In this episode, Jam City launches its new blockchain division and NFT game, Peter Molyneux's game brings in $54 million, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 nixes NFT plans, Ubisoft says it doesn't understand the hate for NFTs, VentureBeat says NFTs pose a threat to gaming, Voodoo plans $200 million investment into blockchain gaming, China is pushing back against blockchain and play-to-earn games, Polygon and Reddit's co-founder creates a $200 million Web 3.0 gaming fund, and so much more!

Episode 5 Keywords: NFTs Threaten Gaming, China Fighting Blockchain & P2E, New IP vs Retrofit, Peter Molyneux Hit, $200M Web3 Gaming Fund

Welcome to the metaphysics podcast. The Metaverse and web three are bringing about the

biggest revolution since the internet itself. With your hosts Paul the prophet Dawalibi And Jeff the

juice Cohen. We will be bringing you the latest Metaverse, business news and insight into what it

all means. The meta business podcast starts now. From the boardroom to the metaverse. This is the

meta business podcast. I am Paul the Prophet Dawalibi. I'm joined today by my friend and co

host Jeff, the juice Cohen. For those of you who are new to the meta business podcast, welcome.

What we do here is we cover all the major Metaverse stories, industry news topics every

single week. But we look at all of them through a business and C suite lens we dissect, we analyze

the business implications of everything happening in the metaverse and web three. For our new

listeners. Welcome. Thank you guys, if you're new here, if you've been a regular listener of the

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how much you love the podcast. It really helps other people to find, especially a new podcast

like this one. We really appreciate those reviews and spreading, you know the podcast to your

friends, to your colleagues, whoever Jeff, how's it going? How you doing this week? I'm doing

great. We just we just recorded the live stream. Normally for you listeners, we record this prior

to our live stream which we do every Wednesday night, which as a plug you should check that out.

It's pretty interesting. We also put it up on as avadh but I feel like my juices are flowing like I

feel in the flow right normally we start this cold and I you know I always feel like I'm kind of a

reliever coming out of the bullpen whereas right now, I'm like a starting pitcher in the third

inning. Like I'm just you know, through the order one time I'm ready to go. My takes are hot. The

juices the juice is gonna be flowing. This is gonna be a what is it? The baseball term of

perfect. Are you going to pitch a perfect game here? Is that is that? I think so. I feel like I

feel like this is gonna be the best episode yet. I am very excited. I would know you. You're still

Paul the Prophet Dawalibi. I think I must be Paul and master of the metaverse. Now Now everyone

knows me as the prophet Jeff. And, and and and as the Prophet. You know, I see the future. I just

this is what I do, whether it's for gaming and esports on the business of esports, or whether

it's for the metaverse, which gaming is a huge part of it. Right. So definitely sticking with the

profit. Everyone knows me as the Prophet. And so that's, that's what we're going with here. Now. I

want to jump into some news though. Because since you're warm, since it's the third inning, I want

these I want these hot tastes right. I want the juice hot takes here. And and the first story,

it's a series of stories, right? There's kind of a theme to all these stories. Okay. And I'm going to

read the first one, and then I'm going to present to you sort of the big questions I have and then

I'm going to show you a few others. Okay. So the first story here is

the headline maybe is not completely telling of where I'm going with this, but the headline is jam

city unveils blockchain division, and first NFT game champions a session. Okay, so this is jam

city. They make mobile games. They're taking the plunge according to this article into NFT games.

And they're launching a new blockchain division and their first NFT game called champions a

session. Now, the article also mentions that other companies like Ubisoft, which we talked about

Zynga

GSC gameworld, all these companies have made sort of moves into web three into blockchain based

gaming. Okay. And, and so park that for a second,

because I think this is interesting in and of itself. But I'm going to show you three or four

other articles that are mentioned or alluded to in this one. And the big question I have for you,

Jeff, and for everyone listening is there seems to be a theme right with game developers, is they

seem to have two major choices when they're looking at blockchain based gaming, right? Do

they, if they want to introduce NF T's? As part of their product mix? They seem to have a choice to

partner with an existing company in the space or roll their own. And, and the second sort of choice

they seem to have is do they embed NF T's and blockchains into existing games? The same way

