleveland ohio um i you know my mom was uh my mom was a nurse my dad was a police officer my uh my mom was a delivery nurse which later i'll tell you was very helpful when we had a baby but um they got

36:57divorced uh when i was three years old i was the youngest of three uh my dad ended up moving away a couple hours away i didn't get to see him all that often growing up because he was in columbus which is like two and a half hours away from where we lived uh and yeah i mean i had uh there's not a lot of [ __ ] to do in ohio right so what you do when you're in ohio is you play video games and you're a big sports fan right so unfortunately i'm a die-hard cleveland browns fan cavs fan and indians now guardians fan uh that obviously hasn't

37:24you know there's been a couple bright moments you know uh since i was born in 86 but there's not a lot to certainly not on the brown side um and so yeah i mean i think like when i looked at there i i became like i told you very you know enamored with gaming and in the interest in gaming and so when you're in cleveland ohio there's not like video game opportunities out there and so i just became really adamant on on what i would need to do to create that opportunity for me um that took me through into college right i was like well everybody's doing

37:54that right it's like we're done with high school we go to college and what do a lot of people in ohio do they go to ohio state right that's like what we do you know so we traveled down you know and i went to ohio state and really loved going you know being there right the energy of being a uh on campus and you know the sports program being so big and how much that's important ohio was all awesome and i had a blast there but um i was a terrible student right because so much of my time was spent you know in the video game world and not just like

38:20playing video games by any stretch of imagination it's like how do i actually create this opportunity for myself which is where i started to dabble in being a broadcaster and you know doing volunteer work for major league gaming while in college and so that is actually where i think the chip started to get into a manufacturer because everything always was kind of like oh i don't know like that this is going to be a thing you know try telling people like you know all those years ago was a 16 17 years ago like oh people are going to want to watch people play video games you sound insane right like truly

38:47sound insane it's like people can't even sit still when someone has a controller in their hand let alone you're gonna actually think like a business is gonna be built around this and so i think that's it's that doubt that kind of continued to happen which is where i started to get you know uh maybe a little bit stubborn and adamant where i'm like i guarantee you there's other people out there like me so ultimately um we went through the recession right you know there's a huge huge uh kind of you know kind of a a recession that impacted a lot of jobs out of college right when i was in my junior going into

39:18senior year of college so i had buddies that were older than me and they were moving back home with degrees right um and like you know they didn't know what to do and these you know like look there these would be really hirable people that just could not get a job because nobody was hiring nobody knew what was going to happen i mean it was pretty scary times at the moment and so i was basically doing a bunch of volunteer work for major league gaming and then and you know and some paid work as well like the commentating and running tournaments and all of that and

39:44machinima called and so machinima was this kind of like you know aspiring to be like the mtv of gaming and they were a business built entirely on youtube they only had about 10 or 11 employees this was kind of their their aspiration and they called and they were like hey you know do you want to do you want to come work at machinima and and you know be a community manager there's like a but we don't really know like there's a bunch of rules that need done we just got you know our series a like we're trying to hire some folks and i was like oh you know like that's i yeah that's a

40:12dream job but i have a another quarter left of college you know so i can't do it they're like oh that's too bad well you know let us know when you graduate and like if we have a job like maybe we can you know extend something and i was kind of like timeout hold on the whole reason you go to college is to go work now i'm like i have this dream job opportunity i'm like in [ __ ] ohio and now i can finally get out to los angeles work at a job work in the gaming industry and so i immediately was like you know what like

40:37i'm coming i don't know how i'm gonna land this conversation with my mom but i'm like i'm on my way you know so i'll make the move and so dropped out and uh had to communicate that to my mom but that's kind of how that's maybe how a lot of that stuff started to begin on like okay like uh you know i really gotta prove that i can do all this and make a career out of this there's this um there's this great framework that you reminded me of while you were while you were speaking there on you know what you said about like trying to convince people that gaming

41:08esports was going to be a business and industry that like people were going to watch people in stadiums all of that sounding completely [ __ ] insane yes um at the time when you were trying to do it there is a i think it's paul graham has this kind of framework that that i love which is like if someone tells you um something that sounds like a crazy idea you ask two questions one are they a domain expert like do they really know this domain and then two do you actually know them to be a pretty reasonable person and if both of those answers are yes then you should probably

