Play to earn in a mobile game format? Brilliant! But wait… what if we add AI inside? Amazing sceneries, custom avatars & badges amplify the experience. Daniel Tamas, Co-founder, and CEO WAM talks about his app and how WAM 3.0 is creating a whole new crypto-gaming experience.

If you’re a gamer here is the redefinition of hyper casual crypto gaming platform!

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WAM - Sportifying Communities

Participants:

• Nadja Bester (CEO & Co-founder of AdLunam)

• Daniel Tamas(Co-founder & CEO of WAM)

00:22

Nadja

Hey, web3world. This is Nadja Bester from AdLunam, and you are listening to The Future of NFTs, the show that looks beyond current NFT use cases and dives into what non fungible token technology is evolving into. All this are seen through the eyes and built by the minds of the fascinating guest speakers we speak to each week. AdLunam is the only Web3 investment platform that rewards attention with allocation. Our Engage to Earn platform features dynamic NFT investor profiles, NFT allocation fractionalization, and our one of a kind Proof of Attention allocation mechanism. Now, my guest today is Daniel Tamas, who is a passionate serial entrepreneur and the co-founder of WAM, an award winning Web3 game tech company that is changing the way people play games using blockchain technology. And WAM App is a social gaming platform where users can compete in skill based tournaments on simple and highly engaging hyper casual games to win digital assets, WAM tokens and blockchain backed collectibles.

01:30

Nadja

So very happy to have you here with us today Daniel.

01:33

Daniel

Can you hear me?

01:37

Nadja

Hey, Daniel. Yes, I can hear you. How's it going?

01:40

Daniel

Good. Just listening to the rain at this point, but very happy to be here.

01:46

Nadja

Oh, lovely. Which whereabouts are you?

01:47

Daniel

In the middle of Transylvania.

01:51

Nadja

Oh, wow, what an appropriate scene. That's incredible. Yeah, I was going to go over there a couple of months ago, but I didn't end up making it. But I can't wait to go. It's definitely on my list. I visited a reconstruction castle of some Transylvanian castle in Budapest a while ago and it was really like, very telesco. I can't wait to see the actual part of the world.

02:16

Daniel

Well, the place is welcoming. Beautiful sceneries. And just come and see. Everybody gets surprised in a good way when they do.

02:29

Nadja

Absolutely. Well, I'm actually also enjoying the rains. I'm in Goa, India, and the monsoon season is just starting. So I'm very grateful for a little bit of a reprieve from the extreme heat. Daniel so, yeah, getting into it. I want to start us off really just by cementing for the audience what exactly it is that you guys do. So you describe yourself as a play and earn hyper casual crypto gaming platform. So I know a little bit about the journey that you followed that you evolved from a gaming company into a Web3 gaming company. So I would love to know as a company, since getting started, and obviously the market that we've been in has not been an easy one, how have you evolved as a company in terms of the offerings that you offer your audience? And I mean in terms of the audience just to say that WAM already has really quite a substantial traction.

03:24

Nadja

03:46

Daniel

05:00

Daniel

05:41

Nadja

I find it fascinating that your perspective is definitely different from most web3 gaming companies in the sense that you already had an existing gaming company, whereas a lot of founders, I would say the majority of gaming founders in Web3, this is their first time working in the gaming sector, as well as launching a startup as well. So there's been so much talk, of course, at the height of it, there's been so much talk about GameFi being the future of Web3 and then of course, on the other extreme, that there are some large gaming companies that have said that they are not going to get involved with Web3 at all. So as someone who has been in the gaming sector pre Web3, what are your thoughts on what it's going to take for gaming to fully adopt what Web3 has to offer?

06:31

Nadja

How far are we from getting to that point where it becomes more of a mainstream adoption? And what are some of the steps needed or perhaps the obstacles that prevent us from getting there.

