In this episode, we discuss faith and worship in the metaverse, McDonald's filing trademarks for virtual goods and restaurants, Take-Two Interactive considers bringing NFTs to the world of Grand Theft Auto, Gala Games' plans to spend $5 billion in order to expand its NFT offering, Sequoia Capital India leads a $450 million investment round in Polygon blockchain, and so much more!

Episode 12 Keywords: Faith, Worship, Metaverse, McDonald's, Trademarks, Virtual Goods, Virtual Restaurants, Take-Two Interactive, Grand Theft Auto, NFTs, Gala Games, Sequoia Capital India investment, Polygon blockchain

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

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

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

all means. The meta business podcast starts now.

From the boardroom to the metaverse. This is the meta business podcast. I am

Paul Dawalibi. I'm joined today by my friend and co host, Jeff, the juice Cohen. For those of you

who are new to the meta business podcast. What we do here is we cover the biggest Metaverse, topics

and news of the week, but we look at all of it through a business and C suite lens, we dissect,

we analyze the business implications of everything happening in this Metaverse industry. Jeff, how

you doing this week?

I'm doing good. I'm battle battle in here. Got a little little case of the COVID. So

you know if I started, middle, you know, a second time suck, and I podcasted through both of them.

So you did you know, hon Metaverse news never stops. And so we will always be here no matter

what. But yeah, definitely, you can probably hear it in my voice a little bit congested. But we've

just have so much going on that, you know, I couldn't take a week off. You never know who would

even get to replace me. I don't know if there's anyone who could.

I mean, I mean, really the juice. No one can replace the juice. That's just the

reality. Just like no one can replace the Prophet. You can't replace greatness like that. Sure. I

will say congratulations, by the way. 12 episode, this is episode 12. And every episode has been the

audience has been bigger than the last. So thank you all for tuning in every week, we really

appreciate it. I know I've gotten a lot of great feedback from people that you guys are really

loving the content. And Jeff and I really love doing it. So, Jeff, let's jump into some Metaverse

news this week. I think I have to start with it's maybe become sort of this shows. Hallmark, I would

say is I've got to jump into something that's maybe the most important Metaverse news this week.

Nevermind the $5 billion of investment or five and a half billion dollars in investment. This story

definitely took the cake for me. The headline here is faith in the metaverse a quest for community

and fellowship, and the articles talking about how some churches and in this case they were using a

Mormon church as an example that some churches are turning to the metaverse and VR as a way to

deliver service services to their congregation. So it says here ranging from spiritual meditations

and fantasy worlds, to traditional Christian worship services with virtual sacraments. In hyper

realistic church like environments. Their devotees, says, say the experience offers a

version of fellowship that's just as genuine as what can be found at a brick and mortar temple.

And then they have a quote here, which was the most I liked it, the most important aspect to me,

which was very real, was the closer connection with God that I felt in my short time here. This

is the quote from the founder of something called from VR Church, which was founded in 2016 by DJ

Soto, a former high school teacher and pastor, and and there's images here, which if you're watching,

if you're listening, unfortunately can't see it. But images here of some of the virtual worlds, and

Pastor DJ Soto who started VR church, I'm curious, Jeff, short, man, yeah, we won't spend too much

time on this. But as we see, and we I think we've used the first story now in almost every episode,

as it is a great example of the metaverse and VR and these concepts infiltrating aspects of our

lives that maybe we wouldn't expect. Where do you put worship and church? On this list of sort of,

did you expect the metaverse to get there that, you know,

we're gonna have religions and I'm interested more to see, you know, the first

Metaverse only religion or something like a Metaverse cult, which maybe would be more more

exciting. But you know, this is this is actually I think this is sort of a creative way for you know,

this, this church to reach out to a larger congregation. And we've seen in the in the 90s and

early 2000s. Even now, like televangelists have made hundreds of millions of dollars like

broadcasting on on TV and getting in front of a bigger audience. A lot of them I would say are a

little bit sleazy and maybe frauds, but it makes sense. I mean, I bet this is gonna catch on. And

it could bring in a new audience or a younger demographic to the church, and then maybe you

typically see. So kudos to the church for for kind of being innovative. But yeah, I'm waiting for the

first metaverse. I think that's going to be going to be interesting that the Branch Davidians of the

of the metaverse or something like that will be entertained.

