In this episode of the #TFON podcast, host Nadja Bester engages in a dynamic conversation with industry trailblazers Mariam Nusrat, Faizy Ahmed, and Funsho Ajibade, exploring the intersection of AI, VR, and blockchain technology in gaming. From Breshna.io's simplified game creation process to Astra Nova's strategy for bridging Web2 to Web3 gaming in the MENA region and Project Lambo's fusion of AI, AR, and VR technologies, the guests provide profound insights into the future of immersive gaming experiences. Discussions also touch on the role of NFTs, play-to-earn models, and the transformative impact of blockchain on fairness, transparency, and cross-industry collaboration within gaming ecosystems, offering a compelling glimpse into the boundless possibilities of the evolving crypto gaming landscape.

Crafting immersive worlds: AI, VR and the future of gaming

SPEAKERS

Nadja Bester: Co-founder of AdLunam Inc.

Funsho Ajibade: Founder of Sheertopia

Mariam Nusrat : Founder of Breshna.io

Hey, web3 world. This is your host, Nadja Bester back for season 3 of the Future of NFTs. Future of NFTs is sponsored by AdLunam, a web3 fundraising accelerator and investment ecosystem. We work with early-stage startups to achieve institutional and retail fundraising success, and are an Engage to Earn idea Launchpad aims to democratize crypto investment, which is also why we are doing this educational spaces. So if you are joining us for the first time today, welcome. We record this live on twitter spaces every Tuesday at 1pm UTC. And of course, you can always catch up with your favorite episodes on our Spotify channel. So I have incredible panel of guests, I would not be able to do their bios justice. So I'm going to keep it very brief. Mariam, I'd like to start with you. If you ask the average person, I mean, sorry, if the average person asks you, let's say someone who doesn't know the jargon, the lingo that we use in gaming and in technologies, various technologies and web3, what do you tell them? What is the future of gaming?

Oh, I love that question. Nadja, so good to have you back. It's funny, you're having connectivity issues. My voice is giving out to me. And so it's like, it's just one of those days, but we'll make it work. But yeah, I think for me, the future of gaming is the future of, communication. I think that's for me, where I would start. I mean, what we saw what TikTok has done for video, what Twitter has done for audio right here. I think gaming is going to do for communication in the future. And I'm psyched about it. So I want to take a ton of time and just start the questions going. But yeah, the future is communication.

Absolutely love that answer, answer and Funsho. I know you will have a lot to add there. Based on your experience with Project Lambo, which is very community based well as all the other endeavors where you are really bringing community together.

Yes, for sure. Firstly, I just want to say thank you for inviting us on, it's always a pleasure. I love speaking in these spaces, and always enjoy listening to new people hearing their points of view. For me personally, based on that question. I'm one of those people that watched a lot of sci-fi movies growing up and seeing things come into fruition. And it's just been a joy to be part of this industry moving forward, I think the future of gaming is going to be so much more interactive and immersive. And I think virtual reality and augmented reality have already painted that picture for us. And for me, what I'm starting to see is how training is being utilized with virtual reality where I've actually got a company that's very close by to our offices here in the UK. And what they do is they go around and map virtual reality with the special 360 degree cameras. And they can recreate any scene that you want, and it looks HD perfect down to the millimeter. And what they're doing is they're working with like fire departments and police departments to put them through scenarios that could happen. But the beauty of it is they're wearing a VR headset, there's no smoke inhalation issues there, it’s none of these major problems that can occur in training scenarios are going to be there anymore. And that is so powerful. And I'm really looking forward to how sport gets introduced as well. So imagine you've got Ronaldo or Messi. And these are like amazing footballers, some of the best that we've ever seen in the world. And they take free kicks in a certain way they had the ball in a certain way. Imagine that being mapped out with virtual reality, augmented reality so that children can start to interact with these things and understand exactly how they should strike the ball, how they can chip the ball, how they can curl the ball. These are just little tiny steps towards what I believe the future of gaming, social interaction community, how we watch movies together, how we can start to go inside of movies and interact with them. I'm so excited for this Future with Project Lambo, we're bringing a lot of amazing things this year, our ride Sheertopia game is ready for people to already interact with. I'll talk to you guys more about that later. But yeah, future of gaming for me, it's just an amazing, amazing, next few years I believe.