06:44

Daniel

Okay, I'll do my best. First, a lot of people that jumped into web3 were marketers that saw the opportunity for a quick buck, let's say it's what it is. And this in turn led to a lot of scams being propagated in the space. Because in a hype driven environment, if you know what other people looking at you want, you can actually tailor your message in a way that you want them. The stuff that I'm selling regarding the perspective, first, in order for web3 to gain mass adoption, and I honestly, truly believe, and actually I don't believe when you believe, you don't know. I know that games will be the mechanism and the car or the spaceship that will take us to mass adoption. And there's the reason for that. When you're in a gaming mindset, when you're in a gaming environment, you tend to be open to the new stuff.

07:58

Daniel

You tend to be curious. You tend to experiment. You don't quite focus on what tech is beyond the pixels on the screen. And this is how it should be, right? When you have a technology, in order for it to be massively used, you cannot focus on what the technology is. You have to have users that benefit from using that technology in a very invisible way. So this goes towards a simple answer regarding mass adoption that is user experience. Most people, and even us in this room, probably hate the current UX, but we got used to it. Like signing transactions, topping up your wallet, or buying with your credit card, and a lot of stuff that goes on, plus the uncertainty with the security of a certain protocol or a certain piece of technology or adapt that just contributes to lack of trust. So coming back, the user experience needs to be awesome.

09:11

Daniel

The technology needs to be invisible. And the second would be the right incentives. We've experimented with several types of incentives, and not all of them were quite appropriate in the sense of, okay, you have a token, you have an NFT. How do you reward your community and how do you make them part of the community using one or the other or both? And a community is only a community as long as the general guidelines for it to exist are actually upheld by the community members themselves. So that is a community. It’s a group of people that believe in the same stuff and actually contribute to the success of that community, whatever they set out to do. So with the right incentives and with the right understanding of how web3 technology is supposed to work and what this decentralization actually means, what benefits can it bring?

10:21

Daniel

And who are you in this new world? What are the expectations, what are the ecosystems’ expectations towards web3? To know the technology, to understand the actual contributions that are needed to understand that value must be created, must be brought to the table. You can also take out value in certain conditions and so on and so forth. So these are the two main things that I see will help mass adoption. Regarding games by a show of hands of hearts or whatever emoji you plan to use, please use it to signal if the first thing you used as a digital user were games. Like when you touched your first device, were there games involved or not? Just show of hands, of hearts or I believe you if you even send me one bitcoin. So whatever you choose. So regardless, just imagine that the first time you touched a device, be it a computer, be it cell phone or a smartphone or if your guys old enough, if you had like Tetris or whatever console, it was always games.

12:01

Daniel

Because it's medium that allows you to learn fast, to have fun, to eliminate complexity, to focus on a simple task that brings you joy at the end of the day and an actual sense of improvement of one skills. So games plus amazing user experience and community will get to that. Mass adoption.

12:32

Nadja

Yeah, I mean, I 100% agree with you in the sense that at the moment, what has been happening, or thus far at least what has been happening in the web3 industry is that things are useful because they're web3 or they are sexy because they're web3. But the crutch of whatever someone is doing is usually around the fact that it's web3. Whereas in reality, if we are going to move along to adoption, we have to get to the point where, as you say, the technology is almost invisible, but it's the function that it performs that outperforms alternatives. I have a question related to you saying that community of course is such a huge part of this, a part of the adoption experience as well as gaming. So WAM focuses on giving casual gamers the opportunity to win at something, whereas usually it's only professional Esports players that compete in gaming titles, which obviously there's, I mean the statistics of course, we all know there are an incredible amount of gamers in the world.

13:37

Nadja

And while many people would love to compete, at least in a rewards based system, that pool of professional sports players, Esports players very small. So can you run me through your thinking, in terms of how this idea came about and why you believe that the way that WAM has structured things is so important as we enter a new era of gaming.

14:05

Daniel

Okay, first of all, we're still experimenting. So the way we structure things today might change tomorrow because we still need to figure out a lot of stuff. It's an ongoing building process. We came up with the idea, especially deriving it from the professional Esports players in the sense that, okay, these guys play Counterstrike or Dota or whatever they play. But what are the guys that play for fun with their friends on a Saturday night? And what about the people that play on their mobile phones? So the concept was actually hyper casual Esports. And in this context we added the tournaments on top to allow people to compete. Now there's an observation. Not everybody wants to compete. It's just human nature. Some people just want to do it for fun, some people just want to explore a bit and some other people will take your head off in a competition regardless if it's, I don't know, lighting a house, playing on WAM or eating boiled eggs.