Ubisoft that like we talked about last week, Ubisoft did with Ghost Recon,

or do they do they create entirely new games and new divisions to make blockchain based games

specifically right so embedding current games, or rollout new games focused on that entirely so that

those seem to be the two sort of choices all these companies have. And and so I just want to show

these other stories that are alluded to right one here is NFT gaming platform Lego

See by Peter Mullenix earns over 54 million, right? So he's creating his own sort of virtual

worlds or it's like a London basically recreation, London Metaverse where he's selling land. There's

Zynga partnering with forte for blockchain games. And there's this third piece of news that stocker

to canceled their NFT plans because they said they were going to introduce NF T's into the game they

were already developing,

following a bunch of backlash. And then And then finally, there was the article we talked about

last week where Ubisoft now says they understand where the NFT hate comes from. Kotaku, who made

this headline wrote does not understand shit. So

there's the whole spectrum here, right of what I just talked about, which is game developers,

either creating new games to incorporate blockchain and NFT into, or they're using their

existing games, in which case, we see some backlash. I'm curious how you think about these

forces, with all of these stories? And, you know, where what is the right path for game developers?

In your mind? This is an interesting one. I mean, and it's one where if you've been listening to all

the episodes, you I'll have to give me a call back, because you'll probably immediately say,

well, this isn't was this wasn't your take two weeks ago. So I will acknowledge that I think my

initial take was it was smart of the of a Ubisoft and my answer to this question two to three weeks

ago, would have been putting NF T's into existing games is smarter, because you already have a

player base, and you're adding an additional mechanic, you're giving players more, you know,

more choices, more optionality, and it's just an easier path to adoption, because there's already a

player base, and there's already a community. And it's just, it's just an easier way to go about it.

I'm starting to now that we've seen a lot of the negative backlash move towards the the camp of

this this, this industry may, it may be a classic kind of innovators dilemma situation where, you

know, the what you need in order to get adoption is to attack this as sort of a small niche kind of

community and create a new game and a new audience that kind of is tailored to this and wants this

sort of experience. So I do think the jam city model of creating a completely new IP may actually

be Interestingly enough, the the risk averse strategy and the better strategy.

Yeah, that's sort of where the that is how my thesis is changing over the past two weeks with

what we've seen, obviously with Ubisoft, and then the stock or to, you know, the fact that they've

basically had to you completely walk back putting NF T's in their game. So we've also seen this with

discord. I don't know, this happened about a month ago. I don't even know if we covered it in any of

our any of our various podcasts, but discord had kind of alluded to, and then a blockchain

integration, and then they had to sort of walk that back as well.

Yeah, that seems to be the theme here, right like that. If you look at the four stories I talked

about are five stories I mentioned here, right? The Jam city one is they're creating entirely new

games, right? Zynga, not 100% clear from the story, but they're partnering with forte and it

says, According to the article, the aim is to use Zynga as IP for blockchain games. So I think we

can safely assume this means creating entirely new games, right? They're not going to put NF T's in

Farmville, for example.

So you have these, these, these two companies creating entirely new games, right, creating new

divisions, new games, new partnerships, specifically for blockchain based games. And then

sort of on the other hand, you have stocker too. And they're the developer there, which is GSC Game

World. They were already making a game right? This game has been in development for a while. It's a

game that people are looking forward to. Then they decided to announce and it was kind of a cringy

announcement. I'll admit, I'll just it says in this article, the NFT promo material posted

yesterday, was full of jibberish about becoming the first meta humans in the stocker Metaverse,

which was going to be achieved by a way of a Metaverse seal bridge.

Which,

you know, probably someone in marketing row two who had no idea what any of this meant. But the

existing games like Ubisoft with Ghost Recon stocker, to

in the other case, is part of it. Just the psychology of you have fans of these games,

they're expecting one thing, and no one likes change, like no one wants to mix it up.

