NFTs serve as the building blocks of metaverse. Before NFTs and blockchain technology, there was no guaranteed method to verify ownership of anything online, much alone a digital asset. This new episode of the Future of NFTs welcomes Rashmi Ranjan, founder & CEO of Born to Die Game, an AAA-class 3D shooter game, that is set in the metaverse. Rashmi talks about unlocking the value of NFT in games and how NFT gaming rules over a traditional one by having fun and profit at once.

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Unlocking NFT Value in Games - Rashmi Ranjan

Participants:

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

• Rashmi Ranjan (Founder & CEO of Born To Die Game)

00:25

Nadja

Alright. Awesome. So happy Tuesday, if you are joining in or tuning in live on Twitter spaces or happy any day of the week. If you are listening today's episode via the Future of NFT's podcast series on your favorite streaming platform, I have a couple of key announcements for you today, so let's give a moment for the room to continue filling up before we get the show on the road. If you are joining today's space, expecting that we would be hosting Julie Pacino today to speak about NFTs and filmmaking, I'm going to ask you to remember that good things come to those who wait. Unfortunately, something came up and Julie won't be able to make it today, but she definitely will be joining us on a future episode real soon. So keep an eye out. If gameFi is your thing, you are going to love today's guest.

01:19

Nadja

We are going to deep dive into NFTs and gaming in the Metaverse, so definitely just stay right where you are. In other news, September Hoohoo is officially AdLunam's birthday month. We are one year old and what an amazing year it has been. First we started by parachuting off the top of the mountain at the height of crypto summer, then snowboarding down the slopes of crypto winter. Bear markets always seem like a time of hibernation on the outside of the cave, but believe you me, there's a whole universe happening on the inside. As a team, we are super excited about what we've been getting up to behind the scenes and of course, where to next. So, yes, my official birthday wish as I blow out the candle on the cake is for the charts to turn a bright neon colored green. We have a couple of excuse the superlatives here.

02:20

Nadja

Extremely exciting news announcements coming to your socials later this month. If you're in it to win it in more ways than one, be sure to keep your eyes peeled because there might be a few game changing opportunities in store for you. So with that, happy birthday to AdLunam. Let's get into today's discussion on NFTs and GameFi. So hey web3 world. 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 as seen through the eyes and built by the minds of the fascinating guest speakers we speak to each week. AdLunam is the only IDO Launchpad 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 and you can catch the Future of NFTs live on Twitter Spaces every Tuesday.

03:32

Nadja

Subscribe to us wherever you find your podcasts to tune in for any of the episodes that you might be missing. Our sister show Diving into Crypto is live every Thursday, same time, same place. Join us for both shows as we speak through thought leaders and change makers in this game changing industry. On today, you ask and we listen. After our previous gameFi focused episode with Metaverse Play to Earn game Cornucopias. You told us that you want more discussion around gaming and today that is just what we are doing. I've got with me on the show today, Rashmi Ranjan, the founder and CEO of Metaverse shooting game Born To Die. Rashmi is a seasoned entrepreneur. He has had an illustrious career, leadership career on top of that in business, most recently as the Vice President of Business operation for WazirX, India's largest cryptocurrency exchange, as well as leadership positions at billion dollars startups like Go-Jek and Careem.

04:41

Nadja

Stay tuned as we delve into the whys and the hows of Web3 and all of the delicious snacks that it puts on our menus. If you would like to ask Rashmi a question, feel free to put in a speaker request as always when we open up the room for questions at the end. Or you can simply DM your answer to the AdLunam Twitter handle at AdLunamInc and we'll read it out on your behalf. Rashmi, welcome to The Future of NFTs. Before we get going, tell us a bit about the PFP on your Twitter profile.

05:19

Rashmi

Thanks for having me here. It's a privilege and honor. I think I have mentioned this. This is a Macy. I aped in a little late into the system with Born To Die, sorry, with Bored Yacht Club and Mutant apes. This is, I got something which I got really excited. It's an ugly ape, as you can all see, but I really love it. It's like one of the top 50 mutant apes in there. I believe in what the process and the systems, how the Yuga labs are creating the bod ape and the way they are going and I firmly believe in them and this is one way I'm trying to support them in general. It's a mutant app that we have with us. Thanks.

