IlluviTalks #5 - Diving Into The Metaverse (Will It Survive?)

Are NFTs in the middle of the next “Dot Com” bubble? Are we way too early in this space and we are actually 10-20 years out from the metaverse being a thing? What will it take for the metaverse to survive?  Which business models are most viable? Our expert panel of Hustlepedia - Jonny, JP - Arcade and Animositas tackle these topics and more!

Follow Our Host & Guests
Andrew Wall (aka Awall) - https://twitter.com/awallcrypto
Hustlepedia - Jonny: https://twitter.com/hustlepediayt
JP - Arcade: https://arcade2earn.info/ + https://www.twitter.com/missionpoole
Animositas: https://www.youtube.com/c/AniKnows + https://twitter.com/Animositas1

ABOUT THE GAME
Illuvium is an exploration looter and collectible autobattler game built on the Ethereum Blockchain, releasing on PC and Mac in 2022. Play and earn in a graphically-rich, vividly-realized sci-fi adventure and conquer the wilderness to help your crash-landed colony flourish.

Race across stunning alien landscapes on your quest to uncover the cause of the cataclysm that shattered Illuvium. Hunt and capture Illuvials, powerful creatures who have ruled the land unchallenged until your arrival. Train and fuse your Illuvials into powerful evolutions. Build your ultimate Illuvial team to take into battles and tournaments in PvE and PvP Arenas. Use your creativity to build unique synergies to outsmart your opponents and progress to the top as become the most legendary Ranger on this planet.

Illuvium’s collectible NFT games feature crypto token assets with functionality and a gaming use case, interoperable across the Illuvium universe and the larger DeFi metaverse. The decentralized NFT collection offers players a user-maintained custody never before possible in mainstream gaming.

#IlluviTalks #Metaverse

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Transcript

intro music what's up everybody Andrew wall here host and executive producer at eluvium is the metaverse dead will it survive and thrive how are we going to get through these times is this the.com bust over again 2.0 are we the uh foods.com the website that you'll never ever go to are we going out of business we're going to answer all of those questions today and talk about a path forward in terms of viable business models for crypto gaming web 3 games all of that and more of course with our super stacked panel as ever let's go ahead and bring in each of our panel members today as we lead the conversation about the future of gaming our first panel member is otherwise known as hustle pedia Johnny host of crypto banter founder of this thing of ours and it's just educating people about crypto gaming nfts in the metaverse this guy's face right here how you doing today I'm doing awesome Andrew thank you so much for having me on I'm excited to chop up the industry and everything we have on the DACA today pleasure to chop it up with you thanks for having me we are going to chop indeed and we have other Choppers here in the kitchen including JP from arcade this guy's on like every podcast ever I've seen this guy's face all over the freaking internet CEO and co-founder of arcade of course the infrastructure platform focused on lowering the barrier to entry for the GameFly industry we're gonna need that lowering the barrier with how dead the metaverse is right yeah we're going to talk a little bit about that aren't we um yeah excited to be in the kitchen with you guys and always a pleasure to be with uh with Hustle perfect and last but certainly not least is Annie the host of Annie knows the best source according to what he wrote up for me the best source of YouTube content for deep data-driven insights on web3 gaming I'll give you some credit there and he likes to say that we should take our fun seriously Annie how you doing today yeah I'm doing well Andrew it's really good to be with all of you guys today um looking forward to a lot of serious discussion about the state of the industry and where we're going in the future because as we've seen the last six months have been rough but I think the future's never been brighter so let's get to it oh I like that the last six months have been rough but the future's never been brighter this is great these got catchphrases all day so let's talk about building the metaverse today this is what we're discussing the topics are nft interest being down way down metaverse PR issues we're talking about Zuck and other issues with people laughing at this space and how do we survive and thrive and of course we'll pull your comments live during the show here on a louvatox there is an audio version of this podcast on literally every single audio platform just go to eluvium.buzzsprout.com if you want to enjoy the juicy edited audio version when with the ums and awes and everything caught out and it goes without saying everything these guys say everything I'm saying this is not Financial advice this may be a part of your research you may be learning about game 5 crypto gaming web 3 that's awesome we're really happy that you're learning we love to teach but this is not Financial advice got it good then let's go ahead and get straight in to our topics for today gentlemen it's going to be good nft interest is down way down and I'm gonna kick this over to you JP first but just to give people context I don't like to just say that it's down let's take a look at the headlines here because these are not encouraging headlines the media influencers everybody's piling in talking about how bad it is what do I mean trading volume down on top nft Marketplace open C by 99 yikes that's not good Google Trends says that nfts if you look at search interest when it peaked toward the end of 2011 moving into 2021 or I'm sorry the end of 2021 moving into 2022 it's down about 80 percent yikes that is not good some of my favorite podcasts even the podcast all in podcast the one that inspired this show talking about how nfts are dead this is very bad the media is piling on influencers are piling on there's so much fear uncertainty and doubt I can't even see straight so JP here's the question for you amigo are nfts in the middle of the next.com bubble if so which nfts are gonna bust and which ones are gonna boom it's a loaded question go no this this is a this is a big question no um so you know I have some optimistic point of view and I also have you know a more I think realistic point of view so I guess let me start by saying I think that you know we are not really in that.com Phase yet I think we are probably even before that I think we're even earlier than that I think that the next cycle is when we're gonna have the.com effect right where there's going to be a really big um pullback or crash I don't even think that we've seen that yet I think that the interest is just still so early and and that's good for everyone that's watching this or good for everyone that's in the nft space right now because being early you know historically has paid off you know Leaps and Bounds but hit pause right there so I want to clarify so you think what happened in the metaverse hype cycle we just saw where every tech company Facebook repositions itself every investment everything anyone was doing ever was metaverse and everyone was talking about it that was not the hype cycle that's going to be not even next cycle but maybe the next one after that I mean help me understand no I I think next cycle so I think you know we what we've seen so far reminded me of kind of the Bitcoin cycle of