Absolutely love it. I think that was just the best introduction to our discussion today. There's so much optimism, and also hope so you know, there's a lot of hope Weaam. And I'm going to start with the most difficult question perhaps of the hour first, because I think it's important to address that head on and then we get into everything else. So of course, being in the web3 space, we know that it's incredibly important to build it and you know, Kevin Costner Field of Dreams, they will come and they might not come right now. However, on the other hand, we’re seeing incredible strides being made in terms of tech. The other types of technologies are the metaverse, Yes. It depends on who you ask what kind of Metaverse you know, Apple vision Pro is very early days, but we can already see it's going to really revolutionize the way that people show up in the world. I'll actually tell you a little anecdote, just to kind of encapsulate the question that I'm getting at, my son is very much into into virtual reality. And he was telling me the other day, while he can't wait, he's going to be working while working on his computer while at the same time watching tutorials and VR. And I was thinking, wow, here's a person that is very much exposed to web3, of course, myself working in the industry, but he has no interest in web3. He doesn't see for him and his personal life, the utility of these technologies, but that's something AI, these are things that he is already engaging with. So my question then being probably the most difficult question of the hour. Is all of these developments happening in the space in the technology in the gaming space? Where does that leave with 3D gaming going forward? Are these technologies going to support adoption? Or is it a case of if we don't if we are not careful, this sector is going to be left behind?

Yeah, I can go for that, Nadja. So I think, you know, I feel like there's these boundaries between web3, AI, gaming, I mean, no code, they're seen as almost like isolated sectors, as of themselves. And by way of introduction, just so that it adds a little bit color to what I'm gonna say. So I'm the founder of Breshna.io, which is a no code Game Maker platform that allows people to make their own video games, obviously, without any coding design skills. Rational means lightning in the Pashto language, which is my mother tongue. So you know, anyone can make a game in 15 minutes. So what can be added for designed TikTok for video we were doing for video games. And when we started building, Breshna, it was like, Okay, here's a no code game maker. And then you're not only changing how video games are created, but then also how they use, I come at this from spending 15 years as an economist in the education space at the World Bank. So for me, it was really important to unleash the power of gaming beyond just entertainment, kinda like how Funsho said training, social impact marketing, all of that. But when we started building Breshna, we did not think like, Hey, we're a web3 company, we're an AI company, we're a no code company, or even were a gaming company, right? For us what was important was, we are solving a user problem, which is that there are 1 billion video clip game players around the world, but only 200,000 people making games. The games are such a powerful communication tool. But there's I mean, there's very high costs, time and skills, barriers to making games. And sure, just like on TikTok, you're not going to build a Netflix documentary, like you know, I mean, not on rationale, like a no code game maker, you will probably not build a AAA game, but you will be able to tell your story around the world. So for us when I mean, so there's the no code game maker, and then with that when you create games, and then we have a web3 enabled Metaverse, where you're able to carnival where you're able to showcase and monetize these small snackable games that you've created on Breshna. So when I think about it, I actually really liked the idea if our users I mean, for them, it's like, Hey, I made a professional game. And I'm gonna take it to depression numbers to monetize it and own it. So it's not this. I mean, it's almost like blockchain gets under the hood. And I feel like it's okay. I mean, I feel like the last bull market there was a lot of hey, I'm a blockchain person. I'm an AI person and there was a lot of like, you know, flags that we were carrying. And if you think about cloud technology companies now are not like, hey, you know what I'm building on AWS cloud or Google or Azure, cloud x under the hood, you know, I mean, your users don't know where that's happening as long as their data is secure. And it's there, that what they care about, I actually think a lot of companies will become an, uh, you know, I mean, a compilation of these emerging tech trends. And that's a good thing, because at the end of the day, we should be solving real problems. And the technologies that we use to unleash that, whether it's no good, whether it's AI for instance, in our case to make games, and whether it's blockchain technology to own and monetize those games, I think that's 100% Fine. And I think that's the direction we should be moving in, if we're gonna go towards mainstream adoption.

Beautifully said, so much I agree with you, Mariam. And I think that this time that we've come through of being the web3 DJ, and no one else can understand the lingo we speak, and therefore no one else is part of the cool in club cloud. That was great. But that was not something that was ever going to lead to, you know, these technologies being in people's households. Funsho, of course, you have big plans with Project Lambo to revolutionize also the gaming industry and really making making it a little bit more human. So what are your thoughts on these divisions between the different technologies?