41:41put some skin in the game on that idea because it's highly likely to be like an asymmetric bet on the future and this is such a perfect example of that like i feel like people told me that i knew were really smart and i knew were pretty reasonable that gaming and esports was going to be this huge industry and i was like that sounds crazy i'm not you know not going to get involved whatever it is but consistently if you follow this framework i think you end up with a bunch of really attractive asymmetric bets over time so this is like yet another example of that kind of coming

42:09through and that was really like if you think about bets that's the first life one i really had to make right you know all this other stuff i had been doing playing competitively doing the commenting all that was so hedged because you're in school right so it's like this doesn't matter i'm like just i'm tinkering i'm discovering myself my interest where my passion is this is the first time it's like this is a this is a life decision that you're gonna have to make and you alone are gonna have to make this one and so it was the first time you know you're actually putting skin in the game right uh and it was

42:39equally terrifying and exciting at the same time and i had a long drive from ohio to california to think through all of it uh on the travel out here and i moved to los angeles i'd never been here before right like i'd never been to la in my life and all of a sudden i'm driving to go live there so it was pretty wild yeah what was the uh conversation with your mom like how did that go you know my mom um she's italian so she's uh she could she she's very animated and no shortage of candid uh opinions right i'll say that um she actually surprisingly was more

43:14supportive than i thought because i kind of pitched it as like here's the deal i only have a couple classes left we're gonna knock those things out like don't worry about it of course i'm gonna graduate of course i'm gonna get my degree it's like but this is an opportunity i'm gonna go and so i think because i kind of preface it that way she was a little more supportive obviously i didn't go and get that degree or finish but um i think now she's okay with it but yeah not yet yes you're on the honorary degree track now that's what i'm going for and i'm hoping

43:42that that can like you know i i can finally kind of come through with my promise to my mom uh that i would i would get a degree it just might be a little different than she thought um so she actually was uh for me i was i was really nervous to tell her because look like you know we didn't have we didn't you know we didn't want for anything but we didn't have we we definitely were always like very mindful of of money right um and so she definitely put money up towards my education and all of a sudden and it's like for what now right and so

44:09i i was terrified but she was pretty supportive the one thing my mom was so good at always was harnessing the passion in the right direction right so it's like if you like video games and you want to work in video games here's a couple options like you're gonna have to learn how to make them but they also need people in marketing they need people in finance they need people in business right so it's like you gotta like you gotta point your efforts this way so she did a really good job of of always putting up like bumper rails for me to make sure that i stayed on on the

44:37beaten path to kind of pursue that so part of it part of her was definitely like frustrating and annoyed but the other half i think she was like really proud that you know that kind of came to fruition because she knew how hard i was trying to aim in that direction so she took it pretty well i think it's one of those funny things too about the education system like you went through three and you know two-thirds of your college degree yeah and for some reason you know i think it's called the sheepskin effect like the reality is all that matters from a job standpoint is

45:06like actually getting the degree it's not actually the learning that people are valuing otherwise you would get you know three-quarters seven-eighths whatever of the value that you were supposed to get by doing that much of it really all that matters is like staying long enough to get the little piece of paper that tells you that you're like a functioning member of society and it's total [ __ ] obviously we all know that but the sheepskin effect still is very real and it's cemented in our parents minds and so like that is viewed as dropping out versus like oh he went and got seven eighths or you know eight ninths of the

45:35value that he was supposed to get it's true i think um and really it's that first job only right like i mean yes every you know the jobs that i went to after did ask but you know at that point they're putting way more stake in job experience than that degree right and so um yeah i mean that was the other thing like while at machinima i got an offer you know from twitch to go work there and stayed at machinima that probably wasn't you know in hindsight maybe everything happens for a reason but that might not have been the best decision financially at least um and so like once

46:07that started to happen it further then moved me away from like oh i really don't need to go back right like now i'm getting calls to go work at other places that are great companies to work for and so it then continued to further reduce that fear that i don't have one because you definitely move it like you certainly operate for a while in fear not having one right like machinima goes south all of a sudden i'm unemployed without a degree like that doesn't sound great you know so i was definitely nervous about that the first couple years coming out here it's such an interesting juxtaposition

46:37like the three of us even on here greg and i have very different experience sets with education and like what track we were kind of on i i from a young age just like i sort of my dad was an academic my dad's a professor um you know my mom is indian and academics were very very important and i just remember like from a young age i just knew okay what i was supposed to do was like i'm gonna go to college i'm gonna do four years i should probably get a master's degree and then i'm gonna go get a stable job and i'm just gonna

