Welcome to another episode of The HERO Show.
I am your host Richard Matthews, (@AKATheAlchemist) and you are listening to episode 202 with Tanner Larsson – MECH.GAME: A Raising Standard of NFT's & Blockchain Gaming.
Tanner Larsson was the CEO of Build Grow Scale, which is one of the biggest and best ecom training companies in the world. Just recently, Tanner stepped down as the CEO of BGS to pursue a crypto-based gaming project called MECH.GAME—a game-ready mechanized 3D NFT’s.
The best way to describe NFT or Non-Fungible Token is, if you have a quarter in your hand, I have a quarter in my hand, and we put them on the table, and I mix them up and cover them up. Can you identify your token? The answer is No, because they're fungible, meaning they're interchangeable as the same.
NFT is non-fungible token. So what we did was we took that currency, and we wrote, Tanner's quarter and Richards's quarter on it. Then we mix them up, do you know which one's yours? Of course, you do, because it has your serial number on it.
The NFT technology, at the most basic level, is a way to put a serial number on digital stuff. You can use it in insurance, business, applications, art, etc.
With MECH.GAME you’ll have a hero character that runs around the map that you control. We made the game more fun by building in a strategic element where you have to mine resources in the games to have a little bit of that strategy aspect, those resources are used to build your towers, and repair your towers in the level.
The game is a top-down Tower Defense-style with a hero character as your Mech. All of those, the Mech and the stronghold are the main NFT's that you own. They're upgradable, they earn experience, and they have game stats that can be improved, like health, battle, power, energy, all those kinds of things. And when you upgrade them, that reports to the blockchain and stores that data.
Want to stay connected with Tanner? Please check out their social profiles below.
With that… let’s go and listen to the full episode…
In the crypto and gaming NFT space, it's all
Tanner Larsson:about interoperability and collaboration. So projects want
Tanner Larsson:that, because the number one cool buzzword in NFT's it's
Tanner Larsson:currently utility. And what utility means is, in a simple
Tanner Larsson:form is this NFT that I own, what can it do for you? What
Tanner Larsson:does it do? And so it's only when the one game that utility
Tanner Larsson:is still good, but it's much more limited than saying, hey,
Tanner Larsson:not only can you play them, the can, you can take them
Tanner Larsson:decentraland, you can take them to other meta verses, you can do
Tanner Larsson:these other collaborations. And the other thing is, when you
Tanner Larsson:start doing those collaborations, you also provide
Tanner Larsson:additional utility for other games, tokens, currencies,
Tanner Larsson:things like that, that then allow the value to increase and
Tanner Larsson:different stuff like that. So there's a lot of huge
Tanner Larsson:opportunity there. But the other side of it, that's that crypto
Tanner Larsson:gaming has become really cool. And I'm sure you're aware of is
Tanner Larsson:crypto gaming. Even these these, like non game games in the
Tanner Larsson:crypto space have pioneered this whole new world of scholars and
Tanner Larsson:scholarships. And what that is, is there are people like
Tanner Larsson:especially third world, second world, people that want to play
Tanner Larsson:these games, but may not have the money to buy the NF T to
Tanner Larsson:play originally, right? They need the NF T to play. So what
Tanner Larsson:has happened is these guilds have come in and buy the NF t.
Tanner Larsson:And then they basically let the player or what they call the
Tanner Larsson:scholar, us we can fit in the game. And then in the game, the
Tanner Larsson:scholar and the guild split the currency rewards that come out
Tanner Larsson:of the game. So basically a leasing system. Right. So in
Tanner Larsson:that game, we're doing the same concept.
Richard Matthews:Heroes are an inspiring group of people, every
Richard Matthews:one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes you see
Richard Matthews:on the big silver screen, the everyday heroes that let us live
Richard Matthews:the privileged lives we do. Every hero has a story to tell,
Richard Matthews:the doctor saving lives at your local hospital, the war veteran
Richard Matthews:down the street, who risked his life for our freedom to the
Richard Matthews:police officers, and the firefighters who risked their
Richard Matthews:safety to ensure ours every hero is special and every story worth
Richard Matthews:telling. But there was one class of heroes that I think is often
Richard Matthews:ignored the entrepreneur, the creator, the producer, the ones
Richard Matthews:who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves,
Richard Matthews:you know what, I can fix that, I can help people, I can make a
Richard Matthews:difference. And they go out and do exactly that by creating a
Richard Matthews:new product or introducing a new service. Some go on to change
Richard Matthews:the world, others make a world of difference to their
Richard Matthews:customers. Welcome to the Hero Show. Join us as we pull back
Richard Matthews:the masks on the world's finest hero preneurs and learn the
Richard Matthews:secrets to their powers, their success and their influence. So
Richard Matthews:you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more
Richard Matthews:money, and experience more freedom in your business. I'm
Richard Matthews:your host, Richard Matthews, and we are on in 3...2...1…
Richard Matthews:Welcome back to the Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews. And
Richard Matthews:I have a fun returning guest for us today. I've got Tanner
Richard Matthews:Larsson on the line. Tanner are you there?
Tanner Larsson:Yeah, I'm here.
Richard Matthews:Awesome. Glad to have you here. So for those
Richard Matthews:of you who listened to Tanner's episode before. Tanner was the
Richard Matthews:CEO of Build Grow Scale, which is one of probably the biggest
Richard Matthews:and best ecom training companies in the world. And I know you
Richard Matthews:just recently stepped down as the CEO of that company to
Richard Matthews:pursue some other ventures, you want to tell us a little about
Richard Matthews:what's going on there. And where you're going next?
Tanner Larsson:Yeah, so yeah, I mean, BGS is still it still is
Tanner Larsson:kind of the premier training and optimization company for ecom
Tanner Larsson:brands. But, you know, I've been doing ecommerce since 2001. Been
Tanner Larsson:kind of a dinosaur in the online space. I've done all kinds of
Tanner Larsson:things through internet and through internet business. And
Tanner Larsson:I'm always got my hands in different things and dabbling in
Tanner Larsson:different side projects, different things where I see
Tanner Larsson:potential in one area that I have been getting heavier and
Tanner Larsson:heavier into for the last several years is crypto, and
Tanner Larsson:cryptocurrencies, Blockchain technologies and things like
Tanner Larsson:that. And I started what was originally kind of a passion
Tanner Larsson:project when I saw this kind of perfect opportunity for me in a
Tanner Larsson:space. And it has since grown into something that is becoming
Tanner Larsson:very quite big, quite large, quite fast. And I see the
Tanner Larsson:potential here and the future here in such a big way that my
Tanner Larsson:partner and I talked at BGS. And for me to be able to pursue this
Tanner Larsson:the way that I wanted to, I decided to step down as CEO of
Tanner Larsson:Build Grow scale, so that I could pursue this venture, you
Tanner Larsson:know, full force.
Richard Matthews:Yeah. I don't know if this is too early, but
Richard Matthews:it's Mech.Game is the name of your NFT game that you guys are
Richard Matthews:starting, is that right?
Tanner Larsson:I kind of was cryptic in that description. I
Tanner Larsson:didn't mean to be cryptic, but yeah, so the project, it's in
Tanner Larsson:the crypto gaming space, which is actually a very new space,
Tanner Larsson:but the project itself is called Mech.Game and that's actually
Tanner Larsson:the URL as well, which I was super stoked to get that URL,
Tanner Larsson:because it's just perfect Mech.Game.
Richard Matthews:That's really cool.
Tanner Larsson:And the project is a crypto based gaming project
Tanner Larsson:that leverages NFT technology blockchain ledger, distributed
Tanner Larsson:ledger technology as well as defied economics. So there's a
Tanner Larsson:whole bunch of things there that we're talking about that kind of
Tanner Larsson:sound technical and geeky. But the first thing that is to
Tanner Larsson:understand when I say NFT, most people eyes glaze over, or they
Tanner Larsson:go, oh, you mean those stupid JPEG monkeys and things or
Tanner Larsson:whatever. And it's, oh, look, I copied and pasted a right click
Tanner Larsson:and saved I stole your JPEG. I'm like, Yeah, I think that's
Tanner Larsson:stupid, too. But that's not the reality of the NFT technology.
Tanner Larsson:And to be fair, when I I've been in crypto since 2016, not as an
Tanner Larsson:quasi investor, as a very bad investor, I would say, in the
Tanner Larsson:early days, learn how to take a large amount of money and make
Tanner Larsson:it into a small amount of money. So if you want secrets on that,
Tanner Larsson:I can tell you that from as far back as 2016, but I stuck with
Tanner Larsson:the space and kept evolving with it and learning more, but when
Tanner Larsson:NFT's first came out, I thought they were stupid too I'm like,
Tanner Larsson:look at this. I mean, I love the money that people are making.
Tanner Larsson:That's amazing. But what? Like, what is this? And it wasn't
Tanner Larsson:until I really started understanding the underlying
Tanner Larsson:technology of it that I was like, Oh, this has some legs.