The good news is, if you drink the Kool Aid in the metaverse, you'll be fine.

That's your avatar only die.

Your, your your avatar may suffer, but you'll be fine. No, but seriously, like from a

business standpoint, I think one of the reasons the business of religion has declined in years,

right, like attendance, things like that. Right. Some of the, the specific numbers around religion

have declined, is because, at least anecdotally, I think there's this sort of barrier, right, which

is you have to go and it's only on a Sunday morning. And, and, you know, if you don't make it

for that one hour, you sort of miss I'm talking in this case, Catholic church, but you know, all

religions sort of have the schedule around around services and things like that. But does the

metaverse potentially bring religion back in a serious way? Or bring maybe people who had not

considered religion before back as sort of a customer? Because it's so easily accessible?

Right, I can be in my I can be in my underwear on my couch, on a Tuesday evening. And I don't have

to put my suit on on a Sunday morning.

Yeah, I mean, I guess talking a little more abstractly, we're definitely we're talking

about religion a little bit as a business, which is, which is interesting. Just in general, fair, I

think just in general, when you whenever you widen distribution and create more accessibility and

engagement, you're going to see sort of metrics like that go up, and you're going to see people

coming more often and, and getting more involved and kind of widening the distribution. So short

answer, yes. Do I think this is gonna change religion as we know it? Probably Probably not. But

I think someone like this is innovative and could find a little bit of a following, and certainly

grow their their congregation more than they would, if you will.

It's funny, and the one the last, I'll end on this, and then we'll move on. But if

you look at every pop culture kind of portrayal of the metaverse was whether it's a book or a movie,

for the most part, there's always a, you know, a messianic or like a worshipped figure who's sort

of like the master of the metaverse, so to speak, like a Christ like figure, whether you're talking

about sort of like the matrix or Ready Player One, or, you know, all these modern portrayals of what

we might call meta versus it's interesting, because I wonder if that's where we do end up

right.

Are you saying someone's gonna create someone's gonna create a religion around that

figure?

Yeah, or, you know, some someone who's a leader in this in these virtual worlds

because they're either a leader of a company or whatever, becomes almost like a, a religious

figure who is worshipped. If they have some, some hand in the creation of this Metaverse, right? You

almost create a potentially messianic figure. Because we're creating a whole new universe a

whole new world, right? Yeah, it's interesting. And it'll be interesting to see how, you know,

traditional religions compete in the same way. A lot of traditional industries will have to

compete. Let's move on to McDonald's McDonald's in the news, and, and, you know, we talked about

McDonald's in the, in the context of Elon Musk, if you remember. But this McDonald's story I thought

was interesting. And the headline here is McDonald's files trademark for Metaverse based

virtual restaurant. So they've applied for a trademark for virtual goods, services and virtual

restaurants and cafes. You know, their expectation, I guess, is that they will need to

operate potentially McDonald's restaurants and virtual worlds, so they want to make sure they own

the name. This follows Panera has filing for Panera verse. And other big companies like Nike,

Walmart Skechers, who have all made similar filings in the past. It says here, this in this

Forbes article, it says when you see this critical mass of large companies making this many new

trademark filings, it's very clear, this is coming. Do you buy this? Jeff, one of the things

here says, you know, every brand is gonna make a filing like this within the next 12 months. So

first of all, do you buy that piece of it?

I think I saw I do by that. I mean, you know, every time you use words like every it's

it's hard to necessarily get on board with that. But you're seeing this 100% It's it. Brands are

moving to the metaverse totally believe that. And I'll sort of give a little bit of both sides to

the story because I kind of see both sides. On on one hand I mean, it's it's a little bit like when

the internet first started, I mean every brand needed to eventually create a website. Some did it

early. Some waited till very late, but you needed if you were a brand, you needed some sort of

presence on the worldwide web. If we assume that the metaverse is the next iteration of the World

Wide Web, the internet, every brand will need some sort of presence in the metaverse. I think I buy

that. That's a logical argument. The problem that where it breaks down for me is with a brand like

McDonald's, like I just don't see, like brands like Nike, brands, like Under Armour, something

where you're selling clothing, digital items, something people wear to represent themselves.