I think, for me, personally, I have to agree with a lot of what Mariam has said, but I've always had this thing, and I say it in a lot of the spaces, web3, and a lot of the other words that we all understand because we're in the space, they are, in my opinion, most likely going to be temporary buzzwords when I look at gaming, okay, and people talk about web2 gaming,web3 gaming bridging between the two gamings. And the more we can focus on the gaming element, the better it will be for the end user. As you said earlier, no idea about your child and the interactions and they've got no interest in web3. I fully understand that because the jargon is too techie. You know, we're all sat there going like, right, just set up a Metamask wallet and do this and do that and save this and bridge that and do the other. For me personally, you're completely confusing everyone. And unless you are a techy person, it's going to massively turn you off, and you're going to be scared. It's not what I'm in charge of my own money now. And if I send this I can lose everything. It's like you people aren't prepared for that. So for me, what we need to focus on is what we're good at, which is build great games. And they will come as we say, because people love games, these hyper casual games that they're playing on mobile free to play. The best example I can give for what we all refer to as the metaverse is probably Fortnite, I think they've done a fantastic job. Epic Games. And you know, we're talking about over 70 web3 games they've got on epic game store. Now, you know, you look at Star Atlas and illuvium as big names that we can mention that Epic Games have nailed it Fortnite, their creative mode, you can play pretty much anything if you if you've ever played it before. Then they've got it on the big Call of Duty Zombies fan. And I love playing zombies. When I went on to Fortnite for the first time. And I'll tell you the story very quickly. I saw my kids play Fortnite. And I looked at it and I thought, I'm not playing this game. It's all car to noise. Why would I play my kids play it? It's not something really that interests me are more of a Call of Duty battlefield type player. But eventually I took the plunge and started playing and I realized how much community and teamwork is involved in playing that game. And I then realize that in these creative modes, they've got pretty much everything. They've got Lego style games, they've got racing games, they've got Call of Duty games, they've got, you know, these jumpscare games, they've got everything you can imagine. And what the kids do is they spend their time socially online inside of these metaverse. It's now where I see web three, as we call it, and all the technologies that are around actually massively impacting is invisible in the background. When kids realize, hang on a minute, this character here I actually own and I'm able to gift it to one of my friends or trade it or apparently I can even sell it and it's worth some money. Well, if my parents come on and quickly set up a wallet for me, which even that has become invisible today, because we've gone out of our way to make sure that these things can be done. So the people that we're partnered with and working with, for example, Polygon gaming, immutable scale network have smashed it, you know, you've got zero gas fees, zero transaction fees. If you want to educate people about NFTs and all the things you can do, that is the way to do it, produce a great game that's free to play that people interact with, make part of your quest system, people to interact with skins and weapons and NFTs, send them to other friends of theirs. You've just now got user acquisition for wallets, you have got transactions that are starting to take place on the blockchain, you can start getting yourself trending on DappRadar, that, for me is how you go about doing this. And how you can start slowly leaving bite sized pieces of education for people and reward them for interacting with it. And then you're going to start bridging people out from web2 to web3, but it's gonna take time. This isn't something that this year, everybody just plays web3 games, the web2 aspects of gaming is far too big, far too powerful. And you've got to look at the game publishers that are out there and how big they are. But what I love is we're starting to see them adopt because they understand the power of these technologies. And they're starting to get involved look at up sauce, partnering with immutable, and there's so many more, I could talk for hours on this, but I'm gonna be quiet now. give other people an opportunity.

Yeah, I love both of your sentiments in the sense that if we would like to see these technologies adopted, it's not the technologies that we can sell. And we've tried this in the space. I mean, we've tried this to death. And now we heading back into a new bull market. And we might see more of these actions, of course, a hype, hype market as a hype market. But I love the fact that over time, more and more founders and builders in this space are really just adopting that mindset of look, if there's no utility for what I'm building, I cannot expect people to come on board. So my question then is, yes, of course it is going to take time. Who then is it that we are building for, especially in the gaming space? There's gamers of all different ages. And everyone of course, has the as your even Funsho saying that the games that your kids play are not necessarily the the games that you play. But then who is this target audience that we think is will be the first wave of people of gamers, using the technologies without necessarily even knowing or caring? What is in the back end?