15:15

Daniel

It's just their nature. So I do see two users, two user personas with different objectives, but at the same time with the ability of being community members in a gaming environment. And at the end of the day, the vision for WAM is to become a platform where you can find your own type of entertainment, where stuff is enabled by the blockchain, secured by blockchain, and you can go in and out without having to look over your shoulder. Is this legit? Is this a scam? Are my funds protected? Is my wallet safe? And so on and so forth. Plus, in terms of publishing, we no longer have to worry about Apple and Google because in terms of content, a self-organizing community can actually curate the content itself. Similar to what the green light on Steam is. Similar.

16:22

Nadja

That is a very level headed approach because we stand on the precipice of so many new things. But at the same time, this time is so crucial in terms of how this is evolving, especially now with the advent of technologies like AI, which again stands to evolve, well, disrupt and evolve the gaming industry. I know that you have some AI powered features that you've included. Can you run us through how that works and what the response has been so far, if any?

16:58

Daniel

So we're experimenting with AI like everybody else. This year has seen a boom in AI driven startups and everybody's looking for the next pot of gold. For the gaming industry, the AI brings something unparalleled in terms of creativity and creation. You can actually have in game assets, you can have sounds, you can have entire game scripts written by AI and you can have custom gameplay. For instance, a game adapts to your gaming style and increases the difficulty just a bit every time. So you can still be engaged and enjoy the progress that you've been making on the skills that you've been training. We have three pillars that we see important and want to move towards. One is AI assisted game generation. Basically, you create your games with the help of your phone and then just have fun on tournaments or on single player mode with other people and friends.

18:00

Daniel

And this is possible especially for simple games that have like an endless type of gameplay where you can just progress from level to level and the difficulty can increase coming towards the customization of the gaming experience. This is also important because we have a lot of today, a lot of inefficiencies in designing the right type of game loops and game structures to capture a certain type of audience. But what if you start a game, it's simple enough and there's an AI behind the scenes that understands how you play, understands your pace, and starts adapting the gameplay to what you find most engaging. Right? So this would be a very new experience. Plus, in terms of generating content, you can have endless worlds, endless maps, 2D, 3D, literally anything that you want, including sounds, are like half of the game. And this can also be generated.

19:12

Daniel

So it all comes down to the creativity of the person trying to create something. And the AI is the tool that will help you get there very fast. And the other pillar, the third pillar would be the security part. A lot of the client side games, the games that you play on your phone, don't have a back end for secure score transmission and for a lot of the data that has to be secured. So then the question arises, how do you secure something that runs on the client? But you have to actually pinpoint cheaters and hackers and scammers and so on. This is where machine learning comes in and can learn patterns really fast, can flag accounts that are, let's say I'm missing the word, breaking the rules and all of a sudden it can be almost a self-governing ecosystem where you have these tools that are plugged into the back end or sorry, plugged into the app.

20:15

Daniel

The app communicates with these tools, but at the same time, this can be saved to the blockchain transparently. We come to inefficiencies when it comes to saving a lot of the data on the blockchain. So not everything will be possible, at least in the near future, or even efficient, not possible, efficient to be saved on the blockchain. But I've just seen yesterday the recent progress polygon has made with polygon two. And a lot of smarter people than us are working very hard on improving the technology and ensuring that it has enough scalability to reach that much coveted adoption. Worldwide adoption.

21:03

Nadja

Very good point. I know that you have the offensive vampires NFT collection. What makes those NFTs unique and why are they part of the ecosystem? What is their role and what is the value that they offer?