We've talked about this a lot. I'm fully on board with that. I think that makes all the sense in the

world that people are going to want to kind of show their show off their avatars were things in

terms of eating food in the metaverse like, I I'm not sure I see a need to eat food in a digital

world. But you, you don't digital worlds do not have the same constraints as physical worlds. We

don't really need to consume food in order to have our avatar, walk around and be in the world. Maybe

that will change which there will be resource management, stuff like that. I kind of hope it

doesn't because, you know, I just don't think it's a constraint we need to add into the world in the

metaverse. And even when McDonald's it's like it's a it's a fast casual restaurant or not investiga

it's fast food. Like there's nothing sexy about eating McDonald's. Like if this was some five star

restaurant wanted to create like a really cool virtual experience of like going to like a

Michelin star restaurant. I think I could get on board with that too. But there's just like nothing

cool about going to a McDonald's and eating a Big Mac. I don't know, tell me I'm wrong.

Oh, look. On our sister podcast business of esports. We often have this argument

of like esports teams pretending to be media companies and lifestyle brands. Right? Could you

make the argument that this is McDonald's going? We're more than just fast food. We're kind of a

lifestyle brand. Right? And therefore, we need to have a presence in the metaverse that is that is,

you know, branded McDonald's. And and so that's my first sort of counter argument is, could you argue

that Panera and McDonald's are actually lifestyle brands? And I'm sure the people in those marketing

departments want to believe that they are right. And we could think that's silly. And we could

think that's totally off base because they're fundamentally just the Egg McMuffin and Big Mac

company, but like, they may see themselves as lifestyle brands and how they fit into people's

lives may translate to the metaverse and it may not be about selling a burger in the metaverse,

but it may be about selling McDonald's branded whatever, or giving away McDonald's branded

whatever. The bigger sort of implication I saw from this is, and you brought up a great point in

the early days of the.com era, right of web, what we're calling even web one, right? Most companies

didn't go and like immediately secure their business. name.com. Right. But the reality is, a

lot of companies were actually quite slow to doing that, because they didn't see the value. I see

this interesting trend here where companies don't want to make that mistake sort of again, right.

And there's there's a couple implications there, which I think are interesting one, you're going to

get a lot of squatters, right, who listen to this podcast or read this news. And go wait a second.

Now I'm going to go and try and squat on a whole bunch of, you know, names in the metaverse. That

was my first thought. And then there's my second thought immediately after was, but wait a second,

like what this means fundamentally, is that all the real estate conversations we've been having in

the metaverse right are sort of meaningless, that the trademark here is way more valuable than

owning a virtual person. piece of land like a.com, to me is like real estate. It's a virtual piece of

land that you own and no one else can own right? But putting up something that looks like a

McDonald's in the metaverse, you'd have to buy all the land to stop someone from putting that up. The

trademark happens to be kind of a legal shortcut here that protects them from all meta versus

right, whether it's decentraland or sandbox, so that they don't need to necessarily go make plays

in each of these meta verses today. They know long term, they've protected their trademark in this

general application.

I see what you're saying. I mean, we kind of need Jimmy on here to bring the legal, you

know, to dive deeper into the legal workings like I don't know how that would actually work. I guess

what you're saying is the brand is more important than then kind of the having the real estate or

you know them being first to market there.

Is that what you're saying? What I'm saying is I think the brands are going to have

an easier time. On one hand protecting They're their brands in the metaverse. And on the other

hand, they have a harder time because this is far more decentralized than then the web is right?

Like, the web has only one McDonald's dot com, right? Whereas in the metaverse today or this

environment today, you're saying there'll be multiple McDonald's in this metaphor, there's 50

Different meta verses right? And McDonald's if I'm the company is not going to go build a McDonald's

in decentraland, and build a McDonald's and sandbox and build a McDonald's here and build a

gun, right? Like, I don't know if that makes sense. Whereas, like, just trademarking the brand,

for this application sort of gives them blanket protection, until the ecosystem has sort of sorted

itself out.