like the early 20 2010s right and I feel like we didn't really have that explosive blow off top for the crypto industry until later in the teens like you know 2017-ish so there was at least one or two cycles in there where people thought that that Bitcoin was dead or people thought that the market was trashed and it came back and it you know did that 100x run and then it crashed from there so that's kind of in my mind where I'm thinking things are so you know I think you know it's hard to say right none of us can see the future I think in terms of which ones are going to be the most successful or the ones that are going to Boom coming out of this early Market it they're the ones that are building community right there are a lot of projects out there that are doing their pfp release and there's no utility there's no Community it feels very cash grabby and I think it's giving the industry a bad name and then you have the ones like you know even the the board ape Community um you know the fluff World Community even you know projects like what Johnny is is creating and what a luvitars aim to create are building community and you know that fun Factor around the brand which I think is going to make those sustainable and is going to make them you know longer lasting and be able to get through the hurdles that we're seeing in the industry currently and you know I guess maybe just my last thought would be that the um you know I think that actually you know what no I'm gonna leave it there got it yeah I mean the whole Community Factor matters a lot in that sort of social currency and clout uh like board ape for example has a huge community and a huge uh group of people behind it I was just in New York City and walking home from the super high-end retail sector where it's a thousand dollars in item in stores and there was a board a alpha Lounge there it was empty but the point is if people believe in something if they get behind it if there's a community behind something obviously it can survive but who knows if it can thrive in that case but I love I mean it's exciting the prospect that this next cycle will be the metaverse cycle and what we saw before was just a tiny tiny sneak preview that's interesting I gotta ask the media is bearish on nfts right now so what will turn them bullish on it if anything at all Annie what do you think about that yeah so I actually mirror a lot of JP's thoughts on this and and maybe coming back to where we are in the the cycle if you think about it the first domain names were registered in 1985. so we want to talk about the longevity required to really see major use cases appear in a new space like this if you bought domain names in the the late 1980s it wasn't for another decade before you actually were able to utilize those and see value out of them right and that that was assuming that you were successful at navigating the entire.com bust so I think many folks in the space need to really recognize you know what is what is the uh longevity that's required what's the time Horizon that they actually need to be involved to see the maturity of the industry um what is it going to take from a from a consumer standpoint I don't even think that most individuals today have any kind of a sense of what's coming because the use cases have been so trivial frankly in the nft space that you know they're laughed off right now and if you think about the you know the sense that uh first people laugh at you we're still in phase one right now of the utility that nfts are going to provide um it's there but we have to see a lot of maturity uh for the builders and the communities before we see anything approach mainstream and so I I would say what what projects are going to need to deliver is Meaningful utility and meaningful communities and for me a community is more than just a group of people you've got to either be United behind a single cause or purpose or behind a leader either of those can work and uh in most cases the current nft craze there's neither there's there's only the utility of the price is going to go up and therefore I'm here but that's not a community that's a herd and so we need to make sure that we're avoiding herds and actually building in communities that have some sort of vision or direction that they're working towards well if price is obviously the reason why a lot of people got in they're hoping to buy low and sell high and make some of that sweet sweep I don't know some meme stock ask uh returns right a fast Buck insert things to describe that sort of extreme short-sighted greed are we at the bottom of nft Interest right now though like if we're going up to metaverse all times if JP's right or were you at the bottom or do we still have a darker low to be in where people give less of a [ __ ] about nfts than they do right now Johnny what do you think I'll Echo the sentiment that I think that metaverse has a long way to go uh that you know I think we'll see apple Microsoft I think we'll see all these companies eventually you know come to the metaverse I think that even people could argue Minecraft banded FTS because they're not ready into it and they can't let someone front run their model which they're under strategized on but are we at the bottom of nft Interest or is there more decline to come I personally think for the entirety of the nft market I think there's more decline to come uh not talking about anything with the market but obviously the eth merge is a big Catalyst mid month which could obviously and any part of the crypto Market any way from there see interest I see the interest going lower because there is just not a lot of projects coming out at this time period especially since the beginning of the summer we've just seen a bunch of free mint garbage for most of the releases uh you know there's been few and far between projects that are coming up with real utility and unlike you know the past bear markets where like a so is built in the bear for example a project popping up out of nowhere that's just sweeping people off their feet obviously this Utes project yesterday for nfts in general was pretty hyped and a lot of liquidity but I think we go lower for nft interest as potentially crypto could go lower uh as the climate who knows whenever that next wave is whenever the you know next bull market quote unquote is so yeah I think nft interest could go even lower from here awesome I love it so much bearishness even within this podcast panel yeah personally I would agree with that I think we could we can go even lower uh than we are right now in terms of Interest like we're not at the point where people within this industry that I talk to on a daily basis for me this is an indicator where people I like work with or people I talk to regularly or people like in private calls are telling me I don't know if this industry is going to make it and I maybe I made a mistake getting into this professionally and stuff that hasn't happened yet you need like that sense of total desperation like things could never turn around and then they rip we're not there quite yet we're getting close though things are looking pretty bleak so we're getting close but I agree there could be one further leg down in terms of Interest not even describing price let's move on to the next topic then about metaverse PR issues which is certainly not helping boys I mean look we all know Mark Zuckerberg most relatable person on Earth and definitely lovable we all know that and a great Ambassador for our space I mean look do we