06:14

Nadja

Awesome. Nice to see a bit of diversity in the PFP space as well. I'm having a bit of issue hearing you. Your connection seems a bit spotty. I just want to let you know in case it's possible to move to a different part of the room or maybe to a different room, but I can let you know if it doesn't improve. I think with that, let's get going. I would love to know more about your background and how did you get into this crazy Web3 world of NFTs and the metaverse, especially as someone who originally came from such a traditional in the sense that you still were in the tech startup space. How did you make this shift from the world that you were into web3?

07:04

Rashmi

I'm sorry, my connection had dropped completely. So is this okay now? And I couldn't hear your question.

07:11

Nadja

This is perfect. So definitely now everything is absolutely fine. My question was, would love to know a bit more about your background and how did you make the shift from the tech world or the traditional, let's say tech world into the web3 space, NFTs, metaverse, et cetera.

07:33

Rashmi

08:47

Rashmi

09:54

Rashmi

That has been a journey even before crypto, with web2 mobile tech and everything. Also most recently into NFTs and gaming, that will call it.

10:06

Nadja

11:08

Nadja

Losing a lot of money, of course, in the process. And crash and burn. We see this mass exodus from the market before as prices go up, we see everyone returning again. This philosophy around just developing, as you say, a thesis before getting involved, I think is such an important point. I'm curious on the metaverse game that you're building, Born to Die, tell a bit more about this, especially in terms of how you use NFTs and what is unique about your approach to using NFTs in the game.

11:44

Rashmi

12:45

Rashmi

After all. Afterwards, when the webcam happened, and then Axie Infinity showed a model in which gaming can work that essentially triggered the thought process. That okay. Now, I believe that web3 gaming is at the stage, and I could start understanding working backwards, saying that how a gaming platform or a web3 economy can work on gaming. And let's start digging deep into that. I started digging deep into web3 economy, gaming economy, late last year and it has been twelve months since I have been again, like I said, I'm building a thesis around what should web3 gaming be like? That's where, if I have to put it in a simpler word, web3 gaming is not gaming first. You have to see web3 gaming as a financial product first. Once we see that the most of the issues that we see around gaming today, we'll start understanding it better.

13:46

Rashmi

There is an issue of NFT liquidity that ratio is because we are not seeing NFTs as a financial product, but we are seeing NFTs as a game asset first. The moment we start seeing NFTs as a financial product first, we'll design the NFTs inside the game or the game NFT assets in the game in a little different way. The same thing happens for if we look at the way the play to earn economy is happening, the way we are designing the token economy is we are doing it at a game first so far on all the games. Once you start thinking from a financial product first, the fundamental principle of a financial product is the amount the currency should not lose value. I'll give an example here. Most of the games today which we see are having a two token economy. Now, two token economy makes sense to a large extent.

14:36

Rashmi

What happens is by design, by virtue of how market operates, a financial market operates, there would be oversupply coming of the second token, the game token invariably and when that happens, the value of that token will crash out. If we are keeping that token untouched, we are not decoupling it from the main token, then it starts causing issues. These are some fundamentals how you start approaching a game from a financial market perspective, a financial product perspective, not as a game. Only game happens, game is there. I think I would put it this way, that we have solved a lot of gaming related problems, issues with the web2 gaming itself. I think we are having hundreds of millions of gamers out there in web2 playing from serious games to casual games to hyper casual games today. We don't have to reinvent the wheel over there.

15:36

Rashmi

What needs to be invented or solved for, is the financial aspect of the web3 that web3 brings in. Once that is solved, web3 gaming is a non-stop. It's going to create large huge market in the web3 and we'll see crypto coming and getting used at a high scale that we all have been thinking or waiting for it to happen. I think with those thesis and those learning that I have been studying, that is what I'm trying to bring in with Born to Die and the metaverse which will eventually come with Born to Die. I'll stop here. Thanks.