Tanner Larsson:And in the nutshell, for those of you guys who don't know,
Tanner Larsson:NFT's, if you look at an NFT anything, what is special about
Tanner Larsson:it, it's not so much the actual NFT Non Fungible Token, it is
Tanner Larsson:the fact of what the NFT does. So the best way to describe it
Tanner Larsson:is if you take a token, which in cryptocurrency, everything's
Tanner Larsson:called tokens, right? NFT's are tokens as well. But all tokens
Tanner Larsson:normally are fungible. So if we take a quarter, you have a
Tanner Larsson:quarter in your hand, I have a quarter in my hand, we call
Tanner Larsson:those tokens, and we put them on the table, and I mix them up and
Tanner Larsson:cover them up. Can you identify your token? No.
Richard Matthews:Not really because they're fungible,
Tanner Larsson:They're fungible, meaning they're
Tanner Larsson:interchangeable as the same. So my quarter is the same as your
Tanner Larsson:quarter, there's no difference.
Richard Matthews:Which is a rule for currency, currency has
Richard Matthews:to be fungible in order to function as currency.
Tanner Larsson:100%. Now NFT is non fungible token. So now what
Tanner Larsson:we did was we took that currency, and we wrote, you
Tanner Larsson:know, Tanner's quarter and Richards quater on it. So we mix
Tanner Larsson:them up, do you know which one's yours? Of course you do, because
Tanner Larsson:it has your serial number on it. So NFT technology, at the most
Tanner Larsson:basic level is a way to put a serial number, if you will, on a
Tanner Larsson:digital or type of anything. So an NFT now has a serial number.
Tanner Larsson:So when you start doing that your artwork has serial numbers,
Tanner Larsson:you can use it in insurance and business applications and all
Tanner Larsson:kinds of stuff.
Richard Matthews:Yeah, you can use it to tokenize real estate,
Richard Matthews:you can do all sorts of interesting things.
Tanner Larsson:So many crazy things.
Richard Matthews:With NFTs and it's such an interesting space.
Richard Matthews:And the thing that has really been blowing my mind within NFS
Richard Matthews:is looking at like, I think a lot of people right now they're
Richard Matthews:looking at NFT's. And they're thinking, what is the stupid
Richard Matthews:monkey JPEG have to do with the future of the internet? And
Richard Matthews:they're not looking at what does the underlying technology
Richard Matthews:actually capable of. And when you look at what the underlying
Richard Matthews:technology is actually capable of, what you see is you see that
Richard Matthews:probably within the next 10 years, if it even takes that
Richard Matthews:long, every asset you have in the real world and in the
Richard Matthews:digital world is going to have some sort of NFT tokenization
Richard Matthews:that goes along with it. So you can move and transfer ownership
Richard Matthews:and even do crazy things like right now you and I aren't in
Richard Matthews:the position financially, maybe if Mech.Game goes really well.
Richard Matthews:We will be, but to like buy one of the big towers like Trump
Richard Matthews:Tower in New York or something like that, we couldn't buy that.
Richard Matthews:Because you just have to be really, really wealthy to invest
Richard Matthews:in those kinds of things. But they're talking about NFT
Richard Matthews:technology allows them to actually tokenize the ownership
Richard Matthews:of the real estate. And the same way that you can buy a portion
Richard Matthews:of a company with a stock, you could buy a portion of a big
Richard Matthews:real estate transaction. And all of that it's like baseline NFT
Richard Matthews:technology, you're talking about how you can apply that to
Richard Matthews:gaming. So he's talking about how does that sort of technology
Richard Matthews:apply to a game.
Tanner Larsson:Absolutely. So that's where I think in my
Tanner Larsson:opinion, everything you just said 100% True. But in reality
Tanner Larsson:that's like the super adopters, the super nerds and super geeky
Tanner Larsson:guys, I get this and I'm ready to jump in now. For NFT
Tanner Larsson:technology to really catch on we got to catch it with something
Tanner Larsson:more mainstream, that's more adoptable and that's where the
Tanner Larsson:gaming aspect comes in a big way. So one of the things about
Tanner Larsson:gaming so I consider myself a closet gamer and I say that
Tanner Larsson:because I have an obsessive personality and once I find the
Tanner Larsson:game that I like everything else goes out the window and my life
Tanner Larsson:gets consumed by the game. So I don't let myself game very often
Tanner Larsson:anymore, but I used to a lot back through high school and
Tanner Larsson:after that and I played Doom I played World of Warcraft I
Tanner Larsson:played all kinds of these different games. Apocalypse all
Tanner Larsson:kind of games.
Richard Matthews:I spent a lot of hour playing Legend of Zelda,
Richard Matthews:a couple of youes back.
Tanner Larsson:I did that too, you know, all that stuff, but
Tanner Larsson:one of the first games that I got into that was an online game
Tanner Larsson:that was big was Diablo two. Now Diablo two. Remenber that?
Richard Matthews:Have you played the resurrected version?
Tanner Larsson:I have to play it now. But if you remember back
Tanner Larsson:My son and I played the resurrected version and the both
Tanner Larsson:of us have put in untold hours over the last year since they
Tanner Larsson:released it.
Tanner Larsson:with Diablo two, you would build these characters and you start
Tanner Larsson:out as a level zero and you wind up with like a level 80
Tanner Larsson:sorcerers or whatever and you play ungodly amounts of hours to
Tanner Larsson:do this, then you get bored or you're done playing or whatever.
Tanner Larsson:And that's basically it. Say what?
Richard Matthews:I said I'm currently at level 75 DREW it.
Tanner Larsson:Drew it Okay, perfect. Now with that, what we
Tanner Larsson:did back then was we're like, okay, well, what can we do with
Tanner Larsson:this, and we decided to try to sell our accounts on eBay. So
Tanner Larsson:that was a thing for a while, you'd basically try to sell your
Tanner Larsson:character on eBay, but you didn't sell the character, you
Tanner Larsson:gave your logins to your account. And then you would go
Tanner Larsson:create a new account and you hope that when you make the
Tanner Larsson:transaction that that was like authentic, and people weren't
Tanner Larsson:scamming you, because it was a high trust factor. But it was
Tanner Larsson:also illegal by the terms of blizzards and Diablo Two Terms
Tanner Larsson:of Service. And then World of Warcraft comes about in the same
Tanner Larsson:thing, people are finding rare armor, rare items, things in the
Tanner Larsson:game. And there's this whole like underground marketplace of
Tanner Larsson:people trying to sell them for real money.
Richard Matthews:Yeah, just mainstream. Like if people have
Richard Matthews:watched Big Bang Theory, they have got a couple of episodes in
Richard Matthews:the series where the characters in the TV show are playing a
Richard Matthews:World of Warcraft style game. And they get one of those super
Richard Matthews:rare swords. And there's like this whole joke where like, they
Richard Matthews:catch the sword, and they'll stop playing to go sell it on
Richard Matthews:eBay. And then he's like, I got it, I sold it. And then one of
Richard Matthews:the other guys on the couch is like I bought it.
Tanner Larsson:So that what was happening and it is happening.
Tanner Larsson:And but according to terms of service of the game, you're not
Tanner Larsson:allowed to do that it's real janky operation. And currently,
Tanner Larsson:people who play video games play for pure enjoyment, when you
Tanner Larsson:stop playing the game, all that time invested, is gone. There's
Tanner Larsson:no value there. So what NFT technology is allowing, and one
Tanner Larsson:of the reasons I'm jumping in in the big way is, we can now use
Tanner Larsson:NFT technology to attach it to your game character, or your
Tanner Larsson:game items. And now the character that you play your
Tanner Larsson:level 75 Druid is now a piece of digital real estate that you
Tanner Larsson:own. And all the upgrades all the things that happens to your
Tanner Larsson:Druid is recorded on the blockchain. And when you want to
Tanner Larsson:because you own that it's like the title to your car, you have
Tanner Larsson:a title to your car, you have a title to your level 75 druid,
Tanner Larsson:you can go sell that druid to another player on the
Tanner Larsson:marketplace. But your druid has armor, he has a staff, he has
Tanner Larsson:potions, he has all these different things. All of those
Tanner Larsson:things can also be in NFT's and have a serial number attached to
Tanner Larsson:them. So you could sell them as a whole or you could parse them
Tanner Larsson:out or when you find stuff you can't use, you could sell that.
Tanner Larsson:And it's a legal way of transferring it in a very
Tanner Larsson:trustless meaning that there's no trust required in order to
Tanner Larsson:make this transaction happen. You put it up for sale on the
Tanner Larsson:blockchain, I want to buy it I send you cryptocurrency by
Tanner Larsson:clicking the button at the same time the transaction happens and
Tanner Larsson:the NFT is sent to me. There's no way to scam people. And it's
Richard Matthews:So I want to point something out that's
Richard Matthews:super awesome.