So here's a quite more of an existential like a higher level question. Will

Will the brands that are popular kind of IRL slash even in web one, web two? will those be the brands

that dominate the metaverse, you think? Or will we see completely new brands? I suspect the answer is

probably a little bit of both. But where do you fall on that spectrum? Like, it's going to be

completely new brands native to the metaverse versus like, Hey, if you're a McDonald's, you're

going to come in, and you're going to be the virtual burger shop or, you know, virtual casual

restaurant, as I keep calling it fast, casual, fast food restaurant.

I mean, it's a really good question, Jeff. And I think, you know, I'm

guessing we agree on this, that there's probably, if you look historically at what happened with web

one, web two, and we're talking about this as web three, like if history remains consistent, there

will always be like this mixture, right, some old brands will make the transition successfully, will

succeed will do very well. Some traditional brands will not make the transition and may fall by the

wayside and they disappear. And then you will get sort of web three native brands that grew up there

live there live and breathe that space and exist only there. It's definitely going to be a

combination, right? McDonald's, trademark or not presence in the metaverse or not, is not going

anywhere, right? Like if they say, We don't care about the metaverse. People are not going to stop

eating Big Macs, right? That's just they can afford to miss this boat. Now. And I mean, from a

present standpoint, from a marketing standpoint, that's more questionable. Do I think brands can

just sort of close their eyes and say, We don't need to reach this audience? That I think is a is

a bigger mistake. I don't know. Do you agree with that?

Yeah, no, I do agree with that. I actually think it's interesting that you're

talking you kind of right there, just at the end, sort of separated the marketing to people in the

metaverse versus actually being kind of present in the metaverse. Do you? Do you see that as a big

distinction? Or is that just something that popped into your head?

It's, uh, you know, I know I'm gonna get comments from people saying it's like,

purely semantic but like, McDonald's having a presence in the metaverse is a marketing

activation, right? Like, they're not doing it to Sell Burgers in the metaverse. They're doing it

to, you know, expose the brand to more people. So it is a little bit of just like us twisting

language. But I think I genuinely do believe you're either there for commerce, or you're there

for marketing like an exposure. And, and for McDonald's. They could probably miss the entire

boat on the Commerce piece. And be fine. I think if they miss the boat entirely on the marketing

piece and the exposure piece that that's where I worry.

Yep. It's almost as simple as your brands that are selling the avatars and brands

that are selling to people, right. So if you're selling stuff in the real world, it's on the

people. If you're selling stuff in the metaverse to be consumed in the metaverse avatars, I think

that will be an interesting distinction for brands as they enter the metaverse to kind of parse out

what their strategy is.

Yeah, and and, you know, because a lot of, as we've seen, there's a lot of crossover

too, right? Like Nike can sell a physical good, and the digital good. They can sell a good to a

real human being and to an avatar. And so that strategy between that sort of, are we doing

commerce or are we doing marketing, I think becomes an interesting conversation and seeing

where all these brands land. I agree will be interesting to watch. Let's talk about Jeff, let's

move on to the game that I think almost everyone listening or watching this show probably is aware

of and that's Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto was in the news because their parent company

sort of made a statement about the NFT opportunity. So the headline here is Grand Theft

Auto game publisher, highly convinced and this is in quotes by NFT opportunity. Take two's

optimistic view on the opportunity in NF T's also comes with caveats and caution around the crypto

sectors. Speculative side and they have a quote from our friend Strauss Zelnick, who by the way

was on the business of esports podcast. If you're don't know about the business of esports podcast,

you should go check out that episode with Strauss Zelnick, who was amazing. But he said he was

quoted in this article, he says, we're highly convinced there's an opportunity for NF T's to fit

with take two's offerings in the future. He says, We believe in rare goods, we believe in

collectibles. The concern we have is that there's speculation going on. We want to make sure that

consumers always have a good experience every time they engage with our properties. And losing money

on a speculation is not a good experience. So we're going to stay away from speculation. Stress,

easily one of the most well respected people in all of gaming take to has been a very massively

successful company, obviously, Jeff, what do you think of stress is very concise take here on NF