16:15

Nadja

Yeah. Rashmi, you said this is your favorite question, but I think this is one of my favorite answers because I always ask this question, what is unique about someone's approach to NFTs? I think the way that you answered it, really the way to think about it, is to completely go back to the drawing board and for each person to understand that what you see is not necessarily what you get. If you think about GameFi, it's not just about the games, it's about so much more those fundamentals, as you say, which is really a financial product. Because I think we see this a lot in the gameFi industry. There's this problem of really bringing over these mass amounts of gamers in the web2 space. What should gaming companies do in order to get them into web3? It's not that the audience is not there, it's just that the onboarding is virtually nonexistent.

17:10

Nadja

I mean there are so many question marks around why this is, but I think you've touched on something extremely important is we have to think differently about how we approach this. This is the same issues that we are plagued with in web3 in general, we have to completely reinvent the way that we think about things to only take a copy paste model from other industries and especially in web2 and want to apply it to web3. This is why a lot of projects with very good intentions unfortunately crash and burn. I want to jump on this last thought that you had in terms of how GameFi companies are approaching token economics. For instance, what do you think is the overall future of NFTs in the GameFi space?

18:10

Rashmi

Like I said. Right. I believe that my conviction into NFTs actually started when I started realizing the potential of NFTs in gaming. Gaming for me is a placeholder in general. What I mean by that is I believe that NFTs will play a very fundamental core role in anything related with identity, anything related with assets, anything related to even doing transactions where we are exchanging value not just tokens but with an increase of the identity as we go along. Right. If I have to give an example, so we have all played games where we start with an avatar inside a game and from there on the avatar essentially grows from level one to level ten to level hundred and so on and so forth. Right now that means there is a progressive NFT that is coming in a growth based NFT which is there and how does that come inside the gaming?

19:21

Rashmi

We haven't seen that yet. Getting used at scale. Similarly, if I have to put it that NFTs are, we have been all talking about NFTs are interoperable, but how and when will NFTs be interoperable is something we haven't seen yet. Right. I believe that what we are seeing in the NFT space is just the surface. There's a lot more that is going to happen in terms of innovation and gaming is going to lead that space, lead that use case in the NFT for the next three to five years.

20:01

Nadja

Yeah, it's truly an exciting time. Especially if you take traditional gaming companies, for example, you have Roblox on one end and they seem to be going all out for the Web3 space and then you have Minecraft on the other and they say no way Jose, to the whole approach to Web3. It's very interesting to see how different companies are approaching this future forward projections and going, I'm going to bet my horse on web3. Or know, as we are so used to in this space, people who, well known speakers and thought leaders who say, this is all just passing fad and I'm not going to look at it only through a couple of years down the line, change their mind. I wonder and you mentioned, and I think very rightly so, that this is for sure just the beginning for NFTs. We are at the moment building out use cases that are perhaps easier to understand, things that people are more easily able to engage with on different levels, especially in terms of creativity and arts and entertainment.

21:15

Nadja

That down the line for sure, more and more business use cases will continue to really be built out. In terms of the metaverse, which is of course another buzzword that we are all hearing about, but there's not always 100% clarity of exactly what that is or what that's going to look like. What role do you think NFTs will play in the metaverse and especially in, let's say, the short to medium term future as we lead to this great future where NFTs, as you say, will play a role in identity, in assets, transaction and any kind of share of value?

21:55

Rashmi

Sure. I think we have already seen some of these starting to play out in the metaverse world. The fundamental thing, I think, here is a mental model which I think metaverse like and then we have to go and extrapolate that for a larger ones. Right? For metaverse are like cities in the virtual spaces and we’ve got multiple different metaverses here and there, like multiple cities in the world. There is a New York, there is a Los Angeles, there is a Dubai, there is Mumbai, there is a Bangalore and so on and so forth. Now, when I see these metaverses are essentially cities for me, which each of the city having its own peculiarity or own identity or own use case per se, right. They would be different and they will be same at the same time. Now, when that happens and as an individual I am traversing from one metaverse to another metaverse or one place in the metaverse to another place in the metaverse, I would need to have some form of a binding identity or pass or how will I essentially get identified and they will get access to stuff.