Richard Matthews:really cool about that, that I think a lot of people don't
Richard Matthews:really get where the value is coming from. And so if you back
Richard Matthews:up into like, what's happening and Ryan Deiss couple years ago
Richard Matthews:said, he's the head of digital marketer, for those who don't
Richard Matthews:know, he said that, everyone's in the attention business today,
Richard Matthews:whether you like it or not, you're in the business of
Richard Matthews:attention. And going forward, that's really the way marketing
Richard Matthews:is done. It's all about how you get attention. And what's
Richard Matthews:interesting is if you look at companies like social media,
Richard Matthews:Facebook, Twitter, any of those, they're all essentially, we are
Richard Matthews:giving them our attention, and then they're monetizing that
Richard Matthews:attention in the form of ads. But we don't get compensated for
Richard Matthews:our attention, because our attention is valuable to the
Richard Matthews:advertisers who want to pay for our attention. And what the NFT
Richard Matthews:gaming space and I think a lot of other entities are doing as
Richard Matthews:they're going to allow you as the one who has the valuable
Richard Matthews:attention to monetize that attention yourself. So when you
Richard Matthews:take and you put in 450 hours into your Diablo two character,
Richard Matthews:that 450 hours in building that character and getting the stats
Richard Matthews:and doing the stuff for it has a value to it that you can then
Richard Matthews:exchange in the economy, that you can't do now. So it changes
Tanner Larsson:Correct. And the other side where the value comes
Tanner Larsson:the way games work.
Tanner Larsson:from is the players right? A lot of times players want to come
Tanner Larsson:into a game they don't want to start at the level or the
Tanner Larsson:beginning, they're willing to buy or they don't want to find
Tanner Larsson:the rare thing they're willing to buy it and that's been
Tanner Larsson:proven. If you look at games like Candy Crush, Clash of
Tanner Larsson:Clans, they all have these things where you can buy in game
Tanner Larsson:purchases to buy more jewels or buy more whatever to make the
Tanner Larsson:game easier for you to play faster. It's a convenience
Tanner Larsson:purchase. And people to the tune of billions and billions of
Tanner Larsson:dollars are doing that every single year with no value, no
Tanner Larsson:value exchange other than enjoyment. In this case, they're
Tanner Larsson:doing this same thing. But everything that you buy can
Tanner Larsson:become more valuable in the game, there by the same players
Tanner Larsson:that you're playing with can then buy your character, you can
Tanner Larsson:change, trade exchange, whatever. But it's all tracked
Tanner Larsson:by a basically a serial number technology that is completely
Tanner Larsson:trustless. And can store the value. So it's, I can't say,
Tanner Larsson:hey, buy my level 80 and you buy it, and it's only a level 20,
Tanner Larsson:there's no way to scam the system.
Richard Matthews:Yeah, it is what it is, because it's a real
Richard Matthews:asset. You're essentially being able to do the same kind of
Richard Matthews:things you do in the real world, where it's like, hey, instead of
Richard Matthews:a digital cup, like, here's my actual cup, it's the same kind
Richard Matthews:of transaction, you give me money, I give you my cup, you
Richard Matthews:have my cup. Same thing happens in the digital space, I got
Richard Matthews:levels of any character, I give it to you. It's the same type of
Richard Matthews:physical exchange because of the way the technology works, which
Richard Matthews:we couldn't do with digital stuff. Before NFT technology and
Richard Matthews:blockchain stuff existed. What I want to talk a little about,
Richard Matthews:though, is in the NFT gaming space, there's a lot of stuff
Richard Matthews:that's happening, you guys are approaching it a little bit
Richard Matthews:differently. And I want to find out why are you guys approaching
Richard Matthews:it that way? And what do you think sort of like the problem
Richard Matthews:is in the marketplace that you guys are going to help solve
Richard Matthews:with the way you guys are building Mech.Game?
Tanner Larsson:Sure. So there's a couple of different things
Tanner Larsson:that are happening. So that's one of the real reasons I was
Tanner Larsson:excited about moving into the gaming space. But the other
Tanner Larsson:thing is that, if you talk to any crypto expert in the crypto
Tanner Larsson:token space, whether they're investors, advisors, Blockchain
Tanner Larsson:owners, whatever, they're all saying that the next big boom
Tanner Larsson:industry in crypto is going to be crypto gaming. And they're
Tanner Larsson:saying it's three to five times or more bigger than the dot com
Tanner Larsson:boom was just in one sector of the crypto space, which is just
Tanner Larsson:in gaming. Now, the reason for that is because crypto gaming.
Richard Matthews:For those of you who don't know, just
Richard Matthews:traditional gaming is like a $60 billion a year industry.
Tanner Larsson:Correct, and they are expecting that it will
Tanner Larsson:be multiple trillions by 2025.
Richard Matthews:And again, if you don't know the space, like
Richard Matthews:when there's big game launches, they are generally bigger and
Richard Matthews:have more money behind them than your big Hollywood launches that
Richard Matthews:you see over the summer blockbusters.
Tanner Larsson:Very true.
Richard Matthews:Yeah, so it's a huge space that if you're not
Richard Matthews:a gamer, you're not aware of. But when you're in like our
Richard Matthews:world, which is gaming and marketing, you sort of pay
Richard Matthews:attention to all that stuff. And you realize that man, some of
Richard Matthews:these big game launches, they just make like the Marvel
Richard Matthews:superhero launches look like, chump change.
Tanner Larsson:Correct. And one of the reasons crypto gaming is
Tanner Larsson:poised to be so big is looking at the gaming population. The
Tanner Larsson:people who are in crypto right now are the technically savvy,
Tanner Larsson:the technically advanced, they're typically people that
Tanner Larsson:have a little bit more tech savvy, right? To get more
Tanner Larsson:mainstream adoption, we've got to lower the technical curve,
Tanner Larsson:we've got to get more of that. And obviously, more and more
Tanner Larsson:people are getting into crypto every year. The next big
Tanner Larsson:technically competent audience is gamers that has not yet
Tanner Larsson:dipped their toe into crypto. So that's one of the reasons that
Tanner Larsson:they've been pushing so hard the full gaming.
Richard Matthews:It's the next step.
Tanner Larsson:Correct.
Richard Matthews:I always tell people, when they're looking at
Richard Matthews:investing in any crypto, whether it's gaming or not, I was like,
Richard Matthews:if you want to see who's gonna win long term, see who makes
Richard Matthews:crypto invisible to grandma. But lets grandma use crypto.
Tanner Larsson:Correct. Yeah. So Gaming will be the first
Tanner Larsson:phase of that. Now, Crypto gaming as a whole is pretty much
Tanner Larsson:focused around PDE, which is play to earn. So basically, you
Tanner Larsson:play the game and you earn some form of cryptocurrency reward in
Tanner Larsson:exchange for playing the game. That's how most of these games
Tanner Larsson:are operating. Traditional gaming, you game for enjoyment.
Tanner Larsson:You only play for enjoyment, crypto gaming is incentivized
Tanner Larsson:gaming where you get paid to play.
Richard Matthews:You get paid for your attention?
Tanner Larsson:Correct. The difference is that in the PDE
Tanner Larsson:world, the crypto world, the games can barely be called
Tanner Larsson:games, because they're more like defy applications dressed up as
Tanner Larsson:a game where you click as an example, you have a horse race,
Tanner Larsson:you have two horses, and you you're going to race them, and
Tanner Larsson:you click a button that says race my horses, and then two
Tanner Larsson:seconds later it says, Oh, congratulations, this horse won.
Tanner Larsson:It's a randomized algorithm. It's not a game, there's no
Tanner Larsson:skill. What it is, it is gambling packaged up as a game,
Tanner Larsson:like a gambling algorithm, an online gambling algorithm.
Tanner Larsson:That's what it is. Now, the most games are like that right now.
Tanner Larsson:Because it's early in the space and everything else and you
Tanner Larsson:click a button and you win and you get a reward. Okay.
Richard Matthews:Yeah. Part of the reason for that though, is
Richard Matthews:just like the technical hurdles to actually make a real game.
Richard Matthews:have real entities that are interchangeable, either between
Richard Matthews:the system or between other games it's huge. And it's going
Richard Matthews:to take someone who's really dedicated to building the
Richard Matthews:technology to do that, which sounds like it was where you
Richard Matthews:guys are going?
Tanner Larsson:Correct. There's still two worlds of gaming, they
Tanner Larsson:have not touched at all. If you go to a gamers forum, a
Tanner Larsson:traditional gamers forum, and you mentioned NFT games are PDE
Tanner Larsson:games, they basically talk crap and say how horrible they are.
Tanner Larsson:And they're right, because these guys play for the love of
Tanner Larsson:gaming. So they're gonna play a game over on the crypto side,
Tanner Larsson:and it's not fun. Why would they play it?
Richard Matthews:They are for 450 hour into clicking on the
Richard Matthews:horse.