Yeah, so I don't know, Nadja, if you want to keep to order or like, move it around, but happy to go on through that. Yeah, so I think, you know, I mean, for us speaking specifically for from the lens of what we're building on the Breshna’s side. For us, one of the things that we realized was that video games are a universal language. And people around the world are, I mean, this is the generation of snackable short form content. And you know, people are people would love to tell their stories, whether it's like, I mean, whether we're seeing a teacher in Saudi Arabia, making an Arabic video game for science and math learning, or you know, a kid in Nigeria making a Valentine's Day game, or whether it's a mother in Pakistan, making a reproductive health game for her daughter, right, and everything. So we started to see this shift of, you know, I mean, this idea of really leveraging video games as storytelling tools. So what we're building for is, we Breshna actually empowers a non tech, almost a non gamer audience. So it's really interesting that if you ask a lot of casual gamers, Hey, are you a gamer? They'll actually say no. So for instance, in the US, the average mobile game player is a 36 year old woman. And that is a demographic that often, you know, a lot of game development tools within the gaming industry are not speaking to they're building for game developers, local tools, all of that, you know, open environment, these are being built for people there who already have some understanding of how games work and everything. We said, Hey, let's forget all of that. Let's build for the content creators. And if you can imagine, let's take the example of teachers teachers have been content creators, where before content creation was even a concept the way that we know it right now and everything right, but I mean, so for instance, 7 million teachers are using Kahoot every single day in their classrooms. They think that's a game that's a game if I It engagement, right and everything. So we're seeing this is Kahoot on steroids, you're able to now build your own video games where you're running and you're catching even numbers, and you're dodging odd numbers, and you're having a blast. But I think for us, what was really important was, again, if you come at it from the utility of the user, so we were saying, hey, and we're starting with ad tech and content creators, I mean, you know, if you're building for everyone, you're building for no one. So we have become hyper focused in that. And our countries are very interesting. Pakistan, us, Saudi, Nigeria, and Indonesia, are the top five countries where we've seen growth, we've had 170,000 registered game makers that have created 150,000 Video games on the platform. And these have more than 2 million game clicks. And our this has been mostly organic growth, like our cost of acquisition is less than $1. We haven't done digital paid marketing, we haven't done the common kind of, you know, web3 marketing strategies. We've just basically had a flywheel of content creation, a teacher sends one game on WhatsApp, you know, it's a URL link 20 students played of those 27 Go ahead and make their own video games. So I think what's really interesting for us is actually, we didn't come at it from the typical web3, go to market strategies. And if anything, we got a lot of pressure during the bull market to launch our token immediately, even before our product was ready. And we said, hey, you know what, we really push back on that. And that was a challenge. And we push back on that. And we said, we're not going to launch this token. Until we know that one, we have a product. And number two, that the product is needed by the people. So we established an underlying utility, these 170,000 people that are on Breshna, right now, are not there to earn. They're there. Because they're making games, they're playing games, they're contributing to games, and then when they will also be able to own and monetize. That is when it's a top right and everything. So I think for us, really, I mean, who are we building for? I think we should be building for people where games solve that problem, whether it's deep engagement, deep, immersive engagement, people who are hungry for deepen bursts of engagement, people who want to tell their stories, in their own language, with their own avatars, with their own music, you want to make a game that's truly yours, and you want to send that as a birthday game or something you can do that, you know, it's like, I think there's so many spectrums of like, who the gaming industry builds for. And I think Funsho was right, like, we don't have to reinvent the go to market strategy for games. Gaming has had a hunger there, always. And if we start with that game first mentality, then these web training blocks, you know, I mean, web3, and blockchain technology becomes those things that just enhances that user experience so much more.

This always reminds me why I'm so grateful for the show. Because if you're listening to the show, I mean, the Insights shed and the, let's say, the sobering insights shared by the audience, by the guests on this on the show is always so incredible. Mariam, thank you so much for that I think your voice truly needs to be amplified within the gaming space, because of course, we've seen a lot of the opposite of that. And we've also seen that nothing then leads to fruition in terms of actual adoption. Funsho, I know you feel very similar. We've spoken about this before. But please share your perspective. I know that you, as Mariam has an incredibly, let's say correct perspective, when it comes to leveraging these technologies, as opposed to making them the be all end all, with no user adoption in the end sight.