21:25

Daniel

First, we've been in the bear market for the past year and a half. It's the first time we go through it and it's like birthing a baby through your belly button so it takes a bit of push. And we kept seeing a lot of rug pools, we kept seeing a lot of naysayers. That crypto sucks, NFT suck. What's the price, sir, what's the floor price? And so on. So we had the vampires concept for about a year and we just couldn't do all of them at once. Like everything that we had to execute. But this year we kind of said, well, f*** this. If the market sucks, let's make something that sucks from the get go. You know it will suck the moment you see it because it's written on the freaking screen. And then went against, let's say, the current trend of not offending people.

22:30

Daniel

I see no reason why not to do it, but in a way that is not offensive, if that makes sense. So we said, okay, let's play a bit with the words given. We're from Transylvania, Dracula was around these parts and we have the WAM brand that very easily rolls down the tongue when you say vampires. We said, okay, let's make offensive vampires collectibles that suck. And this is where we played with the words like literal suck because they're vampires. But at the same time related to crypto stuff, you have double suck, which is awesome. And that was the story behind the concept. In terms of the utility, we struggled to keep them as few as possible. There are a few utilities. We couldn't make them suck, fully suck. So we said, okay, some stuff needs to be there, like getting royalties. If you scream your lungs out at the reveal moment and creating that sound for 3 seconds, that is your creation.

23:40

Daniel

And that's something that you will get royalties on. Just scream at the freaking computer. You've done it. We've all done it. It's just a matter of actually being worth it this time. The other one would be access tournaments on WAM, the ability to stake the NFTs, and to participate in a DAO, which we call Dracula's autonomous organization. Yeah, we tend to, or at least want to keep things as fun as possible. Low expectation, like very low expectation for the simple fact that coming from the game space, the most traction games had was when you just didn't give a s***. Like, we're going to make something fun and it has to be fun for us. It has to be fun for the people that believe in this type of fun. We live in a world where everything becomes very sterile in terms of communication, in terms of how we address each other.

24:48

Daniel

And we forget that humans actually thrive in a bit of controversy, thrive in a bit of honesty, thriving, a bit of quirky fun. And this is what we want to do with these NFTs. Well, we're going to call them collectibles for the simple fact that a lot of people are afraid of the technology. It's like I'm afraid of the electrical current, but still, we're not going to go against the grain.

25:18

Nadja

Brilliant. Absolutely love the branding. A lot of fun. And I 100% agree with you. This industry is a place where people definitely get to express their creativity and the inner child a little bit more than in other industries and it's always something I'm so grateful for. But at the same time it really speaks to users at a level that other industries don't speak to them, where everything is so sterile and formal. So I have a question around the idea of an audience and a community because you have a very ambitious goal of having 100 million users, which of course is completely reachable, but at the same time it's so much about having users get on board with what it is that you're offering. So what are your thoughts around growing a community, especially in Web3, where there's both unique opportunities as well as unique challenges?

26:12

Nadja

Or perhaps your approach is really not Web3 focused at all, but onboarding, just normal gamers, perhaps experience. How do you approach this?

26:26

Daniel

Tough question. Well, our approach regarding the users in the app was definitely Web2 social media, viral content creation. There you go, I spilled the beans. I could say we're pretty good at it in terms of building a community. Again, I'm no better than any other person trying to build something that they think is meaningful and rewarding at the same time. It's all about finding the right people, which is hard, that believe in the same stuff you do and actually want to be there. We've noticed that forcing user in a certain type of pattern, just because we want to have a big community or want to have a certain type of engagement does not work. And given it's a Hype driven business, and we have a token, you can easily spot why this is difficult because it's not about the project, it's about the price, which is stupid.

27:35

Daniel

28:23

Nadja

As we talk about the concept of mainstream adoption, which obviously is not something that we are going to see on the horizon too soon, but it's certainly moving in the direction at WAM. How do you maintain a simple and a user friendly platform for newcomers, especially in the light of so many of your users being people from the Web2 space? Do you make an effort to quote unquote, hide the technology, as we were discussing earlier, or do you see it as kind of a calling or responsibility to onboard people into Web3 at the same time?