Tanner Larsson:Yeah. They're not real games, they want to
Tanner Larsson:play real games. So the opportunity here in the crypto
Tanner Larsson:space is for games that are built in the reverse order from
Tanner Larsson:crypto, a game that you would actually want to play, even if
Tanner Larsson:there was no play to earn rewards. But then you build a
Tanner Larsson:real game that's playable. And then you tie in all this stuff
Tanner Larsson:like play to earn rewards defy economics, and player owned
Tanner Larsson:assets with NFT technology. So players own the character,
Tanner Larsson:player owns the weapons, the shields the whatever the other
Tanner Larsson:items are that make the game function.
Richard Matthews:Have you seen a Ready Player One?
Tanner Larsson:Yeah, I've seen part, I actually couldn't watch
Tanner Larsson:the whole thing, I didn't like it. But I did watch part of it.
Richard Matthews:So it's just interesting to me, because the
Richard Matthews:world that they built in that movie was essentially all NFT
Richard Matthews:based stuffs. And I always tell people like if you're confused
Richard Matthews:about how NFT's work and what it looks like, watch that movie.
Richard Matthews:Because every time that he's like, I'm gonna go into my thing
Richard Matthews:and plot an item for his his digital avatar. It's all NFT
Richard Matthews:stuff, exactly what you're talking about here. Play around
Richard Matthews:assets.
Tanner Larsson:Now the other thing in the gaming space right
Tanner Larsson:now is currently in the in the crypto gaming space. The big
Tanner Larsson:thing is, people have been trying to tie NFT's and crypto
Tanner Larsson:together since NFT's came out. So there's lots of NFT games.
Tanner Larsson:But if you look at NFT's most of them are 2d images, they're a
Tanner Larsson:JPEG, or a png of like a torso of something. And then they say,
Tanner Larsson:Oh, this is your character in the game. And they try to build
Tanner Larsson:some game. Well, reality says the technical coding says this
Tanner Larsson:2d, jpeg three quarter is not actually your character, because
Tanner Larsson:a game character has to be coded in a specific way, using Unity
Tanner Larsson:or Unreal or whatever. So they're not. So they're saying
Tanner Larsson:that you own your game character, but you really don't,
Tanner Larsson:you own a PFP, or an image of what your game character could
Tanner Larsson:look like. But typically, these games then build a character
Tanner Larsson:that is not also an NFT. So technically, all what happens on
Tanner Larsson:your game character, by the simple state of the law, you
Tanner Larsson:don't own it, because it's not connected and tied together.
Richard Matthews:You own the JPEG representation of your
Richard Matthews:character, you don't actually own your character. And it would
Richard Matthews:be like taking a picture of the Mona Lisa, versus actually
Richard Matthews:owning the Mona Lisa.
Tanner Larsson:Correct. And that's where we're at have been
Tanner Larsson:at currently, what we're doing with Mech. Game is, and that's
Tanner Larsson:another reason why you see JPEGs and images. Because NFT's have
Tanner Larsson:been very simple. They've been very simple art type of things
Tanner Larsson:until now, what we're doing is the actual NFT that you
Tanner Larsson:purchase, is your three dimensional game character. So
Tanner Larsson:if you go to Mech.Game and look at it, it is the game character.
Richard Matthews:Yeah, so it's the actual code that's being
Richard Matthews:played in the game.
Tanner Larsson:So what you see on say, open sea, or bike.io, or
Tanner Larsson:whatever, when you go to an NFT marketplace, and you're viewing
Tanner Larsson:your NFT, you'll see a three dimensional walking around mech,
Tanner Larsson:and you can manipulate and do all that that's the exact one
Tanner Larsson:that you use in the game. So you'll see the exact
Tanner Larsson:representation of it, it is the exact one in the game, and out
Tanner Larsson:of the game.
Richard Matthews:So if I can make a comparison real quick,
Richard Matthews:just make sure I'm understanding this properly. World of Warcraft
Richard Matthews:is really huge, everyone has their little characters and
Richard Matthews:their avatars. But at the end of the day, all of the game code is
Richard Matthews:owned by Blizzard. Right? So any of the effort that you've put
Richard Matthews:into the game, all of the stats, everything. Blizzard owns all of
Richard Matthews:that what you guys are actually building is whatever I put into
Richard Matthews:the game is actually mine. So I actually own a portion of
Richard Matthews:Mech.Game. And like literally own a portion of the code of the
Richard Matthews:game is mine. Is that right?
Tanner Larsson:Correct. Yeah, the code that pertains to your
Tanner Larsson:character, your assets, your interaction with the game, the
Tanner Larsson:overarching game infrastructure like the levels you play, and
Tanner Larsson:all of that, that's owned by the company, of course, but your
Tanner Larsson:participation in there, yes, you own that, you own your
Tanner Larsson:character. You play the level and you find a new weapon. That
Tanner Larsson:weapon is an NFT as well you own that weapon. And you know
Tanner Larsson:whether it's equipped with you or not, it's stored in your
Tanner Larsson:wallet or your inventory basically, and you have access
Tanner Larsson:to it. You can then sell it, you can trade it, you can use it,
Tanner Larsson:you can destroy it, whatever you want. You own it. And then when
Tanner Larsson:you want to leave the game for whatever reason, you can take
Tanner Larsson:your stuff and go and then take it somewhere else. The other
Tanner Larsson:thing is what this opens up for us is collaboration with other
Tanner Larsson:projects, where you can take your Mech from our game and go
Tanner Larsson:play it in another game that we collaborate with or
Tanner Larsson:decentraland, you can take your Mech into decentraland and park
Tanner Larsson:it in your driveway if your decentraland house. Because the
Tanner Larsson:code and the ownership of the NFT allows as long as the other
Tanner Larsson:platforms are coded in this in a similar sense, certain types of
Tanner Larsson:code was required, you will be able to do that. And there's
Tanner Larsson:other projects that are coming out that we're collaborating
Tanner Larsson:with as well, to do exactly that. So you're basically, in
Tanner Larsson:the beef, they'll be spoofs right? There'll be fun level. So
Tanner Larsson:we have one of our collaborations, they're building
Tanner Larsson:a Metaverse game that is with superheroes. And they, we're
Tanner Larsson:going to build a side level that kind of conjoined our games
Tanner Larsson:where their superhero can battle one of our max. Now, it has
Tanner Larsson:nothing to do with the original, the regular gameplay, just one
Tanner Larsson:extra arcade mode type thing that you can add to a project
Tanner Larsson:and we can do tons of those other projects.
Richard Matthews:Do you see more and more of that becoming
Richard Matthews:mainstream in the NFT gaming space that instead of like,
Richard Matthews:because I know everyone's looking at NFT's like how do I
Richard Matthews:win in the investing game. And I know that one of the things that
Richard Matthews:I've been looking at is, I don't think there's going to be a
Richard Matthews:winner, I think the winner is going to be the people who are
Richard Matthews:or the games and the technology that's going to allow things to
Richard Matthews:have interoperability,
Tanner Larsson:Agreed.
Richard Matthews:Right? Where your stuff can be like if I own
Richard Matthews:it, but I can only ever use it in Mech.Game. it's limited. But
Richard Matthews:if you guys are built in such a way that it's interoperable, and
Richard Matthews:other people are coming on board, and also building
Richard Matthews:interoperability if I own a really cool Mech.Game mech, and
Richard Matthews:then I can take it over to you know, this is just spitballing,
Richard Matthews:say Pokemon gets into it. And I can take my Mech into the
Richard Matthews:Pokemon world and do a Pokemon battle with my Mech against
Richard Matthews:Charizard kind of thing. That's where you start getting the
Richard Matthews:really interesting futures for gaming.
Tanner Larsson:And in the crypto and gaming NFT space.