T's and games? Well, I

think he's pretty spot. So first of all, you'll never hear me say bad thing about

stress. I feel like he he's pretty spot on about about most things he gives things on, and

obviously a very well respected person industry. I think he's I think he's right here. I mean, it's

very obvious. Gamers are willing to buy digital items they see value in digital goods,

collectibles, scarcity, these are things that are economic certainties. And I think he's right about

the fact that right now, the NFT market, and then of the gaming market, there's a ton of

speculation. And to his point, speculation is great when you're the person who buys low and

sells high, but it's not as great of an experience for the people who buy high and sell low. So I

think it's a smart way of saying, hey, there's a lot of froth in the market right now, we see that

there's something here, but we're not going to be the ones diving in at first sticking your neck out

and kind of ruining the experiences that we've tailored to consumers currently. I think it's very

similar to what we saw with EA. I think Strauss maybe said it a little bit more diplomatically and

intelligently, then that Andrew Wilson did. And, you know, he didn't have to walk back prior

comments, because I know we covered Andrew Wilson, EA CEOs take on last week's episode. So I think

he's right here. It is interesting to juxtapose it versus Ubisoft, which I know is probably the next

thing we're talking we'll talk about, but I don't know if there's anything more. I mean, I agree

with Strauss. I don't know if I can add even more to that.

I mean, the question I have for you is, is this first of all? Well, first question, I

think you're the one who told me on their earnings call. Correct me if I'm wrong that Strauss didn't

make one mention of anything. metaverse.

I did in fact, I tweeted that actually at Jeff Cohen. 23. Give me a Yeah, I made sure I

did Ctrl F on the transcript before I tweeted it just to make sure I wouldn't look like an idiot.

No mention of the word Metaverse, which was pretty striking versus the last couple of earnings calls

that Activision EA, you know, Facebook, obviously, you know, analysts asking people talking about it.

No mention of it. I don't know if that is maybe just a signal of where we are in the hype cycle. I

think Facebook's earnings and then subsequent drop, even though it really had nothing to do with

Metaverse, maybe put a little bit of a damper in the buzzword. I think you have a little bit of

fatigue from people that are have jumped in with two feet, maybe? I don't know, what do you make of

that was just a coincidence?

No, because I take that and I put it together with this article. Right? And I'm

going and then the EA conversation we had last week and there's sort of this pattern now it seems

to me of maybe most of these gaming companies really don't have any strategy or any, like any

view whatsoever on where this is going and what they should be doing about it. Like what I'm

seeing is a lot of very well constructed sound bites that say a whole lot of nothing. Again, I

have the most massive respect for Strauss you know, a friend of the podcast like I think it's

this was just a really an he is tremendously good at this. Like this was an incredibly polite and

diplomatic way of saying basically nothing, right? Because the truth seems to be that almost every

single one of these gaming companies and I'll throw even Activision Blizzard in there, right?

That even the ones who gave a lot of lip service to the word metaverse. Most of them really don't

know what they're doing. And I don't mean that they they're not smart. I mean, most of them have

not formulated any kind of strategy around NF T's or the metaverse or how this affects and plays

into their business, short term or long term

on NF T I think on NF T's you're absolutely right. metaverse. Depends how you

define Metaverse, because, you know, you could argue some of them are doing a lot of the things

you would do for them, like Grand Theft Auto Online, basically created 95% of what I would

consider a Metaverse 510 years ago. So like that, I don't know if I would necessarily agree with the

NF T's part, I think people got blindsided by it a little bit. I mean, I think NF kind of web three

gaming and ft gaming is really probably less than a year from a year old in terms of coming into the

mainstream, like, maybe over this past summer, people really started talking about Axi infinity

and the ability, like played around kind of crept into the mainstream consciousness. So in the span

of, you know, massive triple A publisher, and kind of like, how much these guys have going on. That's

a pretty short period of time to like, that's like one or two board meetings, you know what I mean?