No, I completely agree with what Mariam said. And I think for what Mariam has built and is building, it makes total sense. The big thing that jumps out for me, is everything is starting to become gamified. So when we talk about people creating their own games, or people launching games for end users, I just think we're moving into a world where gamification is just hitting every industry. It really is. I mean, we recently partnered with Megaland, Tracy, she's a brilliant woman, and she's got massive backgrounds in investment. And I love what they've done. It's they are helping people understand how to invest in cryptocurrency, but they've gamified it. So the information that they're sharing even the charts, they'll show you a chart for a particular cryptocurrency that you could potentially invest in, and then the information that shows you you're actually playing a game so the char becomes a roller coaster that your character is riding on, and you need to decide when you should buy and sell. And I think that's just genius. And these are the kinds And the things that I think progressively with the additional technologies that are now out there, you know, I think Apple vision Pro VR is going to blow up so much more augmented reality. There's amazing things that can be done with it already. We're factoring that. And we've already got support for ride share, topia, which is open world RPG game for the vision Pro. And we recently have pushed that out on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store as well. But coming back to your original question, which I want to kind of delve into a little bit further. Now, if we're thinking about who we personally are targeting with Project Lambo, we're looking for those hyper casual gamers, people that just jump on their mobile when they've got bit of spare time. However, we have produced a number of options for them that can enhance what their normal gameplay experience would be in a web two environment. And I think that's what's the important part. With us knowing how much time it could potentially take for adoption to get to, you know, a far higher level than what it is right now, it's important to concentrate on producing a fantastic game that people enjoy keeping that fun factor input, and obviously importing some form of educational content so that they understand the technology that is now out there, and the benefits that they could have. But don't force it down their throat, don't try and token gate them, don't try and NFT gate them. Instead, you can come and play our game, have fun hanging out, do whatever you want and leave, there is no expectation for you to buy anything. And that's what's key. From our side, we are focusing on building an ecosystem for safety for gamers. That is our number one priority. We've we believe that the online gaming industry as a whole has far too much toxicity. There is online bullying, there is racism there is grooming. And there are people that have taken their Lives, unfortunately, young people. And we want to create a safe gaming environment where people have that same experience that I had when I was a kid where online gaming didn't even exist. But I was still transported away. I remember playing Final Fantasy, I remember playing Resident Evil, I was not talking to someone on the other side of the world. But I had an amazing experience. And that is where our focus is provide an amazing experience for people add that additional technology, and give those bite sized pieces of educational content. Because ultimately, we do want people to understand more about this technology and to take advantage of it. However, we understand that you can't force it down their throat and they need to consume it at their own pace.

I love the work that both of you are doing I think the next few years are going to be pivotal time in terms of seeing how the sun shifts, sands shift. But then the question becomes now that we are coming back into a bull market period. And of course, all of our all of us who have been through these cycles before we know that in our if you look at the fear greed index, when things on the fear end of the scale, everyone's licking their wounds, and you're just yeah, we're going to do better next time. And we're not going to make the same decisions. And as that needle begins to swing in favor of greed, all logic and all of the promises from from the bear market flies out the window. And then we repeat exactly the same behaviors that we've done previously. Because of course, this is crypto, and this is how it goes. So I would love to hear from both of you. Having built in a bear market, which I think I don't know, if retail investors always appreciate what it means for a project to build in a bear market, it's extremely easy to get everything you need, like think of it and you get it in a bear market in a bull market. But in a bear market, the situation is very different than so those founders who build in a bear market are the ones that have a very different way more long term sustainability, healthy perspectives than the pop up startups that we see, you know, kind of come and go. So I would love to hear from both of your friends where we can start with you. I know you've been through many a cycle in this space. What do you anticipate is going to be different in this bear market as it comes to these technologies and the intersection with gaming? Or do you see do you think that we'll see a lot of the same mentalities and behaviors repeated as we've done previously?

I think that's fantastic question. And if I'm honest, I think both things are gonna happen. And the reason that both things are going to happen is because there are going to be people that come into the market, they're looking for a quick cash grab there. And there are also going to be people that come into the market that are planning to do a long term have all the right ethics and reasons, but they haven't got the experience. So this is why these spaces are so important because the information that's shared, you know, builders do need to take no, there is so much more than just building your project that you need to take into consideration. And for us, me being someone that's been a crypto educator and investor for over seven years now, I know as well as most how important it is that you've got a game plan, understanding the volatility of the market, understanding the liquidity, understanding market making, understanding how to protect your investors, your community, your users, every single element has to be taken into consideration. And that is the difference between a project that survives a bad market and a project that doesn't. So for us, luckily, we have got a fantastic team with experience. We've got people that have worked in impact investing that have worked with some of the largest private banks on the planet. IAG, Australia, BNP Paribas. And we have got a five year roadmap with plenty of runway and a very good investment strategy to make sure that some of these severe pullbacks we see in the market that catch a lot of people out because they're thinking Money, money, money, and they're thinking, leverage trading, that is not something that we would even consider, you need to make sure that you've got a certain amount of stable coins that sap that so that you are not having the price of your token, massively affected with the volatility that can take place. And I think that if you are somebody that's new that's coming into this industry, and you're considering building a project during a bull run, you have to make sure that you seek the right people to get involved with your project and seek the right advisors and advice. It may come across very salesy, when a lot of these people are offering these different advisor packages and things like that. But you do need the advice and help from these people. And I can tell you now, I've spoken to so many projects that regret from the last Bull Run, not taking on that additional advice, it affected them, it affected their investors. And more importantly, it affected the community that had invested in the first place, but time, matter and money. So these things do need to be seriously considered when you're running a project in this space.