Whether the game's not done yet, or the game's already done, it's just sort of a change in the

expectation that people don't like, or do you truly feel like there's some logical backlash

against

Because to me, it doesn't add up, right? Why if we create a new game, that's a blockchain based game,

people play it, they get lots of users, they make lots of money. Everything's good. But if we try

and put NF T's in an existing game, like everyone hates it, I think the obvious potential obvious

answer is that it's a different audience. It's different people with different motivations. And

again, I would love to dig more into that. But I think it is possible that they are just two

different audiences, which is kind of why I think that strategy of creating a separate game may make

sense. But it is odd, it strikes me that like the whole blockchain gaming community almost needs

like a,

like a PR consultant, or something like that, where I don't know when this happened, where it

became so negative, because if you think about it, all blockchain, all these games are effectively

trying to do is create micro transactions where you have digital ownership, and you can, you know,

not necessarily play to earn but play Ender and where it's like, Hey, you put out you know, you

spent $50, maybe when you go to leave the game in a month, you end up selling them for 20. Like you

didn't necessarily make money, but you got something. Whereas normally, if you play Candy

Crush, or, you know, pick a different game, empires and puzzles from Zynga, you could spend

$500. And if you stopped wanting to play the game, well,

there you go, you spent your $500, Zynga has that and you you make you get zero when you leave the

game. Imagine if you could, you know, take that $500 that you put in and either turn it into

$1,000. Obviously, that's great. Or even if you turn into $200, like if you given up on that

hobby, it's better to have $200 at the end and $0. So, in that respect, it seems like who could? Who

would argue that having $200 or $1,000, at the end is better than having $0? Like, who would who

would take the other side of that argument? So it almost seems like there's a perception problem

that some of these games have were or that the whole industry has, sorry, where it's like gamers

have now viewed this as kind of an affront to them. And it's sort of like, they're just so

against it. I don't know. Where I'd love to get data is your your the point you just made before

is like drawing that Venn Diagram of gamers and blockchain based gamers.

Right, has to be out there. So it almost to me feels like one of the more important studies that

someone could do in the entire industry like it. It's so it's so fundamentally important have a

question that I have to imagine that someone like a forte or any of these companies has done market

research of like this, the attitudes and opinions of their current players versus blockchain gamers,

and what the motivations are and kind of why they're buying the games. Because it's just so

fundamental to what we're trying to what all these businesses are trying to do. Like from a pure

game or reception standpoint, I think the art we can conclude from the articles we just saw. And

the news we just saw is if you try and integrate it into your existing game, this is probably not

going to end well. Whether it's a psychological thing, whether it's Venn diagrams that don't

intersect, and it's a totally different audience. Like, in some ways, from a business standpoint,

the cause is irrelevant, right? There's seems to be a clear pattern of don't inject this in

existing games, because people, those gamers are not going to like it. If you want to do this, go

create new games. And could I will I do think that seems to be the comment now or the prevailing

narrative. Now, there was a couple of quotes that in that, Jay, I thought that JMC article was

pretty meaty. So there was a couple quotes that I kind of wanted to dig a little deeper into. One

was when Krista wolf in he actually was the former founder of MySpace. So really like was at the

beginning of kind of web two, it's now interesting that he's moving his new company into web three.

He talked about sort of the user experience, and he there was a quote where he said, you don't,

you're not going to have to download all these crazy wallets. And I thought that that sentence

was interesting, because it does get a little bit to the heart of maybe one of the potential reasons

why gamers currently are shying a little bit away from blockchain gaming. And it's just the user

experience. The user experience of these blockchain games currently is just so bad. I know

you and I have had some conversations with folks in the blockchain gaming industry. And there's a

ton of companies that are out there now that are saying like their mission is to basically create

an easier UI kind of onboarding experience user experience for blockchain gaming. But I do think

that's an you know, I want I'd love to get your thoughts on that. But it's just I think it is an

incredibly fundamental part of all of this, that right now the user experience with Blockchain in

general, just not very good. It's a great point. And I do agree, but doesn't that also support

like, what I what I just said before, which is the prevailing sort of wisdom seems to be go create

new games, because then at least

Maybe you can solve for those user experience issues, right? Where it's sort of trying to trying

to squeeze it into an existing game with its existing UI and something players are used to.