29:01

Daniel

As I mentioned, we cannot force people to do stuff, especially when they're new. So the efforts that we make even contain some prayers and locking the technology in a closet and throwing away the key. But it's not as easy as it sounds. One of the challenges that we notice is building for a large group of people is way more challenging than it looks from the outside like way, with a lot of A in the way. And what's the usual process? Trial and error, a b, testing, figuring out what works and what doesn't. It's a painful process. So I'm usually with my IV, walking around and looking at stats because the calcium drops really quickly. I'm joking at this point, but being on a more serious note is removing as much as possible the technology that impedes the primary goal of the user when in a certain environment, I just set a sentence very complicated.

30:27

Daniel

So basically, just make it simple enough so stupid people understand. Why I'm saying stupid, I'm saying tech stupid, which we all are. At a point, if I'm going on a banking app, I'm very stupid. Or if I open up an insurance app or something that I've not been familiar with, I'm going to be stupid at that point. And it's the job of the app owner or the business to figure out how they can make it unstupid. And it's hard. It's a hard thing to do because we're all individuals. We all have our likes and dislikes, our way of behaving in a digital environment, we say if there's this specific, let's say not quote, but there's a line saying, okay, it's one thing to ask your users what they want, and it's another thing to actually observe what they do. And the better one is to observe what they do.

31:31

Daniel

Because if everybody has a very personal bias towards, oh, no, I'm not clicking on that button, or, yeah, I know how to do this, or yeah, I know how to paste the wallet address, and you just wake up and see email addresses punched in and your head starts spinning.

31:53

Nadja

In terms of audience or user distribution, do you see any particular trends in terms of a certain age group where they are more inclined to play? Well, either it's these type of games or whether it's just the medium through which you're doing it, the innovation through which you're doing it. Is there a trend that you are seeing in terms of your own audience?

32:16

Daniel

Well, historically speaking, trends are given by young people in any industry. Of course, if you're building freighters or big oil tankers, you don't want them to be built by 17 year olds. But when it comes to digital products and the trends in the market, usually young people set the trends. I'm old. I'm 37 this year. I may need a license to actually speak about web3, because young people say, okay, you're almost in a coffin right now. Well, with the NFT collection, I might be, but the trends are given by the young people just because of their curiosity, the available time they have on their hands, and the needs of the age. Right. So when you're a certain age, you have certain needs and you want to have fun with your friends, you want to be in a group, you want to be accepted, you want to be good at something, and you want to stand out.

33:18

Daniel

So all these are basic needs that you as an individual want. This means you're going to go towards a place that allows you to get these things. We live in a very digital world and an increasingly more digital world. Sorry. And we've all heard metaverse, we've all heard AR, we've seen apple's new orthopedic glasses everybody's pushing towards a certain future where we're even more digitally connected. Who will be there? Well, young people. And why they'll be there for the reasons that I just mentioned. So this means the trends will be given by young people depending on the needs that they have. So what is the problem that young people have today? I have no idea. I have my own. Each with its own. We'll try to figure it out as we go, but this is my take on how do we spot trends. And I think there was one more question.

34:24

Daniel

Right? Please remind me.

34:27

Nadja

No, I think you've covered it. What I wanted to ask is in terms of NFTs, so obviously you are utilizing NFTs on your platform and there's much to be said for the potential that NFTs have within the gaming experience in general. And by virtue of what you said about the youth or young people setting the trends, can you spot any particular trends specific to NFTs that is busy shifting right now? Because obviously with NFTs, there's been a huge evolution in terms of utility. So in terms of the gaming sector, what are you guys doing in terms of NFTs to leverage it in the best possible way that speaks to your audience. And what do you see overall in the gaming sectors? What can we expect in future from NFTs and gaming?

35:15

Daniel

Essentially, NFTs are the utility for tokens. This is my number one take. So you have these two amazing technologies and I want you just to close your eyes and picture counterstrike. You have the weapon and you have the bullets. You need the weapon in order to shoot and you need the bullets in order to shoot with something. The weapon is the NFT, the bullets are the tokens. So you need both of them. This is the visual aspect of it in terms of games, having the ability to own the investments that you make. Because this is what it is actually about. When you spend $1,000 in a game or $30,000 in a game today, it's not much you can do with that. You just put in money and hope your wife does not find out if you're married or some other Wife. Right? And with the progression of NFT, the blockchain itself all of a sudden have this ability to see and to own stuff in different ecosystems.