Very well said, Funsho, I wish we can put you on a loudspeaker for all the founders out there to hear it is really involved building a project. And it doesn't matter what market you're in. They are always challenges. They are always incredible opportunities, but also so many challenges. And that's why the web3 community, if we are still calling it a web3, is far more supportive than other industries. Because whether you are working in the industry, whether you are involved as a retail investor, or as a user, there's so much free information available for ensure exactly as you said, These spaces are invaluable experiences for everyone to learn. I mean, whether you are working in the industry, whether you are just beginning, there's always so much information being shared by people who have been through the trenches. So Mariam, what about you? What do you think we are going to see this year, of course, your background is from a very different industry than this crazy with three minutes that we have. And your approach as well is for like, I don't want to call it traditional, but I think traditional is not necessarily always a bad thing. For me, you know, my background is in marketing. And yeah, web3, marketing is an interesting space to be but it doesn't necessarily mean that we are doing the right things in the industry, even if it is industry practice. Because ultimately, we are dealing with real people who are out there in the real world. And if we create this little bubble, yeah, it's great and fun to be here, but it is then essentially a bubble. So I would love to hear from you. Based on your experience. What do you think we'll see in this brave new market coming up?

Yeah, absolutely. Not yet. And before I started, just want to give a heads up I had allocated 60 minutes. I do have a hard stop at the top of the hour. So just just as an FYI, I think from my perspective, you know, like you said, I mean I am coming at it from an economist From an international development perspective, entering the gaming space eight years ago, I had a lot of impostor syndrome. I was very nervous. I mean, you know, I kept doubting myself whether I was the person to build a gaming company, I'm not a coder. I'm not a hardcore gamer. But I do spend hours and hours of my of my life, you know, it's like playing hypercasual video games. And to me, you know, I mean, I was like, Do I belong, right? And everything. And I think the gaming actually, the gaming walls are way higher than the web three walls, right? And everything. Like, if you look at the gaming sector, it has had way more years to cement, these traditional stereotypes of a gamer of who a game developer is of who belongs in the, in the industry. And now we're trying to scrape away of for our doors and everything, but I actually feel like web three, everyone was able to grab a seat at the table. But everyone did not feel like they knew what they were doing there, right and everything. So I think it was like one of those parties where everyone was invited. But then there was like a little bit of a lack of structure and like fonts, you're saying, I think there's a I mean, the web3, you know, I mean, industry is a little bit like kittens around around shining balls, because there are so many things that come your way. There is an advisor at every turn. I especially think founders are over mentored and underfunded. Especially there's a certain type of founder that may not get that same level of, of guy quality advice and everything. So I think that I try to keep one Northstar one compass when I see myself, especially because it's so easy to get I mean, as a founder to get rosy eyed about capital coming your way or advice coming your way. But not all capital is good capital. Not all advice is good advice. So I try to keep myself grounded in the one Northstar, which is what is my user want, right. And I think what I tried to build was an, at least in my capacity, a user base that isn't diluted by trends, you know, and everything. And if you're building a startup, if you're building the future, I mean, first setting the mega trends of the future, first gonna set the culture of the future, we cannot have a two year one year time horizon, that's not what we're building for, like fundraising. I mean, if you've been through all of the cycles, and everything, you know that you're here to stay at risk, and we're probably going to have three, four or five more cycles, before these companies mature to the point of defining those mega trends in culture. So for me, at the end of the day, it goes back to having a hand on the pulse of what my user wants, and saying, Alright, this is something will this feed into my Northstar? Will this enhance the user experience? Will mine user Come on? Make a simple video game? And then how so I'm helping them with creation? But now how am I helping them with discovery? Now? How am I helping them with monetization, so it's really responding to those needs, and then kind of kind of approaching it like that. So I'm excited about the bull market to come back. But I'm also a little bit weary, because honestly, the one really cool thing about building in the bear was that the noise died down. And honestly, the quality of conversations was very high level, there were very few people, but the people that were there, it was such high level, very collaborative conversations. And I'm actually kind of gonna miss that, right? Because then when there's more noise, there's more, you know, I mean, it's like, then there's, it's like you said, Not everyone gets that pressure of just getting swept away. And you know, I mean, doing all of that, you know, hustle, and almost a blind hustle and everything. So I think like, I'm just gonna try to stay grounded. I mean, the waters will come. But I think as long as you have that long term vision, and if you surround yourself with the right high quality people, I think I think we're in this for the long run.