Like, you're shoehorning something that maybe doesn't fit. And it's a little clunky and the

clunkier it is, the less likely people are to adopt it. Like, I don't know what the answer is.

But it seems like there's enough going against it. It's the psychology, it's maybe the the gamer

demographics, and it's maybe the user experience. But it seems to be a lot of cases against trying

to integrate into an existing game. Right? Fundamentally, then the question becomes, you

know, where, where do we start getting triple A experiences that are blockchain based games?

Because that's a much bigger hurdle. I think for Ubisoft or for an Activision Blizzard, or an EA or

whoever to get over. Right. I think it was easy for Ubisoft to say, we have a game. Let's put this

in here, see how it goes. But to commit resources and people and time and money and all kinds of

things, to say we're going to create an entirely new triple A game that's going to be this way that

blockchain will be the foundation of

that's, you know, that's that's going to be a tough case. internally. I think this actually

brings me to the next quote that I sort of highlighted that, that I,

you know, kind of thought was interesting. We've touched on this a little bit in the past. And so I

want to get your opinion, I think I know the answer your opinion. But it also gets a little bit

to what we were just talking about with do you partner or do you try to bring it internally? How

do you actually resource this, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but it says jam city is

betting web three games will have deep gameplay and will be built by actual game developers, not

crypto enthusiast. Do you agree with that statement? What's your take on that? I mean,

I think if we want this to be successful, it appears like not just blockchain based gaming, if

we want the metaverse to be successful, this has to be built by gamers and gaming companies. I

don't know. Maybe that's not such a hot take. But like this can't be built by crypto companies like

that. Because I think it has to be fun first, gaming first, you know, leisure first, whatever it

is, there has to be a component that hooks you that is that is fun.

Regardless of you know how we're defining this or what we're calling it, whether it's a blockchain

based game, or it's a Metaverse proper. So I'm definitely on the side of the game developers and

I agree there. I don't know if you do feel that way. Or, I mean, I sort of I actually, I think we

we've made this point in prior episodes, but I I definitely 100% Agree.

The only thing is like with the Zynga forte, I did see in that article, they talked about Forte's,

like partner with 200 Plus studios. I think right now, there's a lot of crypto knowledge and actual

like, know how that needs to be brought either brought in internally into game studios, or out or

outsourced in some way. I do agree, like the fundamental building of the game needs to be done

by game developers, but the nuts and bolts and the pipes. You know, if you're someone who doesn't

understand crypto or doesn't know how to build those things, like I don't think you can. It's

sort of a prerequisite. I mean, this there's a great segue here necessary but not sufficient, if

you will, I want to tie this into the next story, because I think they segue perfectly. And, and the

headline here is also really good. It's gaming's best existential threat of the year, and fts. And

so the picture they use as Ubisoft here, which is not too flattering, but there's nothing the

headline sort of explains this article that basically NF T's are a threat to gaming, because

fundamentally, they're no different than just microtransactions. And you know, you get something

useless. And

people are going to focus on, you know, playing to earn and playing to, you know, make money or get

an NFT as opposed to playing to play. You know, it says here, I'll just quote this. It says when it

comes to video games, NF T's are incompatible with decades of game design, they would replace the key

verb of play with a new key verb of invest, and that could diminish games as we know them.

Do you agree with that one?

Well, I actually think that it sort of sums up the narrative and the current. I mean, Jeff Grubb

wrote that for games beat. I mean, he's a pretty well respected games journalist, and I think he

does a great job. Something like that sentence actually sums up pretty well. The way I think a

lot of core gamers view. The blockchain gaming and NF t's the challenge for the industry is going to

be how do we create games that don't fit that narrative and are fun and bring people in? And I

do think like I said before, it's going to be in this sort of classic Innovators Dilemma model

where you sort of create a

You you build a niche and sort of a minimum viable product that kind of takes a small niche of the

market and then grows from there. I think that that probably will be how it happens.