Like, there are quarters like that's, that's a very short period of time to formulate an entire

kind of strategy. And there's something I was thinking when you were talking, I'm curious, do

you equate this like, was there a similar thing with esports, maybe 10 years ago, where the

attitude toward from publishers was like, we know, this is a thing. It's interesting. We're following

it. But we don't really know exactly how we're going to be involved, what we're going to do, but

we know it's important, and we're there, but we, besides that, we don't know what we're doing.

Because to me, it kind of feels similar.

I agreed, I think super insightful. And, and I would I would extend that to just not

just esports, right, like every fledgling tech related kind of industry feels like they have a

moment like this where everyone recognizes there's something there. I guess what bothers me is it's

it's a little bit of just the lip service, right? Like the the statements that say nothing, I just,

I'm a I'm a as the Prophet, I'm the truth teller, in my mind, I would much rather them and I know

this would never happen to Jeff, the IR guy would never allow this to happen. But like, I'd love the

CEO to come out and be like, Look, we know this thing's interesting. We have no clue what we want

to do with it yet. Right? Like, yeah, come back to us in two years, and maybe we'll have a good

strategy. And I know that like, but that'll never happen. You'll never hear that. No. But that would

make me happy. Because I do think that's sort of what's being said here. Just reading between the

lines. Yes, that

is 100%. The translation. A lot better.

The way stress said it did sound a hell of a lot better. I want to end here on two

stories, I want to put them together. And I just think indicative of, again, the massive

opportunity that's being presented in this space right now. The first one here, gala games to

expand NFT offerings with $5 billion. It says here in the article since its launch in 2019 Gala

games, has been growing steadily, the platform has 1.3 million monthly active users has sold 26,000

and fts. The firm in this $5 billion in the $5 billion, they're going to assign here to these

expansion efforts. 2 billion is going to be on gaming, 1 billion on music, 1 billion on movies,

and the remaining 1 billion on the gala theme park and fts. Aside from the 2 billion budgeted for

gaming, the firm also launched $100 million gaming fund with C two ventures, and they're going to

invest in new blockchain games. So I just want to park that for a second, by the way Snoop Dogg is

gonna miss out on this story. Like we could certainly have done the whole episode, which means

then there was another story, which, you know, had we not read that one first would have just also

been eyewatering. And this one is Sequoia makes a big bet on web three leading $450 million

investment in polygon blockchain. And for those that don't know, polygon is a blockchain network

that serves as a support layer to Aetherium. It says here polygon wants to become a decentralized

version of Amazon Web Services. And obviously, it has attracted here, Sequoia, maybe one or the

other than Andreessen Horowitz. Those two are maybe the biggest names in all of venture capital.

And so polygon raising 450 million. Jeff, maybe just your general thoughts on both of these

stories. I don't know if you want to start with the gala.

I mean, that's a coil was the polygon one is interesting. I mean, they're doing great. I

mean, they just hired Ryan White to kind of run their gaming, Polygon gaming business. It's pretty

similar how they're trying both these companies are trying to attract games to be built on top of

their platform. The goal one, I thought was a more interesting article. There's so little more

numbers. But one thing, the first thing that kind of sticks out to me is just the amount of money

flowing into this. The fact that it's 1 billion not 1 million, 1 billion with a B is going to be

invested into gala theme park and fts. That is a mind blowing amount of I don't even know what a

gala theme park NFT is, but I want to go start a company that builds them. Because there's a

billion dollars being funded on these things. that's mind blowing. And I think I tweeted this

saying like, would, too, with this much capital flowing into kind of the web three gaming space,

you're bound to see a few mainstream hits in the next call it 18 months, the knock that we've come

back to time and time again, with web three, gaming, Blockchain gaming is a games aren't fun.