Thank you so much to both of you. I'm going to move over into questions keeping in mind Mariam that you need to go on the hour. So I'll start with you. But before I start with you, in case you need to run out before I'm able to ask you this question, where is the best place for people to follow you? Where are you most active? And what are your preferred channels?

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, again, a little bit more traditional. Obviously, Twitter is one place, give me a follow drop a DM, but I actually build in public on both Twitter and LinkedIn, because I feel like there's a lot to be said about founder experiences building in these, like the gaming sector, but also like fundraising between web2 and web3, fundraising as a first time female non tech founder, I have a ton of experiences that I share. So both Twitter, LinkedIn, I mean, you can find me there, you know, obviously emailed but then also just check out rational.io. It's a free platform where anyone can make their own video games. So Breshna.io. We'd love to see the games. And then we have our breath numbers and our token launching next quarter. So super excited about what's coming for 2024.

Wonderful. So I'm going to pose the first cue question to you so that you can run when you need to go from crypto CMO, Will we ever see gaming both for offline education being used in places with limited connectivity or electricity? very pertinent question for those people in the world who would like to game but they perhaps don't have the resources in order to play the same games that we play in other parts of the world?

Yeah, absolutely. Nadja, this question, I mean, I relate with the Lord. Because again, I spent a lot of my time in, you know, serving what, what is the bottom billion, right, like underserved locations, where you don't always have connectivity, you don't always have the hardware to be able to build for the kinds of innovations that we're seeing, you know, in some other economies. And actually, when we started wanting to first I started as a gaming studio building social impact mobile games, for low end $10 Android phone. So like, one of the first video games we made was a period game, where you're catching pads with a pair of undies on offline learning about menstrual health and reproductive health. And that was built for $10 smartphones in local languages, right? So games have offline versions, there are so many different ways of getting these games on these low end phones. And I do know that a lot of a lot of technology will require connectivity. But let's also not sleep on the ability for these economies to leapfrog. A lot of times, you know, it's like, I mean, for instance, the reason we're looking at blockchain in the first place is because a lot of our economies, they're not banked. They don't prefer Fiat. They're already on cryptocurrency, way far, far more ahead, than for instance, the banking brick and mortar systems, right? So actually, sometimes economies like that they're able to leapfrog certain technologies and just be able to get into the future so much faster. So for us, Nigeria, Saudi, I mean, East Asia are huge markets. And they're the ones asking for the ability to monetize, but not through fiat currency, but actually to cryptocurrency so I think, I mean, the the gaming, it's already there for offline. And I also think that we rather than building for the past, we can build for the future, and that leapfrogging will happen within innovation.

Mariam, thank you so much for your time today. We'll be watching closely as you continue to do amazing things with Breshna and just this mentality that you have of what you want to bring to the world as North Star, I think that shines very brightly through every word that you're saying. So thank you so much for your time here with us today. And then Funsho question for you, because I know that project Lambo is quite well versed in terms of AI. So a question from Kylene Johnson. Many people are afraid that AI will take over people's jobs. What is your thought of that? And I want to expand on this question a little bit. If AI continues to come into gaming, what is that going to mean? Also, for the professional aspect of game development, if AI is taking over a lot of the game creation?