Tanner Larsson:It's all about interoperability and collaborations. So projects
Tanner Larsson:want that because the number one like cool buzzword in NFT's is
Tanner Larsson:currently utility. And what utility means is, in a simple
Tanner Larsson:form is this NFT that I own, what can it do for me? What does
Tanner Larsson:it do? And so if it's only in the one game, that utility is
Tanner Larsson:still good, but it's much more limited than saying, hey, not
Tanner Larsson:only can you play it in the game, you can take it into
Tanner Larsson:decentraland, you can take it into other meta verses, you can
Tanner Larsson:do these other collaborations. And the other thing is when you
Tanner Larsson:start doing those collaborations, you also provide
Tanner Larsson:additional utility for other games, tokens, currencies,
Tanner Larsson:things like that, that then allow the value to increase in
Tanner Larsson:different stuff like that. So there's a lot of huge
Tanner Larsson:opportunity there. But the other side of it, that of crypto
Tanner Larsson:gaming, that's become really cool, and I'm sure you're aware
Tanner Larsson:of is crypto gaming, even these like non game games in the
Tanner Larsson:crypto space have pioneered this whole new world of scholars and
Tanner Larsson:scholarships. And what that is, is there are people especially
Tanner Larsson:third world, second world people that want to play these games,
Tanner Larsson:but may not have the money to buy the NFT to play originally,
Tanner Larsson:but they need the NFT to play. So what has happened is these
Tanner Larsson:guilds have come in and buy the NFT. And then they basically let
Tanner Larsson:the player or what they call the scholar, use the NFT in the
Tanner Larsson:game. And then in the game, the scholar and the guild split the
Tanner Larsson:currency rewards that come out of the game. So it's basically a
Tanner Larsson:leasing system. Right. So in Mech.Game, we're doing the same
Tanner Larsson:concept, you will be able to own your Mech. Now let's say this is
Tanner Larsson:where the whole investment, how do you win an NFT's thing comes
Tanner Larsson:back into play with NF T's you can buy them, you can sell them,
Tanner Larsson:or flip them, right. Or you can hold them, you can play them,
Tanner Larsson:there's different things you can do. But the NF T's that have the
Tanner Larsson:most value and the most long term appreciation opportunities
Tanner Larsson:and stuff are the ones that have multiple utilities. So with
Tanner Larsson:Mech.Game, you own your game character, like I have people
Tanner Larsson:that are buying the Mech's that don't want to play the game at
Tanner Larsson:all, they just want to rent them out and have it become a passive
Tanner Larsson:income stream for them. So I have a Mech, you want to rent it
Tanner Larsson:from me, I basically set up all in the system, I can select the
Tanner Larsson:percentage that says hey, you're gonna get 60% for playing the
Tanner Larsson:Mech, I'm gonna get 40%. And the system automatically splits
Tanner Larsson:those rewards and sends them to each person's wallet as their
Tanner Larsson:earned. But then if you're underperforming as a player, I
Tanner Larsson:can enter the agreement and I can go rent it to somebody else.
Tanner Larsson:And then once you've earned enough money, you can
Tanner Larsson:potentially go buy your own Mech or just keep doing that. Now to
Tanner Larsson:think that's kind of hard to believe it is until you realize
Tanner Larsson:that there's a game called Axie Infinity that kind of pioneered
Tanner Larsson:this model. And they have 1.2 million Filipinos that log in
Tanner Larsson:every single day to play full time for their living and by
Tanner Larsson:full time, it means a couple of three to six hours of playing a
Tanner Larsson:day. And they make between 25 and 50 ish dollars or more a day
Tanner Larsson:out of their cut. Now these guys do that, and they literally make
Tanner Larsson:more money playing a video game, that's not even a fun game, then
Tanner Larsson:they could out their regular job in the Philippines, and that
Tanner Larsson:these guys are all scholars that guilds have created that
Tanner Larsson:basically bought the NFT's and then leased them out to the
Tanner Larsson:scholars, 1.2 million of them a day are already doing this. And
Tanner Larsson:it's just continuing to grow as other countries are finding out,
Tanner Larsson:hey, I can make 30 bucks a day playing a video game, sign me
Tanner Larsson:up.
Richard Matthews:If I'm understanding you correctly, one
Richard Matthews:of the things that you guys are trying to do differently, is you
Richard Matthews:want to make the game aspect, like the actual I'm going to
Richard Matthews:play a game to be something that you would play whether or not
Richard Matthews:you were getting paid to clients.
Richard Matthews:I'm pretty sure everyone in our age bracket had our parents tell
Tanner Larsson:Plus the number one priority of what we're
Tanner Larsson:building, because that's the only thing that is going to
Tanner Larsson:us at one point when we were teenagers, like you shouldn't
Tanner Larsson:attract regular gamers to the space, they're going to come
Tanner Larsson:spend as much time playing your video games, because you're
Tanner Larsson:over and go man, this is a fun game. All right, and then
Tanner Larsson:never going to be make a living with it. And here you are
Tanner Larsson:they're gonna get into it, start playing it, and then they're
Tanner Larsson:gonna start earning crypto rewards and like, dude, I get
Tanner Larsson:literally designing a game.
Tanner Larsson:paid to play this game. Hey, Mom, look, you said I was
Tanner Larsson:wasting my life playing video games. Now I'm making money. Right?
Tanner Larsson:Now some people do in response to streaming, but I never did,
Tanner Larsson:the vast majority of people don't but and I'm not say saying
Tanner Larsson:that someone who lives in Alabama, in the middle of
Tanner Larsson:America is going to be able to make enough money playing
Tanner Larsson:Mech.Game to change their life or live. Not saying that at all.
Tanner Larsson:It's not the point. The point is they're going to build a game
Tanner Larsson:that people want to play for enjoyment, and then also reward
Tanner Larsson:them for their time, through rewards. And then they also own
Tanner Larsson:the assets that they're playing, and that they find and
Tanner Larsson:everything else. So they can supplement it, either sell it or
Tanner Larsson:trade it whatever.
Richard Matthews:It's no longer just entertainment. Like your,
Richard Matthews:again, your attention has value, in the new economy for that, and
Richard Matthews:you're being rewarded for your attention.
Tanner Larsson:Correct. And the other aspect is, with the
Tanner Larsson:blockchain, you're able to record like, as your person gets
Tanner Larsson:better, as your character gets better as you upgrade it, that's
Tanner Larsson:all stored. So when someone comes to buy my Mech that I want
Tanner Larsson:to sell or rent it, I can say, look, it's worth this, because
Tanner Larsson:of all of the stuff that's been done to it, and they can see the
Tanner Larsson:upgrade path, they can see that it's not a base level character,
Tanner Larsson:and they can go do I want to go buy a base level character? Or
Tanner Larsson:do I want to start at a badass level and jump into the game
Tanner Larsson:like a king?
Richard Matthews:Okay, so tell me a little bit about actual the
Richard Matthews:Mech.Game, like your first version of this? What kind of
Richard Matthews:game is it? What kind of gameplay? Like whose your sort
Richard Matthews:of target gamer that you're looking for?
Tanner Larsson:Perfect. So I didn't just pick Mech, because I
Tanner Larsson:love Mech Warrior. I used to play that a lot. But I
Tanner Larsson:approached this opportunity the same way I would approach any
Tanner Larsson:business I started doing research and figuring everything
Tanner Larsson:out. And one of the areas that I researched when I was looking at
Tanner Larsson:game demographics of fluency of spending, things like that, was
Tanner Larsson:that the Mech demographic, the robotic gaming Mech fighting,
Tanner Larsson:Gungan, Mecca, all those different combinations that all
Tanner Larsson:boil down to a mechanized or fighting robot. They're a
Tanner Larsson:massive audience.
Richard Matthews:There are also Hollywood blockbusters about
Richard Matthews:that audience.
Tanner Larsson:Yeah, I mean, Pacific Rim, all that stuff,
Tanner Larsson:right? There's a huge audience of gamers that love that kind of
Tanner Larsson:gaming. They're also a fairly frustrated audience in that the
Tanner Larsson:only type of games out there for Mech combat are mech verse mech,
Tanner Larsson:battle combat, like fighter mech, that's it, and the general
Tanner Larsson:consensus is like, this is great, but what other games
Tanner Larsson:could there be?
Richard Matthews:The video game equivalent of those little push
Richard Matthews:button and they punch each other. That's the video game
Richard Matthews:equivalent.
Tanner Larsson:So I saw that, and I was like, okay, well,
Tanner Larsson:that's interesting. And I love Mech. So that's cool. And then I
Tanner Larsson:started looking at other games. I've researched a whole bunch of
Tanner Larsson:different genres. But another one that caught my eye because I
Tanner Larsson:also enjoy it is tower defense. It's a strategy style game,
Tanner Larsson:right? Where you've got hordes of enemies coming in trying to
Tanner Larsson:attack you, and your job is to defend them by building towers.
Tanner Larsson:And so I kind of kept looking at this. This is another audience
Tanner Larsson:that's massively huge. It's very addictive. They like to stream
Tanner Larsson:so they want to share their gameplay.
Richard Matthews:My current tower defense game that I play
Richard Matthews:with my son is called Baloons TD six. And it's retarded. It's
Richard Matthews:literally it's monkeys. Your towers are monkeys and then
Richard Matthews:balloons come and attack you and they pop the balloons with
Richard Matthews:darts. And then they just go all the way up to like, you got
Richard Matthews:wizard monkeys and super monkeys and whatever you want to do, but
Richard Matthews:the point is is like the market. I didn't realize it was this
Richard Matthews:huge, but that one game all by itself has a multitude of
Richard Matthews:streamers who make full time six figure incomes just covering
Richard Matthews:that game all by itself. And it's just it's a tower defense
Richard Matthews:game with monkeys and darts.