23:09

Rashmi

Right? I think we are already seeing there are events happening in the Metaverse and you can only go to events if you hold a certain type of NFT, that you can go to. Now, if I have to extrapolate this, let's say Nike is coming up with an event in the virtual world and you can only go there if you have a Nike shoe NFT. Right. They could not do that in the real world. Now in the virtual world it is very much possible and if you put that alongside any other events let's say there are nightclubs in the Metaverse. Some of the Metaverse will evolve and there is a nightclub and you can only get access to the nightclub if you have the top brand NFTs with you or else you cannot. It is kind of a social gate pass, social access card NFTs and the brands will be available or will have to come both in the physical and in the virtual world.

24:06

Rashmi

With time the virtual space brands will become more valuable than the physical goods itself. I think Nike has recognized this value, the potential of what virtual goods can bring it and that's the reason why we have seen an acquisition of the product that they did right. I think RTKFT or I'm not always remembering the name but that's what they have done and we'll see more and more such products, virtual only products. Either brands will be starting to build it themselves or will start acquiring as they go along and that will be directly getting extrapolated or applied onto the Metaverse of the world. Starting with avatars, starting with the clothes or the fashion that you are wearing to the gate passes and various different cards that you can hold and each of them unlocking different value, different access in the metaverse as we go along.

25:00

Nadja

Brilliant. I think you touched on so many important points. First, I love this analogy that you use about metaverses being different cities in the digital space where each city has its own identity. Peculiarities use cases. Because I think this is one of the most magical things about the metaverse, is it is going to mean different things to different people? I have used this example before for my teenage son. The metaverse is going to look completely different than for me as a woman at my age. My interests are different, and the way that I approach the world is different. There is really room enough for everyone because, as you say, it's just like cities in the world and even neighborhoods in the world where you can find whatever it is you're looking for and there's a space for you. I think one thing that is very significant about what you shared this concept of as users of the method.

26:09

Nadja

Can you guys hear me? I seem to have lost connection. Okay, great. Just to repeat the question that I was about to start, so this idea that in the Metaverse you as a user of the metaverse you are almost like a walker between worlds. You have this binding identity or the need for a binding identity, as you say, between different metaverses reminds me of the Soul Bond tokens that Vitalik Butran recently came out with in a paper. What is really fascinating is this concept of NFTs as a type of token gating on the one end but also NFTs as a replacement for real world products. There are very important implications there if you think about the environmental concerns of fast fashion and overconsumption. On the one hand we have this idea that NFT is all about exclusivity but on the other hand we also have this idea that NFTs can actually replace some of the damage that we are doing in the real world.

27:23

Nadja

I think you touched on some really important things. The question then is yes, right now we are seeing NFTs in gaming and we are seeing NFTs in the Metaverse. How do you think we are going to get from where we are right now to the point where business use cases for NFTs are going to become an everyday occurrence in different industries all over the world?

27:52

Rashmi

Sure. I have a viewpoint here and it may not be the most popular viewpoint across and there are going to be, maybe many people may not like what I'm going to say here but what I believe is, NFTs today is that it's infancy where we are talking about NFTs, okay? Which is an Ethereum NFT, this is Solana NFT, this is a polygon NFT and so on and so forth. Right now NFT in general is a technology and the first informal step that we have to see is start thinking NFTs are not chain centric or chain dependent but chain agnostic. How can that happen? There has to be a fluid interaction between different chains. Chains just happens to be the infrastructure on which NFTs are getting built. NFT happens to be the tech on which we are building business use cases, Right? If you start thinking only that there is a certain form of chain dependency or infrastructure dependency to build NFT, we'll always have this to and fro going in general.

28:58

Rashmi

I think we are moving towards a place where we are getting to multi chain agnostic NFTs and I believe that's the first layer which will happen before we see businesses adopting this, that's one, second I believe that today we see NFTs primarily in the form of art or art based forms and that could get further use cases as we see. We would see that once with the Multi-Chain comes in, businesses will start thinking hey, this is a technology, let's try and adopt different use cases. On the top of that, we have started seeing some adoption of this in real estate space. We started seeing some adoption, like you said, in fashion, for replacing from physical fashion to digital fashion. I think slowly, as the adoption for NFTs in general starts increasing, we start seeing the value that we see with real world contracts and everything going into NFTs, we'll start seeing NFTs coming more and more mainstream as we go.