all unanimously agree Mark Zuckerberg's who we want to represent us I mean he's a lizard person so if you're into ethos some sort of uh tangentially related I guess there you go he's a lizard person is the nicest thing that everybody can say about it so so obviously there were PR issues recently with um Zuckerberg dropping a relatively low quality uh Mashable you're killing me bro uh relatively there it is relatively low quality picture of uh Horizon worlds on his feet and he was just excited right like we could travel around the world and here's the Eiffel Tower and stuff but obviously this is a laughably bad photo of the future of the metaverse but then he went into a PR sort of uh you know let's say uh safety mode or Fix-It mode or whatever and then his team whipped together this photoshopped image of him looking better right than he did in the image on the side but this was unanimously laughed at by it was hard for me to even choose which article to pick it was unanimously mocked across the entire internet our space externally my wife knew about it my mom knew about how laughable this metaverse was so we need to talk about the pr issues here and I'm going to kick it over to Johnny is Facebook's meta Horizon worlds now the face of the metaverse can we avoid that I mean it's one of the most valuable companies in the world one of the richest men in the entire world are now making themselves essentially the face of the metaverse are they the face and is this a good or a bad thing to have zuck's Grill up in there representing us what do you think Johnny so I think you know as far as web 2 people go definitely right you're not going to walk up to the average person on the street be like hey you know what the sandbox is let's just say for example sorry about that with my dog uh let's just say like you know what the sandbox is they're gonna most likely say no Mike I played one when I was a kid type of thing I don't know what you know a Sandbox is so I think from a sick brain right like for web two people I think that we could see them completely aiming towards um Facebook meta Etc but in my opinion look at the brands in the world look where the adoptions going like metaverse projects the like the brands the Adidas's the big conglomerates the banks they're looking at sandbox and decentraland they're not running the Facebook saying hey let's build up our headquarters in the future of meta right they're all understanding that the future of the metaverse web3 uh is where that's probably going to be built out and Thrive the most uh to bring their brands to a decentralized model because why would they want to bring their brands to the most centralized model uh I mean obviously we could talk about the flaws in Facebook and the things that have gone on over time there for probably as long as we could have this podcast but I could totally uh see that you know this not the metaverse to the people that are really in know and involved and the smart money in the space like I said people aren't [ __ ] the build and meta every headline that you see is within a web three metaverses so that would be my take uh from a surface level yes but when you go in depth and look at where the interest is I would say no interesting so there's a lot of bad things about what you know in these headlines about Facebook right so I'm not going to cover we don't need to oblitigate all of that but it's mistrust in the Privacy side of things it's the corporate greed side there's the politics and censorship side and then there's the laughability of what the current state of metaverse is uh you know with what they're showing and so here's a great question from Ricky tan77 which part of the metaverse do you want to not survive if any and I'm going to tailor this and I'm going to say about Facebook's meta if there's some aspect about Facebook's meta and their agenda they're pushing right now and the product they're trying to push to market right now that you want to not survive what would that number one thing be about that that you hope dies and maybe we could kill with fire Annie what are your thoughts about that yeah so I I actually am pretty negative on the entire meta metaverse and and I would honestly kill the whole thing I I don't I don't see value aside from two two factors right so one is mainstream recognition because people do know Facebook for for better or worse and so if Facebook is talking about something I think it raises awareness to the industry um and I also think from a from a r d perspective the research budgets and and resources that are necessary to do major innovation in the hardware space I think is necessary so I think there's going to be some interesting work that comes out of meta around AR VR it may take another decade for us to see meaningful use cases so I'm okay there but I think the entire concept of a centralized gatekeeper controlling your access to essentially all of the virtual worlds that we're going to want to play in all the virtual communities for the next you know set of of decades or even centuries no you can count me out I'd burn the whole thing down Virtual Worlds no no Horizon worlds is the word we're using now JP what are your thoughts there if you were to just kill one thing with fire about what Zuck is building over at meta what would that be if you could just delete it and be like no thanks yeah so I think I I uh really agree with with what Annie is saying here um I don't know if I'd go as far as to kill all of it um I do think that anytime that you have a centralized Authority trying to come in and take control of how people interact with one another that's dangerous and I think that we've already seen the uh the downsides to that model with like social media today right and censorship and stuff like that I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole but I think for me at least having Horizon worlds or whatever the heck it's called I think it being you know so poorly executed so far is good for when people compare the web 3 options right that's kind of how I look at it a little bit people see that's interesting they learn about you know Facebook's meta and then they're like wow this is a joke and then they find an article comparing it to a web 3 version that's a hundred times better and they're like why would I use meta and give up you know so many rights when I can go over here plug in my computer and access this other world that comparatively is just so much better so I think it's actually a good look for our industry as web3 in that sense that's interesting okay I'm gonna kick that one too maybe let me retract my statement because oh uh the concept of medicine is a bad example I actually I'm okay with that too so your point is well received all right Johnny one thing you could kill well meta and then we'll move on and this is regarding Facebook's meta specifically right Facebook meta not the entire metaverse just Facebook's meta if you were to kill one thing with fire there that you would want us to leave behind with that I accept of metaverse what would it be I think just from a reality perspective we've all probably seen that Meme or a gif where uh Mark Zuckerberg's walking through that conference room and it says never get high on your own Supply and everyone in the room is wearing Oculus is and he's like smiling like an evil emperor like Darth Vader like like the Lord uh like Lord Sidious you know what I mean and start in Star Wars so it seemed like I don't want that to I don't really want this to become