47:04work in that and like entrepreneurship was never on my mind it was never something that i kind of learned about or was around greg you know obviously you had a very different experience like you from a young age were doing entrepreneurial things diving into it college was not necessarily on your mind in the same way that it was for me um but it's really brave ryan that you had that like you you sound like you were closer to my track like you were supposed to kind of do that like stable thing and at a young age you were brave enough to just take that leap and jump into

47:34something that you were passionate about and excited about and it took me until i was 30 to do that and kind of have the courage to do something like that um and it's just it's just really interesting to see kind of when different people come to that realization of like being willing to take that leap into something new that they're really excited about yeah and i don't even know like classifying it as brave like because i kind of you know for me i felt i think it felt pragmatic whether it was or not it might be another thing but i was like look this is what i'm like boom there's that

48:04opportunity i've been waiting for i'm like i love that you know like grabbing that right like been waiting for that thing that door to open so for me it was like i'm out you know it was snowing like eight inches of snow out uh in ohio it was december when i moved out i'm like i'm out of this place i'm gonna go work a gaming screw all of you who said that gaming wasn't ever gonna be a thing like you all are living at home with your moms and parents and i'm on my way to los angeles like bye right so uh i think it was actually more that chip on

48:30the shoulder speaking than any bravery but yes by the way cleveland ohio i have to throw it in there is in my top five uh most underrated cities in america my top three i went there for a wedding like in november and it was cold there's like the downtown area is all right there and like the stadium's right there uh marble room the steakhouse like that place is awesome there's some cool hotels i was actually i was blown away by cleveland it's total aside but i feel like i have to throw some positivity because we're uh i feel like we're sitting here crapping on uh crapping on

49:02cleveland l.a super overrated by the way this is super overrated i'm moving to san diego no i actually like cleveland um i love cleveland we'll always be super near and dear and i think they get too much black you're right like downtown they've done a great job they put a ton of money in restoring that and yeah you have the you have the the cavs are right there the browns are right on the water right so it is really cool um yeah cavs are right next to uh um uh progressive stadium and so yeah that's great i love it there i love going back there i try to go back you know three or

49:30four times a year my mom still lives there so we have to get to the red pill moment yeah um it seems inevitable on every web three pockets yeah it has to it has to be um you know a core part of your story now especially but you were you know you rose through the ranks in your in your prior career you were a senior senior executive at one of the largest and most successful companies in the world running gaming at youtube huge deal massive burgeoning industry you and i had actually connected while you were in that role we had chatted um you know shared some deal flow different

50:07things that were happening and then i see this news you put out this thread which went super super viral um you know was all over the place greg and i shared it with each other um when we chatted about getting you on the show so what what was your like first or like your purple pill moment and then what drove you to the kind of full red pill um you know decide to make this transition and join polygon studios as ceo yeah it's a good question i think i got you know taking a step back going about like when i joined youtube as well right like i think

50:39i had this passion that you know gaming video was going to continue to be a big thing that bet was starting like you were starting to see that now right like you actually started to see product market fit and the idea that people would watch gaming video so when i went to youtube i was really excited because um a big thing i always want to be able to do is have like a high impact on things that i love doing right like that's at the end of the day it's always been that it's like if you could just focus on how you have a high impact in an area where you're

51:04passionate about a lot of things kind of just fall into place now you could call that luck hard work persistence some of it is probably all of those things to be honest with you uh but that is always where i focused on it so it was never about job title it was never about money it literally is always that right i'm like put me in a place where i can have high impact and so when i came into youtube i was like i can have a ton of impact here they don't know anything about gaming it's this growing business um i have the opportunity to kind of set

51:31the strategy hire everybody i had definitely a little bit of imposter syndrome because i was like 27 years old coming in aside of gaming um you know so that kind of that was a motivating factor it goes back to even the chip kind of conversation on the shoulder and so um every day there you're you have people that um you know some people get it but some people are like you know this is ridiculous right like people watching people like do is this what we want our company to be about like do we even want to embrace it why does why should we care about people