Love that question. I think the best way that I can put this is, it's all about perspective. So for example, anyone that's interacted with ChatGPT, and understands the power of what it comes down to is not that it's going to replace the job of the writer. But actually, it's going to enhance the writers skill set to be able to have even better productivity. And this is where you've got the lazy individual that decides to say to ChatGPT create me an entire article about a certain topic, and then pushes that out. Right, it's very easy for me to tell that that's been created by ChatGPT however, if you were to say to ChatGPT to create an article and go into a lot of detail. Get ChatGPT to understand who you are, how you communicate what your tones like what your sense of humor is, like, every aspect of it, you can start to train it very, very well. You can feed it with so much information about you as an individual or about your business or about your service or your product, or whatever it may be. Now when you go about it in that way. It's actually very easy for you to then just come and make a few tweaks to it. Now that's making a massive enhancement to your productivity. So it, it all comes down to perspective. For me, there are a lot of deep fakes that are out there and some of the new video quality that open aI have recently released with four, or Soreq, I'm trying to remember the name of it's one of those. So what I'm trying to get at is, I think it's going to be an amazing, additional help for everybody that understands how to communicate with it. And it shouldn't be something that we're scared of. But what we do need to do is be responsible about making sure that people understand how to spot the differences, and how to make sure that people aren't suffering from scams because AI ultimately, as powerful as it is can be used for good or it can be used for evil. It's no different to anything else that's in the world. You know, we talk about Fiat we talk about cryptocurrency, the people that scared of cryptocurrency will say that Bitcoin and crypto is being used to fund war by war criminals, okay, but before crypto was around, what was informed by them wasn't about the dollar, or the pound, or the euro, or the yen, or whatever else it may be. You know, this is all about perspective in my eyes, and any tool that exists out. It's all about how you approach it. But I am so excited for what artificial intelligence can do. For us with Project Lambo, just to give you a short little understanding, imagine this, okay. I've played video games all my life since I was eight years old, first computer, Commodore 64, eight bit, my kids, I still play video games with them today. I call them kids. They're 15, 17 and 20 years old. And we have an amazing time. But I've seen how things have advanced, you know, video games back in the day that I played, it was text on a screen. And you could make a couple of choices that would give you different alternate endings, for example, today, what we're working on, is the ability for you to interact with your own inner NFT characters in a human like manner with ChatGPT’s, API, artificial intelligence built in. Now, there are so many things that you can do with this, because you've got to put it into perspective of I remember, the worst part for me was always you need to come off the computer now and get your homework done. Imagine your NFT character being able to assist you, in doing your homework in helping you with translation education searches online, what this comes down to, again, is the responsibility of the developer to make sure that there are parameters set so that nothing bad is going to be shown or sad or communicated to the end user provided that responsibility is there. AI is fantastic. And it's going to do so much for so many people. It's already doing so much for so many people that don't even realize it's in so many of their apps. So many of these live chats that they go on, when they've got a problem with their internet. It is already here. It's not going anywhere. And what this comes down to is what kind of regulatory framework is set up to make sure that people are protected. And that is where our responsibility is high. You know, we've got to make sure that we're looking after the user.

So I'm going to take this opportunity to answer a question that was posed to me by snow, what inspire you to bring together this diverse group of gaming Innovators for the space? Think if you have been tuning in the power over the past hour, that question is naturally answered because it's just a such an amazing gift to be able to show up here week after week and listen to how the minds that are actually building the future. Think about these technologies and think about the place in the world. So with that Funsho, it's always an absolute pleasure to speak to you. We are very very supportive of everything that Project Lambo is doing. And every time that I speak to you they are new things that are being integrated, but your north star as Mariam's really shines bright and pushes you in the direction that the vision that you have is sending you so thank you so much for the time that you've spent with us again on the show today. lovely to have you back and yeah, all the best for the future. We will be with you guys every step of the way. It's the new dawn is joining I think in in the gaming sector and it's just wonderful to hear the balanced perspective of both of my guests today. So if you would like to follow Funsho, Funsho where is the best place that people can follow you and Project Lambo.

Thank you. So, I always love coming on these spaces no idea I think that you're a wealth of knowledge yourself. I love the way that you talk. I'm really thankful that you put these spaces on anyone that wants to follow me, you can follow me on X just by simply clicking on my bald head that you can see that alternatively for Project Lambo, you can follow us on X or visit our website projectlambo.io. And I'll quickly take this opportunity to say that we're running an amazing in game AirDrop, first of its kind, it's the most simple AirDrop you will ever interact with where we're giving away Lambo tokens for you simply downloading the game, entering your polygon wallet address, and finding treasure chests around our world, which is called Sheertopia. So if you're up for doing, please feel free, and it's completely free. Nothing is all that you need to do apart from that. And thank you again for the opportunity to speak today.

With that we have come to the end of today's show. We will not be having a live show next week I will be attending the Saudi gaming Summit. I think it's in Saudi Arabia next week. So we'll definitely be telling you guys how that experience was if you've been following Saudi Arabia, you know, there's a lot of development happening in all of these emerging technology sectors. So I will see you the week they offer for the next episode episode of the Future of NFTs catch you on the other side. guys have a great week. Cheers.