Yeah, I'm curious to hear what you think. I love the point you made earlier about, there's almost

like a PR problem. Right. And I feel like, that's sort of the heart of an article like this

existing, which is, and, you know, it's a good article, I don't necessarily disagree with the

conclusion. I just think there's more nuance to this than just NF T's are going to destroy gaming,

right, that I totally disagree with. I almost feel like

there needs to be two classes of NF T's that we're lumping all NF T's in together. And fundamentally,

that's causing some of these problems that I think that's causing some of the confusion. It's causing

some of the backlash because, you know, an NFT of a, an ape wearing a hat. Right? That's, it has, it

has no value really, right, other than some value that people have ascribed to it, because it's

scarce in some way or whatever, right? Like, it has no utility, that's for sure. It's just the

collectible, it exists to exist. And if someone thinks it's valuable, and will pay for it great,

right, but it serves no purpose, and it has no utility. I think that needs to be in a completely

separate category. From a PR standpoint, marketing standpoint, business standpoint, from a class of

NF T's that have utility, right? It gives me something, it's it provides something beyond just

whatever the certificate of authenticity is, right? It's not just the collectible. And in

gaming, that's so obvious, right? That's in game, cosmetics, or items, or whatever it is, like

there's some in game utility. But I think part of the problem is, it's what the utility is, is not

communicated. And everyone just sort of has this blanket kind of view on NF T's in that first

category, right? Like the pure collectible, it's totally useless. And that's what this article

misses in my mind. It's, there are a class of NF T's that have some utility, that may resonate with

gamers and may be valuable to gamers.

And I don't think it's the threat. He says it is right not long term, if we can communicate that. I

do agree. I just think, again, it's like this PR issue where it becomes I think people are viewing

this as a speculative sort of speculative, speculative assets and kind of investments versus

Hey, you know, like you said, I want to I want to get this gun in the game because it has utility,

or because it's a cool cosmetic not Well, I want to get this gun in the game, because I think I can

go on open sea and sell it for 10x To some, you know, person sitting down the road like that. I

think those two things are not the same, like those two motivations are not the same. And I

think, unfortunately, a lot of people who are into in this sphere, and these early adopters are kind

of these opportunists that are looking at everything saying, Hey, how can I go make money at

why I'm buying this? Because I think it's going to be worth more not because I think it has value to

me, or is fun to play with, which I think is a problem or will become a problem overtime, Agreed?

Agreed. You know, the theme of this episode, I want to say is almost like competing forces. And I

think this next story, two stories we'll call that fall into this sort of competing forces. And so

the first headline here is this is two pieces of Chinese news on the metaverse front. And the

headline here is Tencent back to mobile game maker to invest 200 million in NF T's. So this is

voodoo. They're They're owned or backed by Tencent, they're going to invest more than $200

million to start a blockchain division that will obviously offer NF T's. They're going to compete

with CRR, which is a French based NFT fantasy sports platform. They're going to be competing

with Ubisoft, obviously, they mentioned in this article, they're known for their mobile titles,

helix jumped and paper.io. And they're going to integrate a system that rewards players with

digital assets as they improve within a game. So you know, nothing terribly differentiated here.

The company has a $1.9 billion valuation. And Tencent owns a minor minority stake. So

sorry, go ahead. I was used, I guess. This is going to take us a little bit away from the topic.

So I'll just go on this tangent then we'll come back. But to me like a company like voodoo, which

their games are hyper casual games, right? They are Flash games, you doubt you basically don't

even download them and you put you know, it's like Bubble Pop. You play it for like, seven minutes

and then you delete it, essentially, like I think the day to retention is like less than 1% or

something like that on these hyper casual games. Tell me there you couldn't think of a worse type

of company to do NF T's it's like, if I played seven minutes why

Do I want to own an NF T of anything in the game? It's literally something you do on the subway for

seven minutes, and then you forget about it the rest of your life, like, you're gonna own an NF.

Just like NF T, the NF T's make sense in something where it's like a absolute passion or a hobby or

something where it's like, an almost an obsession, like, wow, you know, like people play WoW, for 15

years, I could see you wanting to invest in an asset or invest in own something that's like a

digital collectible. It's like, I've played WoW, for 15 years, they just came out with this cool

skin. I want to own it. I want to look at it every day or every week or whatever. It's my passion.

game you play for seven minutes on the subway like, like bubble pop or brick breaker like, what

NFT? Are you gonna? What does that do for this company? It just, I think it's downright idiotic.