Ready Player one I think that if it becomes too out of touch with reality then that could become potentially toxic for mental health standpoints and other things uh regarding you know state of life versus virtual state of life I think that could get really mixed up if the metaverse actually they came to what we've kind of seen it to be made out to be so I don't really uh I think as far as that goes I just hope that people don't get immersed in the experience and wrapped up in it too much because uh you know these people do know how to create experiences that will Loop you in and I really don't hope that we go that digital right uh you know real life experiences are just as valuable as much as I want to spend you know time in in other worlds and other games uh I think that that's just the truth of it I'm gonna share my two cents on this and then we have more to talk about here so I actually have a completely different view than two of our panelists I think that Facebook investing tens of billions of dollars into Research into this space is the biggest Boon to the metaverse on Earth right now I think that Facebook allocating 10 000 employees to develop Hardware on the Oculus side is the largest Hardware Boon to our space and I think that overall Facebook is contributing the most positively to the development of the metaverse currently of any entity on Earth by far without question now are there huge downsides to them being the number one player in the hardware software and network side absolutely but in terms of getting us in this primordial goo State we're at right now with the metaverse to like phase one the fact that they're dropping billions and tens of thousands of people worth of Labor onto that problem to get us from zero to one is one of the biggest Boons to this space and is speeding It Up by years in my opinion so I am very happy they're doing it but I don't want them to win after we get past phase one just to be clear but I'm glad that they're helping us get from phase zero to phase one I am glad about that part that is my opinion but since the sentiment out there is so negative boys what does the public need to see then obviously not zuck's ice cold dead eth lizard eyes they're not youth lizard eyes I'm sorry lizard the not eth lizard eyes to change their minds about metaverse from negative to positive Johnny what do you think about that like what do they need to see is it one of these web3 gaming projects just looking gorgeous and being a fun experience for you to play what do we need to go from it's dead and I hate it to okay I'm in that's really cool again headlines are everything right to an outsider's perspective and I think all the headlines that the space gets you never see the good stuff in the news right um only thing you ever see is the 600 million dollar axi hacks um rug pulls you know this and that actually you know promising what was the Bloomberg article actually promises riches and you know becomes like most decimated Pro whatever they really turn the narrative on those articles I think when people see that from an outsider's perspective uh no matter what you see from like Facebook it's just so negative and people see 600 million dollar hack and that was the bridge that was compromised but it makes it seem like every user lost so much money and these headlines paint a false descriptor like like you said earlier with your mom knowing about some things my mom asked about a couple things in the industry right regarding axi Infinity she saw like that 600 million dollar headline if you're like you weren't affected by that were you I was like no of course not but I think when you're not involved in the industry and you see something like that yeah it definitely steers you away and then of course the quality right you see how popular and how highly evaluated that game was and then you look at the game quality it just doesn't equate to each other so yeah definitely I think the perception from an outsider's perspective needs to change from a quality standpoint and a headline standpoint Annie what do you think man Obviously good headlines matters oh you got to have something behind the headline actually that's good to happen to write a headline about so Annie what is that big story is it uh Donald Trump puts on a VR headset everybody that won't be polarizing how about Joe Biden I mean is it a big celebrity is it a big politician is it a government adoption is it what is it that is the positive headline that will spread like wildfire and start to turn sentiment around or is it a Confluence of things Annie what do you think yeah so so two thoughts here the first one and this may not be what most of our audience wants to hear the first thing is actually time because all of the projects that are building today frankly they just need more time to fully gestate and develop what they're working on so we always want to try and speed things up and if only we could do better at marketing or only we could um you know create a better economic structure all of those are critical but frankly there needs to be more time to iterate within the space to figure out what's going to work um the the second thing is I don't think that having a single uh individual put out a statements um kind of like you saw with uh with like institutional investors around Bitcoin a few years back I don't think you're going to have a single Catalyst for the perception changing I think what you're going to see and this is just based on the theory of diffusion of innovation where people don't change their behavior in most cases unless they have someone that they trust personally that shares info information with them that causes them to rethink what their approach was and so in most cases in gaming it's going to be either an influencer or content creator a guild member of or or like a teammate of a current game that they're playing something they personally trust maybe within their smaller network of maybe around us an interest or something yeah that makes sense that's right my wife listens to random instagramers that are like either lifestyle content or fashion content and if one of them mentions crypto stuff that's how she knows about it now she trusts it but there's nothing I could say to get her to trust it so that totally makes sense so trusted parties that's probably not government or politics ones maybe celebrities but it sounds like you're saying more micro influencers or your friend or your family member is more influential for something like this is that fair to say that's right yep that that's exactly my opinion because we see this often and you even see in the nft space it doesn't matter the brands that are advertising you've seen some celebrities talk about crypto even talk about you know web3 gaming and yet there's no real traction from those because people like to hear about influencers reinforcing the beliefs that they already have but they won't change beliefs that they have unless someone that they personally trust convinces them or at least gives them another option to consider makes sense there's a hilarious comment here I'd like to highlight it just gave me a funny idea Biden versus Trump in survival mode like how about this Catalyst the presidential debate is in Horizon worlds on Facebook and they pay anyway I'm just joking that would be horrible in dystopian so last question on uh PR issues it sounded like you're going this direction JP you sound like you mentioned like 1985 or maybe was it Annie sorry who mentioned 1985 for the