Tanner Larsson:Yeah. And it's a goofy one. It's not even like a
Tanner Larsson:realistic, like a triple a title or anything crazy like that is
Tanner Larsson:just a fun little game to play. So that audience that you're
Tanner Larsson:exactly describing, we were looking at, and I was like, Holy
Tanner Larsson:crap. And then I did sort of comparing the audience
Tanner Larsson:demographics. And I found out that there was a massive overlap
Tanner Larsson:between Mechie players and tower defense players, meaning that
Tanner Larsson:Mech players are also tower defense players. So that was
Tanner Larsson:where we said, hey, what if we could dream up a Mechafide tower
Tanner Larsson:defense game, where you have a base, which is also an NFT, that
Tanner Larsson:you have to defend, you build towers to defend from the enemy,
Tanner Larsson:those are stationary defense towers, air defense, ground
Tanner Larsson:defense, all that stuff. And then you also...
Richard Matthews:Your Mech could be like your hero?
Tanner Larsson:Yep. And your mech is your hero, you have a
Tanner Larsson:hero character that runs around the map that you control, and to
Tanner Larsson:add an extra layer to it to make it more fun. Because a lot of
Tanner Larsson:tower defense games, you just build towers indiscriminately.
Tanner Larsson:And it's just kind of gets less fun. We are actually building in
Tanner Larsson:a strategic element where you have to mine resources in the
Tanner Larsson:games, who's got a little bit of strategy aspect, that those
Tanner Larsson:resources are used to build your towers, repair your towers in
Tanner Larsson:the level. So if you don't mine enough, you're not going to be
Tanner Larsson:able to build enough towers plus, the mines are not going to
Tanner Larsson:be in the most convenient location behind your defenses,
Tanner Larsson:you may have to defend in multiple locations, so that's
Tanner Larsson:where your Mech comes in, being able to run around and do all
Tanner Larsson:this kind of stuff. So it's basically a top down Tower
Tanner Larsson:Defense style game with a hero character as your Mech. And all
Tanner Larsson:of those, the Mech and the stronghold are the main NFT's
Tanner Larsson:that you own. They're upgradable, they earn
Tanner Larsson:experience, they have game stats that can be improved, like
Tanner Larsson:health, battle, power, energy, all those kinds of things. And
Tanner Larsson:when you upgrade them, that reports to the blockchain and
Tanner Larsson:stores that data.
Richard Matthews:Yeah, so like I said, the tower defense game
Richard Matthews:that I'm playing, right, I can upgrade my hero with different
Richard Matthews:animations or different pieces that go with him. You can also
Richard Matthews:unlock like, abilities later on. So you can have stronger
Richard Matthews:abilities to fight bigger, bad guys. So the same kind of thing.
Richard Matthews:Except, difference being like, if I pour real money into this
Richard Matthews:game, it's just for entertainment. Where as if I
Richard Matthews:pour money into my Mech hero, and I decide, two years from
Richard Matthews:now, I'm no longer interested in playing this game, for whatever
Richard Matthews:reason, maybe I've outgrown it, maybe something happens, I'm
Richard Matthews:just not playing the game anymore, I can actually sell
Richard Matthews:those assets.
Tanner Larsson:Correct, and what you just said does happen.
Tanner Larsson:I mean, if as a gamer, you don't play the same game forever, very
Tanner Larsson:seldom. I mean, steam is a whole whole market of like indie style
Tanner Larsson:games that people play. Most people have, who in this world
Tanner Larsson:have 10 to 20 Steam games that they just download play for a
Tanner Larsson:little while to get burnout, move around. So the ability for
Tanner Larsson:people to transfer their, their stored value. Basically, a store
Tanner Larsson:of value of all this energy and time I put into this game, and
Tanner Larsson:have a way to transfer that to the next game. In this case,
Tanner Larsson:it's by either selling your assets, trading your assets, for
Tanner Larsson:the next game you want to play, you now have a way to transfer
Tanner Larsson:that stuff without losing it.
Richard Matthews:Random technical question.
Richard Matthews:Correct, like if you if you're playing level one of the game,
Tanner Larsson:Yup.
Richard Matthews:This is if this is interesting, because one
Richard Matthews:of the things that's really important for when you pick up a
Richard Matthews:new game, is learning how to play the game. And so you would
Richard Matthews:but you have a level 80 character, you all of a sudden
Richard Matthews:have like the either tutorial levels or whatever's going on.
Richard Matthews:If you have a marketplace where I can go in and say like,
Richard Matthews:now, you're just trouncing levels and not doing anything
Richard Matthews:someone who's been playing the game for two or three years, and
Richard Matthews:good, not becomes more play to win.
Richard Matthews:has all this really advanced stuff, and is like really good
Richard Matthews:Not really learning how to play the game either.
Richard Matthews:at the game, if I just bought all of his stuff, and I just
Tanner Larsson:Correct. So one of the things we're building
Tanner Larsson:brand new, how do you guys going to work on managing that sort of
Tanner Larsson:experience in the game where someone who's a new player might
Tanner Larsson:be able to come in and purchase high end assets from someone
Tanner Larsson:who's really experienced player? And how does that manage the Gameplay?
Tanner Larsson:into the game itself is a level based difficulty algorithm. So
Tanner Larsson:no matter what level of the game you are, whether you're in the
Tanner Larsson:beginner levels are whatever the hardest of beating the level is
Tanner Larsson:going to increase to be comparable to whatever your
Tanner Larsson:character is.
Tanner Larsson:Correct.
Richard Matthews:Yeah, so to put that in another game that
Richard Matthews:people might familiar with Diablo three came out a few
Richard Matthews:Right? Or if I go and play on his game, it'll
Richard Matthews:years ago, they do that were like, I can play my character.
Richard Matthews:And I'm at level 75, you know, wizard or whatever. And my son
Richard Matthews:adjust all my stats down to match him so we can Co-op
Richard Matthews:wants to start playing and he can join me in a co-op, and
Richard Matthews:together. And that's what you're sort of what you're talking
Richard Matthews:it'll adjust all of his character stats to be able to
Richard Matthews:about the gameplay.
Tanner Larsson:The thing is we're building an indie game,
Tanner Larsson:play with me.
Tanner Larsson:not a triple A game. Now triple A game requires 1000s of people
Tanner Larsson:on a team and ungodly amounts of money. I'm not Blizzard, I'm not
Tanner Larsson:Microsoft, or Sony, or any of these companies. We're building
Tanner Larsson:an indie game. And that's why we're building in the crypto
Tanner Larsson:space because Indie games are the next phase of crypto AAA
Tanner Larsson:studios will come in, but they're gonna come in, in a
Tanner Larsson:couple of years, there's a lot more that has to happen before
Tanner Larsson:they're convinced that they're going to jump in in a big way.
Tanner Larsson:Also, when those triple A games come in, they're not going to
Tanner Larsson:build, they're just going to acquire and then put their own
Tanner Larsson:spin on whatever they acquire. But in our case, our indie game,
Tanner Larsson:people are going to play the game faster than we could build
Tanner Larsson:updates and new levels and things like that. If they can
Tanner Larsson:only play each level once, that's no fun. But if they can
Tanner Larsson:play each level over and over again, but as they play these
Tanner Larsson:levels, it actually does get harder, because the game
Tanner Larsson:difficulty level is increasing to match their stats, then it's
Tanner Larsson:more fun.
Richard Matthews:Yeah, absolutely. So with sort of the
Richard Matthews:growth of the game, what platforms are you going to be
Richard Matthews:targeting the game to to start off with, are you gonna be
Richard Matthews:targeting like mobile platform like iOS, Android, or like
Richard Matthews:consoles, or PCs? What's your first target for releasing the
Richard Matthews:game?
Tanner Larsson:So our main target for this game is going to
Tanner Larsson:be WebGL. We want it to be a browser based game that anybody
Tanner Larsson:in the world can play without the need to have a crazy gaming
Tanner Larsson:console or whatever. The next phase of that will be mobile
Tanner Larsson:specific versions of the game. Of course, WebGL means it can
Tanner Larsson:also be played on mobile, but we'll have a mobile version as
Tanner Larsson:well. The reason that we're going WebGL.
Richard Matthews:Like the hardware acceleration on a
Richard Matthews:second version, when you go to like Target iOS or something you
Richard Matthews:can make the game faster.
Richard Matthews:And now a quick word from our show
Tanner Larsson:Correct, we can do a lot more detailed stuff.
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Tanner Larsson:without you having to lift more than a finger to push that stop
Tanner Larsson:record button. Again, that's pushbuttonpodcasts.com/hero. See
Tanner Larsson:you there. Now, back to the Hero Show.
Tanner Larsson:The last questions I have for you cuz we're getting on in time
Tanner Larsson:here is, one of the things that I think strikes me is really
Tanner Larsson:interesting. I'm curious how this is going to bridge the gap
Tanner Larsson:between because you're trying to get more of the mainstream
Tanner Larsson:gamers to play. And that's sort of like the clincher for getting
Tanner Larsson:the crypto games to sort of become a thing. And one of the
Tanner Larsson:things I've noticed is looking at the NF T games like Mac games
Tanner Larsson:some of the others that are out there that are trying to do
Tanner Larsson:similar types of things is the price of entry is significantly
Tanner Larsson:different than say going to pick up a triple A game, like
Tanner Larsson:Blizzards World of Warcraft or whatever cost like 60 bucks to
Tanner Larsson:play the game. And to get into some of the NFT games, you have
Tanner Larsson:to actually purchase the NFT. And those can be orders of
Tanner Larsson:magnitude more expensive to get into play the game.