But I know. That wasn't the point. Oh, it's good. All that I want to can I make the counter

argument? Maybe? I don't know. I don't know how good of a counter argument that is. But if you

only play a game for seven minutes, right? What is your biggest challenge as a game developer as the

owner of the game? Retention? Getting people to play?

them? Yeah, like adding the NFT in the mix means instead of playing seven minutes, they play 15

minutes.

I doubt

I see your point. But no, my answer.

It makes two minutes because they're like, oh my god, I have to download like an NF T wallet now to

play this game like know, oops, here my stops up like I'm out.

I don't know. So your question was about China, right? Or do you want to try so there's this

article where 10 cents, this 10 cent back company is going to invest $200 million to start a

blockchain division. And then on the other hand, you have again, keep in mind Vudu is Tencent back.

So which is Tencent being a Chinese company. And then you have this story out of the South China

Morning Post where the headline is, let me put this up here. Chinese state television warns

against blockchain based play to earn games as popularity searches. The CCTV reports said that

pay to play blockchain games should be treated with caution. And that many are a scam. They

actually use the word scam. Played around games have become one of the hottest tech trends this

year with developers seeing their valuations mushroom. So this is, you know, state owned TV.

Right. So this is the government speaking basically. But China Central Television, basically

firing warning shots at play to earn games at blockchain based games. And given what everything

else that's happening in China and their crackdown on gaming in general, not just blockchain based

gaming, but gaming in general. You know, are we seeing again, competing forces, right, we're

Tencent.

They're a minority shareholder, but they're still have some say, I'm sure right. 10 cents, a huge

backer of voodoo and things like that.

Where, you know, on one hand, you have 10 cent back companies, getting into NF T's and blockchain

based gaming in a big way. And on the other hand, you have China going, Hey, maybe this feels like

there might be a crackdown. I'm curious how you think blockchain based gaming plays out in China

over the next few months, even right? Forget about longer term than that.

Ah, it's a lot of different directions to go and that I'm in one I would say, I guess Tencent in

the Chinese government, clearly don't always see eye to eye. In fact, it seems increasingly they're

kind of at loggerheads. So maybe it shouldn't be that so maybe it's because maybe it's as a cause

and effect thing. Literally, maybe maybe, because 10 cents investing this now, the government is

sort of putting out this morning. I did. You know, also I was gonna make the joke. It's sort of like

a, even a broken clock is right? Twice a day, where, you know, Chinese government has done all

these warnings. They're, they're banning kids from playing games are too violent. You know, they're

sort of 20 years behind, kind of where we are in the zeitgeist here in the US, they're still

talking about like, oh, kids shouldn't play games, they're so bad.

But in this case, they may actually be right in the sense of there. There are a lot of scams, I

think going on in blockchain gaming and there there shouldn't people should generally be

cautious about this space. Because, you know, it's it's a nascent industry and there are some, some

opportunists I guess will say that way.

In China also has always been against Bitcoin to some extent or blockchain to some extent, I think,

as a autocratic state. I mean, the very nature of something being decentralized is obviously a risk

to them. The interesting thing is it almost to some extent makes

Chinese gamers may be more interested in blockchain gaming, if, if it is possible for them

to get around sort of the the state.

The state run enterprises, I don't know how, you know, with the internet there and the Great

Firewall like I don't know, if you are able to access some of these games.

It might be harder for them for China to block some of these things than it would be a non

decentralized platform.

though, I know that was a lot of word salad, but I think there was some interesting ideas. That's a

great point, right? In some ways, it may be the way to move assets like this outside of China,

right. Like, it's the, it's the, it's an interesting sort of workaround, and maybe all the

more reason they want, they will crack down on it harder than maybe gaming broadly, right. Like, I

think, I think if what you're saying is ends up playing out and is true.

This, this becomes potentially quite a severe crackdown there that I wouldn't be surprised we

see. And, and it's only going to take, you know, a couple of, of bad, you know, news around scams or

people getting sort of cheated out of money. And I think they'll use that to run with it, and use

that as the reason why they have to sort of crack down on everything. But it's one of these things

where I think we underestimated the influence of the Chinese government in the gaming space, right?