first domains um wow that was you know a long time ago before the internet went mainstream we're that early so I gotta ask JP are we way way too early on the space and are we actually 10 to 20 years out from the metaverse being an actual thing are we that early I don't think we're quite that early um I think you know uh historically you know if you look historically the rate at which information spreads and the rate at which innovation happens is ever increasing right and as we become a more web-based you know virtual uh Community or you know a society I think that these things happen faster and faster so in 1985 the growth factor might have been about 10 years right but I think now we're starting to see that expedite so much that in two to three years we can accomplish as much as 10 to 15 years you know 30 or 40 years ago so I'm very optimistic that we are right at the start of that curve up into Mass adoption I think we are even with all of the um you know the hype that we saw with this little mini cycle I like to call it I think we are really only seeing a taste of it I think there's still a very small fraction of people that know about the metaverse and care about it and I think that's going to still multiply significantly over the next two to three years and certainly by 2025 2026 I think we're going to be in a pretty full swing of things kind of equivalent to that time span of 10 to 20 years that we would have seen back in the late 19 uh 1900s I hope you're right that we're that early I hope that we really are that early and this is just this isn't even we aren't even out of the Dugout if to use terrible sports analogies like the first standing hasn't even started I hope that is correct and Nas here teared us up perfectly for our final topic which is I think the most interesting topic to discuss do you honestly think this whole metaverse is even going to survive or Thrive I mean seriously we have to ask ourselves seriously and in order to answer this question Annie shared a great diagram with me then I want to share with all of you and maybe you've seen it on the internet uh maybe you haven't but this is all the business models potentially in web 3 gaming and I was wondering Annie can you walk us through this and help everyone understand what these potential models are for the metaverse and we can discuss their merits and their drawbacks sure Andrew so in general the first wave of games that have launched and and my first wave I mean 2020 2021 and earlier all of these web 3 games are really focused on a play to earn type of mechanic and so the industry took the idea that if no ownership was bad having full ownership was was good and therefore being able to earn was the best solution around web3 games and so we went instead of going sort of to the midpoint we went all the way the other side of the spectrum and so this play to earn concept is really one in which you purchase items in games with the intention of playing the the economic game or the metagame to make money and I think a lot of the pushback is because this is this is overdone this is a a solution in search of a problem um instead what we need to be focused on are firstly making games that actually have entertainment value as opposed to this uh skinned gamification location of D5 protocols that we've seen and so on the on the bottom row we talk about having games that the game and entertainment value comes first and then you can talk about the question you know do we want to invest um and and make more money in the future through the game or do we view what we're doing as owning Assets in the game with the purpose of playing and so you know I really think that that first wave was instructive because it gave us a concept to really latch on to and most of the games that are building today would not exist if axi had not seen their incredible run up um and so I think overall it's a net positive for the industry but there's a lot of changes that need to take place in this second wave of games that are building right now that are going to launch in 2023 and 2024 and I think you're going to see a lot more of play to own play and own and some maybe play and earn mechanics that are created by these projects in the future let's talk about I love this diagram it encapsulates so many ideas I've been talking about but way more succinctly than I've been able to articulate this is wonderful let's talk about the in-game rewards portion at the top and I'm curious to know what Chad thinks the transition that we're discussing here is the user asking themselves am I expecting to make more money for whatever I'm getting in this video game than what I paid for it basically in wave one here with axi and the play to earn gen 1 games the answer is yes I'm hoping to play this game earn stuff and sell it for a profit later what this diagram suggests is that maybe in the future as we move from Investments to in-game assets that expectation of making a profit if you will by playing a video game and uh getting assets from it we're going to move away from that expectation of profit so I want to bring that up as a discussion topic if we don't have the expectation of profit then is there going to be sufficient motivation for people to play games moving forward Johnny do you think that profit element needs to be there that greed needs to be there for people to want to jump into this space why would they jump in otherwise loaded question I don't think that um I don't think it's everything that you earn inside of a game um you know I even coming from an Esports model where technically you are competing to earn right I spent a lot of time six years plus in uh first person shooter Call of Duty Esports and you know even though I was technically speaking playing to earn in a way I was more playing to compete like I was just a competitor from like a sports background for example and I love first person shooters so whenever it was for me it was more I was just competitive I was good at the game and I loved first person shooters and that Search and Destroy domination those game modes that they innovated at that time period I didn't fall in love with the game from a monetary standpoint I was 12 13 years old I would not have you know had any sort of wherewithal on even like could I make a living on this no it was just for the passion of it and I'm sure my parents though would have loved to get some of the money back that we spent on microtransactions at the time and sure even when I look at like war zone like from the last two years and whenever uh you know we were locked in we lost are in lockdown for example when I'm playing so much war zone competitively buying so many skins battle passes you look back and you're like man I would love to at least capitalize on a little bit a little bit of that but I would say there's not really ever a game that's outside of web 3 gen 1 that I got into that was anything like for earnings right like I think that was the only incentivized model that you ever saw that was like hey come earn cash or crypto with this game and obviously that fell flat on its face with that model just not being too sustainable so as if we can make the economies as much like a regular game normal you know microtransactions normal battle pass assets that are simply just ownable and if you can even sell them later on for part of what you pay for them I think that expectation is good enough for me to be able to put more time and monetary investment into these games because I'll say when I go into