Tanner Larsson:A few hundred bucks or more.
Richard Matthews:Yeah, the cost of entry is radically different
Richard Matthews:than the traditional gaming space. And I'm curious, like
Richard Matthews:from a marketing standpoint, how are you guys going to be
Richard Matthews:approaching that? And how does that actually affect how you
Richard Matthews:guys are going to gain the market share to be a mover and
Richard Matthews:shaker in the space?
Tanner Larsson:Absolutely. So that is a big part of it, one of
Tanner Larsson:the sides of it is if they're willing to buy the NFT in there,
Tanner Larsson:and they understand what they're buying, that they actually own
Tanner Larsson:the asset and that the asset becomes more valuable. That's
Tanner Larsson:one of the mitigating factors that we'll have to do as an
Tanner Larsson:education push. But one of the things that we're doing as well
Tanner Larsson:as we're going to have a free to play version of the game as
Tanner Larsson:well. So the free to play version does not participate in
Tanner Larsson:the play to earn economics, if you are a free player, you can
Tanner Larsson:earn experience points, but you cannot earn actual crypto
Tanner Larsson:rewards okay, because a free player breaks the system, if
Tanner Larsson:they get rewards. So the traditional player will be able
Tanner Larsson:to buy their Mech often marketplace or wherever they
Tanner Larsson:want start playing the game by the Mech in the stronghold,
Tanner Larsson:they're earning the play to earn stuff, the free to play side is
Tanner Larsson:where we are going to get people hooked. That's where they can
Tanner Larsson:come in, they can mint and grasp.
Richard Matthews:The game is actually fun to play.
Tanner Larsson:Correct, they can mentor gratis mech, gratis
Tanner Larsson:means free, right. So it'll be a very base level Mech, that they
Tanner Larsson:can start playing the game, playing all the levels, earning
Tanner Larsson:experience points actually leveling up their Mech, now the
Tanner Larsson:Gratis Mech that they mint, they own it, it's actually an NFT. So
Tanner Larsson:they can get that for whatever the cost of gas is basically
Tanner Larsson:just mint it and it's yours. So it's pretty much free, then they
Tanner Larsson:can play that Mech, they can upgrade it with the experience
Tanner Larsson:and stuff like that by playing the game, just again, like
Tanner Larsson:Diablo, they'll get stat points, they can use a couple stat
Tanner Larsson:points, they can upgrade from level one to level 40, all that
Tanner Larsson:kind of stuff just by playing. But every level they play,
Tanner Larsson:they're going to have like an in screen just like any other
Tanner Larsson:player. At the end of completing the level, you'll see all your
Tanner Larsson:rewards, you'll see how many enemies you killed, how many
Tanner Larsson:towers, you build your score all of that stuff. The Free to Play
Tanner Larsson:player will say, Hey, you earned 75 experience points. And then
Tanner Larsson:it'll have another thing because I'm a marketer, it'll be like,
Tanner Larsson:Hey, here's how much you missed out on and crypto rewards. So
Tanner Larsson:it's going to be this constantly upgraded tally. So it's like
Tanner Larsson:this level, you lost this. But overall, in the time you've been
Tanner Larsson:playing, you would have earned $700 or whatever it is. So we're
Tanner Larsson:going to basically show.
Richard Matthews:So you're going to use the game to educate
Richard Matthews:about the ROI.
Tanner Larsson:Correct.
Richard Matthews:That comes from actually owning a portion
Richard Matthews:of the game.
Tanner Larsson:Yeah, by owning their their character. Now. They
Tanner Larsson:can kind of character, they can even sell that free NFT if they
Tanner Larsson:want to, they could try to sell it on the marketplace. Whether
Tanner Larsson:someone wants to buy it or not. It's a different story. But
Tanner Larsson:since they own it, they can sell it.
Richard Matthews:Are you going to build marketplace access into
Richard Matthews:the game?
Tanner Larsson:Yes. So we are partnered with Byt.io. They are
Tanner Larsson:an NFT marketplace as well, multi chain, there are multiple
Tanner Larsson:different blockchains. But they are doing a lot of really cool
Tanner Larsson:gaming stuff. But we'll have our own marketplace within the game
Tanner Larsson:that you can use. But all that stuff will also be visible on
Tanner Larsson:buy on, open see whatever the incentive to using our internal
Tanner Larsson:marketplace is you'll have more customizable controls, since we
Tanner Larsson:don't control those platforms. Like let's say, have your Mech
Tanner Larsson:and it's equipped with all kinds of like, let's say five other
Tanner Larsson:cool NFT add ons. That's basically a bundle, you can't
Tanner Larsson:sell that as a bundle on open sea, you have to sell them
Tanner Larsson:individually. On ours, you could sell them as the whole set and
Tanner Larsson:someone could buy the whole thing. So they are able to do
Tanner Larsson:that within the within the game.
Richard Matthews:So my last question for you here, if people
Richard Matthews:are interested in either side of this actually playing the game,
Richard Matthews:or maybe investing in the game, which would mean buying some of
Richard Matthews:the NFT's that are getting launched? Where can they do
Richard Matthews:that? Where can they find out about that kind of stuff? And
Richard Matthews:second part of that question is what's your timeline look like
Richard Matthews:for actually having the game playable and ready to go?
Tanner Larsson:Yeah, so the best place to find us is again,
Tanner Larsson:just go to Mech.Game, that's the URL. Go there. All of our
Tanner Larsson:socials are listed down the side right there. You can read the
Tanner Larsson:white paper up there, you can join the discord. If you want
Tanner Larsson:all the itty bitty details and cool stuff and the newest news,
Tanner Larsson:you need to join the discord. It's like Slack for crypto,
Tanner Larsson:right? It's where everybody hangs out. So that's the best
Tanner Larsson:place to find us. Right now we are heading towards our initial
Tanner Larsson:launch of the Genesis collection of NFTs, our Genesis collection
Tanner Larsson:of characters basically our Mechs, these come with all kinds
Tanner Larsson:of additional perks because the people who support the game in
Tanner Larsson:the earliest phase uses are basically if you look at it my
Tanner Larsson:pre round investment are the one who believed in us from the get
Tanner Larsson:go. They've got upgraded stats, they've got better weapons
Tanner Larsson:better this. They get perks in the game, they get higher reward
Tanner Larsson:payouts, they get all kinds of stuff. But we're getting ready
Tanner Larsson:to launch that at the end of the month.
Richard Matthews:End of April?
Tanner Larsson:Correct?
Richard Matthews:Okay.
Tanner Larsson:We'll have the exact date announced inside the
Tanner Larsson:discord shortly, we're just waiting on a couple of details
Tanner Larsson:from some of our partners. But that will be launching.
Tanner Larsson:Following that we'll have all kinds of cool airdrops of
Tanner Larsson:additional cool things. We have the second collection, the base,
Tanner Larsson:which is called the stronghold collection, we have the token
Tanner Larsson:launching. And then right after that, we have the game launch.
Tanner Larsson:And we should have early alpha of the gameplay in the next
Tanner Larsson:month and a half for the initial holder to be able to check it
Tanner Larsson:out. Public game release will happen after that.
Richard Matthews:That's really fascinating. So on that topic of
Richard Matthews:like actually getting into the game and playing it. I'm going
Richard Matthews:to just assume that most of my audience is not super up on
Richard Matthews:crypto. So what do they need to have? Like, on their device or
Richard Matthews:the computer or whatever, to be able to participate in the
Richard Matthews:launch and then actually play the game later. Is there
Richard Matthews:anything special they need to have like a wallet or anything?