51:59watching people play video games almost as if it was like the equivalent to cat videos and like hurting the overall brand and reputation right and so thankfully susan our ceo at the time and still is is like no this is like what are you talking about right like gaming is huge right like we're gonna focus on it and so she was always such a huge advocate but i had to do so much educating and evangelizing in those early years to get people to understand the opportunity and so for me what happened was like now segwaying to actually answering your question about a year ago i started to see some

52:30you know people that i know that are developers from big prestigious studios and publishers you know riot games and activision and ea and they're like oh yeah leave them like believing you're gonna go do it's like oh start my own studio it's like oh what's your game about it's like oh it's a blockchain based game like what the [ __ ] is that you know um and so all this entrepreneurial like spirit was being elevated because there was so much capital really for the first time in the gaming industry right there has never been this kind of capital being deployed to entrepreneurs in the history of

52:59gaming he's obviously seen publishers get involved with studios and like it wasn't like non-existent um and you have like mitch lasky and some legends that have definitely like paved the way but this is like now you're talking billions of dollars because you've untapped gaming specific funds consumer funds and like crypto based funds so it was like boom this this huge amount of money so it's like if you're an entrepreneur game developer which is the untold story really that's of the shift because that happened like started happening a year ago all these people are like oh yeah i'm starting a new studio and starting like uh you know blockchain based games

53:28so i asked the question and i'm like like what does that even mean because i had traded in and out of like ethereum and bitcoin and but has zero interest in d5 and more just because of the the like oh you should have some money in this and blah blah blah put it aside from like smart friends but never got into d5 never got into crypto any of this and so when i started to see some of these games come up and then people talk about you know like look like we can have these free open thriving marketplaces and there's a lot of like you know

53:52equity in this digital ownership and like all of these kind of core concepts of blockchain based games i personally just started spending time learning it right i'm like oh i'm ahead of gaming at youtube like i think this cannot be a blind spot for me i kind of was like thrown off like i'm the guy that's supposed to know all the stuff happening in gaming right and so the further and further a time i spent on that i started then uh look at like okay advisory rules like how can i get in the space how can i help facilitate all of this you know and where is youtube's role in all this

54:18what's my role in all of it and as i started to pursue that you you would think that that actually satisfies the itch that you have but it exasperates it 10x right um so like poison ivy when you start itching it too much and you're spreading it everywhere it's like that actually itching did not help and all of a sudden i was like i gotta i gotta get into this space full-time i have done what i've wanted to do it at youtube loved the company love the people i work with have nothing but great things to say about that experience there but you know i'm 35 i had a ton of energy to go

54:50do something else and like still very much a builder and was not really ready to do the like you know kind of uh vest and rest and coast you know for the next 10 years at google so i had to do something with this fire

55:10[Music] the hard part about web 3 is that there's there's so many shiny objects that it's uh it's really it's it's hard to see when there's just so many shiny objects right so like what made you [Music] go fully into into polygon and what was that process like yeah so agree very much with the shiny object thing so the what you want to do so i that was like the first thing i decided too many shiny objects so how do you actually hedge that is you work a platform you go hor you go very very broad very horizontal which is l2 l1s would allow for that right so

55:52then all of a sudden you're like okay my my my expertise is building out scaled teams working with developers focusing on how to go to market all of this right did it with gaming creators and then gaming developers so i was like where where is that skill set most valuable it's definitely on like the immutable solana polygon avalanche side right so now it's like you get familiar with kind of the different platforms and what do you want to do there as far as you know making your next step right and so polygon from i'm like ethereum is here to stay gonna be here to stay so i'm

56:23like i'm gonna start making that bet okay now let's look at that where would you want to be if you were working to help the developer ecosystem as it relates to ethereum and polygon kind of came into the fold here and then obviously having that bra visibility across all these you know gaming fashion entertainment sports news right you see all kind of what appears as shiny objects and they probably aren't or may not be or you see a lot of things that are not appearing in shiny projects that could probably be like the next minecraft right and so it was fun to say okay that's the kind of

56:52visibility that i'm looking for across the industry it gives me a lot of reps it gives me a lot of exposure to see a lot of different people and try to help as many people and it has the highest level of impact that you can possibly have on this right so um it was the impact role it was the broad visibility and kind of working for a platform and then it was the founding team that really sold it for me so it was a combination of all those things but that that's a little bit of like how the criteria kind of rolled out um and i