war zone now and I'm like oh that's a really cool skin but I would never buy that now because I know that it's not really mine I would just be wasting money technology likely JP I mean the hook and gen 1 gaming has you know was obviously get in there make some money heck even make a guild and turn it into this sustainable business and get people to play for you and go go we're all Gonna Get Rich here man and play video games at the same time I mean this Taps into the same psychology of there's 12 million twitch streamers out there but only one percent of them make enough money to pay their cell phone bill people playing games on the internet making content hoping to make enough money playing video games to support themselves in them live then their lives are some regard there's already tons of evidence from the gaming Creator space and streamer space the entire industry that's popped up from that I mean you can buy a streamer mic and webcam from Walmart and Target now right that dream of playing video games and making money is real it's potent it's tangible so can we move away from um the idea with this space uh that you'll be able to make some legit dough here when you're playing games is that are we removing just one of the best hooks about web3 gaming what are your thoughts JP yeah so you know I think this goes back a little bit to the what what the the world needs to see in order to be okay with web3 gaming and I think it ties into this beautifully that I think games need to set proper expectations and actually in my opinion did a poor job of that um there was way too much of this like get rich quick feel to it you know people um likened it to a Ponzi and all kinds of things and I think that was bad for the industry and games even today are continuing to set you know Pie in the Sky expectations in order to draw people in and I think honestly it all goes back to the same core concept of the game has to be fun right and if the game is fun and then you know I think the model already exists in in web 2 or Legacy gaming in the sense that if you take the model that currently exists you allow for people to have ownership of their you know their assets and the ability to realize some kind of value from it later then it kind of evens the scale a little bit um and I think right now the scale is just so under uneven within web 2 that like hustle was saying it's like a money sync right you're just dumping money in you know tons of capital into it you need to be able to get something back out of it so it's not so much about the earning I think for a lot of people I think it's more about finding equilibrium between those two ideas the idea that I can't afford to drop hundreds of dollars um you know a year on Warzone where maybe a game like Warzone if I could just have ownership of what I'm using I can at least try to break even you know later down the line and so I think honestly Gamers just want to be made whole they just want to break even I think that the average person that is a real gamer is more focused on the gameplay and the play for fun Factor than they are about the um economic potential not to say that there isn't a lot of room for growth within the you know meta game as as Annie and and uh you know one of the projects that we're close with uh Noor has described but it is um you know I think it's just a different game right it's just it's a it's players that are playing the the economy not the game right not the not the uh actual tangible thing that you're loading in with your friends right it's just it's a different I think motive so is this more like than a you know let's say magic the Gathering or Pokemon Trading Card Game or some type of other game where you can buy an asset you can trade it if you want buy and sell them in a card shop let's say a digital card shop is are we thinking that the space is going to go more that direction well you can own the asset but the average player that opens a pack of Pokemon cards is not expecting to retire on those Pokemon cards they aren't expecting to get a 10 bagger off of that open they're maybe thinking I could sell all these later at a significant loss but I could get some value back are we hoping that's where the space is going to go or do we hope that it's going to be 10 Baggers all day loaded question for you Annie yeah so I I think we don't even have to look at gaming the the magic the Gathering is a good example here but let's actually just draw an analogy to take your pick of any other hobby let's say that you're a woodworker or a carpenter or you're a gardener or you're someone that loves photography you can engage in all of those hobbies and you don't expect to make money from doing that right if if you're very talented and you spend a lot of time learning your crafts you can create things that oftentimes you can sell to other people but unless you're really really good at it you're not going to make enough money to retire or even to make it a full-time job only the top one percent half a percent like Johnny mentioned is you know as a Esports competitor only the the very best are actually going to be good enough that people are going to be willing to pay to watch them or pay for their products we just need to take that same model and apply it now that we have the technology to do so in gaming because today in gaming you don't get to own any of the things that you're paying for or spending your time grinding for in web 2 games and so I don't think we need to create some crazy model that um you know turns uh everyday jobs on their heads I think we just need to say you should be able to own the things that you play for and the things that you pay for and if you want to trade them to someone else afterwards that should be good enough because it's good enough for every other hobby that we engage in as humans okay cool I like that as a um as a as a good rounded opinion on that topic but there's another aspect of it of this genius diagram Annie put together which is would I even play this game at all if it didn't have earning and owning involved so in gen 1 games like axi Infinity no offense to everybody who played axi infinity and enjoyed it I just know from people that I've talked to 100 of them and my perspective is is skewed 100 of them hated the actual game um it was just unbearable for them to play but they did it because of the earning and owning and that was new and cool and interesting which is a merit on its own so this transition we're looking at right now would I play this game even if I didn't earn and own when is this transition going to happen are we gonna have to wait for legacy gaming players to kind of come in here and to save us or do we think that I mean eluvium's trying to do this but am I from what I can see there's only a couple games even attempting to make what looks like a regular video game in this space that means we're like four five six years out from maybe other players actually coming to Market is that not concerning so do we need Legacy gaming to make games that are good enough for people to want to play whether they earn and own or not Johnny what are your thoughts on that do you think this space can make those games of the future or is it just going to be Legacy gaming coming in here and sweeping up baby on that sweet sweet crypto I think web3 actually provides a great opportunity for those uh devs that are really talented underneath like web2 Studios that are kind of chained down and maybe don't get the credit that they deserved everyone knows