30:07

Rashmi

It's not going to happen immediately. It's going to take about three to five years minimum to see that transient. That is where I see gaming in general will start leading. The primary reason is because the concept of virtual products, the concept of virtual goods assets is already accepted in the gaming world. The web2 gaming already has a concept of virtual tokens, virtual points, virtual assets. Now, although what we are doing today is trying to do a one is to one transition that would need that correction to apply the web3 layer, web3 understanding for the gaming to see how the NFTs will work in a different step in form inside the gaming. Gaming is going to lead that journey for the NFTs to be adopted at a large scale. That's what I believe is in the next few years to come.

31:07

Nadja

Yeah, I think that's such an important point is we know where we are going and we know the general direction that we are going to follow in order to get there. There's so many steps that we really have to evolve as we are living them. Because I think NFTs is this complete mindset shift at the moment, as you say, there's been such a large focus on art based NFTs and how do we get from being so dependent on specific chains and so dependent on these use cases that we have been seeing to broadening our scope and going wow, but actually NFT is much like the internet. I mean, when we first envisioned the Internet, if you look at the original reason for the Internet, it was very limited compared to what it is today. In a similar sense, what we are seeing today what we are thinking about today, is going to evolve so much over the coming years and the coming decades that it's actually quite funny that we might be able to listen to this conversation that we're having right now, I don't know, 10, 20 years into the future, and think to ourselves, wow, how did we not see that XYZ was coming?

32:21

Nadja

This is the exciting thing about being in this space. The question then is, so gaming leads in the interim. I love what you touched on in terms of in the gaming space, users, gamers are already used to this idea, this concept of having virtual goods, trading them, earning them, virtual tokens are accepted. Why are we seeing that gamers are not onboarding into Web3? What do you think is hindering this process in terms of adoption for GameFi for NFTs from the web2 gaming space?

33:05

Rashmi

I think that's one of the most difficult challenges in today's web3 gaming space. The primary reason I would give again, I don't have a ready answer for this, it's hypothesis at this moment and these can only be proven after or disproven after we try out see and then come back. I believe there are two major reasons for this. One is the experience, user experience today. Today playing a web3 game, no matter which game we are having as a seven to ten step process, you can pick and choose which step is not a right one, which is a right one in general. A seven to ten step process for a gaming, for a gamer is really intense. They just want to play the game right. We are making it really difficult in the web3 space for them to come and start playing the game.

33:56

Rashmi

34:52

Rashmi

They also made the user experience much better, if I have to put it this way. In the gaming space, web3 gaming space, we are in the Ether Delta of the gaming space today. And that has to transcend. Those user experience problems have to be solved to be essentially making it more easy, more user friendly for the people to come and start playing web3 games. That's one. I think the second point here, which we already discussed briefly about is the economy itself. Right now, whenever we see and talk about the economy, what we get to see all the time is the crash and burns of the tokens of the economy and how it is not sustainable, how it is not predictable. Now that uncertainty unpredictability, always dissuades user from adopting new things. As users, it is not that we are going to get something extra.

35:48

Rashmi

The fear of loss is what prevents us from getting there. What if I make $1,000 and tomorrow the $1,000 becomes $100 because the token price has passed by 90%? Now, although this $100 would be an extra, but users don't see it that way. They always see the loss of $900 versus the gain of $100 in general. That predictability and sustainability of the gaming system or the Web3 economy layer needs to be improved to give confidence to the users that, hey, it's okay, you can come and start building this out. We have seen web3 gaming changing lives in Philippines, in Vietnam, in other poorer countries, and in some parts of India as well. I believe that we will only see the true value of gaming once we start solving the core issues that are there. To solve the second issue, that's what I'm trying to say, we need to start approaching web3 gaming as a financial product first, gaming product second.

36:46

Rashmi

The experiences of gaming. We talk about, there are a lot of talk about how the gaming is not fun, it is tedious, and it is boring. There's a web2 gamings are much more experienced. Those all work out. Those are also valuable points. I believe that from change from there to the Web3, for that to happen, we need to solve these two major points. That's already a solved problem. These two major points have to be solved. The user experience onboarding and playing. The second one is the economy structure in here.