57:19wasn't necessarily fully certain greg that i'm go i was gonna make a move right i was like i'm gonna go explore this but you know you're leaving like this i think had a gaming youtube is like one of the coolest jobs in the gaming industry right so sure this is a big this is a big decision i'm leaving that yeah and how i i mean when you when you think about the studio's role relative to the broader like how does studios interact with the mothership at polygon so if you think about studios it's basically a conduit for helping developers on board and sustain success on polygon that are web 2 web 3 and it

57:51excludes defy exchange wallet right so that's part of the overall kind of macro tech so if you're if you're building an nft project or a marketplace or you're figuring out how to enter web 3 you'll come through studios so our partners are everything from like the usual hitters of you know zed run and crypto unicorns and open c but now it also is you know draftkings and nfl and ticketmaster and ap news and and so forth uh and obviously web 2 companies who are inevitably entering the space as well got it so you're kind of like i'm trying to think of like what an analog is for

58:24it's basically we're like polygon yeah okay got it you're like the connective tissue that kind of brings other things with into the polygon universe developer ecosystem all of that and kind of promotes and fosters the broader growth of the polygon ecosystem that's right and so much of it right now is onboarding you know it's like people with this huge intrigue to build on chain apps and so like a lot of us that but long term you need to set the company up to be able to handle these partners that are on three or four years and how do they think about go to market with the creator economy how are they

58:53thinking about you know tokenomics how are they thinking about you know uh you know when they start to be in the wall how can we help them get out of it and provide them feedback and analytics and data just ongoing like customer success of developers if you will and so right now you're looking at like seven to eight thousand daps on polygon like you gotta be ready for eighty thousand eight hundred thousand and eight million over the next five to ten years all of that sets up now right because if you really think about it um these great like so if you look at games today you know their financialization

59:22first they're pretty rudimentary on the game side like obviously those are the easiest games you can get out to market really quick but if you look at these games that'll actually create a material inflection in web three and blockchain in general will be these like high polished aaa type games that are gonna take three or four years to make right so i'm obviously not betting on web 3 and blockchain games based off of what the available offering is today but like what i've seen in the games that are coming that are on the horizon and you've got to build you've got to build a system in place to

59:51support that long term too many things that i'm seeing right now are like oh let's get this partnership oh go build a polygon like next up right and that's fine like that's how the whole that's how all the l1 and o2s that are focusing on this are doing it we cannot operate like that long term and we need to make sure that people find like long-term success and real partnership could you could you talk a little bit about some of the games or applications that uh you think are doing a really good job let's talk about games for a second because i you know there's a lot of

1:00:22people who look at blockchain gaming and they're very bearish and yeah they don't believe in it i'm bullish on it um you know you mentioned you know crypto unicorns i would argue that that's a you know pretty good execution around a game maybe you can talk about crypto unicorns what that is or and and why you think it might be interesting i think too so yeah i'll take us there's a couple questions in there i think the one thing to look at and this is oftentimes a mistake i see across very particularly like the gaming industry and gaming conversations is there's three billion gamers right so we have to

1:00:58have a tremendous amount of nuance when we're talking here just to be like blockchain games and how they work today is super super dismissive because it actually is working for some areas of the world and some gamers right and really what you're doing is right now the the aperture of of offering is very narrow to that three billion gamers and what's out there today and play these player games um that is going to continue to get bigger over time as people are developing different types of games where they're not maybe they're not necessarily play to earn they're just a really high polished tactical shooter that looks like valor or

1:01:27counter-strike that actually just has a free open thriving marketplace that allows for art to be developed in different skins so like some artists can come up and be like you want to do an ak-47 skin here you can drop a thousand nfts with these dimensions and it's a cosmetic item only and you sign and kind of do that and like celebrate the artist and you own that and so there it there's not going to be a one-size-fits-all blockchain games is going to serve a significant size of the total gaming audience but not all of it right and north i would say a lot of games have no

1:01:59business being a blockchain based game no interest doesn't do anything for it not helpful not productive right and so we just need to be really mindful when we talk about games in general um it it's very much like if you try to talk about music and you were like tell me you know tell me about that artist uh drake and in hip-hop right and like and being very dismissive of everything so that's what i'm trying to take a step back from because even in these conversations on twitter where it's just so polarizing it's like people get get nfts out of my game like we don't want