that Infinity Ward makes Call of Duty but nobody knows who works for Infinity Ward or who was the key devs on certain Maps you know people just hop in and play the game so I think that web3 actually provides an opportunity for like these super solid devs on you know Unity unreal five whatever you are building in the gaming space for these big companies if you're really that talented you can come over here and build a product potentially shock the market and then maybe we do see a little bit of adoption there are some projects out there that you know have my eye as far as you know AAA first person shooters uh maybe some sort of a MOBA some sort of you know mobile games that could catch on and get a lot of adoption I really think it will take a game within web three to really like have a pop and show web to Studios okay and I think they're already looking into the model regardless but it shows them okay this is real and now we're seeing a true disruptive model not this like you know Ponzi model that we've kind of seen in the past with the two token tokenomics Etc where one just inevitably crashes and craters so I think that um yeah in my opinion it's going to take a web 3 disruptor and a builder to build a game that kind of shocks the traditional gaming Market a little bit and I think personally even if we get to 10 to 20 of the size of the traditional gaming markets I think that's a pretty big win for for web 3 especially in the short term um and you know even if we never do overtake if we can you know if we can take 10 to 20 of the market share I would say the industry is in a good space I don't understand a scenario where there's only a 10 to 20 percent of market share to be taken I I just don't see that scenario if there is any video game that is successful in letting people own their assets it seems like a fundamental feature that has to be in every other video game in my head maybe it's just because I'm skewed and I'm in here do you guys disagree with that do you think there's a world where there's like this niche Boutique web3 gaming industry and then webtoos gaming still exists and ownership doesn't cross over what do you guys thought what do you guys think about that so so maybe I'll give one one instance that I could think of Andrew it's not my base case either I think that we're going to either wait a long time and there's not going to be much traction or we're going to see pretty major swings over the next decade the the counter argument to that is it may be so difficult for games to build successful integration of nfts into the game in a way that's not game breaking especially I'm thinking of challenges with Bots and um you know players just uh always farming in a game that removes the fun factor from it um and so there's there's a chance that we may see a small number of games that work and it's more or less genre specific because it's so difficult to design effective integration of the economic structures that would be the only case that I could see where you see like a partial success of the industry partial success okay interesting uh JP what are your thoughts on that are we going to see like this League of Legends style player come out prove the new business model and revolutionize the industry and now everybody's doing free to play do you see that scenario or do you see this sort of segmented scenario where maybe some of this alluvium in web3 and star Atlas And whatever stuff works but ultimately we're going another Direction says Legacy gaming what do you think man yeah I mean I think there's a lot to unpack there I you know in general I think I really like what hustle said that you know web3 presents people that are overlooked by major corporations the opportunity to prove themselves and I think that web 3 games have an advantage in being able or being willing I guess because web 2 games are able but being willing to listen to the community and actually take Community feedback right you don't have you know the you know you don't have the Call of Duty you know people running Call of Duty getting on you know twitch streams or you know Twitter spaces and listening to the community like alluvia Missouri or like any other web 3 game is is trying to do so I think that is a huge advantage and I think that is going to allow for game developers to build better games that will show web 2 Gaming and you know Legacy Gamers or I'm sorry Legacy game studios that web 3 is a threat I think so far they don't really look at it as a look at it as a threat because the axi model is kind of what's been there they're like okay that's not really a threat at the moment I think it's going to take a game like eluvium AAA quality you know listens to the community has you know a strong balanced um approach to the the game Loop to really show these Legacy Studios that there's a threat here um but in terms of the longer term I personally don't see why any I'm kind of with you Andrew I personally don't see why any gamer After experiencing ownership and the ability to earn now a guarantee to earn more than you put in is never going to work right so like I'm you know very against that but the ability to earn under the right circumstances or even to just break even and to have ownership um I don't see why anybody would ever go back from that now I do think there's going to be challenges for certain genres like Annie said so I'm kind of on the fence on that um but I like to I guess maybe optimistically believe that we're going to be able to tackle those hurdles and find creative ways I've said for a long time that I think the biggest threat to web3 gaming is Bots and people gaming the system because now it's not just you know being pissed off at that guy in war zone that ruined my my kill streak or whatever right it's not just like oh man that was annoying now it's there's money on the line right like you can actually lose financially because of these hackers and stuff like that and you know Legacy gaming is already having a hard enough time as is keeping hackers in check so I think this is something that needs to be discussed more in web3 as a very serious threat to the industry but you know aside from that I don't see why anyone would come back from you know a play and own opportunity After experiencing it yeah it's tough for me to imagine as well now that I've played a significant amount of play and earn play and own at this point it's I've gone back to play some Legacy games that don't have any ownership involved and I'm like I cool I just collected 16 items it just honestly it felt weird to not be able to go sell those or understand what the value of the mar it's it's tough to go back once you actually own something but until you experience that for the first time it'll be difficult to uh get people in here final Pie in the Sky question and we're gonna wrap up this episode guys this was something interesting so we looked at gen 1 being let's call it oopsie doopsy play to earn let's say Gen 2 is play to own or play and own what's gen 3 then what go is there anything that goes beyond the ownership here or is that just too far out to even understand Johnny what do you think uh I think we would just call it gaming at that point right I mean if if the ownership model did just overtake it I think all of us would love to simply just be able to sit here and not have to term everything as nft gaming or anything like that right we would love to just say this is just gaming so uh you know even whenever I would on the traditional side of things as