37:17

Nadja

38:14

Nadja

The technology has to support what is being done without, as you say, being the seven to ten step process that people have to really learn to wrap their head around something. And on the other hand yeah, exactly. This idea that if we are approaching gaming only in terms of gaming, well, that's a Web2 discussion. In Web3, the discussion is necessarily different because it happens in a completely different space with different principles, different values, different rules, that apply. I think you hit the nail on the head, the question is not how to bring more gamers from Web2 into Web3. As with much of Web3, the question is always what can we do to make things easier, to make things better, and to make things different? Because at the end of the day, the onus is not on the audience to change, on the users to change, it's on people in the industry to change what is being offered so that we can attract those users.

39:17

Nadja

On that note, you touched on Web3, especially Web3 gaming, being able to change lives in developing nations. What is your philosophy about Web3 changing lives? Whether this is in gaming, whether this is in crypto or whatever these different flavors of Web3 is, what are your thoughts on how it can really change people's lives?

39:47

Rashmi

40:58

Rashmi

42:08

Rashmi

We are not building an equitable distribution of wealth yet and that was the initial problem which was clogging the traditional economy and we have kind of inherited that into the bitcoin or the crypto economy as well where the rich are staying richer or becoming richer and the poor stay poorer. Now, to have an equitable distribution of wealth, we need to have something we call and then I had coined a term of proof of human work. That was the era of proof of work where problems, puzzles, hashes was getting solved by machines, bots and the people who have got money reputing lot of machines versus poorer people who are not even able to afford one machine, was not able to contribute or be a part of the system. Proof of human work is what I had then built in my thesis, had put my paper written into a document and said hey, we need to solve this but no blockchain is ready for this yet.

43:12

Rashmi

Now, from there, if I have to extrapolate, that's when I've been working, I've been thinking around that, not really trying to solve because this is a very Big Problem To solve for. Axie Infinity happened and The Impact that Axie Infinity gave on the ground to Philippines essentially happened. That showed that there is a potential that with NFTs and Crypto coming together with gaming happens to be that place where you are doing real work, human work. I replaced that Term from Proof of Human work to Proof of play. Now play here is a placeholder, it could be gaming, it could be social, it could be walk, and it could be anything. The proof of real work or that there's a person doing it is something that has to be there and with that we could actually go and come towards the era of equitable distribution of wealth as in the amount of work that the people are putting in and the wealth is getting distributed equitably around them.

44:19

Rashmi

This can lead to a lot more social changes on the ground than what we have seen in the past 20,30 years of technology that we have seen so far and I am really excited, I don't know if that is going to be possible, but I'm really excited to see if we can take steps towards it and come closer to that goal because that's what is going to make a world a better place and we will bring the world together and elevate a lot of problems in the world by being able to get a step towards that at large. I would not say that we'll eliminate property completely, but I think we'll take a giant steps towards that with technology, with NFT, with crypto,

45:03

Nadja

Brilliant Rashmi, I think just to remind the audience that you have a long and very involved career in tech. You say that these changes that are being brought about with web3 are potentially much larger than any of the solutions that we've been able to come up with Web3, sorry with technology in the traditional sense. What you're talking about because you've seen the changes on the ground in terms of standard technology. I love this idea of proof of human work and then evolving into proof of play. I can definitely resonate much more with the proof of play. This is a really important point because I think this phrase you said about the crypto rich becoming richer and the crypto poor staying poor, this is really one of the biggest negative changes that we've seen over the last few years. I know when I first came into crypto it was amazing, the prospect of suddenly we’re going to redistribute wealth in the sense that there were no glass ceilings and Mexican walls and any of these barriers between people who don't have access to the financial world and what it offers right now.

46:29

Nadja

Because of this new technology and this new way that we are thinking about things, we are going to be able to give everyone access. Unfortunately, as things have become more institutionalized and I always say that the problem with human beings is that we bring ourselves with us no matter what new industry we go into now, we are seeing that we are just replicating the same thought processes and the same behaviors that we had in the other spaces. With us at AdLunam, in terms of even when we started AdLunam, for us, really the biggest question was how can we democratize finance in the crypto space? In the sense that, yes, there's a lot of money to be made, but the sad fact is it's only being made by a select few people who already have money. If you think about investing into projects in terms of an IDO, who is getting the allocation?