1:02:28it there's no place for it here right and i'm like i think everyone's just talking past each other one and then i think we're talking about different time frames and time horizon like i joined like i said you know for games that are gonna be three or four years out it'll be fun to work with all these games uh over the next couple of years yeah it's interesting i mean you raise it right there but like i i've definitely noticed as kind of you know i'm sort of an outsider to all of this i think greg is much more native to it than me i'm kind of a curious observer i

1:02:54would say like not fully red-pilled on all of it and you know try to kind of take a balanced view still because i haven't fully you know kind of dived into the space i wouldn't say but but one of the things that struck me with gaming in particular has been like the animosity that a lot of the core gaming community has around nfts in particular play to earn some of these things um and it's just been interesting to me to see because so much of it feels core to what gaming is um and kind of a logical extension of it but you have this like core community that's pushing back

1:03:28against it and so i've just personally found it interesting to to see that and experience it yeah i think there's a couple things to consider there i actually think some of the outrage towards it is warranted and valid right because i think if you look at it and you're not well versed on it you're like okay i'm open-minded tell me tell me like what's out there that i'm not being mindful if you're like oh okay well we have these like jpeg monkeys that are selling for a million bucks uh we have this game called axe infinity that you know it's like a lot of people do enjoy it but if you're like you if

1:03:58you're thinking about a lot of this like argument of like polish like this is not a game that i would play and so and then they have obviously there is carbon footprint issues yes that stuff is changing over time but it hasn't yet so if you look at it you're kind of like the [ __ ] are you really selling me out right like i don't want any of this stuff i don't want like to see my game turn into like this financialization first thing i don't want to see in order to buy a digital item i have to spend 800 bucks in order to get into the game

1:04:23i don't care about these jpegs that are you know uh subjectively not great art that are selling right and so they don't they don't get it right it's like and it's uh and what they do get isn't exciting to them and that's like totally cool right i i would say the product offering that we have out in market for gamers right now it's pretty underwhelming right it's like here's version 0.5 and that's okay you got to start somewhere all of these companies are great first movers they're going to continue to build and innovate they're going to continue to learn look at like axes done a great job as well

1:04:53right they their success actually really caused market issues for them and they're learning how like how do we burn like what kind of things do we do with the games how do we change the mechanics how do we balance it right all of this will be great learnings um so i just feel you got to give it time right the backlash i think is justifiable i also think you had a lot of people in web 3 in the crypto space that really weren't gaming like just like you know drive pedaling like blockchain games should be the universe in the world and everything else and it's like

1:05:22maybe we like let now like more gaming thought leaders kind of try to like find the balance between all of this because both sides have really really valid points and we need nuanced conversation over time frames and where we think this will be but yeah i think there's there is not a blockchain game that is like totally hits my hardcore gaming right when you release a tactical shooter that's on chain and i have this marketplace and all the things that i was just talking about i'm gonna be all over it and i think that would be the real indication of success when you just play a game because you

1:05:52love the game and it just has this financialization uh you know part of it that you enjoy participating in um and a lot of that stuff is in the background because the the real the on-ramps will be really easy and all things consider like think about using the same tactical shooter example valerian i love it right if you want to play ballarat you know you're buying basically riot points those ride points have a perceived value you buy those digital items and now you'll start to add well now those right right points actually is a fluctuating price you know instead of static it's dynamic which is cool right you can get

1:06:23in early there's monetization opportunities for you there uh like now you actually own these digital items you can resell them you actually know how many there are right you have different artists that are doing different things right so it's like it opens up um it opens up a lot of possibilities i think people will come around to in due time ryan do you remember uh 2003 when steam came out um and counter-strike moved from being you buy you go to a store you buy a disc you put in your disc you install it you play the game to now you you know you you go you download this software

1:07:02it's like in the cloud what is this cloud thing um do you remember the backlash that occurred yeah i mean because you still first of all you still have kids that were playing like on dial up so they're like this is not even this is like absolute [ __ ] right it's gonna take me six days and first of all you're migrating all this stuff over to steam right so it created a lot of um yeah that was kind of crazy and then obviously there was still a lot of sense of ownership and pride of like oh you know i own the disc right i bought these

1:07:28discs i bought the cd i have them right i can install it like that you know now i'm having to do these internet you know uh this this internet platform instead of just being able to locally install it was crazy yeah it's super interesting i mean it's um you know my my play to earn take um which i don't know that we've talked about greg in depth you know my like having now spent a bunch of time around it is probably very similar to to ryan's which is basically just that like play to earn in the absence of having a game that is engaging enough to play for free and to