36:28

Daniel

Why do you want to own them? I have no idea. There's collectible stuff, there's utility stuff. The entire gaming ecosystem will evolve into a more advanced type of gameFi, where things have value. This means the entire logic and the entire system of the games that you play will change from what they are today, but not in the form they existed about a year and a half ago. Why? Because strictly focusing on value extraction and just on the value of something, not necessarily on the entertainment that something gives to you and brings to the table, is a failed attempt. And we've seen that games need to be fun, need to be engaging, need to be with other people. A lot of, according to stats I think News has new stats for last year people are increasingly more and more open to social games. You just want to play with other people.

37:35

Daniel

I don't know, maybe you want to crack someone's head open. You cannot do it in real life because prison, but you can do it in a game and you can respond in that life. So it's a way of manifesting. And in a world that is increasingly more censorship oriented, games are actually a safe haven where you can be yourself. Now think about the identity you have in games that's also an NFT. Think about how you transfer assets from one player to the other without the need of a central server. How do you pay? How you literally pay, right? If you're, for instance, Indonesia and another person is in Brazil and another person is in Saudi Arabia, Iran, whatever, and you all want to play on WAM, but the different payment systems that exist in those countries make it very hard for us to integrate payments.

38:40

Daniel

Whereas where you have the blockchain, you can either accept tokens, you can either accept NFTs, and it's a very simple click and the UX will just improve continuously.

38:59

Nadja

So touching on this point about different players in different regions of the world, how do you think that these new technologies will help democratize access and opportunities? Whether this is working in the gaming industry or whether it's benefiting from engaging with the gaming industry. But do you think that these technologies lend themselves towards more of a democratization of access?

39:25

Daniel

40:41

Daniel

Let's jump to Brazil, let's jump to Indonesia, let's jump to the Philippines. Different infrastructures, different governments, different laws, different you name it. But you're just a kid, I don't know, like 15 years of age in high school, and your passion is about creating fun stuff or having fun with games. And you also see a potential way of supporting your family or yourself. But today, if you don't have Internet access, or if you don't have the right type of cash to integrate with payments to create the marketing in order for your app or game to be seen in the apps or Google Play, you will not have the right chance. Even if you've built something amazing, because it's just an attention economy, most likely the company with the biggest budget will win, and your amazing creation will get to be in the trash. This was the idea behind WAM's vision of a platform where you can publish and we can make the discovery in a way that's different and gives everybody access.

41:48

Daniel

And with a blockchain tech, you have instant access to user funds, so you have instant access to your community's support. And all of a sudden, things move really fast. You can do stuff, you can create more. You can just focus on the things that you love to do. I do see a future where the current way business is done through companies will change. It's just a natural thing. The blockchain enables us to no longer need certain structures that were especially put in place to control capital.

42:32

Nadja

Absolutely. So, well said. At AdLunam, we also focus on the democratization of access to finances. In terms of investments, especially. It's something that really opens world, and so much of the world don't have access to this. So I'm very happy to be part of an industry that really addresses this issue I want to focus on, because I know that you've had some amazing successes. Speaking of the app store. So in terms of engaging with you as a platform, what does it look like if I'm a user and also if I'm a creator that wants to work with you?

43:13

Daniel

So at this point, as a creator, you don't have direct access to publishing games. Building a platform is a lot harder than I, let's say, envision it to be, given the complexity added by the blockchain tech. Complexity with liquidity, with community, with the logic behind it. So it's a complex thing, and we've been exploring a lot of options and models. If you want to play there are tournaments that you can enter free ones, paid ones and just compete your way up into the leaderboard and you will win something. We've held the community tournaments with other projects where we also awarded NFTs and that was a proof of point that NFTs are actually more engaging than tokens. Tokens are not regarded necessarily like something that I want to keep. But if you have a squishy image of a sucky vampire, maybe you want to keep it, maybe you want to grow your player profile, maybe you want to upgrade it and just be cool.