And that has largely been true. So far, with this much money coming into the space, someone's going

to build a fun good game, where you're going to see a game that goes mainstream and blows up way,

way on a way bigger scale than an xe currently, the second number that strikes me and terrifies me

a little bit, when I'm thinking about this, is, if you scroll up a little bit for people watching, it

said 1.3 million now this time, million with an M, monthly active users on the platform. Yeah, that

is really, really, really low. If you think about the current, you know, smartphone, addressable

market, there's like 7 billion people with a smartphone. And the amount of money that's being

invested into mobile games right now is probably less than $5 billion in a year, maybe that that's

a little bit off. But the point is, there's a ton of money chasing a market that currently just

isn't that large. And I think we all are very bullish on it, and believe that the addressable

market will dramatically expand. But right now, this is a really, really, really niche market. And

there's going to be a lot of capital that's burn chasing, chasing this, because not every project

can work. But the addressable market

isn't really that different here. I get they only have 1.3 million monthly active

users today. But is gala games total addressable market, any different than Zynga has total

addressable market? Or kings? total addressable market? Like, and I go back to your first point,

which is, you know, one day we're going to make a good game, or, or it will, the the industry is

going to prove one of my thesis I have, which is the as a function of being a, a blockchain based

game, they're fundamentally just glorified pyramid schemes. And that means you have to make a game

that allows for a pyramid scheme, and therefore the game may never be games may never be good,

right? Like, yeah, I would love for you to be right here, Jeff, and that it's just a matter of

someone being a little bit more creative. That gets a game to, you know, a billion users and, you

know, wow, kind of longevity and success. And, and then it's, it just so happens to be a blockchain

based game, and maybe gala games. This is where that $2 billion of investment in gaming goes, I

don't know, right to solve those problems. But I'm a bit of a skeptic here. Also, I just where I'm

not a skeptic, is I think the total addressable markets. No different, right? Well, anyone today.

So I think you're right, in terms of the total addressable market, if you define it as

gamers, then yes, but the question is, do you define the addressable market as anyone who

theoretically could go play a game on this, or anyone who's on the platform currently? Because if

I, if I were to ask you, if you were a Roblox developer, what is your addressable market? Would

you say, well, there's, you know, 12 billion people on the earth. So technically, they all

could play Roblox games. Or would you say, well, Roblox has 50 million? Da us? That's what the

addressable market is.

I mean, that's different. You see my Gala. Because, yeah, I see your point. But gala

here actually develops games, right? They're not, they're not necessarily just the platform for

other people to develop games, right. So that, to me, the 1.3 million is across all the games that

they've produced and distributed. I think it's it's not unreasonable to define the total

addressable market for gala games as whatever the total addressable market is for mobile gaming.

Right, like it made their own mobile games fundamentally, you know, the fact that they're

blockchain based games in the background and you need a crypto wallet when you sign up. Doesn't to

me change really the total addressable market that drastically so I think it's an interesting point,

that the number is low. But obviously, the billions that are being spent is because they

think this essentially consumes mobile gaming. That's That's my guess. Right? That has to be part

of the thesis here. Yeah. And I would argue, with part with the polygon story that's got To be part

of sequoias thesis as well right that whatever people are going to build on polygon has a total

addressable market that is far beyond the narrow scope of web three as it stands today or crypto as

it stands today now yeah person they chose to go to go help manage that that's a different that's a

different issue. But this is you know, to me this is two totally different plays right polygons and

infrastructure play gal is much, much more b2c Where I'm amazed with gala frankly, and I

surprised surprised you didn't you jump on this because I thought you'd be bothered by this is

like the billion dollars on music and the billion dollars on movies. When you're fundamentally sort

of you're I mean, you're called gala games you're a gaming company they

clearly say You know, I can't take all the I can't take all the good the good juicy

things

but you know, maybe they're gala games is just there's a learning here that maybe

every game developer should be opening their eyes to right like maybe Activision Blizzard should

have a a an equal like a proportionately large budget for for music and movies based on their IP

in the same way gala games has allocated you know 40% of this $5 billion dollars to those two things

I think is interesting so maybe they're just ahead of the curve and and and if the blockchain base

games are leading the way in some of these things that to me makes me makes me less skeptical at the

very least right Jeff like cuz we complain all the time Activision Blizzard should be making movies

and TV shows. And now you've got a blockchain based gaming company that budgets $2 billion for

this stuff. I knew a great article if we didn't applaud it and say, you know, good job, or at

least a nice, good, good for you to try.

No, no arguments for me hear.

That brings us Jeff to the end of the podcast. I feel like that flew by. For those

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