a gamer whenever like fortnite came out and pubg these games that were you know that kind of like started free to play models in a way I didn't really think of it as that type of a shift in the industry like oh wow this is revolutionary right only the people who were here and saw that kind of transpire we're lucky to be here and see these waves of the industry transpire I think Beyond uh free to own free to play whatever the play and earn whatever the model becomes I think the Step Beyond those is just gaming you would just call it gaming at that point and maybe they're not called nfts they're just called digital Collectibles in-game Collectibles because I think that would resonate with a you know traditional gamer a lot better and yeah I think the next step is just to to bring it to the to the masses in the industry and tournament as gaming and not these cliche terms because I never called fortnite free to play it was just a battle royale for example okay interesting yeah most people don't think about the business model they just play uh froby's suggestion is play and live yeah he's kind of going the direction I'm thinking on this Johnny really quick before we go to our next panelist where can people find you on the internet if they want to hear more of what you think about this space yeah absolutely uh and thank you again for having me on uh it was awesome sharing opinions with everybody on the panel today uh Andrew pleasure for having me and um puzzle pedia YT on Twitter you can find me a couple times a week on crypto banter as well I host the crypto gaming and nft show over there uh and check out uh twitter.com tt-o-o-n-f-t if you want to check out uh the project that I recently founded and launched but yeah that's about all I have going on that's great highly recommend following on all those Avenues links in the video description and podcast description for hustlepedia Johnny Annie what are your thoughts there what's beyond play and own do you have any 5000 IQ ideas about what the next phase would be yeah so so a couple ideas um one interesting model that kind of doesn't fit into that framework that I just entered for you is the I call play or own or I'm sorry play or earn um this is what I think JP mentioned with Noor and really they're leaning into more of an Esports type of concept um that's something that I think could uh could evolve over time actually where I where I do think most games are going to lean though in wave three and wave four of the space is probably more user generated content and so we don't really see a lot of that yet because the again building the economic model is very difficult for these types of projects and doing that when you have free open source content creation as well I think is also challenging there are a few uh platforms that are building but that's where I see things potentially evolving in the future interesting and where can people find you Annie if they want to know more about your Genius diagrams and what have you that you're sharing sure so uh check me out on my YouTube channel um Annie knows and as mentioned it's going to be in the description I'm also heavily involved in a number of communities um in web3 gaming whether it's eluvium or it's ethizards or it's one of any other 20 or 30 different projects so um probably following too many at the moment but you know I really think there's so many interesting ideas being generated we need to think about them as an industry as a whole and take the best parts from each project that work as we continue to build makes sense sorry if there's background noise a tank just literally arrived on the side of my studio JP what are your thoughts there what's beyond plan on is that is that is that the end game do we just own stuff on the internet and then job's done no more Innovation what do you think buddy yeah I mean I think that um you know I I think it is going to come to a point where where it's just going to be gaming right it's not going to be web 2 or web3 it's just going to be gaming and you know people are going to base their decisions on what is enjoyable I think um what I do see kind of happening is maybe play and run a business I don't know if we're probably gonna need a better name for it but I think there's going to be a you know a an opportunity for people to have businesses that are operating within these games you know that is more work and earn I guess than like play right it's like a virtual job that you're doing but you know even if it's just um like having a storefront for like um you know eluvian blueprints right like you have the right to sell a certain blueprint or something like that is income for you it's not really play right it's like within this ecosystem of this greater gamefi economy but it's more like a job than it is like play um whatever that's going to be called in the future I think there is going to be a little bit of a separation between running like a business right not just like oh I'm gonna earn like occasionally as a player it's more like I'm viewing this as a job right I think there's going to be a separation there and you know whether it is you know owning and operating a gas station and you know some space game or you know having a storefront for blueprints and alluvium or you know like like Annie said building a map for a game right maybe you are a a designer for a map for a certain kind of game right I think there's going to be businesses and like a whole wealth of job economy that's going to explode out of the game fight space once some of these metaverses and these games actually launch we're just not seeing that yet because there isn't really shipped AAA quality games right like eluvium is really leading the charge here and over the next two to three years as more things roll out I think we're going to see a wealth of opportunity on the business side arcade I've heard of it where can people find it

yeah so arcade um we are on Twitter uh arcade to earn that's arcade the number two earn my Twitter is Mission Pool um that's p-o-o-l-e it's my last name so that is my my Twitter and um yeah we'd love to have you in our community we have great relationships with the other panelists here and even you know um obviously eluvium and Andrew we have a lot of respect for what you guys are doing so we're doing our best to support the industry as it goes and yeah love to have anyone in the community that that hops in and um yeah really appreciate it Andrew this has been fun it has been thank you so much to everybody who watched this episode of Olivia talks Live Well my camera's frozen I was gonna do a cool Studio shot that's me earlier geez that's not even me right now it's not even lit up anyway thank you so much for everybody who's been watching a louvatox every episode it's available on every podcasting platform so go check it out at eluvium.buzz sprout.com if you want to listen to the audio version and most importantly if you have not already gone over to eluvium.io luvitars go ahead and register your email so you don't miss out on the best avatars that could possibly exist on the internet you get to create them with multiple nfts coming together in one customizable one we are revolutionizing what an nft is it's no longer just some unenthusiastic ape that's randomly generated it is now something that you create yourself completely customized go check it out on our website see you in the next episode of illuvatox every single week at this exact time and be sure to follow all of our panelists adios everybody