47:25

Nadja

People who already have money. I think the key really is, and this is my own thesis is for founders in the Web3 space. It's so absolutely crucially important for founders to have the right mindset. I think your answer about the problems that we are solving now are problems that perhaps we didn't even fully understand earlier. As the technology increases and improves these complexities of the problem, we are understanding with new eyes than were able to understand it before. With that, I absolutely loved your many penny drop insights on how NFTs and the Metaverse is changing the face of gaming as we know it, but also how gaming is this vehicle that we are going to use in order to really get to this different future than what we've been having over the past few decades? Tech has promised us a lot of amazing things and unfortunately it's only widened that gap between people who have and people who don't have.

48:34

Nadja

I believe the audience is rearing to go because I see my question screen is blinking furiously, I'm going to move over to what people want to know from you today. Give me a second and I can choose the first one. Let me see. You have been part of many businesses. How do you pick your winners in the web3 space or do you make these successful? Okay, I'm not quite sure. Yeah, okay, so how do you know? I think basically it means how do you know if a project is going to be successful in the web3 space?

49:17

Rashmi

The short answer is I don't. I think no one knows how it's going to be successful. Which one is going to be successful in the web3 space, right? If they would have only invested in those and not in everything else. Here is the fun fact right. Now, let’s take the example of gaming and it is applicable for all industry, all verticals. In general, if you look at gaming, starting from the console gaming, Atari brought up console gaming or arcade gaming I would say, not even console started with arcade gaming. From arcade gaming we came to console gaming. From console gaming we came to online gaming, and from online gaming we came to mobile gaming. Now, no one of the arcade gaming, the leaders of the arcade gaming were not the leaders in console gaming. The leaders of console gaming were not the leaders on internet gaming or online gaming.

50:16

Rashmi

The leaders of online gaming were not the leaders in mobile gaming. Here is something that I would say. The leaders of the online gaming or web2 online or mobile gaming are not going to the leaders in the web3 gaming world. There's no fundamental to say how would you back then, right now, on a basic hunch, everyone say, hey, if you have built games in the past, let's say PUBG in the past, and you are coming to web3 gaming, I'll back on you because you will make it big in the web3 space. But history has sown different. The people who disrupt are people who are essentially coming from not from that world, but coming from a different point of view, different mindset, and then they change the world of that. It is applicable not just for gaming and you can choose any vertical, anything, and you will see this happening, repeating one after the other.

51:11

Rashmi

And that's what makes this place interesting. Now, if I have to back projects, I like to see the team, the vision behind the team, is it just the current project that they're looking up or there's a big roadmap and a vision towards where they want to go? See, in the past, have they executed anything and made it success? Executed at least on the ground and done something, built something out, sipped something, or not, or they're very raw. Now, I agree it may work against the freshers, but even youngsters who are coming in would have built something and executed at least in the hobby projects and something out because that brings in the resilience and knowing that what needs to be done. Thirdly is, obviously that I don't understand every industry, I don't understand every vertical. I only put my money, put my thoughts behind something I fully understand and only then I go ahead and say hey, these are something and even in that I would choose 10 to 20 and I believe that two, three of them would succeed.

52:24

Nadja

Brilliant Rashmi, I think that was a fantastic answer. Next question. You said first person shoot. The games are the most successful genre. Are there new trends in gaming that you see coming up?

52:40

Rashmi

Trends in gaming? No, I would put it this way that I think or I would say rather the kind of games would be always be different. There would be different categories of gaming in the gaming industry. As we go ahead and see more and more I believe that the combination of mobile gaming and Web3is what is going to take this thing forward. We have already seen the amount of users, the kind of engagement and the kind of revenue that mobile games are making today that's only going to grow lips and bound with the way Web3 is coming up, condition we solve the problem of Web3 economy, web3 gaming economy that we come across. I think then you tie up with hyper casual games. Again, we have to think from a fundamental point of view that people today are busy, more busy than they have ever been.