More broadly. And, and I'm not going to make the same mistake a second time, right? Like, when you

start hearing rumors like this, and rumblings like this, that, that they're looking at it or that

there are reports or like my I go directly now to Okay, we're gonna see a crackdown, we're gonna see

some kind of, you know, rules and limits, and I wouldn't want to be investing in those developers

there or, you know, I wouldn't want to be backing those those companies there. I just wouldn't. It's

just too risky when you start to hear things like this.

I'm sure it's something we're gonna come back to, because I'm sure we're going to get more news on

this. But, you know, the point you made Jeff about dislike the decentralized nature of blockchain,

being part of the attraction, again, kind of a great segue into the last thing I wanted to touch

on this week. And this we said this was going live, we just like we literally called it last

week, we said we were going to see a lot more stories like this. And the headline here is

polygon teams up with Reddit co founder for $200 million web three gaming fund. So this is Alexis

Ohanian, who's the founder, co founder of Reddit teamed up with the team behind polygon to raise

200 million to target the development of web three gaming and social media projects. Ohanian believes

that as web three grows, gaming and social media present the biggest opportunities for growth. I

think this I'm tying this to the last story in the sense that

what's interesting to me here is where Alexis Ohanian is coming from right Reddit, while a

centralized platform, right runs on Reddit servers and whatever else and it is some ways a very

democratic social media platform, right? People post stories, they get up voted by the community,

that's what shows up the highest. Right? Like there's very little Reddit kind of intervention in

the Reddit community. It's moderated by, you know, the individuals themselves.

Is he not the perfect guy to be doing a, you know, Blockchain based gaming web three gaming funds? Is

this maybe more exciting than last week's 100 million dollar fund? In your mind? Yeah, I mean,

it does. It does certainly fit his his ethos. So I do you know, like, where people when people kind

of put their money where their mouth is, I think I made this joke last week, but it still applies

every time I see one of these things. I'm like, Oh, my God, why are we not starting a blockchain

game? Like, just the amount of money that is currently in the system looking for x, or for

investments in this space? Is it just hard to believe, like I people always equated to the

beginning of kind of mobile and free to play. But I have to think we're years ahead of where, you

know, we are currently, like where we are today, in terms of what's actually in the industry versus

the amount of money chasing what the industry could become, has to be imbalanced relative to

where it was in mobile. Like, I think, when, as I understand this was kind of I was earlier in my

career. I think I was in college, though. But when free to play, mobile was becoming popular, most

people were pretty skeptical. Like, I think it was very much like yeah, this isn't gonna work like

social games. Nobody cares. Yep. Whereas now, people, people are jumping in with two feet, like

even people who are skeptics are still like, hey, well, I don't know, I just raised 200 million to

invest in it. You know, like, it feels like nobody, nobody is skeptical, which is always a

little bit of a scary place to be where everybody's bought in that something's the future.

But it just the amount of money here is staggering. And you're gonna see a ton of

companies being built just because when you have this sheer amount of investment capital being

driven into a space and the mind power and brainpower that is that is currently moving, and

we're seeing in real time if you follow people on Twitter, or you know, listen, and look, we just

started this podcast a month ago. So there are plenty of people that are smart, that are looking

that are in games in esports in this business that are moving their focus and shifting their focus

into this,

that it's going to be

And then there was a quote, I guess I'll maybe end on this. I mean, Krista Wolf, who, again, coming

back to that jam city article, which I really liked that article, he said, mobile was the last

big platform change in computing. blockchain will be bigger than that. And I think that that, to me,

it's like if there's a quote, to summarize all this, it's like, that sort of hits it on the head.

I can't think of a better way to wrap up this week's podcast, Jeff, and I'm sure we're gonna see

more of these funds. No question. So it's a it's definitely a huge development, love the the money

flowing into the space. I agree, we probably do need to go create a game game development company

making blockchain based games. But you know, for our listeners, guys, thank you for tuning in this

week. Just a reminder to go subscribe to the podcast. If you enjoy it, hit the subscribe button

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