44:25

Daniel

This is human nature. We love fun stuff. You can see that there are several people in the room from the team with the same face. We have the same collection image or the representative image and we thought about the same thing. You want stuff that only you can own. It is verifiable that only you own it and thus you can create and build your player profile. You can show off your earnings, you can take them with you when you log out. This is one of the things that we want to achieve. So there are a lot of things that we want to do. We will see how many of them we get to do. This is also a very honest assessment because we are in a bear market that is probably if you've been under a rock, you did not know. But even now rocks are expensive, somebody paid for that rock.

45:28

Daniel

So you know that something's wrong with money. And there's a bear market in the stocks, there's a bear market in crypto, there's a bear market in the bear woods. So everybody's a bear right now and that takes a toll. Takes a toll in the sense that even users that were more inclined to spend money on entertainment right now are a bit more focused on savings, on adjusting their expenses and properly handling the situation.

46:04

Nadja

I want to remind the audience that you can send in any questions you have to the AdLunam Twitter handle at AdLunam Inc. And in a few minutes I will get to as many of those as I can. Daniel yeah, definitely. It is a challenging market for any startup in any industry, especially in our industry in web3 and of course also in gaming, because it's entertainment. What advice would you have for gaming company or someone really, whether they come from a web two background or whether it's their first four into gaming in web3. What advice would you have for someone starting now during this market?

46:48

Daniel

I'm very reluctant in giving advice because it's very easy to get lost in your own bias, which I tend to do, but start as small as you can and get to product market fit before thinking of anything else. If you want to build something successful. And something successful takes time. And let's say silence, like literal silence, because you need to understand the dynamics of what you're trying to build. And if you have a lot of noise trying to do a lot of things without having this initial incubation, if you will, a personal incubation of stuff, it will be very difficult to get to where you want to go. If this is your first rodeo, of course, if you're experienced enough, my advice means s*** and you know already what to do. Or at least you know a lot more what to do than a young person starting out.

47:52

Daniel

But if you're not even young, if you just want to start out on doing stuff, the worst thing you can do is it depends. By the way, it depends on what type of person you are. If you're building, if you like to tinker with stuff, I would go the quiet route at first. If you're more on the marketing side, on the sales side, you can partner up with tech persons and then figure out what you want to build. Set up a framework that allows you to go towards that direction but still go as slow as you can until you get to that product Market Fit. Otherwise, why I'm saying this most likely people want to get investments and investors have no f****** clue about what you're building and they don't care. Very few of them are in your niche. They don't care. And this is going to be painful.

48:51

Daniel

They care about money. And if they care about money and they want to give you money, they will ask you when I see my money back, depending on the stage that you are in. So in order for you to do that, you need to have some stats. And these stats are obtained by focusing first on Product Market fit. You can get your first users through many channels. Social media is very accessible. Creating on social media is free, but you need a strategy and just go for it. Other than this, I'm probably more stupid than smart.

49:27

Nadja

I think that's some real solid advice. Daniel, my final question. Obviously, every time that we have a bear market, once things start picking back up, there's a shift in how things play out. The user persona per se has shifted. So what changes do you think we might see in the gaming space post this global recession that we are currently really just in the starting point of? Do you think that it's going to change how people want to express themselves in games? Of course. You said earlier, with the advancement of AI and the possibility of really creating your own game experience, that does seem to be tailor made to whatever needs that gamers might have. But what are your thoughts on some of the, I know you said you don't make predictions, so what is your sense of how things might shift in terms of what gamers are today and how they might be as they come out of this difficult time that we are currently in as a global economy.

50:34

Daniel

Thank you for the question and it's good that you mentioned that it's a user persona. I see two people in the crypto market today. You have crypto bros and gamers. Crypto bros are related to trading and making quick profits and speculating on assets that you can do whatever you want with them. Gamers on the other hand, don't care about the speculative aspect as much. Of course, there might be gamers that indulge in the process. Now, for a gamer today there's no bear market. You see a lot of games that today have a lot of users and users play. What insight can I draw from that? Well, the insight is people don't care about market conditions or the technology, they just use the games for their own fun. So where is the trend or what will happen? Well, if platforms like Wham succeed in their plan in just providing benefits with the help of a new technology in a way that people do not sense that they're using a new technology, they will wake up, oh s***, I'm a blockchain user without knowing it.