1:08:00just play for fun becomes like it some totes towards becoming a ponzi scheme because if everyone is purely playing to like make money off of the game i think then you're just relying on more and more users coming in to like pay the early users and those people need to get paid by the next people so in the absence of like a highly engaging game that people are just playing because it's really [ __ ] fun um you're gonna have a really tough time making the model actually work at some point it's just like you're waiting for the fall because then everyone starts flooding out it becomes this like

1:08:30downward vicious spiral and so i i agree with you like we need and i think actually there are people that are entering the market now that have very positive intentions around building this there will be a financialization component as you say but it'll sit alongside beautiful immersive amazing gaming experiences that draw people in for any number of reasons yep and i think the thing that people don't really speak about is in like three or four years because of how much capital has been injected into the game developer ecosystem there's going to be so much optionality for gamers right like there will be so many different gaming experiences

1:09:05across web 2 and web 3. and that's great right so that's why i'm just so much more open i'm like what has happened that's so great about gaming is it went from being this very very specifically targeted to like male teenagers you know to now offering something for everybody which is why you start to see billions of people come in there's still a lot more room to go on all of that and there will which is why then i think you start to talk about like metaverse and digital worlds because now gaming is starting to like infiltrate all aspects of everyone's life where it's like is it even video

1:09:36games right like are we just these are just like now digital experiences that people are participating in and so i think you basically get to a point where it's all encompassing globally and so there's going to be a huge subset of people that are going to want to do these kind of on-chain game experiences and and that's what it's all about i just don't think we should my big issue actually with all the nft backlash isn't even the backlash because i think some of their points are well met i just really hate the gatekeeping of the gaming category because it offers so much to so many people and i don't know

1:10:07like why any of us have any like any right to stand on and be like this has no place in gaming when it is technology right like okay like you don't need you don't need to participate in it and yeah i can see like a lot of people just want to play video games and not worry about like seeing if their account value went from 800 bucks to 200 bucks because like the token price went down and i totally get that right that's why there's like god of war and that's why those games will always be around you know so anyway i digress no that's great um and you know i know

1:10:36we're running up against the end of time and you're gonna go catch a flight soon so um there's a question that we love to ask people especially like you who have consistently seen into the future and and proven that you're good at it that we like to close with which is basically just like if you were to have a few predictions for the future or one prediction for the future you know five ten years out what are you seeing like what are you super excited about what do you think um what do you think the future looks like yeah i kind of is like alluding at that with the the digital

1:11:06world like that's the big thing i think you've got um you've got young generations that grew up from day one on their phone in very immersive digital experiences right and they're really just like those individuals um don't think much of it like having you know playing with your friends in video games like having your community be digital oriented right like looking for those things i don't i think there's a lot there's a stigma in previous generations and so you don't see them kind of be able to wrap their head around worlds that look like this or perceive like this but that is really the reality of

1:11:38it and so i'm excited for that i think the digital worlds that we're talking about will be everything from like what you know as video games into just like actual digital worlds where people like i would hate to be doing just this video call in five to eight years and we're just like still doing zoom calls to have conversations there's got to be more immersive ways for us to feel like we're getting together and i'm i'm adamant that you know with where like unreal and the engines are going and the world is going and technology is going we're going to see those worlds and that will

1:12:04be much more fun to have those conversations in there right uh and so because of that people will put more of an emphasis on their capital being deployed in digital worlds and then you want that to feel valid you want that to feel justifiable and warranted people like peacocking they won't have a problem putting money in digital environments gamers get this really well we just talked about how everybody's becoming basically a gamer which means they understand these basic concepts so i think all that's going to happen i'm really excited for how like big brands pivot into web3 and digital even if not web3 just like their new

1:12:36digital strategy maybe that's like uh maybe that's a little bit more of a subdued way of saying it instead of it always being you know the hyperbole of web 3 and blockchain but they'll have a new digital strategy and it will be their participation will be how you figure out how to be a part of all of these digital universes you know just like we have these top platforms that take a bunch of people's time you're gonna have this new shift of top platforms that take people time and more immersive experiences and we'll laugh at like phone apps as being like super rudimentary in 10 to 20 years like oh my