Tanner Larsson:Yeah, so there's a couple of things normally,
Tanner Larsson:traditionally, to be able to play a crypto game or to buy an
Tanner Larsson:NFT you need to have cryptocurrency, typically
Tanner Larsson:Ethereum you need to own a certain amount of Ethereum equal
Tanner Larsson:to whatever value you want to buy. So if you're gonna buy a
Tanner Larsson:$200 NFT, then you need a $200 and some change worth of
Tanner Larsson:Ethereum. Ideally, you want that in a Metamask wallet, if you
Tanner Larsson:have a coin base or crypto.com or whatever wallet that's not
Tanner Larsson:the same thing that is a wallet on an exchange, you would need a
Tanner Larsson:Metamask wallet separately which you create for free and transfer
Tanner Larsson:your money into that that's where 99% of all crypto wallets
Tanner Larsson:live is inside of Metamask. From then on the day that we actually
Tanner Larsson:launched what you recall a mint in the crypto space MINT you'll
Tanner Larsson:be able to mint your Mech's meaning that you'll be able to
Tanner Larsson:buy them okay and the instructions for that will be on
Tanner Larsson:the website basically click a button that says Connect wallet
Tanner Larsson:you click a button that says Mint select the number that you
Tanner Larsson:want and then you pay and that's the way that works. What we're
Tanner Larsson:also going to be doing though with Mech is my audience as much
Tanner Larsson:the same as yours. A lot of them want to be involved in crypto
Tanner Larsson:but I haven't taken that leap yet. And also getting their USD
Tanner Larsson:into crypto is problematic in terms of just it's a pain in the
Tanner Larsson:butt to learn the first time. So we have a lot of people that are
Tanner Larsson:wanting to be able to get involved by a batch of Mexhs, to
Tanner Larsson:be honest, most of my audience wants to buy a massive
Tanner Larsson:investment they want to buy them flip them after the launch, hold
Tanner Larsson:a few for rentals, things like that. They're not looking
Tanner Larsson:necessarily to play the game. There's a lot of the audience
Tanner Larsson:that's in my Discord. They want to play the game but my
Tanner Larsson:traditional business audience like you and me, and like hey,
Tanner Larsson:how do I make money off this, okay, I'll buy six or 10 of your
Tanner Larsson:Mechs, I'll flip four of them ran out six of them, whatever,
Tanner Larsson:right? Those guys we're setting up an opportunity for them to be
Tanner Larsson:able to buy with USD with fiat currency. And then they just set
Tanner Larsson:up their wallet and after the launch, we will just send them
Tanner Larsson:their NFT's to their wallet.
Richard Matthews:Yeah, that's really that's really exciting.
Richard Matthews:I'm planning on buying a couple because I do actually want to
Richard Matthews:play the game because I mentioned earlier tower defense
Richard Matthews:is like my favorite style of game and it's the one that I can
Richard Matthews:pour hours and hours of my life into and not realize I've done
Richard Matthews:it. So I'm really excited for the launch of your game and it's
Richard Matthews:really cool to see that you're doing this so yeah, thank you so
Richard Matthews:much for coming on and sharing sort of what you guys are up to
Richard Matthews:I'll put the links to the discord and other than the
Richard Matthews:discord Is there any other links I should make sure to get put
Richard Matthews:into the show notes for this?
Tanner Larsson:Yeah I'll give you a batch will do the YouTube
Tanner Larsson:link because you can see all of our past Ask Me Anything calls
Tanner Larsson:where people can really kind of learn more of what we're doing.
Tanner Larsson:See the game trailer. So we'll do YouTube, we'll do the medium
Tanner Larsson:we'll do the website and the end the discord and I'll just give
Tanner Larsson:you all those links.
Richard Matthews:Awesome. That's really cool. Now I just
Richard Matthews:curiosity question. One last thing here. How did you put
Richard Matthews:together the team and the talent? Because I've seen your
Richard Matthews:game trailers and you guys are building actual game. Like
Richard Matthews:you're building gameplay like there's a lot of stuff that I
Richard Matthews:assume is probably new to you. Because you've been in the Ecom
Richard Matthews:space for 20 years. Now you're doing film and you're doing game
Richard Matthews:and you're doing like all these other things like this is a
Richard Matthews:vastly different world how what was that experience like?
Tanner Larsson:So it's definitely a big learning curve
Tanner Larsson:every day. The one thing that I have in my repertoire, if you
Tanner Larsson:will is 23 years of building businesses and hiring people.
Tanner Larsson:And that's what I did was, I have a great network built up
Tanner Larsson:from my other business. And I said, Hey, this is what I'm
Tanner Larsson:doing, who do you know? And they connected me with people. And
Tanner Larsson:then from there, I connected to other people. And I just started
Tanner Larsson:interviewing and hiring. I'm like, okay, I know the basics of
Tanner Larsson:what I need. though. I found a guy who used to work for Ubisoft
Tanner Larsson:as a game lead, he built Assassin's Creed Valhalla. And
Tanner Larsson:he was a freelancer, and I hired him. And I was like, okay, what
Tanner Larsson:else do I need? And I already know video from the business
Tanner Larsson:world, but not video production to that level. So I just kind of
Tanner Larsson:kept reaching out to my network until I found the right people.
Tanner Larsson:And I just started hiring them. That was the one thing that I'm
Tanner Larsson:doing different also for most of these projects is they use the
Tanner Larsson:NFT sale, as their entire fund to be able to grow the project,
Tanner Larsson:hopefully grow the project. I've never built a business like
Tanner Larsson:that. I've always believed you have to bootstrap and build the
Tanner Larsson:business. So I've self funded the entire project. And yes,
Tanner Larsson:when we sell the NFT collection, that's going to give me a war
Tanner Larsson:chest that I will be able to use to further expand and grow the
Tanner Larsson:game at a much faster pace. But we've already started like my
Tanner Larsson:whole team is on payroll. Like, we just started doing that from
Tanner Larsson:the get go. But the answer your question? Yes. It's been
Tanner Larsson:challenging. Yes, it's a whole new world. But my this skills
Tanner Larsson:that I've developed in hiring and building teams, is what
Tanner Larsson:makes this possible because even with BGS, it wasn't me, that was
Tanner Larsson:the rock star at BGS. It was our people. It was the team's, it
Tanner Larsson:was the infrastructure that we built.
Richard Matthews:Yeah, so last final question for you. How far
Richard Matthews:out are we from having plushy dolls of our Mech's?
Tanner Larsson:I actually did talk to a company about that
Tanner Larsson:while I was in Miami, but their minimums are ridiculously high.
Tanner Larsson:So it'll be a while.
Richard Matthews:It'll be a while before we can get plushy
Richard Matthews:dolls of our Mechs. Talking of indie games that went really
Richard Matthews:mainstream. Rovio, who created Angry Birds, a lot of their
Richard Matthews:success came from stuff that was outside of the game. The
Richard Matthews:Merchandising, and getting into Hollywood and doing things it
Richard Matthews:was like, there's the game, but then they did all of the
Richard Matthews:marketing around it.
Tanner Larsson:Will be able to do because we own the assets and
Tanner Larsson:built the characters themselves, people will be able to get 3d
Tanner Larsson:models of their Mech's, they can ge just regular ones that are
Tanner Larsson:just 3d printed, they can get some that are hand painted, they
Tanner Larsson:can have different levels on a one on one basis. So there'll be
Tanner Larsson:more expensive because they're one on one, if they want to
Tanner Larsson:paint it and all of that, but they can get that they can get
Tanner Larsson:merchandise they because I mean, physical products, that's my
Tanner Larsson:world. Like I know how to do that. That's the one thing I can
Tanner Larsson:do, so we'll definitely have all kinds of cool stuff like that.
Tanner Larsson:But we've had a lot of requests. I was surprised they want
Tanner Larsson:shirts. I wouldn't have thought people would want to wear their
Tanner Larsson:Mech on their chest, but they do. They want to wear their
Tanner Larsson:Mech, they want hats, and they want statues.
Richard Matthews:Like pretty fingerines?
Tanner Larsson:Like this dude, right? Like Boba Fett, but not a
Tanner Larsson:bobblehead.
Richard Matthews:Yeah, their Mech from their game, which is
Richard Matthews:cool. That's really awesome. So thank you so much, Tanner, for
Richard Matthews:coming on, and just sharing what you're up to with my audience.
Richard Matthews:I'm really stoked for your game to launch. Because we're
Richard Matthews:friends, but also because I'm just really excited to see this
Richard Matthews:happen in this space. And I know over the last couple of years
Richard Matthews:watching this grow, I kept telling my inner circle friends,
Richard Matthews:I was like the games that get to the point where they're like you
Richard Matthews:actually own the end game assets are the ones that are going to
Richard Matthews:win. So when I saw you launch this stuff and start talking
Richard Matthews:about it, and you were talking about the same thing, and I was
Richard Matthews:like that, that's really cool that you're doing that. And then
Richard Matthews:it's like even extra cool that like, I actually know you, like,
Richard Matthews:it's cool to see.
Tanner Larsson:I mean, I can't wait myself. It's kind of
Tanner Larsson:surreal still, like, I always wanted to build a game because I
Tanner Larsson:thought it would just be cool, but I never envisioned that.
Tanner Larsson:That's where I would be. I mean, I went from being a window
Tanner Larsson:cleaner to an ecommerce expert to now I'm building a video game
Tanner Larsson:like, I would have never drawn that career path for me.
Richard Matthews:And yet, here we are.
Tanner Larsson:Here we are, I'm excited. I couldn't be more
Tanner Larsson:excited. I wake up every day, heck, I don't even sleep. I'm so
Tanner Larsson:excited to wake up super early in the morning and just amped to
Tanner Larsson:get ready to dive in.
Richard Matthews:Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on
Richard Matthews:today and sharing what you're doing. Looking forward to
Richard Matthews:playing the game with you guys shortly. So thanks again for
Richard Matthews:being here.
Tanner Larsson:Yeah, sure. Thank you.