53:43

Rashmi

People today have been lonely and more alone than they have been. What they do is they try to spend time and find places to give this time to sort bursts of time that they have. If you ask someone to spend 3 hours continuous playing a game, I believe we are getting more and more marginalized and may not be available for that. As we go and start thinking that hey, can I spend ten minutes while I am waiting on something and what do I do there? I think people are moving away from social, from news to something a little more fun, little more challenging, little more creative and that is where gaming steps in. We have seen a plethora of hyper casual games coming up and making it interesting. I think the Hyper casual games are having that construct today which is designed around Web2 economy in general where ad based models or upgrade based models are selling.

54:50

Rashmi

That needs to be fine-tuned for a Web3 model economy and how there can be a continuity and an interoperability between hyper casual games as we go along will become more and more norm as we go ahead.

55:03

Nadja

Well, that's why proof of play for the one, right? On that note, I have a question that is definitely related to this proof of play but perhaps in the other direction how do you earn profits from NFT gaming and how do I know these are not scams?

55:28

Rashmi

This is essentially what you've been talking about right? The arcade games had a different business model. The console game had a different business model. Online gaming had a different business model and mobile games have a different business model. Web3 will be having a different business model. We are scared right now. If you think from a console gaming to the online world where we’re at the console gaming, we are selling CDs out there, CDs and software out there. It all became free to play. It's a big shift from selling every copy software to a free to play model, right? It took us quite a few time, I mean quite a few years to essentially solve and find a profitability around that model of free to play. Eventually we did solve it on mobile and now most free to play games are either backed by ads or backed by virtual currencies and how they are making tons of money.

56:27

Rashmi

I think I was reading a report sometime back, I would not remember the exact number but I think PUBG makes around close to a billion dollars every quarter by selling this virtual products alone. Now that's a huge number out there. Right now, what we are going to change here is the concept of ownership and who is essentially selling this virtual goods is not going to be from the game developer but is going to go and get distributed to the game, to the community at large. Now that will again upend the entire business model but I believe at the end there would be enough model which will go around the community as they keep getting they will also give back to the developers, give back to the company and everyone in general will rise up. Or at least that is the premise around which web3 gaming is getting built or around which Born To Die is getting built.

57:19

Rashmi

I'm not saying we're going to get millions, but we'll make our millions and probably our community will also make millions out there. It is a distributed form of wealth generation at large that is one.

57:33

Nadja

Of the best models to have is the company is going to make millions, but the user is also going to make millions. I think on that note, unfortunately we have run out of time for all of the questions that we have. This is always the saddest part of the hour for me is so many AHA moments and then we have to say goodbye. Rashmi, it's been such a treat getting your thoughts on web3 in general, NFT specifically and all of these really targeted insights into GameFi and just really how we have to do things differently if we want to reap the rewards, that is possible, but that means letting go of these old mindset shift. Well, making a mindset shift and letting go of the old ways of thinking that we the legacy, thinking that we are coming into the web3 space with.

58:27

Nadja

Of course, that's always the biggest challenge in any area of our lives, not just in this space. So, audience, if you would like to stay updated with what Rashmi and the Born To Die team is doing, do follow them on Twitter at Rashmi. At Born To Die game for the shooter game that they are developing in the metaverse. As you have been able to tell from all of the amazing insights that Rashmi has been giving us, I think Born To Die is not going to be your average standard metaverse game. They are definitely going to have a very different approach to how they do things. With that, as I said, very sad to say goodbye, but the good news is that we are going to catch you right back here next time. Well, next week on that Fact, same time, same place for another episode of the Future of NFTs brought to you by AdLunam.

59:27

Nadja

Please do keep in mind that if you have any birthday cake or sweets or any celebratory eat or drink this month, think of us because we are one year old baby. So with that, guys, cheers. See you next week. And Rashmi, thank you so much. It's been a fascinating hour. Look forward to what's coming next.

59:51

Rashmi

Thank you very much for having me. It was great questions. I enjoyed every bit happening here. Thank you very much.

59:58

Nadja

Cheers guys, have a good day. Speak soon.