1:13:04god you like actually called you know your a car service from like just a basic app with your address and like from your phone and people like my you know my kids are going to be like oh my god you're so old um so yeah i'm excited for these kind of like transformative experiences but it's important you know there's a lot of hype around metaverse and digital worlds here that's fine but like we are we should be very honest with ourselves that we are in like the first inning if you will like we got 10 15 20 years of this digital transformation and we are at the

1:13:33very beginning of it um and so i think it's tempering expectations like you know two years from now rock and i'll just be like you know it's not ready player one and i think people need to understand too kind of what it's gonna look like so yeah i'm excited about all of these digital worlds and then the behavior that people have and what is required from a technol technological standpoint for that to be enabled that's why i like polygon as well too so much yeah yeah i mean i'm just wondering if you had a chance to see well i'm sure you did i know you saw

1:14:05the uh board ape leaked deck um yeah their metaverse strategy um curious what your perspective is on on that project and where they're headed yeah i mean i'll probably like refrain from commenting specifically on that project but i do like seeing um projects that start with like profile picture nfts actually start to materialize into something bigger it's a different way of game development and now a lot of people are getting rugged on that way right like this idea of like you know we'll start with profile picture nft arts that has a bigger like mission honestly 99 of those projects are gonna be complete [ __ ] but this is really cool to see a

1:14:45very reputable brand and company be like we actually got a long term strategy here and so i in general people that can build that way although they'll be few and far in between it's a very exciting new way to develop that we haven't seen before there's a lot of the the top down or venture funded initiatives like you normally see so i'm excited that that's like really coming together in a credible way we were just before you came on we were just talking about this exact thing that like 99 garyvee came on the show a couple months ago and said this exact thing like 99 of nft projects are gonna

1:15:18go to [ __ ] yeah and they're gonna be worth nothing and the analog i have is like 99 of songs that get released never get listened to 99 of pieces of art never get seen or purchased or aren't worth anything and so it's actually not surprising that 99 of like these nft projects will be worth nothing i think the difference was that it became like sort of this meme of like a cash grab during the particularly like summer fall of 2021 where there was a perception that there were a lot of people just throwing this out because it was like a free money run as fast as you can and

1:15:47now there are a lot of people that are going to be you know under pressure and pushed but now i think a lot of that speculation and insanity that was around nft has actually subsided and what you do have is a lot of people like you labs in this case or whoever it is um that really are trying to put together concrete long-term road maps of how they're extending from this like you know initial whatever funky pfp into something much more meaningful and and hopefully impactful from an ip perspective oh totally like it's like the you know modern day gold rush and then people just thinking you can grab

1:16:18like a pickaxe and like be rich right it's like not the case you know there was obviously first movers that got that benefited from it right um we're gonna see a pullback that's gonna be great because it kind of gets the noise out there it does it does kind of you know create awareness around the community of what projects they should be associated with what they shouldn't be what success looks like what it doesn't look like look when you kind of go into this world where um it's like it's you ask for a tremendous amount of freedom in blockchain environment right and so there's good and bad that comes

1:16:47with that the bad of that is you put money in and you very much could lose all of it on on bad calculated investments and you know you you kind of make that an even bar for everybody right and and that's the beauty of it but uh it does come with consequences you know and that's that that's part of innovation to be honest with you yeah well i mean and for true believers you know when you're looking at investing in these spaces and you've done a lot of diligence and done your work these pullbacks are the best thing in the world right you get to accumulate at

1:17:16lower prices like we joked about it you know you i think we had originally scheduled for you to come on like a couple months ago and then we we delayed and uh i remember messaging you and just saying i was just gonna buy until uh until you came on i was gonna buy a polygon some of the matic and it's been great for me because i've been able to accumulate at lower prices and i've obviously done a lot of diligence not financial advice say it outright but um but you know for people that have done the work and dug in on these projects when you get to

1:17:42accumulate at lower prices just buying good things on sale for sure and we want to make sure we're giving value to all matic holders so we'll keep doing it literally well i'm bullish on you and uh really really excited that we were able to have you on and have this discussion and i like betting on my smart friends so this is a this is an exciting opportunity for me to get to do so and um really excited to release this conversation and have more people hear it and learn from it i love it thanks for all you both do for the community in the industry thanks for having me on it

1:18:12was my pleasure thank you so much join our free community at trwih.com

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