51:48

Daniel

Oh wait, I have a wallet. Oh wait, I own something. So this is actually the biggest difference that I see in the market between these two user personas. So bear market regardless player is going to play and if the technology evolves enough or enough content, all of a sudden they will have benefits that they were not expecting.

52:16

Nadja

I'm mindful of time, so I want to go over to the questions. Let me see here from Samisa, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it incorrectly. What is the gameplay mechanics on web? How do players join tournaments and how is the reward pool structured?

52:42

Daniel

Well, it's pretty simple. You have the app where you can browse multiple tournaments. Given that the tournaments are made on different games, it's a different experience. For each game, 80% of the pool gets distributed to the top x percent of users depending on the, let's say, difficulty of the tournament that you're in. We start at bronze, silver, gold and diamond. And by the way, there's no guarantee that this will remain based on the observations that we make because we're still looking to see what is the best way, what do most of the people want? And this is how I see better adoption.

53:32

Nadja

Then I have another question. How will you market a new NFT collection in the games? I'm not sure if this refers to specifically or in general. Answer it however you wish.

53:48

Daniel

55:10

Daniel

People are a bit cringy in general about NFTs. So the angle that we have with Offensive Vampires Collectibles that suck, just say it three times in your hand. Like collectibles. That suck. What sucks? Collectibles. So this is fun. It sucks. You start to get a hang of it, and whenever you have a bad morning, you know that somebody else sucks with you. And that's an NFT. Yeah. So we just want to have a community of people that the moment, the instant they see the concept, they vibe with it. Like directly. I don't have to sell it. We don't want to sell it. We just want to create something that people love. And by the way, let me blow your minds a bit. So this is the original collection? Like offensive vampires collectibles that suck. And down the road map, we have two more collections. Hold your horses.

56:14

Daniel

So each vampire needs a side chick. So we're going to make hot flaming chicks. Like actual hot flaming chicks, right? Like physically on fire. And this couple needs a pet. And we're going to call that collection Tiny Huge C****, which is an actual rooster with a big head. And it's just about having fun. Like, if your mind goes, what the f*** did this guy just say? Then we're on the right track. Because this is the type of, let's say, emotion that we want to appeal to and to just break out of the mundane. Like, everything is terrible. Everything is politically correct. We're not going to say some stuff. This is what we're going to do.

57:11

Nadja

Daniel, awesome. Sounds like there's a lot of fun coming up before we close for today. Thank you so much for spending the time with us and all of the fascinating insights that you had. I think that the audience will definitely get a lot from your take on things. Where can people stay updated with you personally and also with WAM?

57:31

Daniel

Thank you very much for having me in the first place. And thank you, everybody, for participating in a space related to what we do. You can just tap on my Squared or Polygon type avatar and see what we do. We are on Telegram, WAM app and Vampires Club. We are active in the communities. People are killing each other digitally in our tournaments and just have fun every day. Hopefully they're fun. Otherwise it's going to be difficult to go shopping and you can stay in touch with us through the channels that I just mentioned. Twitter is the most, let's say, convenient, given that we're doing this on Twitter. And if you're interested about the collection, just go to Vampires Club and see what this is about.

58:30

Nadja

Awesome. On that note, we have come to the end of today's show and it's been great talking about gaming again. It's been a while and it's always awesome to just get different people's perspectives and takes because the space is evolving so quickly that even a conversation from a few months ago is no longer as relevant, just based on how quickly things are moving. So, to the audience, thank you so much for joining in, whether you're doing it live on Twitter Spaces or on Spotify, and I will catch you again next week for another episode of The Future of NFTs, brought to you by AdLunam. Cheers, Daniel. Thank you so much. Looking forward to following what you guys are doing.

59:07

Daniel

Thanks. Thank you. Bye.